Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving festivities began at the girls school with a "shared lunch". Everyone brought different items and they all shared lunch together. It was super cute.

The girls and I after lunch....

For Thanksgiving we spent a couple of days in Jay with my family. Here they are playing play-doe with PawPaw & MawMaw....

Eating breakfast with PawPaw at the princess table....I do believe they have him wrapped around their little fingers... :)

Watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with daddy.....

We headed down to Grandpa and Grandma's for Thanksgiving dinner. Here is grandma, with sweatband in place, rolling out her YUMMY dumplings :)

LOVE this woman!!

The girls having a pre-dinner homemade yeast roll :)

Some family shots....

(sister-in-law Juliet, sister Emily, brother-in-law Josh, momma, & Shane)

Same one minus Shane, plus me :)

PawPaw & cousin Kaylea

Food....

and more food...

and more food....!

Shane LOVES having the girls sit on his lap while he is trying to eat the best meal of the year....can't you see his enthusiasm?!?!? Happy Thanksgiving, hun!!

Grandma and some Aunts, Uncles, and cousins...

Jocie getting a taste-test from PawPaw :)

Gabbie LOVES Daisy (one of my parent's wiener dogs)

Jocie downing Shane's sweet tea :)

Jocie is a bit more timid with the wieners but she gets brave occasionally :)

PawPaw with George, the other wiener....

Gabbie getting super brave....with Daddy's help, of course :)

Getting the food to feed the fish...

What is Gabbie's face all about ?!?! ha! love it!

Definitely one of their favorite activities...

One piece of fish food for the fishies....one piece of fish food for Daisy...

Love this pic.....

Never too young to start doing chores... :)

Taking a sunset walk with daddy....

Cheeeeeeeeeeese....

Uncle D, Aunt Juliet, & cousin Landon...

While Jocie was in the living room wrestling with Uncle D and Landon, Gabbie was at the kitchen table playing a card game....geeeeeeezzzzz....my kiddos are SO different :)

Thanksgiving festivities were a blast! We had so much fun with our family....we have SO much to be THANKFUL for, don't we?!??! yes, we do....

In preparation for Christmas...

I walked into the dining room the other day and saw this. I almost pee'd my pants. We've been reading about baby Jesus and the Christmas story a lot lately. In the children's bible that we've been using there are lots of pictures of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. Well, when I asked the girls what they were doing with their sheets on their heads, Gabbie said "we be Mary"....HILARIOUS.....and she, especially, looked JUST like Mary....

Sweet little Mary.... :)

And the other Mary....hahahahaha! classic

For the past couple of weeks every night before we put the girls to bed, they want to sing Happy Birthday to baby Jesus. They don't just want to sing it...they have a very specific ritual...they each put on their purple witch hats that Gigi gave them at Halloween (they call them their party hats....thus, they have to wear them to Jesus' birthday party....too funny...), then they get their red pompom's and then they take turns standing in the rocking chair leading all four us is in the happy birthday baby Jesus song. At the end of each round they scream really loud and shake their pompom's in celebration. It is a sight to be seen.....

Jocie getting ready....

Gabbie warming up her voice....

Jocie at one of the MANY grand-finale moments of the song (they would sing it 100 times a night if we would let them :)

Jocie's turn to lead us....

Getting ready to go crazy.....

Gabbie hitting the really high note in the middle of the song....I seriously do almost pee my pants every time she makes this face when it's time for that note....

Round 13....

Round 22....

Can you tell that they LOVE doing this?!?!?! These are maybe my two favorite pics ever :)

Yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy!!!!

I've been replaced

The other day Gabbie fell down and hurt her leg. This is not unusual. The child falls down ALL the time. Seriously. She also does not "recover" very well AT ALL. I usually have to hold her for a very long time while she dramatically weeps over her invisible boo-boo somewhere on her body. Well, when she fell this time, we started the same way....she fell down and then started screaming for "mommy hold you" (I think every kid at some point says "hold you"....meaning "hold me")....SO, I picked her up and started consoling her like I always do....well, Jocie walks over to her and tries to hold Gabbie's hand but Gabbie didn't want to at the moment...then all of the sudden, Gabbie lifts her head off my shoulder and says...."I don't want mommy to hold you, I want JOCIE to hold you"....she then gets down from my lap and walks over to Jocie as if Jocie could literally pick her up and hold her. Jocie then motions to Gabbie to go to the couch because she would be able to "hold you" there. Jocie sits down on the couch and Gabbie crawls into her lap for her to "hold you". It was HILARIOUS and PRECIOUS. Jocie patted and rubbed her back in a circle just like I do and told her "it be ok, Gab" :)

Gabbie then sits up and asks Jocie to rub her tummy, too! She was milking this for everything she could get!! Too funny :)

She miraculously recovered so much faster this time from her fall :) She did lay in Jocie's lap a good 20 minutes until Jocie finally told her "I all done, Gab, get up"....these two crack me up!

Nightmare Update....It CAN'T be that simple...

A few days after the "Nightmare on Fribourg Street" post a friend of ours, Scott, was over at our house picking up his kids and asked how the whole "bed thing" was going. I gave him the nightmare update and then he suggested trying a very different approach since what we had been doing for the past two weeks had not worked AT ALL.... why not try telling them that they will get a sticker in the morning when they get up if they stay in their beds and don't get up all night long....He teaches kids everyday that have special needs or have major behavior issues and he said that he had found that focusing on the "positive" side (like rewarding them for choosing the right behavior, etc.) verses focusing on the "negative" (like trying to STOP them from doing the wrong behavior, etc.) had worked A LOT better for the kids in his class. I kind of laughed at him when he suggested this....like promising MY girls a measly little sticker the next morning was going to do ANYTHING....yeah, right!! BUT....we decided to try this approach anyways....why not? nothing else had worked...might as well give it a go even if I knew that there was NO way it was going to work.......

So, that night we told them it was time to go to bed and if they stayed in their beds and didn't get up AT ALL, that they would get a sticker in the morning. Their faces lighted up..."a stickeeeee????".....Yes, but ONLY if you stay in your beds and don't get up AT ALL. They then both crawled up into their beds (on their on), got under the covers and said "nite-nite". We then walked out of the room and waited for the wild monkeys to begin their craziness...we waited for a few minutes and then a few more minutes....after about 20 minutes of silence we looked at the monitor and to OUR UTTER AMAZEMENT they were both fast asleep...WHAT?!?!? No way....THEN, the next morning when we walked into their room to get them we were totally expecting to find the remains of an F-5 tornado as we had every morning for the previous two weeks (when they woke up each morning, they would get out of their beds and DESTROY their room)....I almost passed-out when I walked in and saw them SITTING IN THEIR BEDS, patiently awaiting my arrival. When I walked in, they both said..."We get a stickeee cause we stayed in our big-gurl beds all night".....Yes, I am not kidding. This is a true story....not just a wonderful dream. So, for the past two weeks, they have stayed in their beds EVERY SINGLE NIGHT!! I do believe the nightmare has ended...or at least it seems very hopeful :) I can't believe it was THAT simple....

A big shout out to Scott!! Thanks for your advice....it worked!...at least for our two little crazy monkeys :)

The first morning after....sporting their stickeeeeees on their hands....

Seriously??? yes, seriously.... :)