December Pre-Christmas Miscellany

(Blogger HATES me. I have been trying to post this for the past three days, and I have had trouble loading the pictures, then blogger converted this entire post into HTML code. Because that's easy to read. Mad props to my brother John for fixing my sad, broken blog.)

I loaded a bunch of pictures from my camera onto the computer from this month, and I wanted to get 'em on the blog before Christmas comes and I have another 2000 pictures to cull through.

We've had a fun month. The boys both finished up their flag football season. They LOVE football right now. Every day when they get off the bus, they head straight to the backdoor for "training" in the backyard with their football and cleats. (I looked out the window yesterday to see that Aidan was training in only his new pair of boxer-briefs. He's pretty sure they're shorts.)

These pictures are from his football game a few weeks ago when Aidan was perfecting the art of falling face-first into the dirt on every play, even on the plays where he never came into contact with another human being.

He's a bit moody. These pictures were taken in about a 30 second time span.

I love this kid. So much.

After the last game, we headed over to our subdivision's brand-spankin' new clubhouse for a Grand Opening/Open House thing. Our previous clubhouse was destroyed in Hurricane Ike, and now, 3+ years later, it has been rebuilt. They must have used our contractor. We enjoyed eating dinner, meeting a bunch of our neighbors for the first time, and feeding inappropriate amounts of sugar cookies to the kids. We saw the new pool, work out facility, and the kiddos bounced around in a Moonwalk that had been rented for the event.

In hindsight, it should have occurred to us to maybe not stick our kids in a Moonwalk right after stuffing themselves with bright red sugar cookies, at a party where we really didn't know anyone. Sure enough, after a few minutes of bouncing, Harper climbed out of the Moonwalk and into my arms. I think she was actually hugging my neck when she vomited red sugar cookies all over my arm. I realized at that moment that vomit from the fourth child is less "Oh no, my poor baby is sick! We must call the pediatrician for an emergency visit!" and more "Did any of it get on my shoes?" I cleaned myself off, wiped her down with a couple of baby wipes, and commenced with the party. We pulled our kids out of the Moonwalk, and met a few more neighbors.

We talked schools and churches and jobs, and things neighbors discuss when no one knows each other very well. About an hour later, after helping clean up the party and break down tables, we loaded up in the van to head home. That's when I realized I still had a few chunks of red sugar cookie vomit on my jeans. Of course. Just the first impression I had hoped to make with neighbors. "Hi, I'm Mandy. Yes, I have four children. Yes, in fact, I do have my hands full and it is never a dull moment. Oh, and that? Just some vomit chunks from my youngest daughter that I decided to leave on my pants for a while. No, she's not sick. Just jumped around a little too much after eating half of that box of red santa sugar cookies. Hey, weren't we supposed to bring homemade cookies to this thing? Oh, you brought the store-bought santa sugar cookies? My daughter thought they were delicious.

My facebook friends already know about this, but Aidan made a cute little handprint ornament at school last week. It was made of some sort of soft squishy clay/playdoh substance, and Brandon came in the room to find Harper EATING the ornament. Like, she took more than just one bite out of it. My daughter ate a Christmas ornament. What. On. Earth.

She was disciplined, and the ornament was returned to the tree, out of Harper's reach this time. The next morning, we awoke to find her eating the ornament again. I promise we feed her real food, that we are not starving our precious children. This one just eats weird stuff.

Speaking of Harper, Brandon sent me this picture the other day while I was at work.

He had gotten the girls ready for school, and Harper had requested "special hair". I think Hot Brandon is getting pretty good at fixing little girl hair. :)

The girls had a Christmas program at their preschool earlier this month. In hindsight, I have no idea what they did. I'm sure it involved some sort of singing/hand motions set to Christmas music. I do remember afterwards, seeing Emerson goof around with a couple of her sweet school buddies who go to church with us:

Brandon and Emerson had a date on Monday, and they went out for Chinese food for lunch.

Brandon told me later that when they put the food on the table, Emerson immediately grabbed the chopsticks and popped a pork dumpling in her mouth! Somewhere in her brain, she remembers how to use chopsticks. (Brandon had painted her face like a bunny at the Children's Museum before lunch.) Emerson made him take this picture of her outside of the Children's Museum:

I have a few "Dane stories" too, but I will try to post about his birthday weekend at some point, if Blogger lets me!