After Christmas Recovery

I love having my kids home during this Christmas Vacation. With that said, is it time for them to go back to school yet? Please say it is! It's been wonderful having the kids around and spending some extra fun time with them. We've had snow to play in, movies to watch, Christmas presents to enjoy and lots of baking to do during the first week. Now, my kids have had enough of each other and are on to the bickering. I think I will go insane before they head back to school. I have to admit, I'm glad I'm back to work this week ;) Does that make me horrible?

Christmas was really nice. Of course I was pretty depressed we couldn't make the trip to California like we had planned. But, Christmas turned into a really enjoyable time. Or course we did it in true Motsinger fashion and threw in a trip to the Emergency Room. Grace was running around the house and flew right into the wall and split her head open. After some rinsing, antiseptics and a few Barbie stickers, all was well again. We then went over to Mike's parents and enjoyed our tradition untraditional Christmas dinner with his brothers/sisters and there families. I have the best sister-in-laws who all pitched in to make a fantastic dinner feast! I have to say, it is fun to all work together and produce such a fun meal for this huge family. After Dinner, we read the Christmas Story, Maddie recited the passage Matthew 1:18-25 from memory, and then we opened up gifts.

Christmas morning we spent at home with the kids. Maddie and Reece had gone shopping, using there own birthday money and Awana bucks, to buy gifts for everyone. I'm so proud of these kids learning such great giving lessons at such a young age. They were so excited for everyone to open up the gifts they had gotten them. :) The kids were all extra happy to receive each gift.

So, that's my little run down of the holiday. It was fun spending the extra time with the kids. Mike took vacation and so did I, so the kids got a double dose of mom and dad time. These kids are growing so fast and time has been flying by since they started school. It was nice to take a week off and slow down to enjoy being with each other.

Merry Christmas

Our family would like to wish you and yours a wonderful Christmas celebrating our Lord's

birth.

Snow

The kid's school canceled today because of too much snow. The kids were pretty bummed because today was going to be a super huge Christmas party. I had baked double batches of No Bake Cookies and Muddy Buddies. Now, we have an overload of cookies at our house. I guess I'll have to do my part and eat then up. ;) They were also going to have a gift exchange and Reece was really jazzed to make a gingerbread house. But after a morning a moping around, they finally decided to go out and build a snow turtle and have a bit of a snowball fight. Unfortunately, we don't have any hills around our house to go sledding down. :(

The snow was really dry and hard to make a ball. So the girls decided a mound of snow would make a great turtle. They worked pretty hard on this little turtle. Reece decided it would be much more fun to try and ride the turtle. It didn't go over so well.

Rusty LOVES snow. It is hilarious to watch him. He puts his nose in the snow and then runs, throwing snow up into the air. Sooo funny. We also caught him just digging in it and rolling around. He has been enjoying his days outside and loving his nights curled up in his warm chair in the garage.

A little side note, in all the previous years of Gracie's life, she has HATED snow. This is the first year she will actually go out in it and not cry. All our previous videos of us in the snow has Grace in the background crying.

Low 20's and High Teens

Please explain to me why the other two school districts in my area canceled school but ours keeps everything as normal? It is freezing today, I'm not being dramatic either it is in the low 20's/high teens and leftover snow is on the ground. I know this isn't a big deal to some of you. You live in the snow for months at a time, but for us Oregon Coast people, this is quite out of our norm. Needless to say, I stayed up extra late last night watching for school closures waiting for ours to appear. It never did. Then this morning I set the alarm to go off on radio waking me up with the local news. You can imagine my dismay when it stated that our school was on normal schedule. What?! Not even a two hour delay??? Drats.
So, my little feet had to be put on the cold hardwood floors as I shuffled in the kids rooms to wake them up. I had turned off there alarms sure that our school would be canceling today.
Oh well, at least I got to cancel my own job today. No way I'm braving the freezing roads and black ice all the way up the coast. I figure if those schools are closing, then there is good reason to not send this California bred girl out on the road. I value my life more than what I would of got paid. ;)

Wicked

Turning 30 is not pleasant. In fact, it's downright horrible. Today is my birthday and I would rather not blog about it, because honestly, I'm trying not to think about it.

BUT, this day is turning into a fabulous one! I'm super super SUPER excited that the musical, "Wicked" is coming to Portland. Today, I'm buying tickets to see this fab show. I can't even tell you how excited I am that I FINALLY get to see this musical. What a wonderful night it will be when my girlfriends and I get to go. Ohhh, March just can't come soon enough!!! I guess there is an up side to turning 30!

Here is a little taste of one of the songs from the Tony Awards a few years back. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nP1wx3eSfI

Because You're Beautiful

"Mom, I'm staring at you because you are beautiful." Reece tells me.

Peanut M&M's

Last night we got one of those monstrous bags of Peanut M&M's. I was elated and could taste the peanut and chocolatey goodness already. My husband was in a stinker mood and decided to act as one too. I had placed the big bag of my favorite candy in the console between us. My husband decides to sucker punch the bag. I'm outraged that he would do such a thing!

"Don't break the nuts, Mister, or I will break your nuts." I say, then quickly add, "I will pick out all your M&M's and smash them." Nice cover, wasn't it?! My kids were none the wiser for my little jab. I was quite proud of myself really.

My husband takes another punch at the bag and I quickly swipe the bag away. I give him an exasperating sigh.

"Daddy is going to hurt when his nuts break." Grace says

How can you not laugh at such an innocent and very true statement.