Happy Birthday Hannah!!

Yesterday Hannah turned 3 years old. We had a little party for her during half time of the Super Bowl. Hannah picked a pink cake, of course, and got some fun presents. I think she was a bit overwhelmed at first which would explain the odd expressions of her with the cake. She has been to enough family birthdays to know that she needed to blow out the candles, making a wish will come later. She loved opening the presents, as soon as she got one open she would pose for a picture then start on the next one. Here are a few of her gifts. Notice the hat in the picture to the left? My talented sister made that hat for Hannah. The cat purse looks just like our cat, Bootsie. Hannah did get toys for her birthday, legos, little care bears, a princess game and a coloring bag. She got a new outfit too. She loves new clothes as all little princesses do.

Happy Birthday Hannah!

Happy Holidays

Can you feel the excitement in the air? We are getting closer to Christmas. Today we made the mints for the teachers. The kids will bring them to school tomorrow. I managed to make Maya's gift (it's very cute) and wrap a few presents today also. I still have shopping and more wrapping to do before the big day. Since I work all weekend I guess I'll be one of those shoppers on Christmas Eve.

Here are some pictures of the kids making cookies last weekend. We made those peanut butter cookies with the Hershey kiss in the middle. Maya and Elias had fun mixing and forming the cookies. Hannah just got to watch, she had a cough and runny nose, I just didn't want her to get all her germs on the cookies. Now that the cookies are almost all gone we will do some more baking this weekend. I think we'll make caramel corn and more cookies. We are also planning on making mints to give to the teachers.

In the past I have given the teachers books or a Barnes and Noble gift card so they can buy books for the classroom. With the increased number of teachers to get gifts for this year I decided to go with the mints and some caramel corn. We do have a book to donate to the school library entitled E is for Ethiopia . It's a book I ordered this summer that goes through the English alphabet but has a photo of something in Ethiopia for each letter.

Last night Maya started writing out her Christmas wish list. I told her she could put anything on it that she wanted but not to expect to get everything on her list. So far she has only come up with four things she wants.

Maya's list:
1. A dog of my own
2. Hannah Montana movies
3. All the family here for Christmas
4. People in Africa get what they need.

I am truly amazed with this little girl's compassion for others, she is only 8 years old yet she believes she can save all of Africa. Sunday mornings she loves to sit down and watch the infomercials about sponsoring a child in a third world country, or sending money to help pay for cleft lip/palate surgeries for children in third world countries. She always tells me we chould be doing this. I wish I could grant all of her Chirstmas wishes but that is financially impossible. So I think I'll research companies that sponsor children and grant her part of her wish.

Here are some pictures from a recent Girl Scout overnight trip at camp. This is my third year as a one of Maya's Girl Scout leaders. I have enjoyed watching these girls grow up and teaching them new things. At this overnight (our first ever) the girls learned to tie knots. In the picture Maya is demonstrating her ability to tie a square knot. Elias and Hannah came along for fun and also because I couldn't leave them home. This was their first time wearing winter cats, hats and mittens. Shortly after this picture the mittens were shed in order to pick up rocks to throw in the lake. Hannah found some coins in her coat pocket (62 cents) as she was loading it up with rocks. She started yelling "Mom, moneys!" I though this was a pretty good deal considering I bought the coat and matching snow pants this summer at a garage sale for $3. I guess I saved 62 cents!
The rest of the weekend consisted of the girls learning to sew buttons on fabric, cooking two meals and practicing some outdoor sports skills. There was sleeping too, though not as much as we needed.
This coming week is Thanksgiving so I have been thinking of all that I am thankful for. Lately I have been so grateful to Elias and Hannah's father. He made a very hard, painful decision to let his children leave. In my thanks for bringing these children into our lives I grieve for Elias and Hannah's father in all that he has lost and I grieve for Elias and Hannah too, for the father that they have lost. Now that Elias' English comprehension and communication is getting better every day he has started to tell me things about Ethiopia. He refers to his father as "Bopa". As I have started explaining Thanksgiving to him we have looked at pictures of his Ethiopian family as well as his American family and talked about how and why we are thankful for all of them. Hopefully some of this is sinking in and he'll grow up thankful instead of resentful for all of his family.
I am asking all three children to make a list of three things they are thankful for and to draw a picture to go along with it. I'll post the pictures later this week.

Halloween fun

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The trick-or-treating is done. The bags are full of candy and the costumes have been discarded along with all kinds of candy wrappers. The kids are jumping all over the place hoping more trick-or-treaters will come before bedtime.
Elias and Hannah took to trick-or-treating like old pros. They both loved seeing all the pumpkins on porches and especially loved picking out candy when allowed. Maya dressed up as Hannah Montana, complete with a blond wig, Elias was a friendly pirate and Hannah was a forest elf. We skipped make-up this year but they were all as cute as can be.
Hannah did see her first scary costume - the grim reaper with a skeleton face and a vampire with our first trick-or-treaters, she took off across the room screaming and crying. I guess I forgot to prepare them for the scary aspect of Halloween.

Cooperative Kids

This is one thing you can do in a clean living room.

I was hit, big time, by Strep this past weekend. I thought is was just a virus until my throat swelled up and ibuprofen wasn't doing anything to help. So I got some oral pain meds and a shot of penicillin and I started feeling better, though I was exhausted all weekend. I tried really hard not to pass it on to the kids though Elias started coughing this morning at breakfast. We'll have to wait and see.
I had planned to get some pumpkins to carve, instead our weekend consisted of us staying home and the kids entertaining each other. I am actually really proud of how well they played together this weekend. Saturday morning I told them they all needed to help clean the living room and the family room and that if I heard any complaining they would have to clean the extra room in the basement. Right away Maya volunteered to clean the basement and convinced Elias and Hannah that it would be fun. I brought down a load of laundry and Maya brought some music and a CD player. We got the room clean in about 10 minutes (including vacuuming). Then the kids stayed down there playing some game they made up with Hannah's little bike thing. Later we got the family room and living room cleaned and vacuumed without any complaining from anyone! They then proceeded upstairs to play with their toys! Whose children are they? They hardly ever go upstairs to play unless they can convince me to go along. Maybe I should get sick more often.
The kids have decided on costumes for Halloween tomorrow but we haven't done any pumpkin carving, I just couldn't get out of the house to go buy any pumpkins. We'll save that for next year. We do have candy to give out, tonight we're going to practice magic and turn lollipops into ghosts. Have fun trick-or-treating.

What's New Around Here

I've been frustrated with my camera lately. I have been having problems uploading pictures to the computer for awhile but I finally got some uploaded today. We have had some changes around here in the last few weeks. First we got a cute little cat named Bootsie. We brought her home Humane Society one Saturday in September. I took all three kids there with the intention of looking for a cat to adopt. I had found a few online that I thought might be okay. Bootsie was not on my list but apparently she thought she should be. Maya was looking at all the cats and Bootsie stuck her paws out of her cage as Maya went by, causing Maya to stop and look at her then declare that this was the cat she wanted. We spent a little time with Bootsie and Maya was sold on her so we brought her home. She is a very affectionate, petite 1-year-old kitty, she loves sitting on laps and tolerates all kinds of hugs, kisses and being carried around by the kids.

I started back to work last week. A new adjustment for Elias and Hannah, sleeping at Grandma and Grandpa's house. In addition Hannah started going to daycare in September to prepare for me going back to work. She loves daycare but lately has tried producing tears, clinging to me and crying as loudly as possible to get me to not leave her there. Of course she stops carrying on once she thinks I am gone. I actually heard her stop her crying one day on my way out the door, so I know it is all for my benefit. She and I go to ECFE once a week. I have found it nice to talk with a group of women going through the "twos" right now too. It's also nice to see Hannah cheerfully interacting with other kids.

Earlier this week Elias lost his first tooth and got 50 cents from the Tooth Fairy. He is very proud of losing his tooth and called Grandma and Grandpa right away to give them the good news. He had his last soccer game last week and was sad that he won't be able to play on a team again until next year. Elias is never sad for long, right now he is plotting how to spend all his money.

I took Maya and Elias to conferences at school on Monday. Basically they told me that Elias loves school and is always smiling. Sounds familiar enough, he is always smiling at home too.

Maya is getting into the swing of things at school and even doing her homework at home without too much complaining. She has really taken off with her reading and has started reading to the other kids once in a while. She is still swimming at the U once a week and we all go to Girl Scouts twice a month. (I'm one of the leaders again this year). I think Maya is actually enjoying not being so scheduled this year as she has more time to just play.