Ally's Christmas performance

Ally's class had a wonderful Christmas performance tonight. It was SO good! The kids all did a great job. They were so excited to be there. They sang Joy To the World, The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy, and Go Tell It on The Mountain. They did SUCH a great job. Go Tell It On The Mountain had really cute motions with it.

We were so proud of Ally for getting up there and participating. A year ago, she wouldn't have done that. She's really coming out of her shell! She was very proud of herself as well!!

The pictures of ally up on stage didn't turn out that great. It was dark in the audience with the stage lit up and my camera just wouldn't do a good job there. But at least you can see her up there doing the motions. She did SO great! :)

Halloween pictures!

I thought I would update with some halloween pictures. The kids had a great time this year. They really enjoyed it and seemed to get more involved with it this year than in years past. Luckily the kids were healthy on Halloween. All of us have been sick, but Ally, Tommy, and Matt all got well by Halloween night. I was still miserable (and still am) but I was still able to enjoy it with them. I managed to take them to about 10 houses before I thought I would collapse. We came home and Matt took them around the block. They came home with SO much candy!! They had a great time. Ally was an angel and Tommy was a turtle. They both loved dressing up. The next night, Tommy was getting in his pjs for bed and he said, "turtle costume?" And I said, "no, it's not halloween anymore". and he said, "but it's dark outside!" I guess he figured since we kept saying, "we can't go trick or treating until it's dark out" on halloween, that meant we could go every night when it got dark. lol

The night before Halloween, we carved pumpkins. Matt did all of the work while I watched and took pictures. The kids really loved that. We got a free toy in the mail from Matchbox, so Tommy spent a majority of his time playing with that. It's a haunted house that you put a Matchbox car in and watch it go from room to room. Both kids have had a lot of fun with that.

The big pumpkin is our family pumpkin. Matt took a design from The Nightmare Before Christmas and duplicated it. The ghostly pumpkin is Tommy's and the scary pumpkin is ally's. Ally designed her own pumpkin this year. Matt helped her cut it, but she drew it on a piece of paper and told Matt what she wanted it to look like.

Pumpkin Patch!

On Sunday we went to two fun Halloween-related activities. First, we went to a corn maze. It was 10 acres! It was a lot of fun. Mother Nature had destroyed some of the stalks, so the design wasn't perfect, but it was supposed to be a train. The kids didn't care about the flattened stalks. They had a great time. It took us quite a while to get through it, but we made it. There were little stations here and there with clues on how to get out. It was fun. Some of them had questions you had to answer and some had little drawings you had to uncover using a crayon and rubbing the paper they provided. The kids had a ton of fun playing in the dirt on the trails and collecting dried corn.

After we made it out, the kids got to see animals and play in swimming pools full of corn! It was so much fun. They absolutely loved that part. I think they would have stayed all day if they could!

Because of the strange weather we've been having, the pumpkin supply was very low there. After we were done playing in corn, we decided to drive to another pumpkin patch closer to our house. That's where we picked out our pumpkins. The kids had a great day. They really enjoyed themselves.

Ally's birthday party!

Ally had a great birthday party. She has all her friends there. They had a great time playing on the playground and eating pizza and cake. She even had a few friends from school come. She's really starting to develop some really nice friendships at school. It's so cute to hear her talk about her friends.

Ally turns FIVE years old!!!

I can't believe Ally is 5. Time really flies. The night before her 5th birthday, Matt and I were saying how we couldn't believe that it's really been 5 years! Seriously, when we were going through colic with her, we couldn't see past that very trying time and it seemed like we would never get out of that first 6 months of her life! But here we are...with a very happy and healthy 5 year old!

She's come so far. Although minor compared to what many little ones go through, it was a rough go for Ally in the beginning. We're so grateful that she seems to have grown out of the gastric issues. She is a healthy little girl.

For Ally's birthday, we celebrated with presents, lunch out with Boba and Papa .B. and then dinner out with Grandma and Grandpa .K.. Ally picked where she wanted to go. We went to lunch at Steak N Shake and dinner at a local pizza/pasta place. After meeting Grandma and Grandpa .K. for dinner, we went to their house for cake! It was a very nice day.

We told Ally she could pick out an activity to do on her birthday. She picked bowling, but when we got to the bowling alley, there was over an hour wait. The kids didn't want to wait, so we decided to reschedule for during the week. On Thursday, we called around trying to find a place that has open bowling during the week, but we had no luck. Ally decided she wanted to go play mini-golf, so that's what we did. We had a GREAT time. The kids loved it. They both had so much fun! I couldn't believe it, but Tommy actually participated rather than running off like he normally would! We had a really nice night.

nothing much new

A few of you have asked how things are going with the house. So far, we're just playing a waiting game. We have it listed with Matt's mom now. We were spending too much time, energy, and money trying to market it ourselves and it's hard to get the exposure you get when you list is, so we went ahead and listed it w/ her. We've actually had quite a lot of people looking at it, but either they have a house to sell and aren't ready to make any offers or they are looking for a little bit bigger of a yard.
I'm sure it will sell, but it will take longer than usual. It's just not a great time for real estate. Matt's mom is doing an Open House on Sunday, so hopefully that will bring in some perspective buyers.

Nothing much else is new. Ally will turn 5 next Friday. I can't believe my baby is going to be 5!!! It's just crazy how fast time has flown by ! She is loving preschool and doing so well! She's starting to recognize small words in books and starting to figure out how to write small words. Tonight, she drew a picture of Frosty The Snowman and wrote "FRSTY"all by herself. She forgot the "O", but I couldn't believe she did that by herself. She's so smart! :)

Tommy is doing really well, too. He's very easy to please. He loves spending 1 on 1 time w/ me while Ally is in school, but on the other hand, he misses her terribly. He asks me all the time when we are going to get ally. He's my little helper. Always willing to take care of little chores for me. He's doing better with talking. He has had some speech issues, but he's getting better. We may consider seeing a speech therapist if he hasn't improved more by his birthday in December. He's communicating, which is good, but he's subsituting certain letters for others. To some extent that's normal, but there are certain letters that they consider red flags at age 3 and Tommy switches all those letters. I'm sure in time he will learn, but if he's still making those substitutions at 3, I would rather get him checked out. He's a very smart little boy. Very mechanical like his daddy. He loves to see how things come apart and go back together.

Matt's been busy at work. He really likes it there. In November, he will have been in this "new" position for 1 year, although, he trained for the first 6 months of it so he's really only been on his own for about 5 months. He's the "go to" guy, so he's enjoying the step up.

I am still taking orders for a home shopping channel. It's been great. I can work for an hour here and there, which is perfect. I usually work when the kids are sleeping, so it is just enough to have a little extra money for "fun" stuff.
I have also opened up my own Amazon.com Marketplace. The merchant name is Christmastoyshop if you ever get a chance to check it out. It's been good. I spend a lot of time and energy shopping for good prices/sales/coupons, etc and put my items on there. Our basement looks like a toy warehouse (lol) but it is organized and stacked nicely. Matt has a UPS account at work, so we can ship things at an incredible discount, which helps. It's been pretty good for us so far. I was originally thinking of only doing this during the holidays, but I'm considering doing this full time even after the holidays.

Other than that, nothing is new. Just keeping up w/ the kids and trying to keep the house clean for showings. We'll keep you all updated!