Kate's birthday

We decided to give Kate a little birthday party with a few friends this year since her birthday is a day after the baby is due. Much to our surprise the birthday party was a success. It's amazing how much fun these little kids can have doing the simplest things. They got to decorate their own cupcakes which they did by LOADING on the frosting and only eating the "muffin top." As for the presents, a few the kids thought that the presents they brought were for themselves so they proceeded to open them and play with "their" toy for the rest of the time. It was pretty entertaining. Good thing Kate was patient and waited to play with her new toys once everyone left. All and all, I think it was a success (mostly because we avoided any big melt downs).

Our Week

Kara=2 ear infections and pneumonia. Kate=flu. Laura=37 weeks pregnant. Here's to a better week.

Long nights make for long days

Kate has been begging to have Kara in her room with her so we finally made the move. Going on two weeks now, we're not sure how successful the transition is. We try to get them into bed by 8 or 8:30. For about an hour, all we hear is Kara giggling and Kate telling on her. The hour sounds a little something like this, "Kara's jumping on her bed! Kara's ripping a book! Kara took my baby! Kara has a boggie! Kara drank my water! Kara's hiding in the closet! Kara took the 'night night' light out! Kara's in my bed!," etc. By about 9:30 Kate gets tired enough, puts a pillow over her head, and falls asleep. About the time that we're ready to go to bed, we walk by the door and Kara is just standing on her bed with a huge smile on her face. She has yet to go to bed before 10:15. The one time they did manage to get to sleep a little earlier was when they both ended up in Kara's toddler bed (Kate's is apparently too big) which I knew would be a disaster once elbows started to be thrown in the middle of the night. Oh well, at least they were sleeping right?

Happy Birthday Kara!

So it's birthday week in the Bouck household. Mike's birthday was Friday, which he spent all day on the mountain snowboarding, and Kara's was on Saturday. I can't believe our baby turned two yesterday! She however, is in denial. Anytime you ask her how old she is, she replies either, that she's 1 or 3. She refuses to be 2. It was a low key day seeing as how I was sick most of the week before, but she had a BLAST with her new gifts. The only problem we ran into was, and continues to be, that Kate thinks she is entitiled to play with all of Kara's toys more than Kara. There is a melt down almost every two hours as to who all the new toys belong to. We still have a few kinks to work out.
Kara has to sleep with about a million things on her bed. One of which is Pongo, a three foot dog, that is considerably bigger than she is. Birthday girl.

Sporting her new tutu she got from Nana and Papa.

Anything to be like daddy. She's excited to rock out with her daddy now.

Christmas Festivities

This year we were lucky to have Grandma and Grandpa Bouck visit us from Washington for Christmas (good thing they made it!). We've had such a fun time and kept ourselves busy and somewhat sane (with the sickness and present overload I think we did pretty well). We've been busy shopping, playing, bowling, playing, going to the snow, and of course playing.

Grandpa brought his balloon kit and the girls have had a blast making all kids of hats and balloon animals.

This was Kara's first attempt at bowling. Thank goodness for bumper bowling...she almost did as well (or poorly) as I did.

Our California snowman. If we had proper snow equipment and good snow, instead of ice, I think Frosty would have turned out a little better.

About two minutes into playing, Kara said, "Mommy, I'm FREEZING. I need to go home." It took a little over an hour to get to the snow, and we were only there for about 20 minutes. Go figure.

Gingerbread houses

Making gingerbread houses (out of graham crackers) has been a family tradition for decades so I decided to carry it on. My girls absolutely LOVE it. Kate insisted on doing it all herself and I dare say, she did a pretty good job. And yes, that is Kara next to her with a candy cane up her nose. The finished product.

I fear it's just the beginning

As a young adult, I would see scraggaly looking kids and think, "I would never let my kids out of the house like that," or "why can't they just wash their kid's face?," or "does it really take that long to put on clean clothes?" Well to all those mothers that I have ever judged, I would just like to say, "I had absolutely no idea...I"m so sorry." I usually remember to wash hands after meals or activities, but their faces are another story. I usually don't notice that they have crusted milk around their mouth or who knows what wiped all over their cheeks, until they have been presented to the public. The best part about it is, half the time I don't even wash it off. Lately, however, Kate has been into dressing herself, and she and I never seem to agree on what matches. Not that I'm a fashion icon by any means, but I have learned a thing or two about stripes and polkadots, and different shades of pink. Kate however, very logically, debates that stripes go with stripes and pinks go with pinks...so there you go, debate over.

Kara on the other hand comes out every 10 minutes with no clothes on. She then continues to complain that she's cold but still refuses to put clothes on. I just don't know what to do with her. At least those scraggaly kids in the stores had clothes on.