Santas Little Helpers

...Aren't they cute!?




I am sad Christmas is already over! It really snuck up on me this year! And it was a bit stressful getting everything done before Christmas! Next year I need to get back into my more organized mode, and not be so last minute, so I have time to really enjoy the holidays before they are over! Not that I didn't enjoy the Holidays, I did, I was just busy right up until the day we went to celebrate Christmas with my family! We do still have more celebrating to do yet too, so the festivities aren't over for us! Tommorrow I am going for a spa day with the girls on Aarons side of the family (which I can't WAIT for!), and then we get together with them for New Years to do our Christmas with them. Plus we will get together with my Dad soon too.

Last weekend we spend the weekend with my family. Had our own little Christmas at my moms, and then we went to Hanska to celebrate with everyone.
We ate lots of food, stayed up late playing games, fought over dice game gifts (an old school Nintendo in particular) and opened way too many presents! Might I recommend the games Dirty Minds, and Man Laws-Woman rules! They were hilarious!!!

My mother this year, took the liberty of buying her own Christmas presents for us to give to her; a Tom-Tom GPS and a fireplace for her room, so she just figured we would have all chipped in and got that for her, so instead we could just "pay her back" for it!!! AND so we did.....with 24 ROLLS OF QUARTERS!!!

I gathered up all the $ from me and my siblings, went to the bank and asked the teller:
"so could I get some rolls of quarters"?
she says, "sure"
I say, "Can I get like TEN rolls?"
She says, "yeah"
So I say, "welll... How about 24 ROLLS!!!?"
She looks at me funny and says "well, I don't know that I have 24 rolls of quarters here, that's $240.00 worth you know? So I probably don't have that may rolls here, but somewhere in the bank we do, and I could track some down. But let me check if I need to charge you a fee to do that!"
She didn't need to charge a fee, and was able to give me all 24 rolls!

So I wrapped them up in a shoebox, packed it tightly with a towel so they couldnt shake around, and gave it to my mom!
It was hilarious watching her open it, she was like what the heck did you get me that is so heavy!?

Here she is opening all her quarters!



And some more Highlights from the weekend:

Check out that teamwork!


Kinzie loves her new Christmas Dora jammies!


Aaron was seriously excited about his new programming book that he got for xmas!


I LOVE Shel Silverstein! I hope Malichi does too!



We got snowed in at my Grandmas on Sunday night and ended up staying until monday morning. We headed back to my moms to pick up all our gifts that we left there, which were ALOT! I am super excited about what I got.
Everyone went in together and got me this:



No that isn't my house though, that is a picture from the magazine! I have to exchange mine for a darker color so I haven't been able to put it up yet!

So we packed up our van, stopped to have lunch with Aaron's parents, and headed home for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to ourselves!

And it was so nice and relaxed! And believe it or not, I was soooo laid back! I know I can totally get anal about stuff, and feel the need to clean the house all the time, especially with boxes, and wrapping paper and stuff EVERYWHERE, but I DIDN'T!!!! I was pretty proud of myself! haha!

We made our cookies for Santa.



Check out this ginormous Santa cookie I made!



And it was yummy!



After dinner, we opened presents.

Look what Malichi made for me! Isn't that sweet!?






And then after we put the kids to bed, Aaron pulled out a card and present for me! :) We weren't going to get eachother anything. But he got me a very sweet card, and get this... a 12 pack of Diet Cherry Coke, and some chocolate! :) It was sweet. Thanks babe! Sorry I didn't have anything for you under the tree this year! :(

Christmas morning we got up and of course ran to see if Santa came! He did. And he ate ALL the cookies, and left the kids a little note!

The kids opened their Santa gifts, and checked out their stockings and then for breakfast we made Rainbow pancakes (pancakes with whip cream and sprinkles)! YUM-O!

Malichi got some more snow globes to add to his collection! I think he has 20 or so now!


And Kinzie got her baby "sister" that she asked for! Now if Santa could just bring her a REAL sister, that'd be great!




And after that we spent the rest of the day relaxing, and playing with the kids! It was wonderful!

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Wednesday, however, wasn't so wonderful... at least for Aaron. He got all four wisdom teeth out and another tooth pulled that had an infection in it!!! So he has had the whole week off to take it easy after having that done! Everything went well, and he is feeling pretty good.

Sooooo that was long winded! I'll try to post more often so I don't have such ginormous posts from now on! K!? :)

I hope everyone had a safe and wonderful Holiday!

X0Shan

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Can you even believe it is already almost Christmas!? It totally snuck up on me this year!

We kept up our tradition of serving Thanksgiving dinner to people in need up in Duluth this year. The kids did awesome this year too! Malichi walked around and helped me ask people what they'd like to drink and then he helped me bring it to them, and Kinzie brought milks and coffee cups to people! We all had a good time.

After our shift was over, we went to see the movie "Fred Claus". It was a good movie. Kinz slept throught the whole thing, but I think Malichi liked it!

And of course I got up and went to Kohl's at 4 am to do the after Thanksgiving shopping thing on friday! It was even more nuts this year than last year! BUT I am happy to say I am ALMOST done with my shopping! Yay!!!! That feels great! :)

Friday night we did Bentleyville Tour of Lights. And Kinzie actually loved Santa this year and sat on his lap!! Yay!!!

And then we came home on Saturday morning and started the huge task of taking out all our Christmas decorations and setting up our tree!!!!

Here is a glimse of our home at the holidays!



I just love having all my decorations out and my tree up! Now if we could just get our outside lights done without ALL of our NEW lights going out, we'd be set!

Happy Halloween!

Did you all have a nice Halloween!!!?

We did!

We took the kids out Trick or Treating for a while, and we left a bowl of candy at our house by our pumpkins with a note on it to take 2 pieces! (We weren't sure if some kids might come take the whole bowl!) But, we came back to a completely full bowl of candy! We dont have an outside light, just a light inside our porch, so it is kinda hard to tell if we are "participating" and there are not many kids on our street anyway and the kids I do know of, don't celebrate Halloween. So I figured we wouldnt get too many people :( But don't worry! We came back early enough so we could let the kids pass out candy at our house too! I thought it would be fun for them to get to do both. We only had like 3 kids/pairs of kids stop by but Kinzie thought it was a blast getting to give them candy! When we took her out Trick or Treating she told everyone to come to our house too, so they could take some of our candy! It was cute. Malichi was being shy though, and didn't want to pass out candy at our house. Here's a couple of pics from tonight:






Cute aren't they!?

So...rewind back to Saturday. Kinzie started gymnastics! She LOVED it! She did awesome! It is 45 minutes long and she listened the whole time to her teacher, and did just what she was supposed to! She is getting to be such a big girl! She watched carefully as the other kids took their turn, and then when it was her turn she knew what to do! Like on the bars, she watched the other kids do a flip, and she got up there, and just did it like she knew what she was doing!!! It was so awesome! I am so proud of her! Here's some pics from that:







And of course, Mr. Malichi was doing his own gymnastics while we waited!




Malichi asked Grandma Carolyn to make him a sweater. He wanted it Black and Orange. And I think originally with a tiger on it or something! SO he got his sweater on saturday, and he wore it all day! He was pretty excited about it.



..took the kids bowling last week too. Man we have had a busy week.

STRIKE!!!!!!



And apperently Kinzie's ball didn't quite do what she wanted it to!


And on Monday we carved our pumpkins!





Well.. I guess thats about all for now! We had a busy and fun week, with lots of festive Halloween activities!

Later!

XOShan

Happy Birthday Spifferz!

Happy Birthday to my sis Tiffany! I hope you are having a GREAT day! Love ya girlie!



We are back from a wonderful weekend back home. We went down on friday night after Aaron got off work, and spent the night at my mom's.
Saturday morning we went out to mineral springs to take some pictures.
Being there reminds me of when Aaron and I were dating back in High School.
It was "our" place.
We'd have picnics out there. And go swinging.
I remember one time we went out there in the winter and we sat there in the snow kissing while it was freezing outside! But I seem to remember the cold wasn't bothering us too much!
I remember when we called Christa while we were sitting on the big hill out there, and told her we were at the park and that I was in labor with Malichi! (I wasn't...we just thought it would be funny to get her all excited I guess!)
We had both of the kids' blessings and 1st birthday parties there!
I hadn't been out there in so long, and it was nice to be back there!

I made my mom tag along so she could take some family pictures of us! And I must say she did a pretty good job! Of course these aren't straight out of the camera, I played with them a bit, but I love how they turned out! And we got so lucky with the weather! It was the first day it did NOT rain in I don't know how long, and it ended being a gorgeous day! Perfect for a photo shoot!

So...let's get on with it already... Here are a few from the day:




















In the afternoon I did a senior photo shoot for one of my best friends' brothers. It went great! I haven't had time to go through all of the pictures, but I think we got some really nice ones! I HOPE they will like them! :) I'll share some of the photos later!

Then in the evening, we had a Halloween Party/Birthday party (for me and tiff). Lots of fun! Randy made wild rice soup and we had cake...that me and Tiff got our faces smashed into, and then we went over to the school across the street and played some Halloween games! The kids had a blast!






And if you didn't already know how SHORT I am...you will now see....



After the party we went to the haunted cornmaze (withOUT the kids). And you just might remember my blog post from LAST year when we went and I found out how deathly afraid of chainsaws I am! Well I realized this year I am STILL deathly afraid of Chainsaws! Why I subject myself to this cruelty that my family gets such a kick out of...I have no idea?! This year just might be my last going to those...sorry guys!


Then we spend the day at Aaron' parents on Sunday. We had a nice relaxing day, and they had a little birthday party for me too! I was spoiled this weekend! The kids picked out cake and balloons and a card for me. It was so sweet.
The kids had fun painting with all of grandma's "professional" paints...er..watercolors! They just love painting and doing art projects! I love that they love to be creative!






Soo... now that I have spend my entire afternoon blogging, I should get onto getting some unpacking done!

Later!

-Shan

MY DEBUT!

'

I am hoping to have a RELAXING Birthday today! I have been working hard to get ready to debut at my new stores! And now I am sooo excited to be done! I don't think I've been able to go to bed before 2 or 3 am for over a week! BUT I got to sleep in today! Yay!

Have a great day everyone!

The new Do'

So..if I didn't already look like my mom and my two sisters, I sure do now! I went from long, sorta curly, and blond, to short, straight and dark! Quite a drastic change..but I think I like it! Change is good right?! And I donated my hair to Locks of Love!

What do ya think? Here is my "after" picture!


And here is a not so good "before" picture from this weekend.


Boy does it feel good to have all that hair GONE!


The kids tried on their Halloween costumes yesterday. Cute stuff....





Later!

-Shan

a few congrats in order...

So it seems that EVERYONE is pregnant these days! We have whole crew of preggos at MDM right now, and one of my best friends, Kristie, just found out on friday that she is expecting her third! Woohooo! Congrats girl! :)

And up until this week, two of my CT's were pregnant! Well, they both had their babies this week!!!!!! :) Only a few days apart! Congrats Stephanie and Karin!

Apples!

Yesterday, one of my friends in Mom's club, had an apple picking party! I took the kids out there in the afternoon and they loved it! Tonight we had apples and carmel for dessert with the apples they picked!

Some pictures from our apple picking adventure:

they are always listening....

Yesterday, in the car, Aaron and I were talking, and the kids were in the back seats. I didn't think they were paying any attention to us. I was telling Aaron about something, and I used the word "ass". I spelled it out just in case the kids were listening, instead of actually saying it. And after I said it, I hear Malichi in the backseat going, "A"..."S"..."S".. aa...ss..ss.. ASS! "Hey! That spells ASS!" WHOOPS! Aaron and I couldn't help but laugh before we proceeded to tell him that he can't use that word!
So apprently the whole spelling out words we don't want them to hear is NOT going to work anymore! That was an easy one, but soon I am sure he'll be able to sound out other "adult" words!

Guess who I met.....

Elsie Flanningan!!



Scrapfest was going on at the Mall of America this weekend, and she was there! I pretty much went just so I could meet her! I was such a dork when I met her though, I like didn't know what to say to her so I was just like "uh...can I take a picture with you"...dur.. I am such a dork! Oh well! She was nice, but not as outgoing or peppy as I though she would be!

I took my friend Kristie with me, who I am trying to get addicted to scrapbooking, and we did did some shopping, and went for lunch, all without the kids! It was GREAT!
Kristie's husband had to work, so Aaron offered to watch her 2 kids, along with our own, so we could go for the day! Isn't that sweet!? He had them from like 10:30 until 5! Watching 4 kids can be quite exhausting! He went to bed at like 8:30 that night!


Oh I forgot to post some pics from Malichi's birthday! His birthday was the 2nd day of school so he got to bring in treats, which was exciting for him! And then that night we had cupcakes and let him open a present from us.






Today the kid's had their 3 year and 6 year check ups. They both needed shots :( They did not like that! So after we went to the doctor, we stopped and picked up a movie to watch together. Kinzie was so tired, because she didn't nap today.
I thought she was watching the movie, but I got up and came back and saw she was sleeping. And of course I grabbed the camera! :)


So while we were at the doctor, I wanted to talk to her about Kinzie's aggressive behavior. If you know her, you know she has a very strong personality. She is very strong willed, and she will not let anyone push her around. Which can be a good thing, but it also means she can be pretty aggressive. And she can be a bully sometimes. Don't get me wrong...she is a sweetheart, and she can be so caring and compassionate too. But she gets so angry sometimes, and she can be so aggressive, and will hurt Malichi or her friends, or she will try to hit or kick or bite me or Aaron. I try to encourage her to "use her words" and to say "i'm angry" when she's mad, instead of hurting someone. And she understands that, but at the time it's happening, I think she gets angry and then forgets everything we've talked about. I am just at a loss of what to do. I am trying to teach her some coping skills, and how to calm herself down when this happens, but nothing seems to work. I don't ever want her to feel like she is a "bad girl" because of it, or that she is "naughty", but she also needs to know that this behavior is unacceptable and it needs to stop. Somethings got to change.

So anyway, I wanted to bring it up with her pediatrician and see what she had to say. And as soon as we started talking about it, I just broke down crying! I didn't think I would get so emotional about it, but really, I am so stressed out with it and I get so frustrated. And that was quite apparent today when I was talking to the Doctor. She said that it is obviously affecting our family, and we need to find a way to help her cope when she gets angry, so she referred me to see someone that we could talk to, to help us learn how to handle these situations. I figured I better wait until tomorrow to call though because I would probably just cry on the phone to them too! But hopefully we can get some help with this issue!