11 months!!!

Man do these days go by so quickly.  I will admit, there are some days that I wish would move along a little quicker, but the weeks seem to fly by most of the time.  Like this past week, the twins turned 11 months!  I cannot believe it.  It is crazy to think back to this time last year.  Andrew was in the middle of all his time out in California for his trial and I was plugging along with the kids back home and feeling miserable.  And I was trying to convince myself that it was going to be okay if I had to wait until January to have the twins.  Little did I know that I would be heading to the hospital in labor in just a few weeks, getting it stopped, only to head back a few days later complete and ready to have them.  What an adventure it has been!

A little after I finished up our blog last weekend, Andrew got a call that his dad was having some pain and had decided to head into the hospital.  He ended up having a pretty large kidney stone.  Because a few different reasons, including the upcoming holiday, they aren't going to try to break it up until next week.  So he is managing the pain with medicine right now.

As I have mentioned, I enjoy having Jackson on the swim team.  I like hearing about what he is doing at practices.  He declared this last Monday's practice the hardest he has had.  It was all IMs and he said he had to do some 200 IMs too.  I'm glad they work him hard :-).  Tuesday was the twins' 11 month birthday and to celebrate, they got their first hair cuts.  They had some nice mullets going on.  Bennett did pretty well, but Miles did not like it.  I was hoping I could get a couple hair cuts out of them before they started getting upset, but not so.  He is following in the challenging tradition of his older brothers.  I didn't get a chance for a before shot, but this was an after one.  Kim just cut the back of their hair, so you can't really tell anything here, but you can see Miles was not happy.

Tuesday night, Andrew and I had a K-Life board meeting, so my parents kindly watched the kids.  My mom had set up what she calls "Santa's Workshop" in her basement, so they came over to our house to watch them.  We paid them by making dinner for them :-) 

Since I was able to finish up the stuff for Ellie's party, I have started working on the twins' party, A Winter ONEderland.  I had an idea of what I wanted to do, so I spent some time in our storage area with our party supplies putting stuff together to see what could work for decorations.  From there I made designed their invitation, which was fun to do.  I had a few craft things I wanted to pick up for their party, so I ran to Wal-mart after small group Wednesday night and got home a little before 10 only to finally realize that I didn't even get stuff to start making the food for Ellie's party. But I did pick up this awesome shirt for Ellie for Christmas.  I think it is perfect for her with all of her "ninja" brothers :-).  They have some fun shirts for under $5 which is great.

I wanted to make stuff for Ellie's party and freeze it over the weekend, so I had to head back to the store the next day.  Earlier in the day, Lincoln and I worked on cleaning out the dryer vent.  It seemed our clothes were taking a little longer to dry and our vent travels a ways from the dryer to reach the outside.  So I thought it would be a good idea to try to clean it out.  I ordered a cleaning kit online and it took some time, but we got some of it cleaned out.  It wasn't long enough to do the whole thing, but we had a decent amount of lint in the shop-vac when we were done.  Then it was time to pick up Jackson and Ellie.  After picking up the kids from school and dropping Jackson off at swim practice, we hit up Aldi and Wal-Mart and were able to get it done in time to pick him up from practice and drop he and Ellie off at K-Life.  Andrew also let me know during the afternoon, that his family would be coming in for dinner so they could discuss some things.  Since it was last-minute, we all just ordered some Colton's.  So I rushed home after dropping off Ellie and Jackson, got the groceries put away, and made a quick dessert for dinner, and they all showed up a few minutes later.  I had been planning on making some new rice krispie treats just to see if they were any good.  Since we had people over to share them with, I decided to try to get them done real quick before they all showed up.  They were peppermint bark rice krispie treats and they were delicious.  The kids and I loved them.  Andrew was just a so-so fan.  You just replace the regular marshmallows with the peppermint ones they have out now and then drizzle some white and milk/semi-sweet chocolate on them along with some crushed peppermint.  I plan on making some more of these throughout the holidays.  Andrew, on the other hand, has been making deer jerky.  It is not my thing, but Jackson and Ellie love it.  He is nice enough to dehydrate it out in the garage because the smell is overwhelming. 

Friday morning, Lincoln, the twins, and I ran some errands to some places like the bank, the church, etc.  As we were driving around, Lincoln asked me why I was Mommy.  I told him the short answer that I was a mommy because I had kids.  And he then said, "I'm not your kid Mommy.  I'm your cowboy." :-)  I love that kid.  He is always excited to learn that it isn't his day to go to school and he gets to stay home with me.  But I also love that he will run into the house after school and yell, "It was a fun day at school, Mom!"  He enjoys both of his worlds.  And Jackson and Ellie seem to be enjoying school too and are doing well.  Ellie has been making some new friends.  After Christmas, I will need to make more of an effort to try to have some over to play.  One little girl just lives in the neighborhood next to us, so I just need to meet her mom so we can set up something.  Ellie would love it. 

We thankfully didn't have anything going on Friday night.  We just hung around the house and I made a roast for dinner.  I had to call Sara to tell her about my cooking experience because Sara is known to improvise on things when she is cooking :-).  I realized in the afternoon that I was a little late getting the roast in and was rushing to get it all together.  I noticed that I only had one can of beef broth when I usually use close to three.  So I pulled out whatever I could find.  I had some white cooking wine and knew that it was interchangeable with chicken broth in recipes, so I threw the rest of the bottle in there.  And then I took the rest of my Cherry Coke Zero (my caffeine source) from earlier in the day and put it in too.  I figured that people use coke in some meat recipes and it was just my family so it was okay that it came from a can I had already drank out of :-).  And it all actually turned out well. 

Saturday morning brought another day of deer hunting.  Andrew and Jackson left around 5:30.  Lincoln showed up in my room around 6:30 and then declared he needed to pee.  A little bit later he came back to let me know that he peed in his pants.  Very rare these days.  And he left a little trail with his pee-soaked socks.  So I got up and cleaned up the mess and him, got ready for the day, and got the babies up.  I was trying to multi-task while I was getting the babies ready and left Miles with just a diaper on for just a little bit while I ironed a couple shirts.  It was about a minute and Ellie came in to tell me Miles took his diaper off.  He was crawling around in our room, so I figured I better get it back on him.  I picked him and was taking out to get the diaper when I noticed the big pee spot of the floor-too late.  The rest of our day stayed very full.  Ellie and Lincoln were busy with all sorts of play.  They made several forts in the family room with all the chairs, ottomans, pillows, and blankets.  They also played with Ellie's dollhouse and her fake American Girl (:-)) dolls.  She changed up their outfits a few times. 

My day was full of cooking.  I made and froze 50 pancakes and cooked 5 pounds of bacon.  The bacon I could just put in the refrigerator until Ellie's party this Saturday.  I had to do it all in several steps, so it took most of the day.  In between all of it, I was able to finish putting up the Christmas decorations outside.  I had some garland, bows, trees, and our nativity.  Ellie and Lincoln played outside while I was doing it because the weather was nice.  Our nativity are wooden silhouettes that used to be my parents.  When I was setting up baby Jesus, Lincoln said, "Oh, it's a bunny."  Ellie informed him he was wrong and that it was baby Jesus.  He then proceeded to say with excitement, "Oh.  Yay Jesus.  I love you Jesus." 

Andrew and Jackson got home later that evening without any success.  Andrew was pretty proud of Jackson though for "hunting hard".  It was early mornings and long days with lots of walking and patiently sitting.  I think Andrew is pretty happy that Jackson enjoys all of it.  And Lincoln didn't want to be left out either.  So Andrew took him Sunday morning.  Lincoln was so excited to join his dad.  They left a little after five and besides his sleepy eyes, he was ready to go.

Don't all deer hunters where a monkey hat?


Andrew then sent me a picture around 6:45 of the deer hunter alseep.  And then another one when he woke up and was ready to go.

Andrew ended up shooting a couple does and they were back in time for church.  Lincoln was very happy he got to go though.  He will definitely want to be in on the action next year. But he did take a good nap after we got home from church.  While he was napping, Jackson and Ellie worked on their Christmas Money Chore List.  My mom used to do this with all of us when we were younger.  It was a way for us to earn money to buy others Christmas present.  I had the kids draw names to get a gift for one of their siblings and this was a way for them to earn money to get that present.  We actually started first thing in the morning with them getting all of their bedding off the beds so I could wash all of the sheets.  Then they were supposed to clean and organize their bedrooms.  The better they did, the more money they earned.  They did pretty well on their rooms, but their enthusiam was waning as they day went on and they had to go back and improve their work on some of their other jobs.  But they got quite a bit done.  We have just a few jobs left.

After they were done with their chores, they played outside for a bit and then wrote their letters to Santa.

My day was full of laundry.  I washed everyone's sheets plus a few comforters.  It was ten loads of laundry in all and I put the last load in the dryer around 9:30 last night and got Jackson's sheets on his bed at about the same time.  I had Ellie's sheets setting over the gate so I could take them upstairs and they left the gate open.  Miles and Bennett saw their opportunity and headed up the stairs.  They made it up a little ways before I saw them.

I let them make it all the way up and then shut them Ellie's room while I put the sheets on her bed.  They haven't really spent anytime upstairs, so Ellie was soooo excited to have them in her room.  I mean overly excited.  After I finished making her bed and she calmed down, we waited for Andrew to get home from the office and then we headed over to my parents house so Andrew could help my dad bring in a new table they had made.  It was made from rafters from the old St. Joseph school in Edina that my mom attended.  The school was torn down and they were able to get some of the wood.  They had their contractor, Paul, make it into a table for them and my dad finished it off with 1000 coats of varnish :-).  It went into their front room which they have been remodeling and it will be a great table for the kiddos to color, craft, and eat at.  It was very heavy though and I'm just glad Andrew and my dad survived getting it from the garage into the house.  I stepped in for a bit when I thought it was going down, but I don't know if I helped much.  After that, we met Andrew's family and some of their family friends at Colton's for dinner.  The friends come into town to hunt and they usually take the family out as a thank you.  Andrew and I haven't taken our whole family out to eat hardly at all lately, but the twins did really well.  It was pretty nice. 

Miles and Bennet are starting to interact a little more.  If one of them bangs their hand on the ground or their high chair, the other one will smile at them and do it too.  Again, it is just fun to watch them.  Here are a couple more pictures of them and you can see their cute hair cuts from the back.  I wish I had a before picture though.  I think they had around 2 inches cut off.