Fun and Games!

No really, the kids and I had fun and games today! We cracked open M-Moo's new game of Hullabaloo and spent several hours over the course of the day running, crawling, stomping, spinning, and sitting all over the living room.

For the uninitiated, Hullabaloo consists of 16 pads that you spread out all over the floor... they all have a shape, a color, and a picture. Then the console calls out "stomp over to a 'green'" and everyone has to follow the directions. It uses a lot of listening skill, as well as skill to figure out what color, shape, or picture category you need to get to and how. The hardest part for my girls was the rule that more than one person can be on any given pad... they did not like sharing the pads!

Here's a great review on Epinions that neatly sums up exactly what I would say about this game! And here's a cute YouTube video of somebody else's kids playing Hullabaloo.





Anyway, I just thought I'd share, as I know there are lots of mamas and daddies looking for fun things to do with the kids, and we sure enjoyed this game! This could very well be the best thing Santa brought this year!

The girls and I went to the South Summit Aquatic and Fitness Center today. I haven't taken the girls there in forever. It was so fun today to be with an almost-5-year-old and two 3-year-olds! They were pretty independent and I didn't have to watch them like a hawk to make sure they weren't drowning every second.



We got there at about 10:15, changed into our suits, and hit the shallow, zero-entry part of the pool. The girls splashed around in the very shallow water, chasing the diving barbells I brought to throw in the water for them.

Amazingly, both Miss-D and K-Wiggles went down the little slide. They made trip after trip after trip! I was so surprised. At the end, even M-Moo went down twice.



After a little while, we borrowed some of the pool's life jackets and headed for the lazy river. All the girls enjoyed the rushing current as we zoomed through the rain showers!


After some jumping to mama in the deep end (Miss-D even wound up jumping on her own, with the life-jacket, and swimming back to the edge on her own!), Miss-D decided that she wanted to go down the big slide. I couldn't take her, 'cuz I had to stay with the littles, so I told her if she wanted to go herself, I would catch her at the bottom.

I figured she'd climb up the three flights of stairs and then chicken out. But nope! She actually went up there twice, and twice she came sliding down all by herself!

We all had a great time and came home to a quiet (somewhat exhausted!) afternoon. I'll have to take them there more often!

Tough day at Casa Llamedos

Today I realized it has been 10 days since I've had to watch the kids all by myself. Wow! It's amazing how fast I can get used to always having someone else around to help. I must have heard "mama" about 5 million times today. I really miss G'ma and G'pa.

Daddy-J even worked from home today, so he was here in the morning, here at lunch time, and even knocked off early to take Miss D sledding before it got dark. It was still overwhelming.

Tomorrow I'm planning to take the girls to the indoor splash park over in Kamas. I'm hoping that having a fun activity planned for the morning will make the afternoon a little easier. Tomorrow is definitely another day. I'm looking forward to school starting in a week and getting back to spinning classes at the gym.

Not a very fun post today, but it wasn't a very fun day. I share the good and the bad!

Some scenes from boxing day.

Here are some random photos from our Boxing Day. Sadly, G'ma Libby and G'pa Irv left this morning to go back to Lolo/Pullman. Daddy-J and I got to go skiing -- thank you Carmen -- and now Daddy-J, M-Moo and Miss D are out sledding and building igloos with the neighbors.

K-Wiggles and I are about to go take a hot shower to shake off the chill.

Enjoy!

We started the day with a spectacular sunrise.



We had a fair bit of snow!



Even the trees were buried!



Poor K-Wiggles fell asleep in the plow truck. Not even opening the door could wake her up!



Miss-D stayed warm in her new jammies and the new bathrobe G'ma Libby made for her.



While outside, the sun could barely make it through the clouds.

Hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday filled with friends and family.

Cinderella came to visit.

Well, not here. She came to a birthday party for Miss-D's friend Carmen. It was a full-on princess party. All three girls were invited. They each got a tiara and a wand. They got out all Carmen's dress-ups and we had at least two Cinderellas and one each of Belle, Ariel, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. They even had some cute light-up Cinderella glass slippers -- M-Moo commandeered these and would not let them go!

After about an hour of running around playing princess and eating some pizza, who should arrive but Cinderella herself! Oh my goodness! All the girls' eyes just lit up. Cinderella sang all the princess songs with the girls (and what a nice voice Cinderella has!). She played some really cute games with the girls. Then she put sparkles on their cheeks and blue eye shadow on their eyes. She read them her story and then took a giant group picture with them all.

The girls had a really great time, and Miss-D especially cannot stop talking about how she wants princess dressups. Mind you, the girls in this house have just about every dressup you could imagine, except of course for the pre-made Cinderella, Ariel, Belle, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty.

*sigh*

Bathrobes

G'ma Libby has been faithfully endeavoring to cut out and stitch together the bathrobes that I planned to make for the girls for Christmas. The pattern I chose is here.



I ordered this beautiful pink minky fleece for the contrast. And I ordered some pretty pink and brown polka-dot fabric for Miss D, some ballerina fabric for M-Moo, and some pink stripedy fabric for K-Wiggles (have I ever mentioned that K-Wiggles is absolutely ape over stripes?).

My plan was to spend some quiet evenings leading up to Christmas sewing new bathrobes for the girls.

Needless to say, that didn't happen. The idea of sitting down to sew at the end of a long day with the girls just had me completely overwhelmed, so I never even started.

Thankfully, my mother, G'ma Libby, is a much more talented and efficient seamstress than I. She finished Miss D's bathrobe in under 3 hours total. And the other two were finished in less time than that. I kept her company, sort of, while she made the first one. I wasn't much help, but at least she had someone to talk to and someone to strugle over turning the belt-loops right side out.

Anyway, the finished products are absolutely so stinking adorable I can't stand it. And I have a bunch of all the fabrics left over to do something fun with (no ideas yet what I'll do...).

I took a picture of Miss-D in her new robe, but I'll wait until I have pictures of all three before I post them.

Merry Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas here at Casa Llamedos.

On Christmas Eve, we hung the stockings (which Grandma Libby made for the girls) by the chimney and put out gingerbread cookies and lettuce for Santa and his reindeer.


By 8:00 p.m., the kids were in bed, and of course the grownups spent time helping Santa.

Thankfully, all the little ones slept in until 7:00 a.m.!



K-Wiggles was the first one up. Strangely, I found her at the bottom of the stairs, eating cereals and drinking water. I encouraged her to come upstairs and see if Santa had come...

She was pretty excited to realize that he'd been here.

Though she was pretty worried about the fact that the cookies and lettuce were gone.



Miss-D was the next one up, and the look on her face pretty much says it all!


M-Moo slept in and joined us mid-way through the stocking opening. She was feeling much better than the two days previous.


G'pa Larry had the biggest stocking of everyone!



All the girls enjoyed playing with M-Moo's castle.


Of course, we made a disaster zone out of the living room!



M-Moo was a little overwhelmed.



G'pa Larry was definitely overwhelmed!



While everyone was napping (well, almost everyone!), Miss-D used some of her new art supplies to paint K-Wiggles face.



Merry Christmas to everyone!

This is what a sick M-Moo looks like.

Yesterday afternoon, M-Moo got a pillow down off the couch, lay her body down on the floor, and promptly fell asleep. Now understand, most days, M-Moo goes through this routine, only she lies on the floor for about 5 nanoseconds and then she's done. She gets back up and plays just like every other normal kid.

Only yesterday, she slept for about an hour on the floor, and then woke up with a raging fever.


After our home thermometer showed a fever of 102.7, I decided to take her in to the doctor, just to rule out anything serious before Christmas.


Thankfully, the doc says no pneumonia (I forgot to tell you about the hideously nasty, seriously scary cough -- but M-Moo always gets a cough like that) and the rapid-strep came back negative. Ears look mostly good, so we're just going to treat with Tylenol and Motrin to keep the fever under control, push fluids, use lots of vaporizers, Vicks on the bottom of her feet (yep, it works wonders for coughs), and hope she's better by tomorrow.

Sadly, she woke up from a nap today with a 104.0 fever, but it came down with Tylenol and Motrin, so AskDrSears.com says not to worry yet.

The Ramshackle Gingerbread House

Is this not the most dilapidated gingerbread house you've ever seen? I thought so!

Grandma Libby and the girls constructed and decorated the gingerbread house yesterday. It was a lot of fun, but the new pattern we used needs a little work (we've made notes on the pattern for next year!). Also, the frosting we used this year left a little to be desired!


Grandma and Denali worked hard!


Everyone sat on the counter so they'd each have good access.



The house looked a little wobbly at times... but it held steady.



Even Mama got in on the action (yep, that's the back of my head there on the left). Thank you Grandma for wielding the camera for a few minutes!



Candies were placed with the most delicate care!


I think M-Moo had a little too much frosting, though!

Anna Wilson

We took Grandma to see Anna Wilson last night for her birthday. It was a holiday concert, with all original material from Anna Wilson's new album, Yule Swing. I wish I could figure out how to capture the music from her site and play it here, but for now you'll just have to go to her website and listen to the clips from the album. The songs were really great, especially "Wish" and "A House, A Home," which has been adopted by Habitat for Humanity as their theme song.




After the concert, we headed to Chimayo for dinner. After appetizers of mussels, a soup sampler (pumpkin, tortilla, and chowder), and ceviche, we enjoyed four fabulous entrees: sea bass, salmon, kobe beef/shrimp, and rack of lamb. Everything was cooked exquisitely! We were way too stuffed for dessert, but the waitress brought us four italian wedding cookies with a candle in the middle, so we could sing "Happy Birthday!" I think Grandma had a good time.

Hanukkah.

We celebrated Hanukkah at our house on Sunday night. Daddy-J grew up jewish, and although Mama-V and Daddy-J are both atheists and the kids are too little to know what they want to believe, we try to bring some of their family's heritage to their lives.

Anyway, Sunday night was the first night of Hanukkah. Mama-V made a brisket and latkes (Daddy-J helped with those) and a yummy almond cake.


After dinner, we lit the menorah and the kids got to look for hidden gelt.











Then they each opened a gift...









We all really enjoyed the evening. And I think the kids learned a little bit about Hanukkah (besides what they'd already learned at school).

A visitor.

Mama Moose came to visit us yesterday. She came ambling up the draw, right to the side of the house where the water and salt licks are. I stood outside along the garage and took a bunch of shots. She could hear my shutter clicking, 'cuz her ear kept flicking my direction. She was really beautiful!

Gingerbread

G'ma Libby and the girls made gingerbread yesterday. They spent the morning making the dough and then let it chill while they made shortbread. Then in the late afternoon they cut out the pieces for a gingerbread house. With the leftover dough, they made gingerbread cookies and gingerbread ornaments for the tree.



They pressed the cookie cutters into the dough very carefully.


Yes, that's K-Wiggles, sitting on the counter. It's really the best place for her!



M-Moo especially loved pressing the cookie cutters... just look at her fingers!


I just loved this shot of all the hands in the dough!

The girls got a bit silly after a while!

Everyone had a great time! They were quite exhausted.

I'm sure we'll have more photos tomorrow, as they're busy assembling and decorating the gingerbread house as I type.