happy birthday tucker!!

i am so excited to celebrate tucker's 6th birthday!!!! it has snowed every year on his birthday since the day he was born...isn't that funny?? today we are blessed (i think) with a two hour delay. we can take our time to get to school and enjoy our morning together.

from the day tucker was born, he was a breath of fresh air. he was calm, happy, a good sleeper, and oh so easy to please. i remember when he was three weeks old and he had to have his emergency surgery. i remember praying over his little tiny body (already over 11 pounds) and being in awe at how much i was already so in love with this little guy. he had stolen my heart!! i remember the doctors told me i couldn't feed him until after his surgery. so from 1 in the afternoon until 9 at night tucker learned to suck on his pacifier for the first time and never complained once. i'll never forget that...

since then he has grown into one of the nicest kids i know. he has such a heart for his family, his friends, and God. he amazes me with his patience and his kind spirit. he lets people be who they are and gets a kick out of different personalities. he really has taught me a lot about acceptance.

tucker loves to talk about the bible and God and heaven. he can always get me to cry when he asks if i get excited to see my grandmas up in heaven someday. this kid knows what's important!!

happy birthday my sweet tucker! i love you more than you'll ever know....

my heart can break now....

so yesterday at school the girl sitting next to lucy puked at her desk. first of all...ew....second of all...ew. well, apparently lucy was pretty upset about it. not because it was gross but because her friend was sick. she went and talked to her teacher about it and had tears in her eyes out of concern for her friend. then when i spoke to her later i found out why she was so upset. my dear sweet lucy was so upset that her friend was going to have a tough night of throwing up. i guess she just assumed that everyone has to deal with what she does...and to her it was very sad to think of her poor friend going through that too.....doesn't that just break your heart?????

confessions

i hate my fish. everytime one dies i run out and get a new one as if it is something my kids will die without. i hate cleaning the tank and i put it off until we can't tell if the fish is even in the bowl. i love pets, and i don't mind cleaning cages but for some reason that fish is pointless to me. it doesn't do anything, we can't hold it or cuddle with it, and we can't love on it. so stupid...

lucy was pounding on the bowl today wondering if the fish was alive. i was hoping it wasn't but sure enough...eventually it moved. ugh....after this one goes (and i hope that's soon) we are done with fish in this house.

therapy

i do believe i am confusing my kids to no end. when asked, i tell them i don't believe in santa...after all, i want them to know that the real story of christmas is the one i've been promoting this whole time and that i didn't lie to them about it. however, i still play into the santa thing with them. i have the elf on the shelf that comes to check on them everyday and reports back to santa at night. i move it to a new spot every night after they are in bed just so they know he did his duties and their requests were passed on to the big man. i have to say, it really is fun watching joe change his location. he comes back giggling about where he hid it....i love it.

anyway...i tell them there is no santa and yet i am doing things to make them think there IS a santa....they will no doubt need some therapy someday...

perspective

if you want some good perspective on life....check out a blog i've been following. this is a family that attends our church and only recently did i meet them when i got to bring them dinner one night. they seem pretty stinking amazing.....

www.allthemarletts.blogspot.com

enjoy!

NYC

we had the BEST time on our trip to NYC!!! the kids had off school on friday so joe took off too and we drove to NJ and took a train into the city. our first stop was to rockefeller plaza to see the rockettes!! the kids loved the show and so did i...this pic is them getting ready for the 3-D part of the show....and joe in the background...clearly he was excited too.

!

then from there we headed right over to the american girl museum to get julie's hair done. apparently you need to get your doll's hair done more than we do because we got a lot of comments about how messy julie was....well...excuse me for having children that like to play with their toys!!

while we were at the doll museum the boys went to the lego store...shopped...and still had time to get back to us before we were done in the salon!

then we all ventured over to "top of the rock" and it was awesome! it was joe's idea and i have to give him full credit for it because it was so great! we could see everything from up there. the kids were the most excited about one certain thing though. one of their favorite books is The Great Gray Bridge and the Little Red Lighthouse. it's about the george washington bridge that was built over this little red lighthouse....so from the top of the rock we saw the bridge and then screamed with excitement when we saw the lighthouse too!


from there we went to eat our one and only meal at TGI fridays and then walked many blocks back to the train to go back to NJ. we were all tired but really excited to see Carlos Bakery a.k.a The Cake Boss from TLC. there was about a ten minute wait outside the store and it was packed inside. daisy and i were the lucky ones to wait and go in seeing as nobody else really cared at all. daisy and i had a great time though. we were such tourists and we got so giddy with excitement. once our order was in we high fived and just had so much fun together. daisy even got to take a picture with buddy's sister, madelyne. we ordered a crumb cake (we heard in the line how amazing it was) some italian cookies (none with jelly) and a cake that we always see on the tv show. the cookies were okay but the crumb cake and the cake really were worth every minute of waiting and the whole trip in. they were SO good!



as soon as we got home lucy wanted to try out her new apron. so even though we had had enough sweets, she and joe made some s'mores bars....which i ended up eating half of...ugh...


we ended up having a great family weekend together!!!

halloween

we had such a fun halloween this year! josh and summer (and murray) were visiting. of course we had our usual company too...kathyann and her family! we had a blast. it was very low-key and seemed quicker this year..love that! here are some pix...i was a disco person (too bad the pix don't show my awesome shoes!), daisy was a gypsy, tucker was a cowboy, and lucy was a ladybug. my niece, karalyn, was an indian and nathan was a police officer...oh yeah...and katelyn (who i'm holding) was a lion but not for very long. we even got murray to dress up as a shark. fun!