Bethany's 12th Birthday

On Dec 3, our oldest turned 12!  This is a big deal in our church because that is when kids graduate from the primary and move on to the Young Women and Young Men program that they will be in until they graduate from high school.  Bethany was soooo excited.   She had a great party where she had a Pokemon themed cake and played Yahtzee.  She had been curious about Yahtzee ever since she read about it in the Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull.  A hermit troll in one of the books boasts that he is the Yahtzee king. 

Bethany's Pokemon Ball cake and 11 little pokemon ball cupcakes!

All the party guests!

Group hug!!!

Her wonderful friends gave her some very thoughtful gifts from a sketch book and pencils to pokemon cards and a book from her favorite Warrior book series.  They were all very nice girls from both church and school.  I was very impressed and pleased for Bethany.

It was a wonderful day for Bethany!

Belated Halloween Picts

Thanks to the snow storm, Halloween was postponed to November 6th.  Luckily, we had already had our church's Trunk or Treat party where people pass out candy from the trunks of their cars in the church parking lot.  It certainly stream lines the trick or treating process.  Also, since Nov. 6th was a Sunday, we decided that it wasn't really appropriate to participate in trick or treating around the neighborhood, the church party was the only candy gathering opportunity the girls had.   The girls did pass out candy to the few kids that came by.

Three of our pumpkins.  The one on the right has an original Bethany dragon design.

Kaitlyn as CeCe from Disney's Shake it Up

A sorceress and a witch.  The difference, you ask?  I have no idea.

Princess Jessi Rose

Jessi turns five!

Princess Jessi turned a precocious 5yrs old last Thursday.  She loved having her friends from preschool and church over.  She got a great new bike with the birthday money from her grandparents.  She loved riding all around Walmart. 

Jessi blowing out her cute candles on her cake.

I ended up having to have Arnie buy a cake at the last minute because the one I made broke in half when I tried to turn it out to frost it.  Although that didn't keep it from getting eaten.  Arnie and the girls would just break off a piece and dip it in the frosting and eat it like that.  Just goes to show you that it doesn't matter what it looks like.

Jessi was the perfect hostess to all her guests

Snowtober

Here in New England, everyone was surprised when over a foot of snow fell in October knocking out power for a while.  We were without power for 5 days.  This isn't the first time we have dealt with power outages in this house and it wasn't the longest.  The ice storm of '08 had us without power for 10 days.

My snowy wilderness

Because of our previous experience, having no power was only a minor inconvenience.  A friend of mine gave us a bunch of wood for our wood stove so we were toasty warm inside and were able to cook foil bake potatoes a couple times.

LT loves the snow!

My girls loved playing in the snow with LT and were outside more during the three or four days of what people started calling "staycation" than they ever did when it was warm and pleasant. I am convinced children just do not care about being wet and cold as much as grown ups.

Malia showing off her snow chair

Bethany, Jessica and Malia in their ice tunnel

Iced Fall leaf

Kaitlyn and Jessi with their big snowball

Jessi, the Rock Star

 Jessica is a kick in the pants and I mean that in a good way.  This morning she helped me sweep and do the dishes, and then played electric guitar with her daddy.

They were playing so loud the dog ran and cowered next to me.  I don't know about this child.  I think she will be able to do anything she puts her determined little mind to.  Just like her dad.  What do you think?

Bethany's take on her EEG

Just a brief back story.  Bethany had a 24hr EEG done this week.  She got hooked up to a portable machine via a lot wires glued to her head and then had them removed the next morning.  She wrote about this harrowing experience in her journal and has graciously allowed me to copy some excerpts from it.

Prior to the procedure, she wrote of her apprehensions. 

10/3/11- "Tomorrow, I'm going to have a machiney dealy strapped to my head for a full 24-hours.  I wonder what I'll do when I need to go to the bathroom!  The good side of this is that I don't have to go to school!"

10/4/11- " Ugh, today is so WET!  I got the wires attached to my head with plenty of glue, air and reluctance, with a slight chance of burning pain!  My forehead was probably the worst spots where the glue was.  Now, I can't run or play because ther is this thing recording my brain waves.  It feels like the weekend with my brain in a box.  BORED!"

10/5/11- "Wow, the taking off of the wires was much stinkier and more painful than I thought.  It burned my mouth and nose and so I was nearly stolen of my dignity.  But when I got home, I had vegetable oil put in my hair, so I smelled like some french fries that had had some nail polish removed.  Then I stood over the sink for hours on end.  Then my mom drove me to school for even more torture!"

 I am so proud of Bethany for being so brave and having such a good sense of humor about the whole thing.  It made a very tough situation so much better.

Cutting hair

One thing I can add to my list of accomplishments this year is that I did hair cuts for my entire family including myself and my husband.   I think the biggest deal about this is cutting Arnie's hair.  Dating back to when we were first married and he was just commissioned in the Army, he bought a pair of clippers and wanted me to learn how to cut his hair in a military haircut.  I failed so miserably that he ended up buzzing his entire head to just a fuzz and never letting me try ever again. 

This time he had been growing his hair out for several months due to being on leave and now going to college but he was really getting to look pretty shaggy, which is funny only because of our dog, LT looking a lot like a yellow Scooby Doo.   I suppose since regulations are more relaxed at school he let me have another go at it.

Arnie Before Picture

LT

I had to borrow clippers from my friend since Arnie's had died a couple years ago.  Turns out I was in luck as her clippers still had the instructions.  I decided to follow the instructions as closely as possible and hope for the best.  The worst, I knew from experience, was that Arnie would just buzz it all one length again.  I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out not only passable but, in my humble opinion, pretty darn good!

Arnie After Picture