Not Much

We are chugging along into December and not much new to report. We got our Christmas lights hung after a huge debacle and Riley having to take a trip to Home Depot to give them a little piece of his mind, but they're up now. It's so cold, the kids don't want to spend much time outside unless it is traipsing along after Riley or watching him clean his birds from hunting. Morgan got to help him clean some last night and he thought he was pretty big stuff. He was stoked to show me some blood he got on his gloves. Gross!  Riley's planning on making a big batch of goose jerky soon. Mmm, mmm doesn't that sound good? (sarcasm)

We've had a bit of a bug going around and Kendle stayed home from school yesterday. She rarely misses school, she is such a good student and hates to miss so I knew she must be feeling pretty bad. She lounged around all day and hogged the TV and rested. My dad came up and helped me do all sorts of little repairs around the house that have been making my life miserable. I think he can fix just about anything. The kids loved having him here and following him around and watching him work. I always look at things that need to be fixed and they seem like such a big project, and he just comes up and in a few short hours makes it look easy.

Things have been relatively slow with no sports going on right now, but Riley has been working long hours so I'm still not seeing him that much. I told him the other day, he might as well be coaching right now and I might actually see him more. The winter months drive me crazy with my kids cooped up inside and the days seem really long. The twins can get pretty destructive and are always finding new ways to get in trouble. They can climb just about anything and wreak havoc wherever they go. Today I had to box up all the books in the boys room because they just pull them out every day from the book shelf and make a huge mess and I finally got fed up with picking them up multiple times a day. I hope this is a stage they will be growing out of soon.

On a good note though, they have both started to go potty. We are very excited. They just turned 2 a few weeks ago and are very interested and happy about trying to go most of the time. They still aren't talking very much which can make it much harder for them to let me know when they need to go, but I've been sitting them on there a few times a day and having good luck. I'll cross my fingers that it continues and probably try and hit it hardcore after Christmas. I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of not having to buy diapers anymore!

Kendle was excited to sign up for a performing choir they have at her school. I was kind of surprised since she has backed off of her enthusiasm of singing in front of people a bit, but I think it will be fun and she'll enjoy it. They are doing a Christmas concert in a few weeks and might be visiting some retirement homes as well. She's also been learning new Christmas songs on the piano the last few weeks which she gets a kick out of playing for anyone that will listen.

Morgan loves preschool days. Whenever he asks if he has school that day and the answer is yes, he always gives some sort of excited exclamation. He is really improving in learning his letters and numbers and asks me all of the time to let him read letters off of books. He wants to learn addition and always asks me random addition problems. He's really improved on writing his first and last name and loves to draw (or have me draw) all sorts of interesting things that prove what a horrible and limited artist I really am. I think I go down a notch on the "my mom's awesome" scale every time I can't draw a corn combine, tractor, robot, or Star Wars character. He loves doing flips on the trampoline (and in the house -- yikes!) and does head stands and hand stands and all sorts of crazy things. He has so much energy and I'm eager for him to be able to channel that into soccer or t-ball soon.

I love this time of year and look forward to the continuing holiday festivities and spirit of the season.