December 23

So if any of you have been wondering why I am so behind in blog posts. I have a good reason.. This morning we went to a lovely Christmas coffee at our friend's house. Kids came home and took a nap. Mia had just woken up and was eating lunch when all of a sudden I hear the sound of rushing water. This was not in a Tyler just woke up and flushed the toilet kind of way so I am trying to figure out what is going on when I look in the family room and see water coming down from the ceiling all over my new chair, new flat screen, Bose stereo system, etc. So I am just panicking and in my panic thought, "I need help." So literally I leave Mia sitting in her highchair and run across the street to my neighbor who is a builder and he runs over, shuts the water off and realize we had a pipe freeze and burst. This has been a bit of a disaster as you can see from this picture of my family room. The wood floors in the adjacent room buckled and will need ripped out and replaced. Two days before Christmas and my house was literally wrecked from ripping out drywall and trying to dry out the water. From the time the pipe burst to the time we got the water shut off was only 5 minutes. If this had happened an hour later, I would have been out shopping and I wouldn't have a family room anymore so that is the only blessing in all of this. Our homeowners insurance will cover it and I am fighting with the builder as to why I have a new home with a burst pipe but it still stinks. So please learn from my mistake and learn where your water shutoff is. I was actually shown at one point when we moved in but I have post-baby brain and knew it would take me more time to find it than it would to go get help.

December 20 - Church

We went to the Christmas service at Willow Creek this evening. First, I have to say, my kids have been having to get dressed up a lot in the last two weeks and they have been troopers but Mia was just not in the mood to wear her fancy dress and bow this evening so she looks sort of waif-like (my Grandpa's term for Mia when she is giving her best I-don't-want-my-picture-taken look.) Tyler got to stay with us during the service this year as it was very much more like a Christmas show than a sermon. Mia went to childcare and cried the entire time. Afterwards we went out to dinner with Mike's mom and the kids got ice-cream sundaes - a huge treat, to make up for this dress-up torture.

December 20 - Breakfast with Baby Jesus

This morning we went to Breakfast with Baby Jesus for the second year. Each table had a manger with a Baby Jesus doll in it which quickly became Mia's Baby Jesus. As you can see in this picture, Mia's obsession with jewlery is not diminishing and to fight her about wearing gaudy gold beads to church is too much work. Tyler's interest in seeing baby Jesus this time because there was so man goodies to eat, we could barely tear him away from the food table.

December 19

We were snowed in today so we spent a little time baking a little time tasting. Let me just assure you that if you received cookies from us, I made them during nap time. The other treats were consumed by the bakers..

December 17

Today was Tyler's Preschool Program. Mike, his parents and sister all came hoping for a repeat performance but of course this time he sang like a little angel. The little girl standing next to him is his first preschool crush.

December 14

Today was Tyler's Sunday School Program. It was kind of interesting to say the least. We almost didn't go because we missed church and I didn't think Tyler knew his songs. But as always my children suprise me and Tyler stole the show - literally. The first song you could barely hear any singing and then all of a sudden Tyler began to scream the songs. The little girls next to him were just staring in disbelief and a packed church with maybe 200 people was laughing hysterically. Apparently Tyler did know his songs and his teachers must have known he would sing loudly because they put him center stage. It was so funny we didn't even get any pictures because we were just staring with our mouths hanging open but we do have a hysterical video that I need to post. People were coming up to us saying, "I think he is going to be on American Idol." Oh my sweet Tyler..

December 13

We visited Santa today. There was no way Mia was having anything to do the jolly old elf but Tyler wasted no time in telling Santa that he only wanted two things - a robot dinosaur and a pirate ship.