Grandma came to Dance Class.

It was Great! My mom had a wonderful time. She videotaped the girls dancing. Several of the girls asked "are you my grandma?" She said, "I can be your grandma today! " How sweet! Gioia told a couple of them, ITS MY Grandma! Bad enough she has to share her with brother, she ain't sharing her with dance class. HA HA!! Mom said she thought the teacher Miss Leigh was great. They are about the same age, both with grandkids, and they hit it off right away. Mom laughed and said it was like herding baby chickens. They went every which way, but Miss Leigh kept them in line. Then we all went out to lunch and DH joined us. He took the rest of the day off, which was good, since it was snowing. On the way home, he hit a curb and bent the tire on his car. SO tomorrow he has to get it fixed as its not driveable. Bummer. It was very slick and my mom left in the afternoon to get home before dark. My brother has been going to colleges trying out for the football team. He has a couple offers, it will be up to him where he decides to go.

Playgroup today.

Today we had a playgroup, it was really fun. Gioia and her little friend played in her room with the dollhouse and it was so cute. They had a disposable camera and were taking pictures of everyone. We have a busy week. Tomorrow is our day off, wed. is dance class and grandma is coming to watch, Thursday is Homeschool skate day, Friday is go to Grandmas for the weekend and to my brothers basketball game. Whew! We are busy. Dominic is sleeping better, I think he is cutting teeth. They aren't coming through yet, but they are puffy. Tonight we went out to get dog food and stopped to get Ice Cream. It was fun.

Babies playing together...

My babies play so nicely together now. I love it!! :) One funny thing they do is Gioia will lead Dominic around by this red sweater belt I have. She uses it as a "rope" and they will march around hanging onto it together. Also Dominic loves to mock her. She will say MINE and he says MINE. Or pretty much anything else, he tries to say it. Right now he is playing in a box we brought groceries home in. He just fits inside it. He loves the silly thing. Today we went up to Fantastic Sams to get my hair cut. I gave Gioia a sucker and Dominic a piece of candy cane and they sit perfectly still and never moved the whole time I was getting my haircut. It was a small victory for me and I told them how happy they made me to sit still like that. It really was a great moment. I love little moments like that. My stupid video camera is broken. I have to send it in for repair. SO of course I am missing all these sweet things my little man is doing now.

Last night Gioia woke in the middle of the night and cried out Daddy! I need you to snuggle me. He was more than happy to oblige. Getting a full sized matteress for her was the best thing we ever did. Seriously. This week we worked on numbers. Gioia is learning to write 3, 4 and 5. Tomorrow we might try 6 and 7. She did awesome writing number 4. 3 was kind of hard but thats ok. I had to help her with 5. No worries, she is 3.5. :) I think my mom is coming next week to sit in on Gioia's dance class. I hope she won't be too excited to see Grandma to dance. I bet she does ok.

Here is your moment of cuteness for the week.

Skating Rink

Today Gioia and I went skating for a friends 4th birthday party. It was really fun. It was Gioia's first time rollerskating and she did really well. When I finally got her to try not holding the wall she started getting the hang of it. By the time we were finished she didn't want me to hold her hand. She said "You go skate fast." :) We also found out that on the 1st Thursdays of the month they have Homeschool Days from 1-3pm. We are so there! A couple of our other homeschool friends said they will plan to come too. It will be great. Dominic stayed home with Daddy. He is too little to skate and I didn't want to chase him around the rink.

It is snowing here today. I think we have about 1-2 inches. It is the beautiful kind of snow that is fluffy and almost no wind. It just looked like a giant salt shaker sprinkling on us.

She said..

This morning Gioia said “Daddy I like your fat tummy. You drink wine and coffee just like papaw. And biscuits and gravy.” HA HA! Then he said that during the night he went in to snuggle her and when he moved over to get more comfortable she said, “Daddy don’t try to get away from me cause I love you.” What a sweetie. She was also impressing us yesterday by writting her own name and she also wrote Mom. :) Smartie pants. Dominic pulled a metal reindeer candle holder on himself and has a black eye now. Poor guy.

Today is hubby's birthday. I got him a Plasma ball and some self-corking beer bottles, for his beer making. We also had a Tiramasu our friend the chef made. It is divine! He had an interview for a new job today. He really wants it. I think its in the bag, what a nice birthday present that would be! He may not find out anything more until Monday though. He had to buy a new suit for the interview and he looked SHARP! Maybe they will hire him just cause he is good-looking. HA HA!!

Exceeding grade expectations...

Friday is my husbands birthday. The big 33. :) He actually made me a list this year, so I have a few items to choose from for gifts. I think he will like what he is getting. Today is Dance class and grocery shopping day. The Motivated Moms list is working really well. I really like it. I am feeling happier since my house looks nicer. Yesterday was vacuum the bedrooms, which also means picking up all the things on the floor and straightening up. So now the bedrooms look nice! still enjoying my new vacuum.

Dominic ate 2 small eggs and a small banana for breakfast! Wow! His new word of the day is neck. He will say it and tickle your neck.He is also getting good at signing more things. Gioia is on a peter pan kick. She has some stuffed animals that are her Lost Boys and she takes them with her and calles them her Boys. Also I would like to brag that she can do everything on the Preschool list from World Book grade expectations. We are working on the K list now. You know they had "cross the street safely" on the PRE-K list? I don't think so bob! I mean, she knows to hold hands and not cross without mom and dad, but this read like doing it independantly. I don't think 8 year olds should do it alone, forget 3-5 year olds.

Armpit babies...

I just had to laugh about this. This morning as I log onto my Attachment Parenting board I was reading some funny stuff. Since we are all AP parents pretty much everyone co-sleeps with their kids, aka...baby in the bed, aka Family Bed. I know we do and we love it. One mom is having trouble with her baby kicking her when she breastfeeds at night. So we are all giving suggestions and the conversation turns to your babies head smelling like armpit in the morning. HHA AHAA!! Some people won't understand this...but to give a mental picture. Baby is at the breast, mom puts her arm about the babies head, therefore baby ends up with his hair/top of head in moms armpit. Well by morning, you have armpit head baby. HA HA!!! TOO FUNNY! That has happened to us before. So we all hop in the shower together.

My AP families group is so awesome. We have several babies due this spring. It will be great. We take meals to the new mamas, partly so we can see the new babies you know! At least 3 of these are planned homebirths. It is really great. We have a resident Midwife in our group. I know she is doing one of the deliveries. Our cooking club is getting back on track and I think it will be a good 2007.

Today is church and then I hope to go to the Mall and find some black boots to wear under skirts or with jeans. I need some winter type dress shoes and I want boots! I have some christmas money to spend.

14 degrees

It is 14 degrees outside and expected to drop lower during the night. BRRR!!! Hubby worked from home today and the only time we got out was to take the dog to the vet for his bloodwork and meds refill. Then hubby decided to hook up his gas heater in the garage. This required shutting the house gas off (IE: the house furnace) while he does it. SO the furnace has been off for a couple hours now and it is starting to get kind of cold in here. The report is "I am almost done. " GOOD! I hope so. ;) Luckly the kids are snuggled in their beds and nice and warm.

MMM.... Girl Scout Cookies. I usually try to make sugar free deserts or baked goods with Stevia, however I make an exception for Girl Scout cookies. As my mom will say, Thin Mints especially. When I was a kid i would order my own box of thin mints and stash them away and eat them. Who am I kidding I still order my own Thin Mints. HA HA!! My daughter got her first taste of these cookies tonight and she is hooked! In fact, she was pretty pissed I only let her have one, well two if you count the one she snuck when I was on the phone.

My herbal remedy of the week Kali Mur. This stuff is awesome! I had a cold, same thing the kids have had for 2 weeks. Ugh. I was sneezing my head off, coughing, nose running like crazy. SO after 2 days of it I call my friend at the Health Store about cough medicine. She tells me that this Kali Mur is great and dries up your nose, stops the drainage, the whole bit. I took it last night, every 2 hours, by the time I went to bed my nose stopped running. This morning I had a few drips from the nose, so I took it again. Gave Dominic some cause he is still drippy. THats it DONE! My nose is healed. I have not sneezed since. BAM!! Cold is gone! SWEET!!! I had a couple coughing fits, but other than that I feel great! THANK YOU SHERRY! Oh and it cost like 4 bucks.Well worth it.

Into January..

Busy week so far. Gioia resumed her dance classes today and they did not get suckers as usual, they got stamps on their hands. Their teacher said they didn't listen well and stand on the dance line, so no suckers. 2 weeks off is alot of 3 year olds, it was like the 1st class all over again. Oh well they had fun. We are still battling colds here. The kids are mostly over it, but now I have it. Bah!

Dominic is really talking now and it is adorable. His favorite thing to say is "Me-up!" (Pick me up!) He can also say Daddy, Mommy, Do-a (Gioia), Ti-ti (kitty). Today he was reading a book to himself. He also dances and he really gets down! He will spin in a circle and clap his hands. He also signs and says "Nur-ney" (Nursing). He signs several things like book, please, and wash.

Tonight we are watching the Da Vinci Code. Good movie! It really gives a person alot to think about. I have come to realize in a very short time that things are never straight forward. Someone is always pushing their agenda, in religion, medicine, government. It is really disturbing. Sometimes I feel like I am in an old twilight zone, where all the people are kept in the dark ages cause we are too stupid to deal with reality.

Limes!

I was cooking a soup and it calls for the juice of one lime. Well Dominic says "apple!" Of course we thought it would be funny to give it to him. He LIKED IT! HA HA!! I told my husband that my little brother loved sour stuff when he was a kid, still does. Here are the pictures.

New Vacuum

My old vacuum died. We had it 6+ years. We got it as a wedding gift. SO i did my research, check consumer reports and ended up buying a Kenmore Intelli-Clean vacuum. It has this sensor that tells you when you are sucking up alot of dirt, small amounts or the area is clean. WOW! My carpet was really dirty. It looks like different carpet now. Fluffier and nicer looking. Here is the vacuum.
Next on the list to replace is the dishwasher. It still runs, but about every other load comes out with crud on the dishes and it just sucks. Of course, I feel wasteful to replace it when it still works. We are going to keep an eye out for open box items or clearance items and try to find a great deal, otherwise we will probably stick it out with this dishwasher for another year.

We went to the Nelson-Atkins art musuem on Tuesday. I forgot to post about that. It was AWESOME! I loved it. We only got to stay for about 45 mins and we saw the whole 1st floor. I thought that was pretty good with two little ones. Our homeschool group went and most of the other kids are a bit older, around 5. Hopefully we can do it again soon with DH.

Motivated Moms

Well at the suggestion of a friend, I joined this thing called Motivated Moms. I like it. It is this daily planner for the whole year that tells you what household tasks to do. Each week you have your daily chores, such as laundry, dishes, sweep kitchen, wipe off counters, feed pets, read to children etc.. Then it gives you random "tasks" to TRY to accomplish each day. For example, tuesday was vacuum the main living area/1st floor, change towels in kitchen and bathroom, clean out microwave. Then Wed. might be clean all toilets, mop kitchen, clean off master bedroom dresser and dust. I like it because instead of saying Clean the whole bathroom, it says do toilets. Instead of vacuum whole house, it says living area one day, bedrooms the next day. Of course you can do more or less. I have been circling the things I don't get done and plan to catch up over the weekend with DH's help. It was 8.00 a year to download the weekly pages. I think it will be well worth it. I hope it helps me get the house in better order.

Tonight we have MNO (Moms Night Out). We are going to Old Chicago for Pizza and beer. YEAH! I love pizza and I love beer! We also do our cooking club swap at the same time, so we come home with tasty food. We usually have about 15 moms come. Lap babies are welcome, but no other kids.

Holiday photos

Here are a few pictures of the kids enjoying their holiday loot

Crazy Holidays and Dial up connections

I guess I have really been missing in action these last two weeks. WHEW!! Where to beginning?

Christmas: For christmas week we went to my sisters house and had christmas time with my dad and family. It was a great time, but we all came down with sinus colds. Yuck! Then we were preparing to go to Iowa when we found out my sister-in-laws family (whom we were going to stay with) were all barfing with the flu. DOUBLE YUCK! We almost scrapped it all and drove home, but decided at the last minute to go to my Mother-in-laws house. We spent christmas with her and the kids still had a good time. We then came home for 3 days and took off again.

New Years: We went to my Moms house for New Years weekend. Had the annual family Christmas at Grandmas house with all the cousins. Gioia had a great time and all the toddlers are a riot. We laughed so hard. Then for New Years eve we all partied at my Moms house. It was pretty fun. Dominic fell asleep at 9:30 and Gioia made it until 11pm. Then we slept over at Grandma Leotas while the other crazy adults partied at moms until 2am. My BIL had a run in with the Jaggermeister which resulted in sharpie tattoos and many incriminating pictures to be taken of him. All in all, good times. :) We came home with half a cow and 20 lbs of deer burger. YUM!! My freezer is full.

NOw I am exhausted and am off to bed. I will post more tomorrow and some pictures of our holiday fun!