First Snow

Funniest Thing a Kid has Ever Done...

to my pregnant stomach:

Play tractors with the baby.  It was totally his idea.  The little tractor was the baby's and kept rolling down my stomach.  The big one was for Philip.  We have a hilarious video too, but it's too long to post.

Samuel's Christmas Plays

Samuel's class put on two little Christmas plays one morning after Mass.  They were cute.  And Samuel knew all the lines.  His and everyone else's.  Which we often heard, and are still hearing at home.

This is the angel choir singing for Baby Jesus.

As Festive as Our Decorating Gets

With our Christmas stuff buried deep in the garage and the baby coming just three weeks after Christmas, this is all the decorating we did.  But it makes me smile!

Before and After

 House

 Base
ment

 New stairwell

 Door to new stairwell

 Laundry room

 Door to laundry room

I forgot to take pictures of all the big messes that we are now cleaning up, but I had six wonderful friends come Saturday to my "cleaning party." We got the kitchen and dining room walls wiped down, got the washer, dryer and pantry cleaned up and moved out of the middle of the kitchen, mouse messes cleaned up, parts of the floor washed, the breakfast nook cleaned and various stuff that was lying around put away or at least organized.  It was a wonderful start!  Thank you Jessica, Sarah, Karen, Stephanie, Jen and Jennie!  I've been slowly working on more cleaning since then.  Almost all the dishes are washed, the cupboards are cleaned out, the fridge and stove are cleaned and on, and we've started on the living room... it still needs a lot of work though!  The kids have been helping too.  They helped me clean the bathroom last night which was wonderful.  Jeremy has done tons of work to make the house livable again.  I can't even begin to list it all.
We even slept here last night!!!!!  I'm not sure we're permanently moved back in but we had a big snowstorm come through so I thought it would be better to be snowed in here where we can keep cleaning than at Jeremy's parents making messes to clean up there!  :)  My own bed felt so good....
I'm lifting my heart in thanks to and for everyone who has helped us get this far! 

Lifting My Heart

In thanksgiving for four fever free kids!  Now if all the coughing and runny noses stop we'll be set!

Maybe

In our family Thomas isn't known for the size of his bladder.  After watching a um, bladder control product commercial the other day he commented, "I think I might need some of that!"  Maybe we shouldn't tease him so much....

Christmas Program

It's so nice when the kids learn tradional Christmas carols for their program.  When they tell the story of the Nativity you don't have to worry if you can't hear the kids with speaking parts!

 Samuel, second row from bottom, second from the left.

 Thomas, bottom row, middle.  White shirt with black tie that we forgot to tighten.  :)

They did a nice job!

St Nicholas

St Nick must have know our "we have fevers so we can't go to school but we feel okay" family needed a project to do. He brought the kids cotton swabs, glitter glue and project instructions along with a holy card and treat. They turned out pretty cute!

Thanks Mom

1 large house project + 4 sick kids + 33 week pregnant mom who's getting sick too + stressed out husband = pregnancy meltdown.  And apparently even when you're 34 only your mother will do.  Thanks for letting us be sick at your house Mom and Dad.  Everyone please say a quick prayer they won't get what we had!

A Little More Explaining May be Needed

The other day my mom was discussing with the big boys if anyone in our family had ever had stitches.  Samuel is the only one.  He was four or so and sitting on the back of the couch (which he KNEW he was not supposed to do) when Thomas, who would have been about 2 1/2, pushed him off.  He went over the back and hit his head on the corner of the changing table and had to get two stitches.  Samuel commented, "That may be the naughtiest thing you've ever done, Thomas."  To which Thomas replied, "Yeah, I might need to confess that one at my First Confession."

Thanksgiving Break Fun

Woo-Hoo

Perhaps you're sick of my blogger problems but just in case anyone else ever needs to figure the same thing out here's the deal:  You can very easily make a new author for your blog, just like Becky said, but not just any email address will work, you need to have a google account that's different from the one you're currently using for your blog.  I didn't have one, and I found it was easiest to sign up for a new google account and then invite that account to be an author.  When you sign up for a google account you'll automatically get signed up for google+ also.  I didn't want a whole google+ profile of myself out on the web so I found the "delete google+" option and now I just have an extra gmail account.  Then you have to sign in with your old account and change the new one from just an author who can only post, to "admin" so that you can change the background, etc. on your blog when/if you want to, although you could just sign into your original account to do those type of things instead.  Then you'll have another GB of free storage.  Use it wisely!  ;)

Yay for Becky!

Who told me how not to have to start a new blog or resize all my pictures.  Thanks Becky!

Actually, I just had this happen--just create a new author for your blog. You just need another e-mail address--I used my husbands!  Here's a link that tells you how to do it:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2072066_multiple-authors-post-blogger-blog.html

Here's What I Found Out

I googled what to do when you reach your upload quota and here's what I found:

Free storage limits

Picasa Web Albums offers 1 GB of free storage for photos and videos. However, files under certain size limits don't count towards this free storage limit. This applies to uploads for other Google product that store photos and videos in Picasa Web Albums, including Blogger, Google+ and Google Maps.
The free storage sizes are good for sharing photos on the web, but if you prefer to upload your images at a larger size for better quality (archival or print), you can buy more storage at any time. Learn more about Google storage.
If you've signed up for Google+

Free storage limits

Photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards your free storage.

Automatic resizing

All photos uploaded in Google+ will be automatically resized to 2048 pixels (on their longest edge) and won't count towards your free storage quota.
All photos uploaded from the Picasa software or in Picasa Web Albums over the free size limit will count towards your 1 GB of free storage. When you reach your storage limit, any new photos you upload larger than the free size limit will be automatically resized to 2048 pixels (on their longest edge).

If you haven't signed up for Google+

Free storage limits

Photos up to 800 x 800 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards your free storage.

Automatic resizing

All photos uploaded over the free size limit will count towards your 1 GB of free storage. When you reach your storage limit, any new photos you upload to Picasa Web larger than the free size limit will be automatically resized to 800 pixels (on their longest edge).

So I took a look at my picture sizes and sure enough they're over the 800x800 pixels that don't count toward your limit.  This probably explains why I know people who've had blogs much longer than me who haven't reached their quota.  So now I'll have to decide if I want to spend a bunch of time making my already published pictures smaller so I don't have to start a new blog.  I'm thinking no but I have to go pick up the boys from school right now so I'll decide for sure later...
 

Question

Hey blogging friends, perhaps you noticed my teeny tiny picture at the top.  Well, my blog tells me I've reached my photo upload quota and won't let me upload it bigger or any other pictures.  Has this ever happened to anyone else?  Is the only thing to do start a new blog (or pay for more space which I of course won't do)?  I tried deleting an old post with a bunch of pictures but it didn't help.  Just wondering....

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Tank

Philip climbed on this rock outside one of our local stores and said, "Take picture!"  since I had my camera I figured why not.

Philip doesn't know he's little. It causes problems sometimes because he tries to do what the big kids are doing and his little body just can't. It's pretty funny other times.
He's quit calling me Mommy and calls me Momm. I put two m's because he holds out the end m just a little longer than necessary. (Samuel and Thomas still call me Mommy, even though I've actually been trying to change them over to Mom, they seem a little old for Mommy.) When he's feeling agreeable and I ask him to do something he says, "Okay, Momm!" If you ask him if he needs help he sometimes tells you, "No, I fine." The other day he was going to play with Aunt Jen and Aliza while I went to physical therapy but he woke up too late to eat breakfast or get dressed. I told him I packed his clothes and food in a bag for him and he said, "Oh, good!" He also says "Darn it!" when he's frustrated which isn't my favorite but thankfully he says it very clearly so it doesn't sound like something else coming out of his mouth. I'm still trying to convince him to change over to "Oh nuts!" though. He tells me "You fired!" when he's mad at me. I have no idea where he picked up the phrase but when he's frustrated with me it's usually because he doesn't want to do what I say so I'm frustrated too and being fired sounds fine with me!
For weeks at prayer time when we asked Philip to pick a prayer he's picked one but lately he's taken to saying "I don't know." Yesterday though, after not knowing he paused and said, "Puppy know!" He went across the room, picked up Puppy and held him to his ear then announced, "Lamb of God." As we said the Lamb of God, Philip held Puppy in his little arms and kissed him on the nose. It was precious.

There's lots going on with the improvements to our house but I'll update you on those some other time.  It'll be a long post!  :)

Halloween

I've probably mentioned other years, I'm not a big fan of Halloween. The only part I like is getting costumes together. It's the last day of the month so Jeremy is always busy, it's so easy to get greedy while trick or treating and carving pumpkins? Let's just say none of my kids have ever had a long enough attention span to scoop out their pumpkins and they can't do the actual carving yet so I get to carve four pumpkins to match their (intricate) drawings as best I can. Fun.  Plus there's no good meaning to Halloween. But here's the highlights anyway.

Ready to go.

 A Race car Driver

 A Snow Princess

 The Jolly Green Giant

 A Western Sheriff (the western part was very important to him)

 The Jack-o-lanterns (I kept my pumpkin under my shirt).  By the way, don't try to carve Blue Moon Pumpkins, it's hard!  I didn't really intend to but since we didn't get a regular one for Julia I ended up trying.  It turned out fine, but wow, was the skin and pumpkin flesh thick!  I missed taking a picture of Thomas scooping out his, oops.  His white pumpkin was really soft and easy to carve, it made up for Julia's!

They do look cool lit up.

Odds and Ends

Musing from Julia:  Why does Curious George get to stay by himself?
I myself have often wondered why the man in the yellow hat ever leaves that monkey alone.  I am not a big Curious George fan because even though George does naughty things (like try to drive a dump truck he's specifically been told not to get into) he never gets in trouble because it all works out for the best. (Even though George knocks down a building with the dump truck it's okay because it turns out there was a structural problem and it was going to need to be knocked down anyway.  Really? Great example for the kids.)



Where is the safest place to keep Piggy Bear during the house move?
Under your hat.



Samuel is currently in love with "air quotes."  He uses them any time he thinks he's being sarcastic or when repeating something that's "wrong".  I tried to explain them better but to no avail. (Do Jeremy and I use them so much that he picked them up from us?) It's actually pretty humorous.  Keep an eye out for them next time you have an extended conversation with him.





I'd say Philip is offically potty trained! Yay! However his newest method for letting me know he has to go is to yell "POTTY, MOM!!" at the top of his lungs from where ever he is so that I'll come running to help him in the bathroom. I guess it works. We'll work on independence before the baby comes... So far he hasn't done it in public, of course I'm never very far away when we're out and about so yelling isn't necessary I guess.

Family Picture

in the (soon to be) laundry/bathroom. Is is stranger that we're in the bathroom or that this may be our first family picture since Easter? ;)

Inside the Basement

Here's the old basement.  Funny, it didn't seem that small with the house on top of it...

And here's the new one!
Samuel is supposed to be sweeping the floor... he's standing facing south by the egress bay window that will be in one of the bedrooms.

Philip is clearing out leaves in the corner of the family room.  (Julia and Thomas were at Grandma Susan and Grandpa Mike's but I'm sure they'll put in plenty of work before we're done!)

Here's where the old stairs came down.  Don't worry, that door locks with a key from in the kitchen so no one will absent mindedly try to go downstairs.  These were very steep but they hit the outside wall so we would have had to have put in a 90 degree turn to make them less steep, which wouldn't have been fun for bringing furniture down!  The new ones will come down where our enclosed porch was, on the west side of the house going down to the north. I know, it's hard to picture from just this explanation, you'll just have to take my word on it for now.

Right now you have to come in one of the egress windows.  A portion of the old stairs conveniently fits just about right so you don't have to jump in.

It's about 1000 square feet, the same as our main floor.  We'll have two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a family room and a utility room when it's all done.  Woo-hoo!