Christmas 2013

We had a wonderful Christmas yesterday. My sister Samarah stayed the night. I even stayed in bed until 7am before waking everyone up! Christmas with little kids is so amazing, I get more excited now then I think I did when I was a kid. Amari takes the first prize for best reactions, she just squeals in delight over every little thing.

 

Amari's favorite present was her bike.

Zeke's favorite present was his leappad from Papa and Grandma.

Katurah's favorite present was Super Grover 2.0.

Pantera's favorite present was her sewing machine.

Seneca's favorite present was being held all day...I guess she thinks everyday is Christmas:)

 

Katurah wanted to match me after the shower:

 

 Our primary did a live Nativity for our ward Christmas party, Zeke was an amazing Shepard. Pantera was the narrator and she did so awesome. I built our set from the 2x6's Jess has been bringing me. It was really nice, but I forgot to take pictures...oops, so you have to take my word for it.

 they had a blast playing in the stable before we took it to the church. Princess Amari and her servant Pantera.

 We made gingerbread houses and everyone enjoyed themselves except Pantera. She was frusterated that hers kept falling down, my words of wisdom were "more frosting!" but even that didn't seem to help.

 Zeke was mad the next morning when he found out I threw his away. He licked all of the icing and candy off of it, yet expected me to keep his soggy frame I guess.

 Papa came to help and Katurah showed him the real way to build.

 Seneca is getting so strong, she loves to do the "pick me up" arch. She also loves her reflection ALOT, she knows cute when she sees it.

 Honestly Pantera has used my Christmas present way more than any of her own. I got a swing/trapeze for inside and she is on it constantly. She is becoming quite the trapeze artist and says "I feel like and Avenger when I do this!"

 Seneca actually sleeping outside of my arms, picture worthy!

Merry Christmas!!!

MVI 0056

jingle bells

Voice

I made the mistake of letting Katurah take a nap before our photo shoot, most of the pics look like the one above. She is doing pretty good in speech therapy and has picked up some new phrases "What you dooning?" is my current favorite. She was singing some gibberish to the tune of jingle bells the other day, super cute. Watching her and Amari in singing time for Nursery is priceless. They are the only kids that jump up out of their seats for the Sunbeam song, I guess the other parents don't encourage craziness like we do.

 Speaking of super cute and talking, Miss Seneca is quite the little chatterbox these days! She has discovered her voice and seems to really love the way it sounds, just like Pantera;)

 I have pics of the other cuties that I haven't quite finished editing, so I will get those up soon.

Last week as I was getting the kids ready for preschool Zeke looks at me with a goofy grin and said "I hope my girlfriend is at preschool today." What?!? So naturally I pry "Zeke I didn't know you have a girlfriend, what's her name?" his reply "I don't know, she is in high school and she helps me." We pull up to preschool and there are three girls waiting to walk them inside, I notice Zeke has that goofy grin again and I ask if one of these girls is his girlfriend. He points to the super cute blond girl and just keeps smiling as he takes her hand to go to class. I found out her name is Mackenzie and he didn't ask her to be his girlfriend "she just is."

Amari never likes to be outdone, so she informed me she has a boyfriend who is also in high school. "His name is Diamond and he wears a shirt with diamonds on it. He has an eye in his hair, not right here (pointing to her head) right here (points to her eye). I'm going to marry him and smooch him!"

As Pantera got on the bus this morning Zeke said "She will always be in my heart, and in my brain." 

Pantera is chugging along in 3rd grade. She loves that her teacher "likes when we act mature" because she is crazy mature. She is Christmas caroling tonight with girls from church, singing to random people unannounced...ummm yesssss!!!! I don't think they could have thought up a better activity for her. Luckily her whole "crush" phase has died down, currently the only guy she is interested in is Captain America "I would marry him Mom!" 

Cutie

 Finally got around to two month pics. There will be more posted soon. How cute is this girl???

Crazies

This week Seneca met her future husband. My friend Chanie and I were trying to get pregnant at the same time, and when we found out the gender of the babies we naturally went to work on an arranged marriage. Unfortunately they moved to Illinois right before he was born.

I think the long distance thing is taking a toll on their relationship...

 I was making lunch the other day and I told Amari we were having grilled cheese sandwiches, she excitedly said "I love grilled cheese, I want extra grill!" Then when it was served she sticks her fingers in the cheese and said "Ahhh, that's some good grill." When Zeke was complaining about his food Amari told him "You get what you get, and you don't get maggots." Pinkalicious quoted just a little wrong. My other favorite is when she says lasagna it is "Buzzagna" love it. 

She loves to play pretend, but it is always hilarious to listen to her describe what she is being. "Pretend I'm a tiger, with blue stripes, and I'm feisty. And my name is feisty and when I'm sad I breath fire, and when I'm confused I breath ice, and when I'm mad I breath rainbows." Ok, will do. Or how about the fabled Poodlecorn "Pretend I'm a pink poodle, with rainbow wings, and a horn and when I'm mad I..."

 Pantera and Zeke playing run from the camera. They love this game, I do too but would love it better if they stopped playing every so often.

 Pantera got new glasses this week, super exciting. She is majorly into comic book heroes right now, so she leads the kids in these wonderful games full of villians and adventure.

 Whenever Jess leaves for work, Zeke says "Do you have to go home now Dad?" I then have to explain that dad actually lives with us, not at work. This brought on a nice conversation "Mom, where is dad's work?" "It's in _________, but sometimes he goes other places." "Oh, I thought he worked in Outofgascar." Great Zeke quotes "When I grow up I'm going to be a vampire or a butterfly catcher."  "I'm a vampire, an awesome vampire." "Everybody don't dance now, do do do do do do do do."  The last one was meant as an insult to me when he was throwing a fit...classic.

Katurah insists on wearing the "Abby" or Mike  costume all day everyday. I had to hide it. She thinks if she covers her eyes you can't see her, so now when she is doing something she is not supposed to she just covers her eyes and does it anyways.

Pretzel jacking

 Here are a couple cute pics of a very sweet little girl. She was 2 months yesterday. She is still just a cuddle bug who hates to ever be put down. She is also super smiley, if she is awake and being held, you can get her to smile.

 I'm excited to see how much she weighs, she sure is starting to fill out nicely.

 Amari wore this sweet croc costume all day yesterday. "Mom you be Captain hook and I'm tick tock Croc and Zeke is Mr. Sleeve."  The other day her friend "Bivian" was over to play. After she left Amari approached me with her head hung low and said "Knock knock." I replied "who's there" she said "Sadness" I said "Sadness who?" She said "Sadness because Bivian is gone!" Poor thing.

She and Zeke argued the whole way home from preschool today. I guess Amari took Zeke's snack and it made him sad. She just said "I didn't steal Zeke's snack, I stole Matalia's. What? I was hungry." Little fart.

 The kids were all playing a game together and when they were pretending to go to sleep Zeke said "It's time to get some shut up." Shut up, shut eye, same difference. There was a game he wanted to download on my kindle and he said "I want to get me some of that action." What?!? Almost as good as his explicit version of Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree, lets just say it involved a certain male body part popping on the tree instead and a certain mom and dad trying not to lose it when they told him that was inappropriate.

I had parent teacher conference for Pantera this week and I couldn't be more proud of that little girl. She has made quite an impression on every one of her teachers so far, but this year she has really tried to be more mature and has even toned down her talking in class. Way to go Tera!!!

Katurah's 2!

 Katurah turned 2 on Sunday. I made her an elmo cake, cuz she kind of loves him a lot.

 She had her favorite guy over for her party, you guessed it-Papa! She just loves my dad SOOO much and gets so excited to see him every time he comes over. I love it when the doorbell rings and she runs to it saying "Papa, Papa!" over and over again, she always hopes he's the one on the other side of that door. But why wouldn't she, he knows her so well and rocked the house with a sweet baby Elmo and she reacted with this face...

 She is also quite the Daddy's girl and loves it when he is home in the mornings especially. She crawls right into bed next to him and talks his ear off. And when Dad gets home from work he gets an earful from her as well. Speech therapy starts next week so he may even be able to understand her soon:)

Katurah, you are just precious. You have the most lively, beautiful brown eyes and the wild personality to match them. You make me smile and laugh everday. I love you so much little girl!

Pantera's 9!!!

Pantera turned 9 last week! She told me the night before her birthday "For my breakfast in bed, I would like blueberry pancakes and chocolate milk." Come again child? It made me laugh pretty hard that she just assumed I would be serving her a special breakfast in bed. The only problem is she was up WAAAAYYYY earlier then me so I had to "yell" at her to go back to bed so I could bring her breakfast.

 She is getting big so fast and teaching us a ton all along the way. The younger kids can thank her for my patience and composure during their temper tantrums, cuz nothing they can do could beat hers as a young child. They can thank her for me letting them ride the school bus in the future, I would never have been brave enough without Pantera's extra push. They can thank her for breaking us in basically.

 Pantera you are a wonderful girl and a light to all those around you, please always remember to let your light shine. Happy Birthday!!!

yoho

Cute little Seneca is almost 6 weeks old! You know what they say "time flies when you rarely sleep and change a massive number of diapers." I may have misquoted that. She wants to be held ALL the time, luckily I bought one of those fancy wrap deals so we are surviving. She was 11lbs 12oz at her month appointment...not too shabby.

 Zeke practicing his scare...

 Amari showing off her scare...

 Pantera in the "loom mood" as she likes to call it.

 Trunk or treat was this past Tuesday. Amari changed her mind about her costume like 20 times. I bought her one but she still ended up wearing something from the dress up box. Katurah was a pirate but called herself a "Yoho" she was super excited about her costume and even left her hat on the entire night. Thank goodness my dad came along to help wrangle the kids, as I am officially overwhelmed:)

Last week Zeke brought home his first scholastic book order form. This little boy was on cloud nine looking at all of the books, "This would make a perfect gift for me!" He and Amari carefully browsed through each page, when they came to a Doc McStuffins book Amari said "I wanted to die so I could read Doc McStuffins!" Zeke replied "No, I did die so I could see Disney Planes." Zeke had Spice Girls in his head the other day but got the words a little wrong "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get rid of your friends."

 

Amari has quite the attitude at times. She put on a pair of earmuffs before school the other day, when I asked her why she said "I am wearing earmuffs so I don't have to listen to my teachers." Totally logical. Good news though, they got class pets "Ginuea Wigs" I guess you can wear them too.

 

A couple of nights ago Amari came down and asked "Mom, is Nemo from Finding Nemo?" I told her yes. She pumped her little fist and said "Yes! I winned! Zeke, Nemo IS from Finding Nemo!"

 

As for Pantera, tales run tall at her school. I can't tell what's real from what she makes up these days. And she has to sit on pillows due to large BM's, her words not mine. Geez, it stinks when they can read the blog cuz oh I have stories...oh well.  

busy busy busy

Big things have been going on at our house. This picture does not really demonstrate that, it's just cute Amari and Seneca.

 Grandma Mary came to visit and meet the baby. Katurah warmed up to her really quick this time and was so happy to have an extra friend to read her stories, over and over again.

 We mostly just hung out, but Mary did put the kids to work raking the yard. Who knew this would lead to a million fights over who's leaf pile was who's.

 She was there for Amari and Zeke's first day of preschool. it was actually orientation and it was a madhouse! Grandma was a lifesaver. Here's Amari looking super adorable and excited for school...

 Here's Amari showing off her backpack or butt, she is quite proud of both so I'm not really sure...

 When I picked them up from there second official day of school, I asked Amari how her day was. She told me "Pretty crappy. I wanted to play in some rocks and they wouldn't let me. I wanted to go swimming and they wouldn't let me do that either. I was hot and I was hungry." Her attitude is getting worse by the day, she gets so irritated with everything. She told me "Dangnick mom! You're fwustewating me!"  She is all about best friends and her current one is Vivian, but she can't say her name right so it comes out Bivian...love it!

 Zeke just loves school this year! Although not having Cori was pretty sad for him at first. He asked me "Mom, do you think when Cori's done with college she will come back and be my girlfriend?" So no one really quite compares this year.

Yesterday Amari was being a terd and kept whining about Jess watching football. After a while of this Zeke looks at her and said "Zip your lips! Dad CAN watch football!" He has become the king of photobombing, he tries to be in all pictures of Seneca. Just for the record Seneca, Zeke is your biggest fan he can't walk by without kissing the top of your head, he LOVES you!

 Seneca is just sleeping and eating and growing. She's a great baby so far, so snuggly and cute.

Pantera is totally into the whole rainbow loom trend. They are bracelets fashioned out of rubber bands. She informed me that "they are like money at my school." She is missing most of hers so I guess she is broke. She always talks about how strict her teacher is, but she likes her now. for example if she sees someone being impolite she is quick to point out "You are so lucky Mrs. Thompson isn't here. She would be screaming right in your face." She sounds like a gem. Can't wait to meet this lady...better yet, can't wait to hear what she's told this lady about me!

The other day I heard the water running upstairs. I went to check and I found Katurah sitting in the sink soaking wet. She is this silent sneak. She has done really well adjusting to not being the baby anymore. Aside from stealing Seneca's pacifiers we have had no issues. She even pets Seneca's head every now and then and lovingly says "baybay."