Happy Birthday to our littliest princess!

There is a small part of me that feels I should apologize for blogging so infrequently- but life just happens. The good news is that I finally got my computer back on Friday so now I am willing to download pictures. The really good news is that my kids seem to be getting better now that all three are finishing up their antibiotics. Yes, all three were on antibiotics at the same time. Grace and Leah had sinus inf with double ear infections and Isaac had (and still has) a sinus infection with a terrible cough. Isaac is strangely resistant to antibiotics even though he has only been on them 3 or 4 times in his life. It has been a long 3 weeks with all of them pretty sick. Of course I am now sick for lack of sleep. There was at least a straight week where I averaged about 4 hours of sleep a night. It was awful. I am so tired of cold/flu season. My kids have been almost constantly sick for 3 months. You would never know that they are not in daycare (Leah is not even in preschool) and were all breastfed babies. On the bright side my kids don't have allergies...so I do have that going for me. Anyway, we are all tired and just trying to recover.


Fortunately we have had Leah's 1st birthday to get ready for and look forward to. Grace and I have been working diligently on the princess theme that Grace deemed suitable weeks ago. All I am going to say is tiaras, pink feather boas, and pink, pink, pink! Her birthday and party were yesterday. Leah had to have her own personal ball pit for the party and she did enjoy it. The big kids had a little too much fun and we finally had to cut them off. Nana and Aunt L came up for the big event. Thank goodness! I kept Nana busy with the big kids and put Aunt L on the decorating committee, pre-party. I don't know what I was doing...a little of everything and all of nothing!

Here is the beautiful dining room table complete with pink roses, carrot cake, cupcakes with princess atop, fruit tray, pretzels, chips/salsa, and peanut butter celery. Note the boa in the chandelier.

I had everyone autograph Leah's plate, and guess how many kisses were in the dish. Aunt L painted this beautiful picture of Leah's party invitation. It was amazing.

We had lots of fun drinks for all ages, confetti on the table and a pinata for color.

And here sits the princess's throne. Yes, her high chair has a pink cover and a skirt for the tray. We had to have the most adorable polk-a-dot balloons and her tiara awaits her on her tray.

This is the show-off table. I have her birthday pictures up next to an infant picture and of course her scrapbook which is almost completely up to date!

We started the party off with some yummy food from Moe's catering. It was a big hit and I will definitely use them again.

Then a little game of pin the tiara on the princess.

Then time for the big event. I made Leah a very special carrot cake cupcake-from scratch. Her FAVORITE! (and it really is her favorite- she loves carrot cake!)

Big brother helped to blow out the pink polk-a-dot candle.

And then she digs in with her birthday cake bib.

And then I added some heath bar ice cream and of course that was a huge hit too.

Oh ya.

My two princesses. Grace was all about wearing her tiara too.

Our next event was the pinata. You are probably thinking that this is a weird event for a 1 yr old's party...but just wait.

The one-yr-old loved it and was very upset when she had to take turns!

We ended up staying up way past bedtime. But a great time was had by all. Nana and Aunt L did all of the clean-up which was the best gift of all as I was pooped! Leah was by far the best behaved child and literally did not fuss one time. I am kind of sad that she is growing up so quickly...that they all are growing up so quickly. But I guess that is what happens.

I know it's been forever...but...

...I really do have two good excuses! My first excuse is emergency related. Literally. Two days before Thanksgiving Isaac was "playing" on a wooden bench that sits at our kitchen table. I told him to get off of it. He jumped off backwards causing the bench to teeter and fall backwards...onto his big toe- and it nearly took off his toe. The lip of the seat part of the bench fell right below his toenail and took off all flesh except for about 1/4th of an inch of flesh that was hanging on the underside of his toe. It was bad-very bad. At first I thought the bench had hit his shin, but he was really crying and I was confused. I had already picked him up when I saw his toe. Blood was EVERYWHERE and when he saw it he panicked. I was cool, though. I kind of got the flesh back over his toe and gently got a towel around his foot. The baby was eating dinner and Grace and Isaac were about to eat. So I had Grace feed the baby while I got on the phone. After 10 minutes I did start to panic a little- I couldn't get Sid on the phone after many calls and texts and none of my neighbors were home. Sid was running late (:-)) and was in the one dead zone area by our house stuck in traffic. I didn't know where he was or when he would be home and I couldn't imagine taking all 3 of them to the ER; but it was looking like that was my only option. Isaac was in a lot of pain and bleeding. Finally my neighbor with the 5 kids got home. The daddy stayed home with the girls and the mom drove Isaac and me to the ER. Fortunately Sid got home about ten minutes later as I had left no instructions for the baby. We got to the ER and they took us right back. Took x-rays (nothing was broken) and did some "surgery" to repair the nail bed and sew on the bottom of his toe. They went ahead and took off the top. Seriously. We were in and out in two hours. My baby was in extreme pain for the next three days -he had serious pain meds that helped a lot. He slept with me and had a tough time for the first week. He crawled around after about 5 days and started walking after about 2 weeks. He just started wearing shoes again about 3 days ago. It's been fuzzy Crocs a size too big until now. The doc says Isaac is healing great and his toenail should eventually come back- though he makes no promises as to what it will look like. At least he is a boy- can you imagine if this happened to one of my girls and their big toe was forever maimed? Plus, Isaac is SO MUCH tougher than Grace. It broke my heart a hundred times to see his frightened face in surgery (they did it with him awake and restrained- it took too long and they said they should have put him under- yikes.), and the pain he was in had to have been worse than any labor pains he put me through- but he was still happy and resilient and NEVER complained. Never. That's my brave boy.
My next excuse is that my computer died. It died - I took it to the Geek Squad who had it for 5 days and they couldn't get the virus off of it- so we sent it into the IT guys at Sid's company. They still have it. Sid brought home a loner laptop for me. I am not supposed to load any software on it (ie no camera software so no pictures.) But since I still don't have my computer back (and it has been a month!) I did load the camera software so I could post some pics and work on my scrapbooks.
So those are pretty good excuses huh?! So below is a month of photos...with short captions. Here is Grace and Isaac's school Christmas program. Isaac is on the far right. Unless you know where he is you will never be able to see him, but you can try if you want to. Grace is not up yet.

The Kindergartners got actual "parts" in the program. Grace was the cow in the nativity. Here she comes....

And here she is singing some song I had never heard except for the 5000 times she played it on her karaoke machine at home in preparation for the program.

Grandpa came for a visit. This is the only picture I took! That is terrible. But all of the kids had lots of fun with him. Grandpa actually babysat for all 3 of them while Sid and I went to a Christmas party one night. Grandpa slept late the next morning.

Then we got a little bit of snow and of course that meant immediate sledding gear on and out the door.

Uncle Will came in from Arizona for Christmas. Cousin Margaret came over for dinner a couple days before Christmas.

Here is Leah on Christmas Eve morning. She is opening one of Sid's presents. So damn cute.

"Oh here you go, Mom. I am helping."

Christmas Eve...

In our Christmas pj's and ready for Santa!

Okay! Now it's Isaac's turn to hold Leah. (Everyone pray!)

Happy Birthday Jesus! And thank you Santa! Wow- check out the lute!

Leah loves the trampoline. Definitely a winner with all of the kids.

Grace and Isaac help Leah with her presents...b/c the 500 they just opened of their own were not enough.

Leah loves her puppy Violet...on the trampoline.

Grandpa got Isaac these giant blocks. They were also a huge hit.

Santa brought Grace an Easy Bake Oven. Here is her first masterpiece. Looks delectable doesn't it?

Santa brought Isaac some glow-in-the-dark stars...I am attempting to put them on the ceiling. It was a very big event.

All of the kids are now tired and ready for bed. Whatever.

And the biggest surprise for Christmas is that it began to snow that night. The next morning was a beautiful winter wonderland. Isaac and Nana built this snowman. And that is the end of our Christmas holiday story.