Aunt Joe came to visit in November and brought Noelle this mannequin (it was solid white at the time) she used for one of the props for her art class in North Richland Hills.  Noelle couldn’t wait to color it and even thought to add some hair, and this is the result!  She calls it her “Rock Star” and still has it sitting on a table in her room (a little creepy).  She’s one creative little girl, that’s for sure! 

Well, we’re all loaded up for a while with another fun run to Costco!  The girls LOVE all the samples!  Mike took these pics with his phone… I love that he has a decent camera on his phone, so if I don’t have mine, no biggie!

The girls were lovin’ some raspberry tea.  We’re a water family around here, so this was a huge treat!

Noelle asked for a wedding ring for Christmas!  Lol!  We found this one for $3.94 at Sweet and Sassy! 

The girls were so cuddly today… Anna Kate was lovin’ her special attention from Noelle.  I love how Noelle was kissing Anna Kate’s little eye closed.  They are SO cute!

Here are the big girls, all filled up on samples and hot dogs!

I took these pictures of the Ziemke family when I went to California for Thanksgiving.  One of them was their Christmas card, so I had to wait to post them.  I’m so honored that I got to take them!  This family shares SO much love and are an inspiration to all!  Love you guys!!!

Thank you for all of the positive feedback on our parenting skills… you all know who you are!  There was one snarky anonymous (of course) comment on the Santa post last night, so we disabled comments altogether.  We have a blog for our family and closest friends, and I’m really thinking about going private again because whoever you are, even though you see a scrapbook of our kids’ lives, you don’t know Mike or me, and you don’t know my children.  I’m happy to share the love that we have with you and maybe some ideas along the way, but you have no right to judge us because you don’t have context… you don’t live our story.  I wasn’t even going to say that much, so I’ll leave it at that.

For further clarification, it was all we could do to make it through Christmas believing in Santa this year.  As Noelle’s parents, we wanted her to believe in Santa as long as she wanted to, and as long as it was fun for her.  She came to us daily and asked us detailed questions and she begged us to stop talking in riddles.  She was continually frustrated that we wouldn’t just say “yes” or “no” to the big question that kept being asked.  I refuse to blatantly lie to my girl, so I never gave her a straight answer (which the other half of the crowd thinks is probably wrong that I didn’t come right out and answer her the first times she asked).  It was no longer fun for her, and it wasn’t fair to her not to know the difference between real and pretend.  She was begging us to tell her the truth.  It was breaking our hearts just to get through Christmas.  She was exasperated.  Truly.  Noelle deserved to know the truth.

I asked Noelle this morning if she is happy that we told her the truth about Santa and this was her answer, word for word, “I’m happy you told me the truth about Santa because I misunderstood who brought me my presents, whether it was you guys or Santa.  Now I know who to thank!”  I’m not even kidding you, that’s what she said.  She’s happy, healthy, responsible, and so excited and already looking forward to being sneaky with us next year (she gets WAY more pleasure out of giving than receiving, so this will be right up her alley)… hopefully she’ll remember Santa as a little childhood game that’s lighthearted and fun… so we’re good!

On anther note, kids are so impressionable at this age, they are trying to figure out who they are and what they believe, and if we out right lied to her about Santa, how could she believe us when we tell her the truth about Jesus?  We would have no credibility and rightly so.  We want our yes to be yes and our no to be no.  She’s trying to figure out the world around her and needs us to be honest and trustworthy.  Those character qualities are much more important to us than believing in something that is not real.

*Now that all that heavy stuff is out of the way, I’m pretty sure Anna Kate will never question the validity of Santa and roll with it until she’s 16, and then be all like, “Oh, I get it!  That’s silly!” but if she asks over and over again, I’m not going to leave her frustrated.  That’s not fair.  Each child is so different, so it will be interesting to see how that unfolds. 

So… Noelle was asking WAY too many really in-depth, perceptive questions regarding Santa this year.  She was problem solving trying to figure out how it all made sense.  One night, she and Mike and I were all talking and she asked, “So, do the elves make some stuff and does Santa buy some stuff at the store?” because she sees toys all over the stores around Christmas.  Mike looked at me and whispered, “She trusts us to tell her the truth…” and we both knew it was time.  But how do you do it?  What do you say?  We don’t have a parent handbook with different suggestions.  I said to Mike, “You do it!”

So Mike said, “Noelle, we have a big girl secret to tell you!”  She got so excited and Mike went on to say, “Santa Claus is the spirit of Christmas.”  She thought about it and then said, “That’s not a good secret!” so we knew we weren’t going to be let off easy.  She was going to make us spell it out for her.  So then he said, “Santa is the spirit of giving and love and traditions and what Santa means is loving and caring.”  Wow!  Pretty well put… but all he got was a blank stare, so he added, “And that’s all Santa means.”  Lol!  We couldn’t bring ourselves to say it.  She looked so confused, so I finally blurted out, “Santa isn’t real!”  And we just sat there like a deer in headlights to see what came next.

The first thing she said was, “Then who ate the cookies?”  I said, “I did!”  She said, “Well, then why didn’t you eat all of them?  Oh did you think they had too much sugar?”  I said, “Yes” and she said, “That makes sense.”

And then she looked us in the eyes and said, “I promise I’ll take good care of the secret!”  And that was it. She’s going to have a blast playing Santa with us for Anna Kate and Rose next year.  We’re even going to let her stay up with us and get all of the toys out.  She will LOVE that, although, we won’t put hers out until she goes to bed…

Whew!  That wasn’t so bad.

Please watch this video when you get a chance:

http://vimeo.com/34046413

ALS seems to be every where I turn these days, even as I stumbled on this video while looking around.  When I started watching it, I didn’t even know it was about a coach who has ALS.  Is it like getting a new car, once you get it, you start seeing it everywhere?  I wish it was a new car… so many awesome people the world needs are leaving us too soon! 

Our friends, the Hortons, recently moved into a house 3 doors down while their new one is being built.  We are so happy to have them as neighbors, if only for a bit!

We had a pizza party play date on the driveway with the neighborhood kids on Friday after school!  At one point, there were 17 kids in front of our house!!!

Berkeley, Jameson, Rose, and Cerly Grace all live on the same side of the street only houses apart and are all a total of 3 months apart!  So cool!

Jameson is one lucky guy to grow up around all these lovely ladies!  Maddie and Noelle really know how to strike a pose. 

Anna Kate, Noelle, Maddie, Robin, and Christian

Creighton and Lesleigh are the big kids on the block and are SO good with all the kids!

Mrs. Robin brought over Christian’s bounce house for the kids to play in! They had a ball!  Julia and Anna Kate were rockin’ their crazy hair!!!

Berkeley and Rose were a kitty and a princess for Halloween, remember?  Here they are a little more grown up! 

Lesleigh (3rd grade) is on the jump rope team at Noelle’s school and is literally the best jump roper I’ve ever seen.  Check out the girls watching her… they were in a trance.  Those of you who have toddlers know that with this many toys there is no way to get them all to sit still and watch something, but they were mesmerized.  I was on the jump rope team back in the day, but our hardest moves are her warm-ups.  She’s been teaching me the Russian something or other, and I’m determined to get it down by the end of school!  Mike has a good jump rope, so I’m practicing.

Yay, Miss Lesleigh!  (that’s what Anna Kate calls her)… half-way through her routine, Anna Kate screamed out, “I love you, Miss Lesleigh!”  It was so cute!

Then we all had Mr. Jim’s pizza on snowman plates in our driveway in January!!!  I will be one to NEVER complain about hot summers OR hot winters… I told Mike, if we ever move, I’ll only go south.  This is my kind of weather!

I LOVE to add random emojis to my text messages (little pictures like this one ).  It’s my specialty.  It gets me so tickled.  Well, on Christmas, I sent Cindy, my friend in California, a text with pictures of a present, a tree, a star, and an eggplant.  Seriously.  It made me laugh so hard.  She made a big deal about how random it was, and it really bugged her because she likes to have everything organized and in its place, and now there was an eggplant messing up her perfect little texts! 

So for the past couple of weeks, every once in a while, I’ll throw the eggplant emoji out there, just to pester her.  Well, today is her birthday.  I thought and thought all week long about what I could do that would be special for her.  Flowers.standard.  Chocolates.overdone.  I just didn’t know, and then last night as I was falling asleep, it came to me… eggplant parmesan.  Perfect!

Clarissa said something along the lines of, “The delivery guy just brought this to you and said it was a birthday present.”  I told Clarissa, she would either know instantly or it would take a couple of days and few more eggplant emojis before she was all like, “Enough with the eggplants… ah-ha!  That’s where the eggplant parmesan came from!”  And proceed to call me some innocent little name to match my innocent little prank.

Anyway, we had a driveway party tonight and when we came back in and I checked my texts, she had texted me, “Anyone up for some eggplant?” with this picture.  I really thought I was going to surprise her again… thinking she would be totally confused, but oh no, she’s way too smart for that.  Cindy doesn’t get surprised very often.  I guess once will just have to be good enough.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CINDY!!!  You’re such an awesome friend!