Derek and I are convinced that Lauren gets the evening crazies just like any cat or elderly person in the hospital. Before I put her to bed, she likes to find any towel or piece of clothing the girls have left on the floor and drape it over her head. Then she crawls, full tilt, in any direction without the use of her eyes! Derek and I have had to stop her a number of times from running into corners or furniture. She also loves chasing her sisters around the house. Who needs a cat?

I finally finished Derek's Christmas present today, thanks to Kara, for letting me borrow her sewing machine since mine is broken! Derek has this blanket from his childhood that he loves, but never uses. He wanted me to mend it, but this blanket was beyond repairing so my mother in law gave me the idea to use the old blanket as the batting for the new blanket! So, I did! We are all making homemade gifts for each other in the family and this seemed the best idea for me. So I asked my friend Tammy to help me tie it, and I'm sorry Tammy, the thread count was so high it took us forever to finish it. It was so hard to pull the yarn through and some of the batting and fabric from the old blanket was being pulled through too. But it is done and, I think, looks ok! I left the colorful side of the old blanket facing up so you could see it through the white side (kind of like a shadow box). It's fun to see it now that it's done. It will definitely be a warm blanket. I took pictures of the old blanket so I could go back and make Derek a blanket much like his old one, but later on when I have a little more time (ha ha). I didn't display the really torn up parts of the blanket, but this gives you a small taste of what it was like.

Updates

Boy, I am awful at keeping this thing updated, but what can you do? We finally decorated the chirstmas tree (seeing as how it's been up for um... about a week or more!) Now the girls won't leave the tree alone. They like to rearrange the ornaments like I remember doing as a little girl; except they keep putting the breakable and chokable ones within Lauren's reach so I have to go back and rearrange it again! We went through Erin and Morgan's school made ornaments and it's fun to see how they have grown. I have so much fun recording my girls playing with their toys. Elise, you know how Tori was microwaving your baby Jesus from your nativity and how "licious" he was? Well, according to Shannon, our baby Jesus falls into boiling hot lava off of our living room table and gets saved by Prince Phillip and Aurora! What do you think of that? And I got it all on video! How great is that? We also got Lauren playing peek a boo at dinner when she was all covered in chili sauce; so naturally it ended up in her hair, eyes, ears, etc. I'm trying to teach her to nod her head yes because all she does is no. She's finding this very difficult unless she gets her whole body into it. Again, funny on video! We are also getting a black lab puppy for the girls for Christmas and they don't know it, so we thought. We still don't know for sure, but out of the blue Erin has become very adament about Santa bringing her a puppy for Chirstmas. Previously we have told the girls they can't have a dog until we move back to Morgan, but someone Derek knew asked if he wanted to do some trade work for one of his pure bred lab pups. Derek agreed, hence the Christmas puppy. Morgan keeps telling Erin that they can't have a puppy until we move, but Erin just says "I know, but I really want one" so we don't know what she knows if anything. Derek and I are still debating how to give the girls the puppy so if anyone has any great ideas we'd love to hear them!

Katie for President!

Erin asked me today if anyone could run for president and we had a nice little talk about it. It's been kind of fun because she and Morgan, mainly Erin, have been very interested in this presidential race. She thought for a little bit and said "Mom I would vote for you if you ran for president. I think anyone who knows you would vote for you! Can you just say "AWWWWW!" What a sweetheart! I told her you wouldn't want Mom to be president because I wouldn't be able to spend so much time with you. She thought a little longer and then decided that maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea, but she still would vote for me! It's funny because the girls will see me watching the news and say "There's Barack Obama again" or " There's the white haired guy again"! For some reason they can't remember John McCain! At there age I was completely clueless! What smarties!

Spooky!

We went to halloween party a few days before halloween and they had face professional face painters there and Derek was finally convinced that he needed to paint his face, but came away with a lot more! People kept coming up and asking Derek if they could take a picture of his head!I think he got a lot more than he bargained for!

On Halloween night we had quite the range of costume; considering we only have girls. Erin wanted to be a scary vampire, but pulled off Eddie Munster rather well instead! Morgan was our homeless gypsy and Shannon was our beautiful witch! Don't call her a cute witch or she will turn you into a toad! They had a blast going out with Dad for an hour and a half! Derek said most of the homes were shutting down for business so they did a bit of walking. He's a good dad because I would have said let's bag it, go home and eat our own candy!

My girls-again!

I like it when I can find time to take pics of my girls. Shannon's pose is all her own! Lauren is just growing so fast and now crawls using her hands and feet. I haven't had time to crop some of my pics so I apologize for the back ground in the group pic.

update-Morgan's party

Morgan's party went well. I was just surprized with how quiet all of these girls were. I had to keep the conversations going while they had lunch and cake. I played Disney songs and had them guess which movie it came from (they seemed to enjoy that. Shannon guessed "Ariel!" every time). Erin had to break the piniata because the girls would just tap at it and then when the candy was on the ground, they made a circle and checked out the candy before even picking it up! Much different from my days as a kid when you had to make a mad dash just to get your share! I could have kept these girls all day! They had their faces painted with butterflies and I had to take a picture.