Long Winter

Winter makes for some long weekends in our house.  We stay busy but soon, because we want so badly to get outside, cabin fever will rear its ugly head in our home.  Maybe, just maybe, the Wii we got two years ago will start to pay off.  Apparently the boys daycare has a Wii that the older kids play in their free time.  Evan likes the dancing game and is now playing it at home.  All three kids are really starting to get into the Wii games we have (which is not much:  Resort Sports, Just Dance and Music).  Their love of video games started with our smart phones and Kindle and now with the Wii (Gretchen likes playing games on the computer but the boys are not there yet).  I never really thought we would be a video game household but in some small way, I think it's better the passive TV that passed as entertainment in our house.  We do it together as a family but I already see an emphasis in Evan to "win".  This might lead to some fighting... sigh....

Sean's favorite present from Santa

Happy Holidays!

First Day of School

The boys are still in Early Childhood so preschoolers again.  Gretchen is a big 2nd grader....

An End to A Summer

This summer has been crazy!  We didn't do any birthday parties but yet we seemed to be busy a lot!  A family of five makes it difficult to do anything on the cheap so we have several passes this year that we did our best to maximize:  Six Flags (of course), Brookfield Zoo, MSI and Field Museum.  So, almost every weekend, we went to one of those places!  We also went to Six Flags St Louis and camping.  One of our last (or second to last) outings before school started was our annual Cubs game with the kids.  They are getting better and better at tolerating the whole weird atmosphere (sitting in the nosebleed section) and at honing in on their taste for junk food.  Gretchen has a list of food she "needed" to eat at the park which included:  hot dog, ice cream, cotton candy and peanuts.  The boys were not as bad but they did enjoy quite a bit of cotton candy!  We have one more day off before school start so we may have one more outing left in us though I am not sure I will survive it!

The Day Has Come (Finally)

We still feel tentative but we're pretty sure... Evan is potty trained....  Sigh... It seems like forever ago that I started buying diapers and pull ups but I am so happy!  Sure he is still having an accident so nothing feels safe yet but we're not putting another pull up on him!

He is my little stinker..............................

Get the Bugs Out

Sean had his dental surgery this month.  Some of you already know the he needed a lot of dental work.  I felt so terrible for so long about it as we waited for our surgery day to fix his teeth.  Our dentist suggested we fix his teeth all at once to spare him pain and discomfort.  Sean needed 6 crowns and a few cavities filled.  The dentist was wonderful and the procedure went well.  It had to be done under anesthesia so we went to a dentist that would do it in a hospital where it seemed safer.  Apparently Sean had some "soft" teeth where the enamel didn't harden like it should so it decayed very rapidly so it wasn't entirely my fault..... He looks unhappy in the picture but he ate food hours after it was taken.  I can now sleep at night knowing he isn't experiencing tooth pain.  My poor little guy!  We had Evan checked too and he did all of his fillings in the office so everyone is finally where they need to be.  And we are keeping those teeth sparkly clean!