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To Christmas Eve!

We stopped by David’s house on our way to church to meet his family in town, and he took some pictures of us all dressed up!

Is she the cutest (or one of, rather) or what!

This is David’s daughter Laura with my girls – great picture!

We could be a Hallmark card.  We’re so cute. 

Merry Christmas again from the Pences!

Natalie’s First Haircut!

Just a warning – there are 25 pictures in this post, and that is by no means all I took that day.  :)

Natalie’s hair was hanging down in her eyes and looking very scraggly in the back so we decided it was time!  This was last Wednesday… the 5th I think.

I was able to leave the J’s at home with Gran so Natalie and I could have a date!

There are lots of before pictures. 

Funny girl.

Inside, waiting on the bench like a big girl!

Look at those gorgeous little curls!

I just love that super light straw color of her hair.

Looking under her bangs into the mirror.

Attempting one of the both of us.

Then I got smart and turned off the flash.

Getting ready!  She did so good for Miss Stacey.

Isn’t that just too precious?

The first snips!

And here they are:

We collected anything of substance that came off.  It was all so wispy.

I don’t remember what this face was about, but it’s cute.  :)

She even got to have her hair blow-dried!  What a treat!

Look at her little fingers sticking out the top of the cape:

All done!

I didn’t know if she’d do as well as Joanna did.  Natalie’s not always quite so fond of being messed with as Joanna is.  But she did great!

Now all we have to do is wait for the sides to catch up with the back.  Goodbye mullet!

Catching up from Last Year

Since it appears I’ve paid Best Buy to just sit on my new computer and never get it to me, it’s about time I caught up blogging on my mom’s computer.  Which, by the way, I’m very very lucky and thankful to have the use of.  I downloaded Windows Live Writer, which is my favorite way to blog.  Here are the last pics I took in 2010.

The Wednesday in between Christmas and New Year’s we had a playday at my house.  It turned out to be a girl playday!  In fact, even though James was here, he slept almost the whole time!

Which meant that little Josie got LOTS of attention from all the big sisters.

They loved holding baby Josie!

Doesn’t Natalie look just too little to be a big sister?

Abby was so nice to share her sister!  We had a great time – lots of fun for the kids, lots of talking for the grownups!

The Vandenberges invited us over on New Year’s Eve for dinner.

Natalie practiced on one of the girls’ bikes.

She loved it even though she couldn’t reach the pedals.

I think Anna is pretending to be a fairy godmother here:

And voila!  Joanna is a beautiful princess!  Personally, I see girl band in their future. 

Miss Natalie wanted to play dress up too.  We had to clothespin her in the back though!

Beautiful Aurora – the last picture of 2010:

Thanks Vandenberges!  We had a great evening!

James' first giggles

Courtesy of Gran this morning

Funny Things from Joanna

Yesterday when I was buckling her in the car, Joanna shivered and said she was cold. I told her I was about to turn on the car. She said, "and then you'll turn on the warm-conditioner."


Joanna was talking to my mom telling her about a song on one of her Bible song DVDs.
She said, "Then one boy said, Jesus diapers all the children."

But it's really Jesus died for all the children.
Kids say the darndest things. I just love how her little mind works. :)

Impressions

If I showed you this dress and said I was going to wear it out somewhere, I have no doubt at least a few people would think it was skimpy... revealing (for me at least!).But if I tell you it's a swimsuit, I bet the general consensus would be that it's very modest.

Don't you think that's strange?

I haven't bought a swimsuit in quite some time. In fact, I'm not sure I've bought one since I started having kids. That's mainly to do with me being pregnant or having just had a baby most summers. Hard to fit, to say the very least. Swimsuits are hard to find for most women I think. Modest suits are even harder to find. I don't see them in the stores. I guess there isn't much of a market for them. Fortunately there do seem to be some places online that sell various kinds of modest swimsuits. Like this one. My friend Shaun sent me the link. That's were I got the picture above. I'm thinking I may try that one out this year. It looks pretty forgiving and pretty comfortable. I don't do much swimming, but I am determined to get Joanna (and maybe Natalie) into lessons, and I'm pretty sure that means I'll need to be in the water some. James will also be at a fun age for the pool and the beach.

Anyway, I just can't wrap my mind around why swimsuits are so skimpy, so uncomfortable, and so expensive (for such a tiny piece of material)! Last year I remember looking at either L.L. Bean or Land's End (anybody else get those two confused?), and seeing that they have swim shirts to go over regular suits, but that doesn't help much below the belt. How come men get to swim in shorts?

Anybody have any thoughts? Do you like regular suits? Wish you had a more modest option? Does anyone have a modest suit they like?

I guess I'm in a pondering kind of mood today. :)

Television and Babysitting (but not at the same time)

Matt and I almost got Direct TV last week. Actually we signed up for it but changed our (my) mind before the installation guy came. We've been without cable for a few months now and it's really not horrible. I've always been a TV junkie though, so it's quite an adjustment for me. We have a converter box and an antenna in the living room that allows us to get most local channels. NBC comes in the best, and CBS and FOX are pretty good too. The spanish channels always come in crystal clear, but sadly it's pretty hard to watch PBS. The girls love videos though, and we have quite a stash of Disney flicks among other things.
The things I miss the very most about cable are channels like HGTV and TLC among others. I also really miss the DVR and watching my favorite shows whenever I want to! Fortunately my favorite programs are available from their network websites or Hulu the day after they air, so we can catch up then. It wasn't very enjoyable to watch them on my old computer, but I think the new one will have a nice bright clear screen for watching shows. We also are able to watch several TV shows and movies instantly through Netflix on the computer, so it's not like we're without media.
In fact, I've pretty much replaced my TV addiction for an internet addiction. :) I really enjoy reading blogs and Facebook, and I find myself sucked in far too many times a day. I have been doing more reading lately, and I'm hoping to do more when I get my Kindle. I'm hoping that will eventually cut down on the clutter around here as well.
Cable is so expensive in our area (maybe everywhere?), but Direct TV has a really good intro offer, and full price is even cheaper than cable as far as I can see. We talked about it and thought it would be worth the price and we would really enjoy it! I can't argue with that, but I started feeling buyer's remorse as soon as I signed up. I thought about it more and really found myself seeing things and thinking things that led me toward the decision to unsign up and be content with what we have! Not that I don't miss it. A lot. :)
For now we're going to save what we would have spent. It feels a lot better to have money in savings anyway. Although we're nowhere near our goal, we have a little breathing room... a very little. It felt really good to be able to buy a computer when mine died.

I'm not sure if I've actually mentioned this on the blog or not (or maybe I have a lot, but I just can't remember!), but I'm in the middle of a "career" change right now. :) I'd been working part time at the church up until James was born. Then we had a (really mutual) parting. It was their idea, but I think it was for the best, all around. So for the first time in all my havings of babies, I didn't have to go right back to work with them. I cannot tell you how delightful that's been! (Way better than cable :) ) And becuase of some nice people and circumstances, I've been able to keep the girls in MDO/preschool even though my income isn't coming in. Guess what I do on Tuesdays and Thursdays? I drop off the big girls, then James and I have 5 hours to ourselves! Talk about bonding!! I still feel a little guilty about it; I've always used that time for work! And in a way, I still do, though it's a different kind. I work on my parenting; I work on my house. It's nice.
I was on the lookout for some part time work as soon as I found out I wasn't continuing at the church. I wanted to be able to be with my kids at least most of the time. My schedule at the church was pretty ideal. I considered a few things, in no major hurry since I wouldn't want to do much before the new year. Then something fell into my lap. Well, first Matt actually got a little raise, which is amazing since they never give him raises! (That sounds wrong. His former boss never gave him a raise, but that wasn't his fault.) So with some budget cuts on our part and the little raise, we were okay for awhile! It feels good to know you're being watched out for, you know? These little things that happened really made me feel that leaving the church (as an employee) was the right thing to do! One thing I really want to be able to do though is keep the kids in the school up at church. They love it so much and I know it's good for them.
Back to the thing that fell into my lap: an old friend who moved back to Kingwood contacted me about watching her son while she works!! I am so excited about this. He was born in May, so he's in between my little ones, and I think this has the potential to be great! I know it will also be HARD WORK, but a different kind of hard than previous jobs. He's going to start next month. I won't have him every day or even the same days all the time. His mom is a PA downtown, and his dad is a student. I'm so excited to be able to help them (and me) out. I'm going to continue to put the girls in MDO/SLC this semester, and that will ease me in I think. Some days I'll just have the boys. Some days I'll have my three. Some days I'll have all four. :) We'll see what happens for the future. I'm excited to be able to save this money for when we need it. And as life happens, we will.

Clearly I needed to ramble. I haven't been writing much and I really wanted to get this on the ol' blog. In my head it was shorter. :)
The new computer will hopefully come in today. That combined with the girls going back to school this week should result in some blog posts with pictures!