Our excavator!

My sister sent Dude this Dino Kit for his birthday and he LOVED it.  There is a block of plaster with a fossil hidden inside that you have to dig out and it comes with a brush and stuff to get the full affect.  It was a bit of a mess but he had a lot of fun with it... I would totally get another one :)






























JVG

Miracles do happen

I've been talking about our neighbor Chase quite a bit lately.  Dude and Lu love playing with him and he is such a sweet boy I'm happy to let them play together!  Unfortunately Chase has this weird degenerative bone thing that occurs only in his jaw/teeth.  Kim was saying that he has to go to the dentist every 3 months to keep an eye on it and it was getting worse.  They said that pretty soon they were just going to have to pull all his teeth and give him implants because they were just going to fall out of his head anyway!  She really wasn't sure what to do and the dentists told her there wasn't a cure for it.  :(

So they referred them to U of M and so they went there to see what their options were.  Well, while they were there they took more x-rays and then they kept calling in different drs to look at the pics.  They were so confused because they had seen the pics from before and knew what they were looking at but the ones that they just took where completely normal!  There was nothing wrong with it at all!  They had no explanation to why it was that way but he was cured.  :)  What a blessing.

JVG

New Star System

So we have been trying to implement a new reward/consequence system.  Lucy and Tristan are still getting treats everytime she goes pee and that girls has been potty trained for over half a year now!  And Dude has been working on not flipping out when Lucy is a bully, so we are giving and taking away stars as punishment or praise.  The first day we did it Lucy was -10 at the end of the day.... She had locked us out the townhouse after we were taking the trash out and Norah was inside sleeping so I couldn't bang on the door.  When I saw her through the window she had gotten my coffee and was drinking it smiling and saying, "yummmm!"  Naughty naughty girl.  And at the end of the day we tally what they have and keep a running total.  That way at the beginning of each day they can start fresh (if they had a bad day the day before) so their past isn't haunting them.  At anytime they can 'cash' their stars in and receive whatever reward is comparable to the amount they have acquired.  So far it is going well and I think that Tristan is really getting the concept of it.  Lucy sort of does but she doesn't really seem to let it affect her to much when she gets them taken away.  So, we shall see how this goes!

JVG

We survived the weekend

Admittedly it is my fault that I am so sleep deprived.  Like I mentioned before I have been obsessing about this sweater and then I realize that its 2 in the morning and the kids have been getting up at 6... ouch.  That's not to mention the few times that Norah is hungry in between those times and wants to eat... so needless to say going into the weekend I was already down a few life bars (yes, that is a reference to nintendo games).  I even drank coffee two days in a row this week!  On Friday one of Gaetan's classmates had graduated and gotten a sweet job in Hawaii so he was throwing a luncheon as a farewell and thank you to the department.  He catered in Indian food from Saffron, which we will definitely have to go try now!  I had heard good things about it, but now I have tried good things from it!  The kids did a good job trying the new food and being all around good.  Gaetan's professors even made a point of telling us how good our kids are and how amazed they are that they will try different foods.  :)  Then the kids played all day with Chase and then I realized that it was 7 o'clock and we hadn't eaten dinner yet and Ratty was coming for a visit!  So we scooted home while Gaetan fed the kids, I put Norah down and Ratty arrived.  It was a short and sweet visit as she was passing through to spend the weekend with her Mom before she left for her big Africa Trip, but it was good to see her in any sort of capacity and am definitely looking forward to hearing about her trip when she gets back!

Ratty getting to read them their bedtime story

I told myself that I would go to bed early because I knew that Saturday was going to be brutal so I looked at my phone and told myself I was going to be in bed by 10:30.  Well, our phones have been on the fritz lately so when I thought I was actually doing a good job and getting into bed at a decent hour it was actually after midnight.  Woof.  Thanks a lot phone...

A perk of waking up at the butt crack of dawn is that you get to see the beautiful sun rise.  This picture didn't do the purple justice

Saturday morning came early.  When Norah got up for the day my phone said 5, but I just assumed it was being ridiculous again, but it wasn't.  She actually got up at 5.  Why!?!  By the time she was ready for her first nap the older two were just getting up.  Lucy had her first swim class Saturday morning as Dude had his on Monday.  They both did great and were definitely at the top of their class.  They are really excited about going and its nice to have them enrolled in something too.

The rest of the weekend was a blur.  I had to play a wedding in Grand Haven in the afternoon and hurry back for the batizado!  More on both of those to come... needless to say, we made both things happen with minor incident and are ready to start this week :)

JVG

Norah Firsts

This past week has been a lot of 'firsts' for Norah!  We tried out these finger food puffs and some baby cereal mixed with Momma Milk.  She did pretty well with it.  The older kids LOVED helping her eat the puffs... I think that they might've enjoyed it more than she did, but I was happy they were enthusiastic to help.  I think that she is still a bit young for it because she just spit it back out because she didn't know what to do with it, but I know that it won't be long until she is onto 'big people' food.

First time in the big girl chair!

The crazies loved feeding her!

Waiting for her first taste of oatmeal

Another first... she apparently was really hungry and I thought she was giving me a kiss.  NOPE, she started nursing on my cheek and gave me a hickey!  It was impressive...

She has also been a planking/getting on all 4's/almost crawling.  It's scary how close she seems to be to crawling already!  That's to fast!  Slow down!  This Momma still needs her snug time... and after they are mobile they don't really like to do that much.  She is progressing quite quickly.  Smart girl.

We are in trouble...

Doing a good job sitting up

Humpty Dumpty... haha

JVG

Knitting

Yes, I am 27 and I love knitting.  I'm secretly a fat old Italian lady... (the fat because I love to eat... Italian because I LOVE Feeding people and well, the old lady is the knitting)  And this is the reason why I have been neglecting my blog for the past week or so... my friend Amy and I are knitting this sweater together and I have become completely OBSESSED.  This is the first time attempting anything that wasn't straight knitting and I think that I'm doing fairly good at it!  I have spent a lot of time watching YouTube Videos and bugging Amy about how to do a lot of stuff but I think it's coming along quite nicely.  Hers is looking awesome and I can't wait to see the end result!  There was a little bit of an issue with the pattern but with some brainstorming on our part we figured it out :)  And if this sweater works out for me my poor kids are going to have a lot of funny sweaters ;)  You know which ones I'm talking about!  haha

Probably why I'm sleep deprived... just one more row...

What the sweater should look like when I'm done... except mine is pink

The very beginning...

I have just taken the sleeves off... the lacey part in the middle is the back and the two lacey parts in the front will make up the front :)

Gaetan had also started a project and finished.  He started knitting at the end of my pregnancy and finished his scarf!  :)  Very proud of his first project and it looks very nice.  Good work Babe!




JVG

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

With the summer ending my parents have been trying to desperately get rid of their tomatoes.  They always are so excited when the first of their vegetables come in but after awhile they have so many they don't know what to do with them!  So, they sent me home with a cubic butt-ton of them and I didn't want them to go to waste or spoil so I had to do something with them... I made a lot of homemade salsa but I still had a TON of tomatoes left, so I tried my hand at spaghetti sauce!  I think that it turned out really yummy.  I was surprised at how much water is in tomatoes that needed to be cooked off but it was well worth it!  If you ever find yourself with a crap ton of tomatoes I highly recommend making spaghetti sauce!  You can also freeze it too.  Win Win!

http://www.food.com/recipe/fresh-tomato-spaghetti-sauce-10837

JVG