Facebook catchup December

Since I got so behind on blogging, I thought that it would be fun to jog my memory and help record some of what we did in December. So I am cheating a bit, and just going to paste a few of my comments from Facebook so I can remember what that day was like. ;) And hopefully I can get to more pictures soon!

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There are many reasons baby play yards exist and Jake has spent his day reminding me of all of them! He doesn't mind captivity yet,but it is driving his big brothers nuts. They have spent their afternoon trying to break "super baby" out with various inventions. Thankfully they have yet to be successful and our having a good time together without fighting.LikeUnlike · · November 21, 2011 at 6:06pm


Just walked back into the living room to find K and T sitting in laundry baskets and J wearing a bib crawling towards them screaming. When questioned why J was wearing a bib and they were sitting in laundry baskets, T and K screamed in excitement that "super baby is about to eat them" (and hence needed a bib) as he continued to crawl towards them and they tried to row their basket away. Ha! When you step back from the chaos and noise, my days are filled with so much entertainment. :)LikeUnlike · · December 6, 2011 at 11:09am

Thanks to a general lack of height, clumsiness, and of course gravity, I have managed this morning to emboss and puncture my forehead with a wooden leaf door hanging decoration. While Kevin was inspecting my forehead to see if I needed stitches (he thinks every injury might need stitches) Tyler came over, grimaced when he saw my injury, and then explained in a very grave tone "You see Kevin, this is why we let dad move big things. If you try to do it, you just get hurt and then you cry." And then looking at me and nodding his head "Isn't that right mom? You should have just waited for dad because now you might need to go to the doctor."LikeUnlike · · December 8, 2011 at 11:54am

I was sitting here trying to convince myself of all the reasons to not go to the grocery store or post office as I just dont want to be "that mom" this morning. I had just convinced myself and told the boys when the doorbell mysteriously rang. Sure enough, the wheel that I have been without for the double stroller for the last three months arrived. Such crazy timing! Now to make a grocery list.LikeUnlike · · December 12, 2011 at 9:49am

Need to find my camera! Just found Tyler laying behind the couch with the Scrabble board out and all the letters in front of him. His nose was buried in the Scrabble dictionary as he was trying to figure out a word to make to put down on the board to play off of "Tyler"! And as I type this I hear " move Kevin, I am going to spell a word now! And my second word is new."LikeUnlike · · December 12, 2011 at 1:01pm

Took Jake to get his first haircut. I took the ENTIRE camera bag so I knew I would definitely have everything. Only to discover once I got there that even though I managed to bring the camera and memory card, I didn't have either battery in the bag or camera! Ugh. So lost a few mom points today, but hopefully made a few back up by letting all three kiddos play forever at the play area.LikeUnlike · · December 14, 2011 at 2:42pm

Quite the adrenaline rush to wake up from an unexpected nap to see Kevin's smiling face covered in green icing. As I rushed to the fridge, I was so grateful to see that he left the cake untouched and just decided to clean up the icing bowl!LikeUnlike · · December 30, 2011 at 1:32pm

December 2011 Randomness

Here are a bunch of pictures I took in December. Just a little bit of everything during the month, less of course Christmas and Tyler's birthday. Since I don't see those pictures on my computer and I know that I have hundreds sitting on my camera card, I am guessing that those are still sitting there! Hopefully, I can add a few of those soon.

For now, here is a quick picture I took of Jake sitting in his highchair watching me cook dinner. He liked to shriek at me then (now he doesn't tolerate just sitting and watching me as he would rather be exploring on his own).

On that same day I caught Tyler and Kevin playing a fun game of dressup. Kevin's imagination is taking off and Tyler's always seems to be at full speed, so they are having fun learning to pretend together. We spent the day in our pajamas that day, and Tyler put on his Super Tyler shirt. And not too long after Kevin was yelling at me to take a picture. Apparently, Kevin came up with the silly idea to be "hot chocolate and marshmellows in a cup" and so that is what he is doing here. He is the hot chocolate and the pillow is a marshmellow, and he is sitting in a blue cup.

He was pretty proud of his game, and Tyler (the super penguin) was pretty excited to get some hot chocolate!

This was the first real time I caught him vividly role playing where he was the one who game up with the game/scene. And such a cute scene it was!

I couldn't resist a cute picture of my adorable super penguin either!

At some point during the month, I decided to dress them up and work on taking pictures for our Christmas card. I was trying to get all three to sit on the bed together, but it didn't work. And Kevin was NOT happy that Jake was not listening at all. All Kevin wanted to do was to hurry up and be done, and his little brother was slowing the process down.

But wouldn't you know that when we were ALL done, it was Kevin who was insisting that I keep taking his picture? He had so much fun thinking of places around the house to take pictures of himself. If I get the time, I might have to go back and post a few of those. :)

I don't remember what I was trying to do here....except that I wanted pictures of Jacob alone that day and staged. Maybe his nine month pictures a little late?

I do remember this though. It just screams how tough life as a baby can be when you have so many older and bigger people around you all the time. Jake was DETERMINED to get into the bathroom (as he loves to stand at the tub and scream). But Tyler, wouldn't let him per my request. ;)

And at some point during that day, I got a picture of him laughing and you can even see his two front teeth!

We also made our very first gingerbread house this year. Tyler and Kevin were way more into it than I really guessed that they would be. We had a fun afternoon putting it together, and the kids enjoyed getting to safety test all of the candy to make sure it was appropriate to put on the house. And thankfully they ate the rejects so I wouldn't have too much mess to clean up. :) And in case you are wondering, the gingerbread man on the right was made by Tyler and is a super knight guarding the house. And Kevin's gingerbread is on the left. His lacks as much candy decoration because he had the unfortunate luck of finding a lot of rejects in his candy pile!!!

It also snowed at some point! This was by far the warmest winter with the least amount of snow I have lived through in Minnesota. I appreciated it as it made preparing the house ready to sell much easier. And it meant that we seized the snow days this year and got out to play a lot, rather than taking it for granted. The big discovery in this first snow outing was Tyler teaching and Kevin practicing how to kick snow. Needless to say, Kevin picked up on it quickly and loves to kick snow now. And this trip out I got a kick out of watching them kick it so high (it was so fluffy) and then listen to their surprise when the snow would come back at them and/or down their coats. They were getting such a kick out of it and were trying to outdo one another on their surprised screams! ;)

We also went again to a tree farm and cut down our own tree after an afternoon of looking for one. Tyler and Kevin were very big helpers and although Tyler was not convinced we would find a tree, they were both very good at following directions and then using their strong muscles to help daddy cut down the tree and then carry it back to the car.

When we finished the tree search we had fun by all going on a horse and carriage ride together as a family of five, and then walking through the petting zoo that was there. We skipped our normal tradition of Caribou Coffee and treats after getting our Christmas tree this year in favor of IHOP. We were all starving this year and decided to go get a big breakfast in the evening! Daddy also treated us to really big hot chocolates in celebration and we all ate and drank until we were way too stuffed.

We did manage to get home and get the tree up but saved the decorating for another day as we were just too stuffed and tired at that point. I hope to search through more December pictures too to post a few pictures of our decorated tree. But since I tend to take a ton of pictures I will have to look again later! :)

Tyler slightly skeptical that this row would have our tree in it. :) Notice that Kevin was dutifully following daddy? He was pretty excited this year to be out searching and getting to take a tree home. Though he was adament that it would not come in the house and that we would plant it outside with the other trees. :)

And a picture of Tyler from the Hollidazzle parade. Adam's work always hosts a firm event for this parade each year in a skyway downtown. They set up refreshments and seating in the skyway right over the street that the parade goes down. And as you can see they have lots of kid entertainment. Tyler was very excited to get his face painted, and he was thrilled to get to be a cheetah. Even now in March, he is still obsessed with being a cheetah since cheetah's can run so fast and if you run fast, then you can be a secret spy. But anyways, everyone had a lot of fun getting to watch the parade, getting the party favors/face painting, and eating lots of cookies! :)

It's been awhile!

Wow....I hadn't realized how long it has been since I have posted, and I wonder if I even still have readers! :) I knew I was getting behind, but didn't realize it has been three months already!!!! I can't wait to catch up on everything we have been doing and I hope tonight I can post a few pictures.

As a quick update, we are moving! This is part of the reason that I haven't been posting lately. Life has just gotten so very busy as we prepared to sell our house and then looking for housing in a new state. I am happy to report that not only did we sell our house but we also found a new house! We are moving to Lincoln, Nebraska in just a few weeks and for the first time in a long time life feels like it is slowing down (I know, silly to say right before a move). But honestly, things were very hectic for so long as we tried to figure everything out. Now we have most decisions made and are lucky to have packers and movers to actually get us out of Minnesota. If it were up to us at this point to actually pack, I'm afraid we would never leave. ;)

The other part of the lack-of-posting equation is our offspring! They are growing up so quickly, have constant supplies of energy, and for some reason seem to have destroyed the little bit of volume control with which they were born. ;) They keep us on our toes and are constantly in motion. And as exhausting and overstimulating as it can be at times to be the parents in the house, it is amazing to watch these three little boys grow up together.

Since I have last posted Tyler turned five! Yes, five! He had a Perry the Platypus cake (a character for his favorite cartoon Phineas and Ferb). He is big into practicing his ninja moves these days and is on a misson to be "a real secret spy" (what he wishes for every time we give him a coin at a fountain). His new favorite number is infinity (he thinks it is neat that no one has ever or will count to it) and he still maintains his favorite color is yellow.

And Kevin has turned three! Can you believe baby Kevin is three? We sure can't. Although he is still sucking his thumb, with this new number has come a lot less shyness and he has become even more daring/creative with his adventures. His imagination is flourishing and his new favorite color is green, while he new favorite number is three. For his birthday celebration, he had a bouncy ball cake; but ended up being sick all weekend and didn't get to eat it until several days after his birthday.

Finally, super baby is growing into super kid! Now at the ripe old age of one, he spends his days chasing around his big brothers to try to tackle (or the last few days hit) them. He is definitely obsessed with the dog water bowls and if the water bowl is left down when he is awake, there is no stopping the kid. It took me longer than I admit to start regularly picking up the bowls to avoid the water disasters the child can make! Because of this, his big birthday celebration was a swimming pool cake. He really enjoyed getting messy with his cake and loves to eat food. His signing is taking off as well, with him signing more, milk, and cracker. He also learned to wave and say bye bye recently and now just walks around waving and saying 'bye-bye'.

We are also pleased to announce that Jacob is a very advanced baby. His tantrums lately have been over the top advanced and so how can a mama not brag???? At just a year he has nailed the 'throw your body around like you won't get hurt' as well as the blindly scream and kick if anyone tries to offer you something you don't want. These newfound skills definitely threw me when he first started them, but now that I accept my easy, laidback baby has an opinion of his own and is eager to share his thoughts...I find myself much better prepared. :) And really, I would hope he has his opinions and be willing to share them as he is going to have to really speak up having two loud, older brothers with which to contend!

I can't wait to share some pictures as I think that the kids have grown a ton. I will also try to recap some stories and make better efforts to keeping everyone informed. We are moving from Minnesota in just over two weeks, and thankfully only have a week gap in housing until we can move into our new house. As much as we teased Grandma and Grandpa Thimmesch that we would just move into their basement, it is nice to know that this entire process of moving to a new state will hopefully be completed soon!

I will definitely try to work in some time tonight to post a few pictures and try to get going again on blogging!