today.

We just got home from overpriced, underflavored Chinese food. Such a disappointment!! It's rare that we feel okay after spending close to 30 bucks on a meal. Oh well. Happy birthday from Geof. (; Now Geof. is reading, "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" to the kids and they'll be sleeping under the Christmas tree afterward. Thank goodness for Geof.; he does those things that I'm too lazy to do or just not willing. Tonight the youth choir that I've been directing performed at the Zoo's "Miracle of Christmas" pageant. It went well. It wasn't that big of a deal, really. I made a much bigger deal of it than I should of. I practically had a heart attack when I arrived and couldn't find our accompaniment CD ANYWHERE!! And we had listened to it on the way there! I was a nervous wreck. I finally found the CD in one of the music notebooks. ?? The kids did fine but of course were there for the social aspect more than to entertain. I couldn't even find a handful of them before we went on stage to perform and they finally trickled in during the 1st song (that's what Geof. said. I didn't even notice). Oh well. Half of the audience was up taking pics with the live animals from the Nativity.

Oh, and I'm 31. yuck.

June's nose kept bleeding all night. Hence the bloody smear on her face.

Thirty Uno

Happy birthday to the greatest mom and wife I know. May your birthday wish of watching children while I work and leading a youth choir in the frigid night air come true. Hope you have a fantastic birthday. Thanks for putting up with four huge whiners who love you and don't really know what to do when you're not around.

Winter Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkOKCWDJ4iA I'm a little slow on picking up on this one, I know. Sooo pretty.
p.s. how do I just put the video up rather then just the link? Anyone, anyone?

too funny not to post

Although I'm sure she cherished the 20 minutes or so that she had outside with her big bro. in the snow, she didn't come in as happy as I anticipated. "It hurts!" (referring to her hand). Poor thing. She was happy within minutes as she got a warm bath out of it all..

now..

While digging through our file cabinet (which doubled as a storage box during out 9 months in WA), I found this D pin. This was one of the few things I got from my dad's mom after she passed away. I guess I was the only "D" grandchild (out of 50+). My grandma's name was Dorothy. Dayne's middle name is Dorothy. I'm so glad I found the pin. I love it.

It started snowing tonight. Although Dayne is still in recovery mode, she insisted going outside in raingear to jump. I was very surprised at the amount of snow we had. Richmond doesn't produce snow very often--and when it does, it's very short lived. Dayne came in shorty after crying with frozen hands..

Cole's last day of school brought him home with the excited, "I can play my X-BOX for 2 weeks straight!!" I don't think so Cole. Sorry...

(um.., please don't look at the nasty vacuum and mini tramp in the background. We've recently moved all our stuff into the "playroom" and it's become a very cozy living space.)

We went to Cole's school today for lunch. I couldn't get June to take off this filthy Santa hat she found on a stuffed "Mushu" dragon.

Cole's pregnant teacher who's literally about to burst. Sweet woman.

The girl to the right of Cole is in love with him. He loves her too. They're good friends. (Scary, right?!)

Dayne's home. She has an incision across her lower abdomen that is similar to that of a cesarean incision. Scary! That's exactly how her Dr. described it to me after the surgery. I had no idea that were making an incision like that. Serves me right not studying up more on the procedure. However, it looks good now and I'm sure it'll heal fine. She's been having bladder spasms which are painful, but overall she's feeling much better than even yesterday. I'm happy to be home. The pediatric unit, as happy as they try to create it, is not a very happy place. A little boy right next to us cried out, "mama, dada" about 85% of the time. At one point I even asked if he could come in the room with us since I hadn't seen a parent in sight. They told me he was contagious and couldn't be around other kids. The nurses that were working with him had to wear protective gloves and plastic covers over their body. What do you think he had?? Soo sad. So many of the kids were alone, it seemed. The nurse told me many of them came from single parent families and the parent (I'm sure mostly moms) were either working or home with their other children. It broke my heart. There were volunteers that came in and helped; one even brought a dog which Dayne adored! I told her that would be Dayne's dream job! Cole and Junie are happy for us to be home, as well! June's been carted to 3 different homes the last 3 days! When I got home tonight she just squeezed me around the neck, "I wuv you, Mommy" over and over, again. Despite her temper, she's definitely our happiest child. We put up our Christmas tree before the surgery and I've discovered that June's smart enough to unscrew each of the lights just enough for them to turn off. Clever girl. I bought the big lights that I remembered as a girl. I LOVE those lights. I want to find some bubble lights as well. I remember staring for what seemed like hours at those bubble lights on our mantle. Alright. Boring post. Here's some pics..

Dayne got quite the loot from the hospital staff. Two barbies, a beanie baby stuffed bear (she says it's a dog since dogs have different colors, not bears), coloring books, stickers, a homemade blanket. Oh, and a princess tiara; just what she asked for for Christmas. We should have pulled the nurses together and wrapped some of the stuff up and put it under our tree. Merry Christmas, Dayne!

This is what happens to you after 3 days of laying on your back and moving in all directions. I don't even know how we're gonna untangle this mane.

Dayne

Please keep Dayne in your thoughts and prayers today. She's going into surgery to hopefully correct her kidney reflux so she won't have long term kidney damage. The name of the surgery is bilateral ureteral reimplant, if you're interested...

happy day to our boy!

Seven is a big number to me! I have a seven year old?!! Doesn't that mean I'm 35 or something? wow. Too old. (and no, I'm not 35..., yet.) Happy birthday to Cole--a boy so full of energy and life I wanna kill him sometimes! (;
However, the above pic of Cole is who he really is; so sweet and so good. A pure heart. We love you Coley Oley!