Sorry, baby girl.

Julie is back from Brown. We headed to Sea Dragon for a nice family dinner. The food was delicious and the kids were all well behaved. Towards the end, Emma fell and bumped her forehead on a chair. We got some ice for her...since it looked bruised almost instantly after the fall. However Emma was not willing to leave an ice pack in between her eyes. once we got home, we put a video on to distract her, and we tried to apply more ice to minimize the swelling. Carlos was wanting some ice, but would giggle and say cold, when I put it on his nose. I guess we will have to wait to see if it is bruised in the morning.

Here comes Santa Claus

We got together today with some college friends for our annual christmas celebration. It is great to see how all our families have grown, and how quick the kiddos are growing. At this gathering Santa makes his appearance and gives the kids a present. I wanted to make sure that everyone was going to be okay with Santa so I told the boys about our upcoming Santa meeting on friday. All the boys were excited, even Carlos.
All the kids were excited when Santa arrived. Carlos had the biggest grin, and all of them sat down to listen to Santa read the night before christmas. When Santa started handing out presents, Carlos kept saying he wanted a present from Santa. As soon as Santa called his name he walked up and got his present. Emma went with daddy to get her present, and the older boys went by themselves. After the presents it was picture time....and Carlos was ready, actually he didn't want to leave Santa. He kept going up and waving, and wanting to sit in his lap...it was very cute. Emma however wanted nothing to do with Santa, so we ended up with a picture of the boys smiling while Emma is crying in Santa's lap.
On the car ride home, the boys asked if Santa was real...I asked what they thought. Sammy said he was a fake and John David said he was the real deal. I asked Sammy why he thought he was fake, and he said Catherine and Kristin told him. Needless to say when he went up to Santa he made sure to ask for Ben 10 toys.
I love this tradition and look forward to many more years with Santa!

Snow...more like flurries.

This past friday it was a cold day and we had about five minute of flurries. Nothing stuck on the ground, and I have no pictures to prove it. I had put the little ones down for their nap, but I could still hear them talking. Sammy was watching X-men and I was putting up laundry. When I saw the flurries, I told Sammy to come. He was quite concerned about missing the X-men. I told him I would pause it and then record it for him. I got the little ones, and came down to bundle them up. By the time we made it out....the flurries were pretty much gone. I still took some pictures so we could document that we missed the snow.

book worm

It has been totally amazing to see John David's reading skills improve by leaps and bounds. He is very excited and eager to read to anyone who is willing to listen to him. His vocabulary is increasing as well. We have recently discovered one down side to the reading....we can't spell things out we don't him to know. He just puts the letter togethers and tells us the word. Then he just laughs and gets so excited that he knows what we are talking about.
Last week there was a book fair at his school. Everyday he kept asking when we could go buy some books.
On wednesday he woke up at 5:30 am, got dressed and came in our room to ask if he could go to the book fair with daddy. So we sent him back to bed, and when I went in to wake him, he woke up and came down to eat breakfast, and was ready to go quickly. JP took him to the book fair, and all the books he wanted were hardback so JP tried to limit his books. Apparently John David gave daddy the sad boy look, and two minutes later John David was excited to get his books. John David needs to remember that look he gave his dad, as it might come in handy again in the future.