**Merry Christmas**

Well, for those of you who don't know, we missed our flight to AZ on Monday. Boohoo! Seriously, I cried. And so did the kids. To make a long (LONG) story short, our car wouldn't start, we thought it was an easy fix, Jason worked on it for hours, and by the time we realized it wasn't the battery, it was too late to get to a rental car place and drive to the airport (3 1/2 hours away). Looking back of course there are a couple things we would have done differently, but nothing we can do about it now, right?

So, we made the most of it. All of the neighbors in the building took some part in helping us on Monday, trying to get us to the airport. One lent tools, one tried to jump-start our car, one drove Jason to get a new battery, and one offered to drive us halfway to the airport. All of that really showed us the true Christmas spirit and how generous our neighbors are. We truly love living here! Luckily we have one family in the building that didn't travel anywhere for Christmas, and they were able to take me to the grocery store on Tuesday to get food. We had eaten most of it trying to empty our fridge! A woman from my Bible study offered to pick us up, take us to Christmas Eve service, and to their house for dinner (and back home again). We had so much fun with her family. They have 2 kids, a 4-year-old boy and a 7-month-old boy. Ellie had sooo much fun with her son, their personalities are very similar so they chattered and played pretend games the entire time. Here is Ellie all dressed up for the Christmas Eve service:

Today we didn't do too much, because we actually celebrated Christmas here on Saturday, in anticipation of being in AZ on Christmas day. The kids loved all the toys, but of course they loved the cheapest ones that were afterthoughts. Ellie is attached at the hip to a new baby doll we bought her, and Rowan loves his magnetic set of balls and sticks. Pretend that we opened presents today, and here are a couple of pictures:

Our tree

Opening presents

Ellie's very own computer

Since we didn't actually have any presents to open today (and I even packed away the tree and lights on Monday morning), it was pretty much just a normal day for us. The only special things we did were make a cake (gingerbread) to celebrate Jesus's birth and read the Christmas story. Here are my little helpers:

Ellie the elf

Rowan will NOT be left out of anything!

"I gotcha buddy"

All the bakers (and my new haircut)

The finished product

So, our car will not be seen until Monday, as everywhere is closed until then. A whole week without a car! Yesterday and today there was no bus service, so we were stuck at home, but tomorrow we plan on taking the bus downtown to the library so the kids can GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! Unfortunately it's been too cold to play outside (below zero a lot of times), but I think the weather is looking up. Tomorrow it's above freezing!

Oh, and a side note, my sister Nichole is now engaged to her long-time boyfriend Warren. Yippee!

Ellie sledding with Daddy

From Ellie's perspective

From the bottom

A whole lot of snow!

This is what the kids have been doing lately. Jason has taken Ellie sledding a couple of times, and she gets to sled at school too. Rowan enjoys it for a little bit, but he gets cold and cranky after a while. Maybe next year the kids will be perfect ages for family fun in the snow!

Today all the schools are closed, including Ellie's :( I had to unbury our car this morning (at 6am) to get to work. Lots and lots of snow expected today!

"I didn't get to crunch"

Ellie had a bad dream last night, and she wants to tell you about it.

Ellie: A dinasaur was trying to eat me. The dinasaur was saying "I am hungry" and I said "No, no, don't eat a nice kid like me." I closed his mouth and it broke into pieces. Then it said, "I didn't get to crunch."

And then a fox came. It was trying to eat me. I was running away

And there was a powerful teacup with hot tea on my clothes thing. I didn't touch it. It went away because it was just pretend.

We can't wait for Christmas!

After much debating and waiting, we finally have airline tickets to travel to AZ for Christmas! We were hoping they would go on sale for an affordable price for us, and they finally did (of course now they are even cheaper, but I try to not think about that). If prices stay this way, maybe some people could finally come visit us :)

We will be looking forward to the weather in AZ, as the ground is already covered in 5-6 inches of snow here. This year is better than last, even if there is just as much snow, because the kids are older and able to play in it a little. Rowan is still a little young, but at least he can move around and I don't have to worry about him freezing to death. Jason took Ellie sledding the other day, and she LOVED it. When I went to pick her up from preschool yesterday her class was sledding too. Two other things we've enjoyed with the snow were spray-painting the snow (with spray bottles filled with water and food coloring) and making maple ice cream by mixing clean snow with maple syrup. Although I heard tonight that even clean snow really isn't that clean. I guess we won't do that too often. Okay, I just googled eating snow and I don't think I'll let Ellie do it any more. Gross!

We have all of our Christmas shopping done for the kids, and I can't wait to see them open their presents! Ellie is getting: a learning laptop, the Barbie Nutcracker dvd (and a trip to see the Nutcracker ballet live), and a Christmas mug. Rowan is getting: a rescue-themed train set from Target, Thomas the train Ultimate Christmas movie w/Thomas train, and Hot Wheels cars. Plus stockings of course. Somehow Ellie knows that stockings are filled with candy, so she's most excited about those. Because of several deals I've done through Target, all of the gifts total about $95 usually, but we've only paid about $32. Christmas shopping CAN be done on a budget!!

Woohoo, a new blog post! I now have my very own computer, so Jason and I don't have to take turns using one laptop. Yes, I woke up at 3:45am on Black Friday. Yes, I stood in line in 20 degree weather for 2 hours to buy this laptop. Yes, my feet almost fell off from the cold and they hurt so bad that I sat on the ground, took off my shoes, and sat indian style with my feet in the backs of my knees. Hey, Famous Footwear had a Black Friday sale too, so I went there to get some warm boots afterwards. The bright side is that we were in Iowa visiting family and not in Madison, so it could have been even colder. We had a great time with family, eating yummy food and playing games.

Here is Ellie with my Great Grandma Knapp (Ellie and Rowan's great, great Grandma!!!)

And Ellie's new favorite thing to do, drawing and writing.

Picture of Mommy (big yellow circle with lots of orange hair) and Rowan (smaller person at the bottom of the page)

Picture of Daddy (with looooong legs and no arms) and Ellie (with orange hair).

Yikes, this is the one and only picture I have of Rowan recently. I'll have to remedy that!

November already?!?

Another holiday down, and now only one separates us from Christmas. Ellie has the schedule down, and recites the order of the holidays often. Oddly, she is most excited about Valentines Day :)

This year's Halloween was much better than last years, for three reasons. 1, the kids are older. 2, the weather was wonderful. 3, we know the neighborhood more. Ellie was a witch, and Rowan was a lion (redone from Bryson's monkey costume last year!). I made the tutu for Ellie's witch costume, cut off ears and banana and glued on fur for Rowan's costume. The rest was bought! And since the weather was so wonderful, the kids were able to show off their costumes with no jackets.

A spooky picture with a weird setting on my camera:

Roarrr!

Ooh, a spooky witch!

I didn't realize they were in the same pose!

Fall photo shoot

I just realized that if you click on the pictures, you can see them HUGE! That's fun :)

Ellie had a blast on her field trip to the pumpkin patch, even though dropping her off was a little shaky. None of us have ever had any reservations to dropping off Ellie at school on a normal day. Ellie happily runs into her class, and I happily let her :) But on the morning of the field trip, it was a little trickier. For one thing, all of the students were there, not just Ellie's class. It was crazy just with the sheer amount of people in one space. But the kicker was that they were separating the kids into rooms based on if their parents were coming on the trip with them or not. So, one room was filled with kids running around playing and their parents chatting with each other, and the other room had 4-5 kids standing solemnly in the middle of the room. Guess which room Ellie was going in :( Siblings were not allowed to come, and Jason had class, so I couldn't go either. After being shepherded into the somber room, Ellie didn't want me to go. But both of us felt a lot better once one of the teachers told us that Ellie would be paired up with one of her fellow classmates and his mom. This particular mom has helped out in class a couple of times, so Ellie actually knows and enjoys her. So, Ellie was fine with me leaving and I left with just a couple tears in my eyes. She just seemed so grown-up going on a bus-driven school trip at the age of 3!

Rowan of course is not in school, but he is still learning every day :) Here is his new favorite trick:

Stay away winter!!!

The last few days here have been unseasonably warm, so we've been enjoying the nice weather! The trees have changed color and most of the leaves are still up, so it is really beautiful here right now. Jason is well into school and is very busy between his teaching assistant position and the full-time course load he has this semester. Imagine grading 30+ papers while trying to write your own! Here is the typical view we have of him with the computer (ooh, behind him is an owl that Ellie made out of paper plates and decorations):

The kids are both really happy playing and learning together. Ellie can make Rowan laugh like no one else, and she enjoys "taking care" of him. It's so nice that they can play together now! Although, they are beginning to plot trouble together too. Rowan usually is the one to figure out how to get into something, and then Ellie helps him. Here they are putting colored pencils into each hole of a notebook:

I don't know if I have mentioned this before on our blog, but Ellie started going to a nearby preschool 2 afternoons a week. It really stretched our budget, but we thought it was worth it for her to have friends to play with, especially over the winter. Luckily we have found out that we will be receiving some funding available for student families that will make it very affordable for this semester. We have to pay each month, but then we'll receive a lot of it back at the end of the semester. Ellie LOVES going to school, and they do such fun things there. Tomorrow morning they are going on her first field trip, to a pumpkin patch. It's nice for me to have a short break from her (about 4 hours a week) and it wears her out too! Here she is taking a rare nap on the couch:

I'm allowed to brag about my kids here, right??

This is the one and only place that I feel comfortable completely bragging about my kids, since it's my own blog. So, here I go... :)

Last night I took the kids out to dinner after church (Jason was beyond busy grading papers, so he didn't go). We went to Old Chicago and shared a 3 course special; I highly recommend it! Anywho, more than halfway through dinner an older couple finished and was leaving the restaurant when the lady stopped and told me, "Your children are so well-behaved and just a delight to eat next to. You did a great job!" I just told her thank you, and basked in the delight of the complement :) I distinctly remember this exact thing happening to my family at Denny's one night while I was growing up, and I'm pretty sure it happened more than once. As I thought about this last night, I realized that someone has told us how well-behaved our kids are after every single flight I've ever taken with them. I guess Jason and I lucked out with kids who are easily entertained! Oh, and let me make the disclaimer that everyone who knows them more than superficially knows that they are definitely not perfectly behaved children. Far from it! Just ask our family or our neighbors (hi Sarah if you are reading this!).

Here are my well-behaved children standing on their activity table :)

Don't they have the same smile?

Ellie's thoughts on marriage...

This video is long, but watch it if you want to see a little bit into Ellie's head, how she thinks.

What does Rowan want?!?

Quick update

Ellie has her cast off, yippee! She was very excited about going to the children's hospital (where her orthopedic surgeon is) to get it off. The clinic was very busy and we were there for 2 hours, but she finally got it off, and the pin removed. She cried while the cast was removed, as it was loud and scary, but it didn't hurt her. However, she SCREAMED when the doctor removed the pin, because it hurt her. They don't give any pain relief, just a 1, 2, 3, pull! It bled a couple drops, but he wrapped it up basically to keep her from looking at it. It was kind of freaky to look at her finger with the pin in it; it was about 45 minutes between taking off the cast and taking out the pin. And afterwards, well, Jason couldn't look at the hole in her finger for too long without feeling sick :) Here is a picture of it for those who like that kind of stuff...

She can bend it fairly well and is starting to write with her left hand again. We thought that maybe she would switch to being right-handed, but nope. There you go, Aunt Nichole, she's a lefty!

The kids are sick (barfy, crying sick), so I can't write a long post. Maybe sometime this weekend :)

My latest hobby

Buying as much stuff as I can with as little money as possible. Otherwise known as couponing :)

As of now, Walgreens is my favorite store. Does everyone know that they give away products free after rebate (known as FAR in the couponing world) every month? In that alone, I have enough make-up and shampoo to last me for a long while. Even with just these products, if you add in coupons, you can actually make money off of this. How great is that? A store is PAYING me to take their products! Above and beyond FAR items, many items go on sale for equal or less than coupon value. For example, take a look at this picture of stuff I just bought last night:


Exedrin PM, 6 (yummy) candy bars, a bouncy ball, and 2 decorative flowers (for Ellie's room). I "purchased" all of this for a measely $.92. Almost all of that was tax. The excedrin and candy bars were free with coupons, buying the excedrin gave me a coupon for $1 off your next order, and I used that to buy the decorative flowers (which were on clearance for $.50 each). The bouncy ball was also on clearance for $.25, and I threw that into the first purchase so my total wouldn't be negative, because Walgreens doesn't allow negative balances before tax (this is called a "filler item" in the coupon world). Catch all that? Isn't it fun? I'm not even going to share the bundles of stuff I "bought" from Walgreens last weekend when they had a $10 off your purchase of $40 coupon.

Here is last night's grocery run. I had gone "real" grocery shopping earlier in the day and saved over 50% on my bill, but this was a late-night run with some coupons that I didn't bring earlier. My grocery store doubles coupons with up to $1 value (so $2 doubled) on Wednesdays (with some rules and stipulations). This is what I bought last night:


6 boxes of Cleanteam flushable wipes
10 refills of Cleanteam flushable wipes
3 loaves of Sara Lee 100% whole wheat bread
1 gallon of Deans skim milk
3 Reach dental floss
1 Aquafresh toothbrush
1 Pillsbury crescent rolls

My total before coupons? Over $60. After coupons, $6.78. Amazing, right? Do you see why I am so into couponing? (Did I just make a noun into a verb?) Usually I'm not able to acquire mass amounts of something, like the wipes, but someone gave me a bunch of coupons for them.

I have a lot of help from various websites where people gather to share deals. If anyone is interested in me helping them get started, let me know! I won't bore everyone with my methods. As long as no one lives near me and takes all my deals, I will be happy to share ;) It's just a great way for me to productively use my free time after the kids go to bed, and save our family some needed money!

Summer is over :(

It's official. By the end of today, our summer will be over. It seems the weather agrees with this, because today and tomorrow the highs will be near 90, and then 71 and 66 for Wednesday and Thursday. Please hold off on the snow for as long as possible!

For our summer's last hurrah, we drove up to Pennsylvania. In hindsight, I think we were more than a little crazy. The trip was a blast, and we had so much fun seeing family, but 16+ hours in the car with 2 kids? Not something I would recommend! On the way there, we drove through the night. It was okay. Ellie was able to sleep pretty well, but Rowan kept crying and falling back asleep. At first it was every hour, then every half hour, and eventually down to every 5 minutes. At that point, I pulled over and brought him up to the front seat to nurse him, hoping that would keep him asleep for a while. Well, as I put him in my lap, he threw up all over me! Then again. And again. But after that, he went back to sleep and stayed asleep for a couple hours!

We drove to my sister Nichole's new apartment where she lives with her boyfriend Warren. They were so gracious to let us stay there with them. Not only us, but also my other sister Tara and her husband and 2 children. So, there were 6 adults, 4 kids (3, 2, 1, and 8 months old) and 2 cats living in their 2 bed, 1 bath apartment for 3 days. Sound like fun? Actually it went pretty well. :) We also had a big surprise. My mom and Mike flew up to visit too (they stayed at a hotel)! Here is a picture of all the family:

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of other pictures, because everyone else took them for us :) Jason and I were even able to drive up to New York City for a day/night, while my wonderful, kind, amazing sister Nichole watched our kids for about 26 hours. Did I mention she is wonderful? (Rowan woke up at 3:30am and would not go to sleep. So, no sleep for Nichole!) But Jason and I had lots of fun with his sister and her fiance'.

The drive home, we decided to drive during the day, since we all had to be somewhere at 9am the next morning. So, we left at 9:30am and returned to Madison at 2:00am. The trip wasn't really too bad. We just stopped for 1 1/2 hours each for lunch and dinner. And, we turned Rowan around to face forward, because I thought maybe he was car sick on the way there from facing backwards. He didn't throw up, so maybe it helped? (I switched the seat around again once we were home again. He'll be rear-facing until he outgrows it.)

So, we didn't get many pictures from our trip, but here are a couple that I haven't shared yet because of my blog-slacking.

Ellie's last ballet class:

Ellie can still draw/write with her cast on! (She had to get her cast extended while we were in Pennsylvania, because her original one was falling off. So, the tip of her finger is broken, yet she has a cast up to her shoulder!!!) If you look closely, you can see the word of the day. Ellie picked it!

Sorry, no pictures of Rowan this time.

Ellie's finger saga :(

Last Friday night, Rowan and I were in my bedroom and Rowan went over to close the door. He pushed it closed, but neither of us realized that Ellie's finger was in the hinge side of the door (she was in the hallway just outside the room) until she started screaming. I whipped open the door, and she held her hand out to me, still screaming. To make a long story short, we took her in to urgent care Saturday morning because she wouldn't move her finger or use that hand, and it was bruised and swollen.



The doctor there doubted that it was broken, since it was a one-year-old that closed the door, and obviously one-year-olds can't cause that much trouble. I don't think he has kids :) He sent us to x-ray just to check, and after looking at the x-rays, it was definitely broken. He put Ellie's finger in a splint, and told us to make an appt. with an orthopedic doctor on Monday.



So, after another LONG story, we finally saw a pediatric orthopedic surgeon on Monday, who said that Ellie needed surgery on her finger. Surgery! For getting her finger shut in the door! It wasn't lined up to heal right, so they needed to get it fixed before it started to heal. So, on Wednesday morning we went into the hospital for outpatient surgery. Ellie was in fine spirits, and actually enjoyed being there, since she was able to watch t.v. to her heart's content :) I went in with her as they put her under anesthesia, and she did wonderful, so they escorted me out. About 45 minutes later, everything was finished. They ended up being able to push it back into place, but it wouldn't stay that way, so they inserted a pin into the bone that they'll take out in about 4 weeks. They brought us back to recovery to be there as she woke up. That was horrible! She was just flailing around and inconsolable for a good half hour. And for the next hour, until she was ready to go home, she was just miserable and would scream at anything the nurses tried to do :( But, no worries, as soon as we left her room to go home, she was her normal, happy self. When we arrived home, instead of crashing in her bed as I was sure she would do, she ran around showing all her neighbors her new hot pink cast.


So, for now, the ordeal is over. We begin driving to Pennsylvania tonight to see all our sisters. And in two weeks we'll take her in to have another x-ray done, to make sure it is healing properly. I believe her cast can come off in 4 weeks, but maybe a little longer. Wish us luck trying to explain to her why she cannot go swimming until then!!!

We are not afraid to put our kids to work!

Check out this video: Putting the kids to work