Patti and Jene had their annual Christmas party and we took the kids. Patti is a grandmother now and really does enjoy my children. Otherwise, I would have left them at home with a babysitter. Patti really knows how to have a nice, relaxing party and she has such beautiful friends!

This is our beautiful friend Jennifer Monda!

When I'm more mature, I want to look as hot as Jen does!!

Cooper Loves Patti's dogs!

Patti & the girls! and Cooper

Cookie Exchange

The teacher's appreciation committee I'm in this year at the kids preschool had it's annual cookie exchange. It was great! The cookies were beautiful, the boxes the teachers put the cookies in (see in photo below, red box with white poka dots with green/red tissue paper). The whole process was great. This was our second 'event' to do and we kinda knew what to do. The teachers were all so happy with the variety of cookies and they loved the box to put them in. The next event is February. Some sort of lunch. Soup/Salad, something easy. Then it will be on to the week in April where we have to do a ton of work. I'm not sure I'm looking forward to that one.

This was a pretzel stick dipped in white chocolate & crushed peppermint
I want to do this for Christmas. Looks soooo easy!!

Here is another one with just sprinkles on it. Again, easy!!

And last easy one, kiss in the middle and M&M in the middle... should be real simple.

The other side view of the table. It was real, real hard not to try one of each kind. It smelled so good. Just like Christmas cookies!! Yummy!

Bella's Classroom Christmas Tree

Bella was asked to decorate a Christmas tree for her classroom for the Christmas season. I let her choose from a few things we could do. She wanted to put her name on it with stickers. I wanted her a photo of her on it and she wanted to put some left over stones/jewels on it to make it pretty. I had the hot glue gun out, so she told me where to put the jewels. She wanted to put her name on the tree with stickers we had just got. That was fine, but she started putting letters on the tree, just so happened to be where I couldn't get them off so we had to make it work. The last 'a' in her name she put on the tree and I worked backward from there, it looks like a 3 year old did it, right? She was so much fun to do this activity with. I just hope she has more skills than I do in the crafty department.

Our finished product.

ToyStory

Cooper and Isabella love to watch movies together. Isabella never would sit long enough to finish a 30 minute Disney show, much less a 60 minute movie until she was over 3 year old. But once Cooper was born and life changed, she would sit and watch her princess movies no problem. One day I got out the ToyStory 1 & 2 movies, I always liked watching ToyStory with Michael and Mavrick that I wanted Isabella to get to enjoy these great movies. She was not at all interested the first few times, but once she finally watched it all the way through, she wanted to watch it again. By that time, Cooper was 'watching' tv too and he was interested in the movies too. Woody and Buzz are very cute characters and we have quite a few items with Woody and Buzz on. One day Cooper was in my bed and wanted to watch 'Buzz'. It was very funny when I walked into the room later to check on him. This is what I found.He was holding his Buzz Lightyear and saying "BUZZ" he loves Toy Story! Can't wait until the 3rd one comes out, on DVD!!!

Choo, Choo!!

Love it!

Baker Bella

Baker Bella!
Isabella loves to help me in the kitchen, with whatever I am doing. She helped me bake the cupcakes for her school feast and some of the left over cupcakes I let her frost and put sprinkles on. I gave her the white frosting and we put drops of food coloring in it, how much ever she wanted and we made a 'color'. Just so happened that we have been reading "Pinkalicious". We ended up with Pink! She loved to frost those cupcakes, but some times I feel like she just doesn't know how to use her hands. She's left handed. Not easy to do just about anything, in my opinion.

Photos are kind of backwards, I hate the way blogger is so hard to organize the photos once they are on the page. So we'll just have to deal with what it gives up. Ugh!

Ear Confection...

As Isabella says it... Bella woke up in the middle of the night Friday night and came to my bed, Brian was just getting home from a late movie with the guys. He went to Bella's bed and Bella slept with me. Good thing he went to Bella's bed, she was up ALL.NIGHT.LONG. When we woke up, she was crying and couldn't stop pulling on her ear. She kept saying her ear hurt and I could tell she was in major pain. It was about 7ish so we had to wait until 9 to go anywhere. But once CareNow opened, I took her in. Sure enough, she had an ear infection, or as she calls it confection. So she's back on antibiotics. She was off for two days after the last round from the UTI and now she's back on this round. I'm sad she was in so much pain and running a fever, but she's back to some sort of normal and I just pray she stays healthy for the holidays and through the end of the year and through the end of January (her birthday is end of Jan.).

Finger Food Feast

Bella's school puts on a cute harvest feast each year called Finger Food Feast. All the parents bring a finger food and the children sing a few songs and then we all eat a quick bite. It was today and everyone loved it.

Isabella was blessed to have a large group of loved ones attend. Mimi, Mark, Michael, Mavrick, Major, Judee, Jane, Eddie, Brian, Cooper and I were all there! My parents were unable to make it due to Honey really messing up her knee and not being able to put any pressure on her leg and she's on major pain medication.

Bella did such a great job, waved at all of us and then sang her songs.
She was a charmer! I was so very proud of my baby girl!

This is Bella's class coming in the gym, she was the line leader!
Bella waving!!!
I caught her blinking and "putting a bubble in her mouth" that means stop talking
singing
Adorable!!
Paying attention to Ms. Brandy, the music teacher



She has on the cutest Christmas outfit and sneakers!
Cheeseball and Ms. Allie, her beautiful teacher!
waving...
this is the table where we sat to see the kids perform

grandparents Jane & Eddie and Aunt Judee

Thanksgiving Feast Cupcakes

For Isabella's Finger Food Feast, I was asked to bring a dessert of some sort. I took cupcakes. I have never made desserts or anything for that matter, that others would eat and I wanted to 'look good' as the baker. So I made a batch before the 'real' batch. The ones I made and took to the feast turned out beautiful and I was so pleased with them. It made me feel like 'one of those moms', but just for a minute.

UTI

Isabella is battling a UTI right now. She started not feeling well on Wednesday after her nap. When she went to the potty, she screamed bloody murder that it was painful to tee-tee. I've never experienced this first hand, that I can remember, so I didn't know what to do. Oddly enough, the night before she had an awful tummy ache and really bad upset tummy, but once the poop passed, she was completely fine. I didn't put the two together and they still may not be any part of each other, other than she was just starting to get ill.
Wednesday for about 5 hours she walked back and forth from the bathroom to the living room, getting on the toilet, getting off, not wanting to go because of the pain, but really needing to go, so she would go back to the bathroom and get back on the toilet, a tiny bit would come out and screams would bellow out and she would stop. The off and on and off was not helping the situation. I took her to the doctor early Thursday morning and once again she walked back and forth in the doctors office bathroom and our exam room. They needed a sample of urine and I had made her drink a TON of water knowing this would be the case. She needed to go, but she knew it was going to hurt, they put a tub in the potty to catch the urine but getting her to relax and let it out was almost as painful as her going. It took her about an hour to finally go tee-tee. Then they found out it was a pretty bad UTI. The external girl parts were not very red, but they urine had every indication of a major infection, with lots of blood and the doctor was very alarmed.
At that point she told me that she was sending us home with medication/antibiotics and in 5 days if she's not 110% better to bring her back in. The meds need to be taken for 10 days though. I then stopped the doctor and asked for a shot instead. Isabella REFUSES to take medication. What am I suppose to do? The doctor mixed up some meds in the office and talked to Isabella to tell her she has to take the meds to feel better and if she didn't she'd have to get shots in her legs. And if she didn't take the medication and her infection spread she would have to go to the hospital and get shots and stay in the hospital and see other doctors. I think the doctor thought I was just not trying or that I was not hard enough or I was a push over. Well Isabella (and I) proved her wrong. We were at the doctors office for another hours trying to bribe, force, beg and just do anything under the good Lord's sun to get this child to take this medication. I was practically begging the nurse to get the shots. The nurse, God love her, I wish I could have brought her home, about forced me to put it in her mouth and shove it down. Isabella was exhausted by then and she finally took it. Well some of it. She spit a good bit of it back out. But got some of it in her system too. I was so tired and felt so defeated when we left. The nurse and doctor both told me to bring her back in every day if I needed to, to get her to take her medication.
Yesterday, Brian and I forced it down her, some made it, some did not. Yesterday I posted on Facebook about Bella unwillingness to take meds and got a few great suggestions. Today I'm going to mix it into her peanut butter for her PB&J sandwich.
I'm just praying she's getting enough medication to fight the infection and the Lord is healing her body.
The past few days have been a complete beating on me. Not only that Bella is ill, but she is needy and Cooper has a bit of a cold too boot. He's needy too. I'm worn out between the two.

Panties for Cooper

I bought Cooper some big boy underpants because he had a bad diaper rash that I couldn't get rid. I wanted to let him run around the house with out a diaper on, but I didn't want him to ruin my carpet or hardwoods. So the big boy panties came in real handy. But Isabella wanted to wear them and insisted on putting them on herself. She's so crazy. She wanted to character in the front, no the back. So she could see it. She's gonna love this when she get married. Ha! I'm so bad!

He has a diaper on under them here, but he sure loves sporting them.