If it's not one thing.....

I know I promised to do better. I am just having such a hard time settling my mind to blog these days. And honestly the break from the camera has been kind of nice, but my fingers started itching it for it today, I went to get it (still packed in the camera case from Maine can you believe that?!) only to find the memory card is not in it! ACK! WHAT! Then Dad says, "well someone's was in the computer at home" I just looked at him.. seriously?? NOW you tell me??? So yeah, we'll be picking up a new memory card tomorrow, and he'll mail mine back to me as it has all my pics from last year on it!

So sorry... but no seriously cute pictures of the little dolls playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos at the moment. And they were seriously cute too. It is one game that is working well for both of them to play together. It's incredibly loud and drives me a bit crazy but the laughter is worth it. ;)

It's been an eventful week here. Devyn is potty training, oh the joys of that. I moved the little potty to the living room yesterday and that seems to be helping at least with the peeing on the potty, she's still flat out refusing to do the other. Did I mention she's incredibly stubborn?? Thing is I am sure that once she does it once she will "get it" you know? If she'd just cave that one time..... LOL. But as I was saying the potty in the living room seems to appeal to her "I want to be the center of attention" nature. She is definitely our showman and if she thinks she has your attention she'll do all she can to keep it.

Julia had a short week at school, but seemed to be glad to be getting back into routine. Only to find out today her teacher's mom has cancer so she is closing school for a few days next week to go spend some much needed family time with her, so next week will be short too. Please keep her family in your prayers will you?

Had to take the van in for some work today. Not fun but at least it is done, fixed and riding smooth again. Bad rotor had to be replaced. So Dad, Julia and I spent some time at the garage, then had them take us to the mall so we could have some lunch and walk around. And then back to the garage to pick it up and pay the piper. Kind of stinks that we had to spend all afternoon over there on such a beautiful day and it was a truly beautiful day. Hoping tomorrow is nice too so we can hit the beach for a little while.

So for now...that's all I've got. I promise to replace the memory card tomorrow. ;)

A few Christm@s shots and yes we are still here;)

Santa visited us in Maine
and got creative with where to hang the stockings!
Waiting to start on Christmas Eve with the family.
We all love these. ;)
her new favorite book, thanks to Aunt Kim's stellar rendition of "roll over, roll over"
Midnight, not sure where the name came from but she named him within moments! LOL
Yes my children are in there....somewhere...
She got pretty buried there for awhile.
Well maybe we all did. That's what happens with a big family:)


Well as you can see we had a fabulous Christmas in Maine! Yes I survived the drive all by myself with the girls. They were fantastic travelers! We did 3 long days in the van and one shorter one. I must have been a sight when I landed at my brother's house in Southern Maine on the way up, after traveling for two days with just me and the girls. My sister in law looked at me sympathetically and offered me a hot shower (which I didn't actually get because they were having hot water issues) but even being cold and clean was refreshing at that point. They even gave up their bed to Julia and I and we put Devyn on her little air mattress. Thanks Vic and Mary, you are life savers! I admit I was quite beat by the time we pulled into their place. It had been a long day from New Jersey to Southern Maine in heavy traffic. We loved just relaxing with them and the girls went wild over their dogs. Such good dogs they have too! So very sweet, they make me almost want one.... but that's still a big almost... LOL

We had a terrific Christmas with my family, despite getting stuck up there for a few extra days due to bad weather in our path south. If Julia hadn't had school it would have been tempting to stay even longer just to have the time with my friends as well as my brothers and their families. With 6 brothers it never seems there is enough time to spend with them. True to their word Grammie and Grandpa have come back to Florida with us to spend the rest of the month. Though they thought they were escaping the cold and that beat us home, such bizarre weather! The girls are absolutely loving having them here, especially Julia and Grandpa have formed quite the bond. She adores him and thinks he's just the greatest thing, I have to agree with her;)

Now before you leave a comment telling me how overboard we went for Christmas, you need to read the following conversations that Julia has had with me and some of my friends. My friend Angie asked her while we were visiting after Christmas, if she had had a good Christmas.
Julia- Yes. I got everything I needed.
Angie- Really? There is nothing else you wished Santa would have brought?
Julia- thought for a moment and said "no, I don't think so" LOL! I LOVE THIS KID!! :)

Conversation with me last night before bed.
Julia- Well Mom, you know I had a really good Christmas. I liked all my presents.
Me- You did? Well I am glad honey.
Julia- Yep, I got everything I wanted, but why did we have to go "there" for Christmas instead of here?
Me- Because I thought it would be nice to spend Christmas with family.
Julia- That's your family and my family?
Me- Yes.
Julia- Oh, okay, that was good then. I have lots and lots of cousins!
Me (laughing) yes you do...

So I think it's safe to say that she is very happy with Christmas this year, even though she is still missing her Daddy terribly. She never once forgot to make her wish and she's still counting the holidays til he gets to come home.

Devyn, I think she is just as happy with Christmas, her face was priceless when she came out Christmas morning and saw all the presents back under the tree. You could clearly see her thinking " but we just opened all of those last night".... didn't take her too long to decide that was okay she would open more! LOL!

She is also speaking in full sentences these days, and sentences that we can understand and wonder of wonders we have managed to get her peeing on the potty this week! We still have a ways to go but I had begun to think she would never be ready to start even! She has come a long way this past month! So very proud of my Stitch. (destructive force of nature but also cute and fluffy, this is so her!! LOL )

I am sorry for not blogging more, it's just been hard to find a few moments to do this. I will try to do better. For now though I have to cut this short as I really need some sleep since I have an eye Dr's appt in the morning.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and wishing you many blessings in 2010!!

Ah a few minutes peace

The peace that a Barbie movie can bring. and the chaos that preceded it. LOL. As you may surmise we are stuck in a hotel tonight, again. We came here yesterday expecting to just stay for the night and be on the road again this morning. See we were supposed to meet my niece in Charlotte and she was going to ride the rest of the way to Maine with us, Julia's godmother had stayed with us last week and come as far as South Carolina with us. And then mother Nature stepped in. The storm first hit Charlotte and Ky couldn't get in and then of course it got to Boston and she couldn't get out. :( So... we sat in the hotel today waiting to see what few options might present themselves and to give the weather time to get cleared out a bit. No options, so from here on out we are on our own to Maine. Not that I am particularly bothered by this, the girls are good travelers and we actually do better on the road then we do cooped up waiting hotel rooms. haha. Oh and I should add here that we skipped the pool and other play areas today because Devyn has "hand foot and mouth"... diagnosed the day we left. Can we just say it's been a long day and right now I am ever so grateful that the hotel has a DVD player? If this works then I may be crashing on the hide a bed. At this point, I am beyond caring. If the girls gifts weren't all in Maine, it is very likely I would just turn around and go back home. But they are, so onward we shall go. And since there is nothing else I can be doing at the moment, I figured I could catch up the blog a bit.

Until the last few days, things have been going great. Julia has been driving me crazy to wear dresses everyday but as the weather has not really been conducive to that the compromise has been dresses with long sleeve shirts underneath and a pair of jeans. I thought she did all right making it work the other day. What do you think? :)

Well we have a long couple of days in front of us, and it is later than I think as I am still on Central time but in the Eastern time zone now. One more thing to take into account I guess. Wish us luck, it's still a long ways to Maine. ;)

Took my Princess

to see the Princess and the Frog today with some friends while Miss Debra was sweet enough to stay at home with Devyn. I can whole heartedly say we both loved the movie! It was fun, sweet, sad, a tiny bit scary, but then what Disney movie isn't?? the Cave of Wonders wasn't exactly a stroll into the mall for Aladdin to find the lamp right? Really it was bad things happen to bad people and the good people get their happy ending, but told in a really sweet way. Ray the firefly was awesome, such a sweet character and so funny. Julia was literally laughing out loud in the movie theater, it was great!! I am so glad we managed to fit time in to see this before heading to Maine for Christmas. And she got to go with her best friends so that just made it even more perfect. It was so funny before the movie started we had been watching previews and everyone was still kind of talking through those, you know how people can... well they started to do the typical Disney opening and Julia was hushing her friends.. "shhh... there gonna show the castle this is my favorite part!" Oh my goodness, Rhe's mom and I had all we could do to not roll on the floor laughing it was that funny! LOL She's priceless! Oh she is so Mama's girl!

I think the Shadows in the movie may have scared her a little bit, she woke up once tonight crying and had a hard time to settle back in to sleep but once she did, so far so good. Really we have had a busy weekend, picked Debra up Friday night, by the way Dev refuses to even try to say "Debra" she's been calling her Papa...so we are working on Dede for her. LOL. Then yesterday we were having a quiet day at home, just visiting and me catching up on all the laundry (done!;) when a friend of mine texted and wanted to know what we were doing for dinner, so we decided to get ready and went to meet her at Buffalo Wild Wings, it was a bit of a drive but we had a good time. Then today was finishing laundry and putting it away, then Dev down for a nap and Julia and I off to the movie. Home after to fix dinner, baths and beds. Phones ringing and trying to fit 4 conversations in with consoling a dreaming child.. whew what a night.. no wonder I am having a hard time unwinding.
This week is call the doc's office about my numb toes, get the oil changed in the van, finish the Christmas shopping, wrap gifts, and pack and load the van. We are heading out right from J's school Christmas party on Friday...so, so much to do.. wish me luck! I don't quite know how I am going to fit it all in, oh and J was given a bunch more homework this week... Really?? they aren't even having class on Friday and some is CLEARLY over a 4 year olds head.. most of it is fine but one night's project is just ridiculous in my opinion and I doubt we'll do more than gloss over it.. I'm so beyond ready for this break, Please pray we have good weather for the drive, please, please, please!!!

Call me crazy but....

After teaching in daycares, parents morning out, and prek classrooms, I really kind of expected that I would be getting a break from the crafts this holiday season and that Julia would be making things AT school to bring home to me for a change, but this week she had 3 fairly complicated projects due. We had to do a "Flat Julia" to go along with their continuing "Flat Stanley" lessons, and then her teacher surprised us all on Monday asking us to do a Christmas tree, with PATTERNS in the decorations, and to decorate a Gingerbread man and cut it out and somehow her name had to be incorporated onto the front of him (I say him, but Julia insisted hers is a girl lol;). We are talking about 4 year olds here in a part time prek program right?? Don't get me wrong, you know I don't mind the crafty stuff so much, but I do mind the amount, and the deadline at a time when I'm sorry but most parents are crazy busy. Am I wrong?? I just know that in MY classrooms, this was stuff I did with the kids in my 3 hours or whatever that I had them and then sent home for the kids to surprise their parents and show what we had been doing at "school". For me to still be the one doing them and then sending it back into the teacher I admit, really kind of gets under my skin. Now to be fair, we don't know what she has been doing at school, they "could" have more things that they will bring home, but so far this school year she has brought home one paper the first day, and her Brown Bear, Brown Bear book, which even for the book she did the artwork at home and I cut it out and sent it back in and her teacher put it in the books. What really got me about that one, was that they didn't even use the artwork Julia had done and I sent in, when I looked at her book, I was stunned and said "this is not hers" to which they replied "she did some at school" and I asked them where were the ones I sent in because she had done a much better job at home and I had wanted to send this to her Daddy. They acted like they hadn't seen it, started looking and there it was right next to the counter, and then they had the nerve to tell me I had helped her color it! I HADN'T. Needless to say things have been a bit tense between myself and her teacher. The amount of work this week asked of me, not helping that a whole lot. I have to keep reminding myself how much fun Julia is having, what good friends we have made, and that we have only one more week before a two week MUCH NEEDED break!
I can't for a minute fault how much she has learned, but that's not helping the irritation factor a whole lot at the moment. Guess I just needed to vent a bit more on the subject. But am I wrong? Doesn't this seem a little backward for PreK?

As for the projects themselves, I have to say I'm pretty proud of my princess. Her penchant for patterns made the Christmas tree easy, and she only wanted to do the same pattern on two of the rows, other than that she wanted each row to be different. The Gingerbread girl she did the face and her name and wanted help on the pants and shoes to spread the glitter glue out for solid colors, it may take her a week to dry. ha ha. Flat Julia, that is all her, she jumped right up and started on the face before letting me go back and do her neck and shoulders without her hair in the way, but she had fun. and you probably can't tell but used the glitter glue to write her name down one pant leg and her sisters down the other. Too cute. Like I said, it's not that I really mind doing crafts with her, we would probably be doing more if she was at home to be honest, but I really don't like being told specifically how to do a craft and it really bugs me that she did all this hard work on it and I'm sending in to her teacher maybe to never see again. I guess that right there is probably why I am so annoyed. Hopefully I'm wrong and we'll get this and more back. I just don't know right now.


Update: I have to add here that AGAIN her teacher asked when we took the projects "how did she do this?" implying that Julia hadn't done the work! I pointed the small amount that I had helped on, and was quick to point out that JULIA had done the rest...for ONE thing we as parents were given very specific instructions on these projects that we were supposed to help them, for another, I'm sorry if you think my kid is too much of a perfectionist!!! This just happens to be her forte, she is very, very good with patterns and her fine motor skills. Sorry just had to get that out, and if you think I'm upset, her Daddy was ready to call from Iraq for the teacher asking that IN FRONT OF Julia! Fortunately I think Julia was too busy with her friends to catch all of it, but that is really not the point. Anyway. Just had to share (and get off my chest) how that went down. UGH I am so ready for our Christmas break!!!

Hearts Apart Christmas

My stylin' big girl.
and her equally stylin' little sister.. can you tell how long those ringlets are getting?? she's noticing. LOL
My friend that dragged us out to this and her little sweetie.. she has two boys too but they were busy playing. ;)
Santa made an appearance
and even listened to what the kids wanted for Christmas and had presents too and LOOK Julia went to him without Mama!!!!
Opening presents
The folks at Hearts Apart insisted on this one.. ugh..

They gave out great age appropriate toys! What an a great Hearts Apart program we have here. Guess I'm glad we got dragged out to it. ;)
Well, you can see what we did tonight. The base has a special program for families to take advantage of when our spouses are deployed.. Look I'm private now I can tell you that Daddy is deployed to Iraq!! He has been gone since the end of August and we don't expect him home til April...and yes that seems so very far away. But back to Hearts Apart, this was my first venture out with them and aside from it being a little bit chaotic (to be fair they had a lot of people there) it was really nice. Nice to get out and spend some time with people that really know what you are going through cause they are in the same place. Devyn made it a bit hard for me, as she is very determined to do what SHE wants and not what I expect or ask of her. And I swear she took a year off my life because we were doing a craft and we were just waiting on Julia to finish cutting hers out, I had taken scissors from Dev and was talking with my friend when I looked back down, she was GONE! I mean we went all through the building and didn't see her, finally the second time we checked the craft room across the hall they had her... she had apparently gone looking for (and found) another pair of scissors!!! Really that's 5 minutes I'd like to never repeat but I know I probably will with her... she has NO FEAR of walking away and doing her own thing.. and then I felt awful because Julia told me on the way home that she had gotten scared while she was cutting her craft out, know why?? because I had to leave the room to find her sister!!! I wasn't worried about her, I knew she wouldn't move til she was done, and she wouldn't go anywhere til I got back. But I felt awful that she got scared, she doesn't like to be out of sight at all, hence the very LONG drawn out issue of sleeping in her own bed. Have I mentioned that aside from liking to dress up these two are POLAR OPPOSITES?! Life should be very interesting here as they grow up... oh my.

Anyway...I was very impressed with our Hearts Apart people. The gifts for the kids alone say a lot. Not just that they were age appropriate but they had gotten names, ages and boy or girl information from us when we RSVP'd and they had specific gifts wrapped with the kids names on them, so this wasn't a generic effort on their part, by that I mean a lot of kids parties we have done if we didn't bring our wrapped gift for the kids, it was something more generic or a book which is fine, I was just impressed with how detailed they got. It took a lot of work, I know I have done my fair share of these things;)

So anyway that was our evening all the ups and downs of it! I definitely had two tired little girls when we got home. Not to mention I am beat, it has been one of those days, waking up late and feeling like I was running behind all day because of it. But really we weren't that far off from our usual bedtime so now I am going to watch Stargate and Sanctuary, it's my Syfy Friday night (bet you wouldn't have guessed that;) and then hit the hay. We may go and check out the holiday parade tomorrow, so it will be another busy day out in the cold. Did you know that FL got cold?? well it has this week and frankly I have had enough already, seriously where do I have to go to get warm weather YEAR ROUND??! My aching back does not like the cold. LOL

Princesses @ play

Okay since I am going to give this private thing a try I am going to go back to using the girls names. so much easier. :)

Julia's friend Rhe came over the other morning for a couple of hours before school. They had so much fun. Dev was not going to be left out, as soon as she was done eating she was looking for a dress to put on too, and since that day she has wanted to wear one every day. She is definitely getting to the fun stage, talking more, and wanting to do so much. She is still frustrated very easily, if she is trying to do something, anything, take a shoe on her own, put one on, color, you name it, if it doesn't go right the very first try she is screaming and often ready to toss it aside instantly. Sometimes I can just tell her to take a breath, try again and calm down, other times we have to move on to something else. She is also being difficult about naps lately, and I know she may be out growing them, and I would agree except that if she doesn't have one by 4:30 she is miserable and making the rest of us miserable too. Being sick last week didn't help anything I am sure. Thankfully she seems to be about over her cold. Speaking of Stitch she just climbed out of her crib... ugh I was so hoping to not have to switch her to the toddler bed til Daddy came back home, but I guess Grampa will have to help us convert the crib when he is here after Christmas. Naturally I just got Julia sleeping all night in her own bed and now I have to start on Devyn. Wish me luck. sigh.

Sorry, this post got a little off track, it was supposed to be about Julia and Rhe. They have really hit it off. We started carpooling a couple of weeks ago, so I take Julia and Rhe to school in the mornings and her mom picks them up and brings them home in the afternoon. It has worked out so nice! And the conversations on the way to school are a hoot. I learn more about them in that 20 minutes in the van then I do any other part of the day. Yesterday Julia asked Rhe on the way to school "do you want to be best friends?" Rhe thought about it for just a few seconds and came back with "yeah" "ok that's great then".... LOL. and listening the their version of "I spy" is hilarious too. They will usually say yes to the first thing the other one guesses, even though I am sure that is not what they initially were thinking of. They are just so sweet to each other and very careful about not hurting the others feelings, wonder how long that will last, hopefully a good long time.