Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells!

Happy Holidays everyone. Isn't it amazing that Christmas is NEXT week? Our tree still smells good and the ornaments on it are slowing moving upward.

On Thursday Lee went into a clinic here on base as a walk-in because he wasn't feeling good. The Nurse Practitioner said he had strep, and wrote a note dismissing him from work on Friday. What is funny and weird: the NP didn't even swab his throat. Lee is still sick and hopefully he will start getting better instead of worse. His gums and tonsils and throat are sore. Haley was not feeling well either and I took her in on Friday. I of course didn't want to take her to the emergency room so I just went to the clinic.

When I walked in it was really busy. I talked to the lady at the desk anyway saying I didn't have an appointment, but my husband has strep and I thought my daughter might have it too. She went and talked to someone and about two minutes later a nurse called me back to her office! She checked Haley over and called a doctor from another clinic to come over and look at Haley. They swabbed her throat and mine too for strep. Turns out that Haley has stromatitis, and we are 99.9% sure Lee has it too. They have the same thing, though thankfully Haley's isn't that bad. I am sure glad it's viral! It was great that they saw me right away, well, Haley.

Here are some pictures from the past week. Enjoy! There are a lot of them, but I always overdo it on the pictures, so why cut back now?!

Our neighbor gave us some cupcakes on Friday. They kids loved them. (I did too!) I don't know why a picture of Haley wasn't taken...maybe she wasn't messy enough.








Saturday after we put the girls down for a nap, I cut the boys hair. They've needed a haircut for awhile. After haircuts Lee and the boys went to the library where Santa was present. There was a train display, crafts, coloring, snacks and of course a visit with Santa.


Cal loved the trains, but wanted nothing to do with Santa. I think Haley may have influenced Cal from her reaction of her first Santa encounter.


Clark didn't mind. Lee said that it was the best Santa set-up he's ever seen.


Saturday night I took the boys to the ward Christmas party. For dinner they served biscuits and gravy and pancakes. The tables had wrapping paper for the table cloths and gingerbread houses in the middle. Of course, Santa visited there too. We definitely don't need to see Santa again this year! When I said that we should go see Santa Cal started crying. He said he did not want to go. I didn't mind one bit, but we waited so Clark could go.


Here are pictures of the kids this morning. This wasn't a planned "photo shoot" or I would have had Cal in his black dress pants and white shirt too. It just happened that we started taking pictures of all the kids together. I should have looked for black tights when were in St. Louis a few weeks ago. I think the white ones look okay at least.








Well, Shanna deserves a little post. Sometimes I call Shanna, Shanna Bear. She's very cuddly and soft and if bears were nice they seem like they would be cuddly. If Haley is crying Shanna is quick to give her sister a hug. And I don't know if bears like to swim in the water for fun, but when she hears the bath water, she quickly climbs upstairs (Haley is like that too with bath time). She is also a climber and can be aggressive. So it's a perfect nick name.

Lately she has been climbing out her crib. So at nap time and bed time I close the doors to their room and that way she at least stays in the room. At night after she's fallen asleep I'll put her in her crib. I intend to do that for her nap too, but sometimes I forget.

Simply closing the door is no longer a solution. She can open it!

She opened it yesterday for the first time. She is only 19 months old! Today she opened the door a few times but I was close by and she would look at me and close the door. Good thing we have lots of those door safety things that prevent little kids from opening doors. I took one off another door and put it on one of the inside door handles to the girls' room. Hopefully that will work, but I bet in a couple of months, Shanna will figure that out too.