Kevin is in training with the SSA office in St. Paul. Elena is writing/reading like crazy. Lucy is enjoying the world of make believe and writing her own songs. Isaac is standing up and bear crawling, has 4 teeth, and can now drink through a straw! Emily is keeping busy with kids, LLL, Girl Scouts, and her job at Children's.
As promised, the whole family went to FS on Monday, this time to take mom in kicking and screaming to have her hair cut. Sorry about the black on black pics, makes it hard to see the 10 inches I donated to Locks for Love. Elena's new do is much sassier than mine, maybe I will have the guts to go that short at the next haircut! 
Is it really a bad sign if you stray from the master plan on the initial day of implementation? Just because I made a meal plan for the remainder of the week doesn't mean that I need to follow it, does it? The plan called for meatloaf tonight. That would have required a stop at the grocery store, didn't quite make it there today. So I decided to do french toast for dinner instead. Uh oh! Now we are in trouble, french toast was on the schedule for breakfast tomorrow...guess we are going to have to have meatloaf instead. 
I don't know why I bother to cook anyway. The little one scoffs at everything I put in front of her today. I was still trying to finish the french toast and she already wanted out of her chair. French toast was thrown in all directions, every direction except the goal...that cute little mouth. I needed a few more minutes without a baby in arms, so I did the unthinkable, I pulled out the cheerio box...again. If you are what you eat, then Lucy is definetly a cheerio. Not such a bad thing I guess. Cute, round, mostly likable, healthy. But really, can you be turned in to child protection for feeding nothing but cheerios? If I am what I eat, then tonight it was cold french toast and Elena's left over milk (guess I should have just eaten while I cooked, like I generally do at breakfast-time, but this was the dinner hour, and I have this thing about having dinner as a family.)
So I decided to print out a new meal plan. I ran it past the vice president and she thought it looked great, as long as I added a peanut butter and Jelly sandwich from time to time. So here it is: breakfast: Cheerios, Lunch: PB & J, Snack: Cheerios, Dinner: Honey Nut Cheerios. In reality, I'm going to start that new meal plan...tomorrow...but not until after breakfast, because we just had french toast for dinner - guess we will just have to substitute...Cheerios
I'm all out of Cheerios!
December 2006
January 2007
Elena got her first real haircut yesterday! After many lengthy discussions with mom, we came to an agreement that a haircut would be an okay deal. When it came down to the day, only moments before, Mom had to pry Elena off the car seat and carry her through the parking lot with tears. Moments later, upon entering "Kids Hair" the tears ended, although the look on her face was one of complete distaste. We had browsed the "Locks of Love" website that morning, talking about the kids who would benefit from Elena's wonderful donation of her first strands of hair. 20 minutes, $20, and 10 inches later we had a new girl, complete with smiles and all!
Good Job Elena! You will make some little child very happy!
Auntie Megan and Uncle Matt came to visit for the past week. The neices thouroughly enjoyed all the spoiling that occured during this said visit. Especially at Toys R Us this evening. The girls got to pick out and pay for their Christmas gift. Guess what they wanted...everything. We'll miss you guys :(
Kevin made us our dream castle.
Here's the castle we stayed in for the retreat. 
6 Families were there, including Gma Audrey and Paul and Deb. Lots of arms to help with the little ones.
Kevin says "It was fun, we ate...lots...of cookies." Elena wants to know when we are going back. Lucy says "Dadadadadadadada...Kitty!"
Cookies, cookies, and more cookies. Who doesn't love cookies?
Evidence that strict hand hygiene wasn't neccessarily followed during the entire cookie making process. Ooops!
Yay we got snow! Enough to make a little snowman and some snow sculptures. 
Lucy showing off her new skills!
