The Most Craziest Time Of The Year!

Whew!  Where are we?  Did Christmas happen already?  Where the hell did this month go??  I've been caught up in a craze of present buying, cookie making, nutcracker show seeing, office and home partying, Santa visiting (at the mall and on a train), Disneylanding insanity for over a month now.  This is the first time I've sat down since Thanksgiving.  I wish I was kidding about that.  This time of the year gets so crazy for us, as I'm sure it does for everyone. Even though the day after Christmas used to be my most unhappy day of the year, when I was a kid, it has quickly moved to the top of the list as my favorite, because there is nothing I HAVE to do today!!  YIPEE!  Well, nothing that is, except catch up with all of you.  

Don't get me wrong, I had a great time with my family yesterday.  The girls loved all their gifts and played for hours.  They are all at such a great age for Christmas.  Although, I think we may lose Sonya in the belief of Santa by next year.  She started asking too many questions about him this year.  Questions that you only ask when you are trying to trip someone up in a lie.  Questions that I wish I could give you an example of right now, but my brain has become a sieve this past month.  Just trust me, she has been skeptical.  However, thanks to the NORAD Santa tracker on line, we kept her at least wanting to believe for one more year.  I remember being her age and thinking things didn't add up.  Things like why Santa and my parent had VERY similar writing.  I have tried to correct this by using cursive when I put Santa tags on their gifts.  I always print, so Sonya doesn't recognize my cursive.  We haven't had anymore questions, so she must be satisfied for now.  I am worried about next year though. Good thing I have eleven months before it will probably come up again.  

So all that planning and prepping, shopping and madness that led to one day this month, and then it's just over.  I remember being a kid and feeling like it took forever to get to Christmas and now it comes faster than I am ever ready for.  The good news is now, I can take a bit of a break for the next week.  My parents are coming on Friday to spend a few days with us, which will be helpful.  They are good with helping out with the kids which will be essential to my sanity during the girls' time off of school.  Then, who knows?  Maybe I will clean out closets and drawers that have been begging for organization for months now.  I do know that I will be able to come update more on here.  Something I have been seriously lacking lately, and I truly apologize.  See first paragraph for excuse.  

Thanks to all of you who come back here to read what I have to write.  I appreciate all of your support and especially your comments.  I hope everyone had as great a Christmas (or whatever holiday you may celebrate) as we did.  Hope your new year is filled with much joy and happiness. 

Now, I'm going to go take a nap.  

Pretty As As A Picture

You may have noticed I changed the picture of the girls on my blog.  It is one of the pictures from the wedding the girls were in back in October.  I love the way all the pictures turned out.  Courtney and  Mark's wedding photographer was amazing.  He had about three other people with him taking pictures. The result was awesome pictures you sometimes had no idea were even being taken.  His name is Mike Larson and if you are getting married or know someone getting married at a vineyard in California anytime soon, contact him immediately: http://www.mikelarson.com  Not only did he do an amazing job, but he was an incredibly nice guy.  He took a fabulous family picture of us as well as tons of great ones with the girls.  But you can judge for yourself:

Getting ready for their big debut.

With the blushing bride.

Sisters!

Loving sisters. (To bad it's not always like this.)

We are all smiling and looking at the camera!  This is not as easy as you would think.

Waiting...

Showtime!

So far so good...

Following in her sisters' footsteps...literally.

Might as well just dump all the petals now!

This is probably one of my favorite pictures of all time.

Followed by this one. This is what I was talking about, not knowing you were being captured.  Well Lana did.

Sonya REALLY wanted that bouquet.  I can't believe how well they captured this moment.  

Terrible Tragedy

Usually I come on here to write stories about my girls being funny, sometimes annoying, or just silly.  Usually you come here to read my stories to laugh or empathize with me.  Even though I had a story in mind I was planning to write about, I just didn't feel that after today's horrific tragedy I could write something that seemed trivial right now.  Instead I want to say how much love my little girls, how incredible I think they are and how tight I am going to hug them  before going to bed tonight.  Sonya and Lana are both in elementary school, and never in my most terrible nightmares could I ever imagine something so scary happening at their school.  Mostly, I can't understand why someone would target such young children.  The whole thing makes no sense. 

I am so incredibly sorry for the moms and dads in Connecticut tonight that won't get to hug their babies again.  Especially ten days before Christmas.  Their lives are changed in a tragic way forever, and I pray I never  know the pain that they are going through.  My girls mean everything in the world to me, even the days they drive me the craziest.  I would no doubt fall apart if something that horrible ever happened to them.  My heart, thoughts, prayers, and tears go out to those parents who lost their little ones today.  In honor of their losses, I will try to have just a little more patience and spend a little more time with my three girls.  I encourage the rest of you to do the same with your own kids, nieces, nephews or grandchildren.  Make sure they always know how much you love them.

They Can Walk 500 Miles-Or Maybe 5

Last week we took our annual holiday trip to Disneyland.  As I've mentioned before, the only reason we can do this is because  our awesome friend Melinda works for Disney.  She gets us in for free.  If not for her the girls would never know Disneyland because we would have to mortgage our house to go there.  Seriously.  It's so incredibly expensive.  I don't know how anyone affords it.  Lucky for us we don't have to worry about it.  Well, for now anyway.  We always go during the week right after Thanksgiving because it's not yet busy.  This year, however, we decided to challenge ourselves.  After much debate, we went WITHOUT A STROLLER!!  AAAAAAAA!!!!

Why would I do this to myself you ask?  Because I like to torture myself and listen to my kids whine?  No, not really into that.  Truthfully, the girls are getting to big for the stroller.  I realized this when I took out our sit and stand to use a few weeks ago for the little girls.  Georgia was starting to look way to big for that front seat.  There are a few pet peeves I have in my life.  Anyone who knows me knows my biggest one is people who leave Christmas lights up outside WELL past Christmas.   The second thing that drives me nuts is seeing a kid with his knees up to his chin sitting in a stroller.  I don't care if your eight year old is tired of walking.  Maybe if he DID walk around instead of you pushing him all day while eating ice cream, we could cut down on childhood obesity in this country!  Seriously people!   Sorry-tangent.

So my youngest two are on that bubble of being too big.  We could have probably still gone once more with the stroller, but I kind of wanted to see if they could do it.  Sonya has been walking around Disney since she was four, so I figured Land and Georgia should be able to.  

I will be honest, I was worried.  Especially after our last trip to Disney back in August. You might remember that story when Lana had her major breakdown and having to walk to the park instead of taking the tram helped to contribute to her tantrum.  Plus, what were we going to do with all of our crap we stuff into the bottom of the stroller??  Well, we packed up a backpack and made Daddy carry it around.  That's what Daddy's are for right?  I mean after helping us create the kids, their other job is to carry stuff around amusement parks.  I'm pretty sure that's a rule somewhere.  I know it was for my Dad.  Who needs a stroller when you've got a Daddy?

The other worry was how long the girls were going to last without the stroller.  Would they get to tired to walk and start protesting? (Lana?)  Would they start  whining about it? (Lana?)  Would there be a tantrum? (LANA??)  Turns out, they all did just fine.  Yes, even Lana, for the most part.  Sonya had  no complaints at all, which is how I assumed she would be.  Lana kept up with us and didn't complain until the end of the day.  Even then her complaints were more funny than annoying.  We were getting ready to watch the fireworks and Lana was squatting on the ground saying,

"Ohhhh...I wish you brought the stroller!  My little legs can't walk anymore today!"  

I'm assuming I talked about their "little legs" at some point in the day. 

Georgia was probably the one who had the hardest time not having a stroller.  She had a bit of trouble keeping up.  Andy and I did have to pick her up a few times to carry her when we wanted to walk more than two miles an hour.  I don't remember her ever complaining about walking though.  I think the best part for the girls about not taking a stroller was that we finally got to take the tram.  Something I always hated doing with the stroller.  It always gave me anxiety to get everything from out of the bottom, carry it, the kids and fold up the stroller in a fairly quick time frame.  We would just always walk the half mile to the park from the parking structure.  This time they were so excited that we agreed to take the tram.  It was really another ride for them.  

So yes, we survived our first trip to Disney without a stroller.  A milestone that throughout the day made me say both of these things-"Haha!  Suckers with the strollers!"  and "Oh I'm so sad we don't have one that little for a stroller anymore."  I tend to be an emotional roller coaster when it comes to my kids growing up.  But you probably already get that by now.  

The Big Bang

Back in September, Lana started putting two barrettes in her hair that would hold her bangs back.  I asked her why she kept putting her bangs back like that.  Was she trying to not have any bangs like her sister?  Indeed she was.  She wanted to grow them out.  FUN! (For those of you who have never grown out a little girls bangs, that was meant to be sarcastic.)  Of course since she wanted to grow out her bangs,  GG decided she was in on that idea.  Double FUN!  Why not right?  Get the annyoningness out of the way at once.  

Now the only problem, besides being aggravated by growing out bangs, was they were a month away from being flower girls in the wedding.  So I decided to get them cut once more before the wedding because I was pretty sure Courtney didn't want two shaggy looking little girls walking down the aisle before her. 

I'm sure there are plenty of you out there who have done this with your kids, and you have not had any problems because once headbands or ponytails are in place in your child's hair they stay there.  For my kids they do not.   I will put barrettes or ponytails in their hair to keep the bangs out of their eyes every morning.  They go to school being able to see unobstructed.  By the time they get home, however, they look like this:  

Georgia is worse than Lana at keeping something in her hair, and her bangs are worse in terms of falling in her eyes.  It's all I can do to keep myself from taking the scissors and just cutting them myself. Sonya grew out her bangs around this age and it took a good six to nine months to get them to a point where they weren't driving me crazy anymore.  The funny thing is, they could care less if their hair is in their eyes.  Georgia just puts her head back, like in the picture, to see better.  

So I will continue to pin their hair back with whatever I can find and hope they get used to it until it's long enough to not worry about anymore.  Don't be surprised though if you come to this blog one day and find a picture of Georgia with very short, crooked bangs cut by yours truly.