Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our oldest four (baby Nathan was already asleep)! We hope your holidays are fabulous and wonderful.

And just silly enough to be delightful.

Pajama pants tutorial here (so easy! I made some for Neil and myself as well and I have practically been living in them). For the shirts I just fussy-cut the pattern from the pants and then hand-appliqued it onto a plain shirt they already owned.

Everything else

I honestly can't remember what photos from my iPad I've blogged and what I haven't, so I'm just going to do a massive photo dump here for the last few months and call it good. First and foremost, did I mention Halloween? Abigail went as Annabeth Chase from the Percy Jackson books (you can't see her shirt, but we freezer-paper-stenciled a Camp Half-Blood shirt and then made a fake Yankees cap. We made the beaded necklace too but I think we forgot to actually put it on). Juliet was planning to be Luke Skywalker and then we convinced her to wear something warmer, so she was a princess. And the boys were dragon-dinosaurs. It was super fun and beautiful weather (i.e. it wasn't snowing or icy, although it was raining the whole time, but heck, it's been way worse!) and we had a blast.

So one day Isaac and I decided it would be fun to experiment with paper-mache. So we did. And honestly, this is one of my absolute favorite projects ever. I LOVED it.

One Friday night Neil & I took a break from painting and made this sunburst mirror out of a candle plate, wood shims, and a bunch of fake gems. I love it and it's hanging over our bed. It was super fun to make and a very easy project until I propped it up over the fireplace, stepped back to look at it, and it crashed down and smashed and we had to puzzle-piece it back together, which was totally awful. I may or may not have cried when it was 2 AM and I was sitting in a pile of splintered wood. Fortunately it all worked out and it looks gorgeous.

So it's driving me crazy that half of these photos are upside down, because I wasn't thinking about the orientation when I took them with my iPad, but I have no idea how to fix it now, Tot is yelling and it's 12:12 AM and I have GOT to finish this post before it languishes for another 3 months. Next time I'll know better.

Anyway, Isaac had this huge obsession with hand pies for about a month. Pumpkin worked really well.

Cherry...not so much.

One day I made curtains for the living room and hung them on rods that I made out of a piece of electrical conduit. Later (after this photo) I picked up some vintage drawer pulls and used sticky tack to stick them onto the raw edges of the conduit. I also spray-painted the heck out of all those pumpkins on the mantel and hand-lettered the autumn sign. All of which means I didn't really feel like cooking dinner for like...a month, or going to the grocery store, so we ate some pretty inventive dinners.

 This one is super cute. He's still crying right now.

So did you read about that huge tornado outbreak? Yeah, it was not so fun. My husband was home-teaching on a Sunday afternoon when the sirens went crazy. I woke up 3 sleeping kids and rushed into our closet with everyone and we huddled together praying while the house shook and the wind screamed around us. We were safe, but the damage in our town was extensive--two of the schools in our district lost roofs and walls and are closed for the next year while they repair everything. 

Can't remember if I blogged this, but I had my hair cut--about 6 inches off everywhere and then bangs for the first time since fifth grade.

Neil turned 33! And as usual, he insisted that his candles be in binary form. I think.

Jules and Abigail both lost teeth last week--first one for Juliet! She was thrilled. She has two other front teeth that are loose right now & I'm really hoping they all come out before the new ones grow in, because I want her to have the awesome experience of closing her teeth around a giant straw and sucking down a milkshake through closed teeth. That's like a rite of passage, isn't it?

We hosted Thanksgiving! Sooo fun and Isaac and I had a great time making these little place-setting cornucopias. My kids were WAY more impressed by these than by the giant spread.

Which just meant more deliciousness for me.

I made too many pies--we finally had to throw the last half pie away when we just couldn't stand to eat any more.

And then the day after Thanksgiving we got our tree! Yay!

 Darling darling baby...

 ...who had to go on nebulizer treatments. Goodness, I'm getting so good at administering those!

 

 One of my absolute favorite family traditions is making ornaments each year. This year we did a dozen beaded snowflakes and it was so, so, so fun. The kids were all super into it, even Luke. I loved their gorgeous designs and they look so magical on the tree! (Basically we just cut pieces of wire and then Neil soldered them together and then we strung on beads and crimped down the ends. Very very easy and very fun.)

Don't you love how Isaac is obviously thrilled and Hermes is obviously not?

Joojie's letter to Santa. It doesn't look very legible at this angle, but I remember that she asked for a Luke Skywalker costume (which is what she wanted and got for her birthday, so she clarified in the PS that she actually wants just a lightsaber. Sorry, kiddo, but there's no chance of that because I've seen you & your brothers play with lightsabers at your cousin's house, and you guys hold nothing back), a scratching post for Hermes, and a lot of surprises.

Isaac drew people all over the back of his Santa letter. I love how they all have bellybuttons.

One night we made like a gazillion gingerbread things. This was just the first round (destined for Isaac's preschool).

The ones we kept at home ended up being made into Cyclops.

Luke is such an awesome jolly kid. Right now he's in this stage where he calls his favorite shade of dark blue "Darth Vader." I think it came about because of the dark/Darth thing. Anyway, he always likes to eat out of his Dark Vader bowl, which oh-so-obviously means the dark navy Anthropologie latte bowl. What, you didn't just guess that automatically?

 Okay, the upside-down pictures are really starting to bother me!!  Reindeer-tot is so cute but you really can't tell.

 Another family tradition that I really love is the night where we make gingerbread houses. I didn't take any photos of the actual event (I cracked my iPad screen and so I've had it up on a high shelf most of the time these days) but I did have to snap a shot of this awesomeness--he came up with it all on his own and waited expectantly for us to laugh. I love that kid so much.




We had an awesome huge storm on Saturday. So so so fun and we had the best time playing together and making a giant igloo.

Neil in the process of wiring a new outlet--Abigail told me today that there is nothing Daddy can't do.

And my sweet Tot!!  Love this little boy...who has now stopped crying!  hurray!

Nathan is (almost) eight months old

My darling Tottles is almost eight months old, and let's be honest, I may not blog again before his "birthday." So I snapped a few photos after church today to document his adorableness.

You guys, I just adore this little man. He is so, so, so sweet and kissable and lovable and delightful. He has the most delicious baby laugh, and he is so ticklish and happy. He goes crazy with joy when you pick him up and just erupts into waves of giggles (but he doesn't like the camera!)

Natie has cut two teeth in the past week (thank heavens--there were some grumpy nights!) and is off of his reflux medication and his nebulizer treatments. He is doing way better with the reflux, but I've found that he is much more sensitive to solid foods. He will happily gum down a chunk of banana, but about half of the time those chunkier foods cause him to start projectile vomiting. So we're still doing a lot of soft purees, although he does quite well with Cheerios (which he can feed himself! Yay!). His favorite food thus far seems to be roasted tomato bisque.

Nathan loves to watch the kitten play--he will just sit there laughing like crazy while the kitten runs around and then try to grab a big handful of kitten when Hermes gets close enough. Thankfully Hermes, who has more than earned his title of Most Patient Cat Ever, puts up with Nathan and wiggles away when he gets a chance.



Nathan has also learned how to blow raspberries on other people.  He finds this hilarious.

And, of course, Natie is never happier than when he is playing with the big kids. The five of them immediately decamped after lunch today and started playing a very elaborate game, and Nathan was thrilled to join in by trying to bite the head off of a plastic kangaroo. I feel so lucky to have all five of these kiddos in my world.

Hermes as photographed by the girls

I quite like the artistic feel of this last one. Abigail's got a good eye.