Updates and some Merry Reading

This morning, as Liv was getting dressed in the bathroom, she tripped over noticed the mountains neat piles of dirty laundry on the floor. She held her jammies up for me to inspect and simply asked, "Light or Dark, Mommy?"
Yes! I will have her sorting and washing laundry before she can do multiplication.


I am really thankful to live so close to a children's hospital. Everyone is so kind and helpful there. And I love, love, love that they love, love, love children. It makes getting surgery or any kind of specialized treatment so much easier to deal with.

Olivia has to be sedated to have some dental work done at the end of this month. Read: we tried going to our normal ped. dentist and she kicked and screamed so much that she will have to be put under to have her cavities filled. I don't know what gets into her. My older girls practically beg to go to the dentist - they love it (I think it may have something to do with all the prizes they get...) But it puts Olivia into an absolute panic. She says she can't breathe and she literally fights off 3 adults on her own. Of course, couple her absolute fear of dentists with her absolute LOVE of candy, and we have a problem!

Daniel will be going to the children's hospital this Friday to get tubes put into his ears. Hopefully this will stop the dreaded ear infections that have been plaguing him since July. He has had 9 ear infections in 5 months. This makes for very little sleep for both him and me (and lots of sleep interruptions for the other members of the family). Please, please let this work!



We got our Christmas tree put up on Saturday. I miss not having the glass balls on the tree - I like how they reflect the lights. I just didn't think it was wise what with the little boy grabbing ornaments off and chewing on them. Definitely not a good year for glass balls! Even up high, I have this fear of him pulling the tree over on himself in his haste to get an ornament off and chew on it. We also had to move the gingerbread ornaments up - they were a bit too tasty for him!

I am still loving reading the Christmas stories to the girls - they look forward to it also. I have read two more since I last blogged so I'll tell you a little about them. First I wanted to mention that my girls are still talking about The Legend of the Candy Cane. We had a great discussion about it again on Friday night. They remembered all the symbolism and what it meant. We got into a deeper discussion about the shape of the candy cane being like a shepherd's staff and what that means to us as Christians. It worked out really well that the last line of Eme's Awana memory verse last week was "We are the sheep of His pasture." They had a good time describing sheep (dumb!) and describing the shepherd (kind, patient, caring, etc).

After that we read Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree by Robert Barry. This was a fun, whimsical book. Mr. W gets a really really big Christmas tree - so big that it doesn't fit in his living room. So he cuts the top off and has it thrown away. But someone takes it and makes it her own Christmas tree, but it's too tall, so she cuts the top off and throws it away. And on and on. I think you get the point. It is very cute though and I so enjoyed the rhyming throughout the book. Rhyming books are my favorites for read-alouds. This would also be a great book to start a discussion about recycling and helping those less fortunate than ourselves.

Last night, we read The Legend of the Christmas Tree by Rick Osborne. This story teaches how the traditional Christmas tree began and also how it relates to the story of Jesus' birth. I learned some new info from reading this and again, it was a sweet story. I would like to find other books that talk about the history of the Christmas tree because I think there is even more symbolism than this book touched on. (although it was very good and in depth.)

We are busy, busy as I'm sure you all are this Christmas season! Keep it merry! =]