5 Christmases!

We spent the afternoon of the 24th walking around downtown, from union station to the US Capitol Building to the US botanical Gardens...

The whole city is getting ready for President Obama's inauguration...Here you can see the massive stands being built for The Inauguration....

At the Botanical Gardens they had a replica of the National mall, with the Buildings and monuments made out of sticks and leaves! This is the Capitol Building...sorry for the poor phot quality, it was my camera phone!

We have lots of family, and lots of family means lots of christmases! 5 to be exact....

Christmas celebration started on Christmas eve at Dale's parents house...we had a soup bar, and lots of yummy desserts! The kids opened gifts and then Rudolph appeared in the back yard, so we had to jump in the car and get the kids to bed before Rudolph got to our house!

(see Rudolph's Shiney nose?!) (His antlers hit the window last year!)


Christmas morning we woke up and got the kids from their rooms (they had already been awake playing games in their rooms for awhile) and waited for the Christmas lights to turn on at 7:24 am before the kids ran down the stairs to see what santa had left!

After a wonderful morning with our little family, Dale's parents and siblings came over and we spent the day eating GREAT food and opening more gifts!

on Saturday, my siblings and their families came over (minus my little sister Sherry and family) ...we had another great day of good food (Chipotle bar) and opening MORE gifts! The weather was nice and the kids were able to play outside for awhile!

On the 28th Grandma Holder came over with Forreste and we opened MORE gifts and had a great time with them...

So tonight we will celebrate new years eve by staying at home, watching movies and eating MORE good food...(it will actually be of a healthy nature!) I truely love this time of year and am so thankful for my terrific family!

"Dear Santa...

I want a PIG for Christmas, so I can raise him and then I can eat him." said one of Greg's little classmates.

Here are the kids letter's to Santa, with their pictures underneath....


Dear Santa,

Please give me a real train, or a train I can ride on, but not in my room, because my room is messy. I want a big train to go around the Christmas tree because my mom is not letting me. Please give me real trains. Also a peice of coal (for his train set) and a firetruck and a Thomas train that goes by itself, and a real train that goes by itself. I want a helicopter that can go all around the train.

Love, Greg

Dear Santa,

I try to be good this year. Could you please get me a hockey stick like Ovechkins and an ice rink in my basement. A robot that does my homework because I don't like to do my homework. I also want cookies and a skate sharpener so I can sharpen my skates.

Love, David

Dear Santa,

I have been good this year. I hope you and your elves have a good year. Please give me ice skates and toys. Also a machine to do my homework.
Thank You,

Melissa


(Alex is aware that Dale and I are Santa's Helpers, so he gets right to the point)
Dear Santa,

1. Super smash brothers brawl video game
2. A castle with knights
3. A battleship that goes in the pool
4. A remote control airplane and helicopter

Santa Claus, I hope you and your elves can get this, or if I was bad give me coal.

From: Alex Kelley
to: Santa/mom and dad

Dear Santa,

I would like, (please):

*A wii game
*magic to make everyone friends at school
* a robot to do my homework
*basketball training
*a cell phone

I have been good this year, I have tried hard in school,

sincerely,

Shawn Kelley

(Since shawn is as tall as me, a full grown adult, he opted out of sitting on Santa's lap)

Dear Santa,

I want someone to clean my house for me

I would like the economy to pick up so no one else has to loose their job

I would like you to help President Obama with all the crazy decisions he will be facing

I would like not just world peace, but peace within our homes and families

Love,

Tammy

Gingerbread house Day/Crazy Hair day for Alex

David's crazy hair (he got real crazy and asked for it to look like Alex Ovechkins)

Alex

Melissa

Merry Christmas!!!

Cookies, cookies, EVERYWHERE!

I attended the 6th annual Keller/Diamond cookie party a few weeks ago. It is a fun and social event, but also are a great way to walk away with many different kinds of cookies without all the headache of baking them! You bake 6 dozen cookies (all the same kind), then you bring them to the party and we all trade! This year I was smart...I decided that this would FINALLY be the year that I would package the cookies up for all the teachers and bus drivers as Holiday gifts!! On the way home I decided to sample a few to make sure that they were "OK" to give as gifts...the ones I tried were great and passed inspection, but I couldn't be sure about the rest...10 cookies later, I was home. The kids followed suit, and just "tested a few"...within two days nothing but crumbs and a few sore tummies remained...so when cookie party invite #2 came, I accepted...I still needed teacher gifts...so I once again baked several dozen cookies...went and had a great time with friends...laughing and cutting up while the clock ticked away...Uh Oh! I gotta go!...I grabbed about 2 dozen cookies and took off...phew! just enough to give a few teachers some wonderful cookies...after sampling 5 cookies, (again, to make sure they were good enough to give as gifts) I arrived home. The next morning I sent the kids off to school, and had breakfast (two very large, wonderfully delicious, caramel brownie cookie bars from the party!) A cookie here and a cookie there, and cookies for dinner...I noticed very few left, asked the kids who ate them all..they said "you did mom!" ...guilty, I ate them all! so here I was tonight, the night before the last day of school before winter break, baking cookies for the teachers and the bus drivers (and a few for myself!)


(Alison and I at cookie party #1)(Photo courtesy of Donna Black Davis, can I swipe it off your blog ? )

Cookies that the teachers will actually see...(cross our fingers!)

Brag blog!

So I went to wake alex up this morning, and had noticed something in his room.

Yes, it is an Apache helicopter constructed out of duct tape and construction paper... I know you are probably thinking "poor Kelley kid's, they have so few toys that they have to resort to building their own!" ..I swear that this is not true, our kids have PLENTY of toys...For several years now, Alex has constructed EVERYTHING you can imagine out of tape and paper..it used to just be scotch tape and white paper, but this morning I see that he has moved on to new, better materials. Below is a baseball stadium I found folded up in a box...it was pretty elaborate, but I couldn't figure out how to unfold the stands and the dug outs and set them up properly...

A rifle with scope, built before the upgrade to duct tape and construction paper

My four older kids love art, and I have devoted my office to their art...here are two of Alex's latest additions..A pirate

A painting of a soldier, with tank in the background (it looks like the tank is aimed at the soldiers head, but it is in the background)

A trash bag full of old paper projects that Alex's mean mommy made him clean up, so he is "storing them" in this bag...I feel really bad, over the years we have thrown away lots and lots of his projects, but I just don't have the space for them all! (which tells you how many projects he makes!!!)


..this is Melissa's latest addition to her art wall....

ok, enough bragging for today...!

Our first snow, and sledding accident!

It snowed on Saturday! it wasn't much snow, but enough to make everything pretty (and I forgot to get pictures, of course!) Most of our yard has a lot of trees, so the snow stays longer than anywhere else. Last year we had snow for a full week longer than some of our neighbors because some of our property doesn't see the sun...On Sunday morning the kids decided to go sledding down the hill in the back of our property where a thin layer of snow still remained. Which is where Melissa sustained our first sledding injury for this sledding season.. ..this particular hill that the kids chose to sled down is very steep and was the scene of a very unfortunate accident for Dale last year....

After a pretty good snow storm, some sleet had fallen and made everything very icy...Dale was home with the kids (I forgot where I was) and he decided to go for a walk. There is a path along the back part of our property, but to get to it you have to walk down a steep hill...it is a clear path down the hill, with the exception of a small tree which has grown exactly in the middle of the path....as Dale and the four boys were making their way down the hill last year, they realized it was a sheet of ice and much too slippery to walk down, so they decided to slide down on their bottoms. Shawn and alex went down, and Dale decided to hold David in his left arm and Greg in his right...as he headed down the hill on his bottom holding tight to both boys, he realized he was headed straight for the tree! He quickly thought of his options, he realized that if he went left, then Greg would hit the tree, and if he went right then David would hit the tree...so his only option was to hit the tree straight on! not wanting to break a foot or a leg, he decided to brace for impact with the tree by spreading eagle!....holding the boys tight in each arm, legs spread apart, full impact occured between Dale and the tree!...I was not there, but I imagine that my children probably heard some sounds come out of their father's mouth that they had not heard before...!

as much as I love Dale, even I couldn't contain the laughter when hearing this story! Every time we head down the same hill for a walk, I have often started chuckling(aka laughing uncontrollably!) at the thought of that incident!

Imagine my great suprise when upon questioning Melissa after her sledding injury I learned that the kids had decided to sled down this very hill in which their father's unfortunate injury had occured! I have incredibly smart children, and when I inquired of them as to why they chose THAT hill, the answer was "Shawn wanted to do it" ...yes, Shawn, (who is almost a teenager!) had decided to sled down that hill....I made the statement to Shawn that he really should have learned from his father's experience not to sled down that hill...his response, "Everything was fine until Melissa got hurt." (mind you that was probably 5 minutes after they started sledding!)

We did have a good discussion about this incident, and I am hoping that the lesson has been learned, we do not sled down THAT hill...

The best picture of the hill I could get...(it really is much steeper than it looks)

gingerbread houses

December is full of so many fun traditions, one of which is making gingerbread houses...infortunately, this year we will not be able to join my family in our annual gingerbread making day, but some of the kids will be making them in school. Yesterday I went in to help David make his in school. They have been reading many gingerbread stories, and David has been talking non stop about gingerbread cookies! (he even asked santa for some)

In a word...

I loved when my toddlers were learning to talk and they would constantly mispronounce words...I used to adapt their way of saying something into my regular speech. For example, Greg said one year "we goin to the cunkin catch??" so every fall instead of going to the "pumpkin patch" we would go to the "cunkin catch" ! he used to say "we wide the crain?" so ever after I would say "you wike widing the crain?" Who knows how bad I delayed their speech by incorrectly pronouncing words when I spoke to them, but I had fun doing it. My youngest is now 5 and has caught on to the gig and gets angry when I mispronounce things. As they are learning to speak correctly, and I can no longer laugh at their mispronounced words, I have turned my attention to their writing. Every night I help with homework and check classwork that was done that day. The school doesn't focus much on spelling things correctly unless it is a writing assignment, so as long as the teacher can decifer what the student is saying, they leave spelling alone for the most part...it is so fun to see how my kids interpret what they hear.. this a sampling of answers that I had fun with yesterday...



Q: "I have no sides or corners, what am I?"
David: "crokol" (translation: circle)

so trying to stay serious I would hold up an item and say "David, is this a crokol or a square?"

Q: "These shapes are alike because...."

David: "taer bof ratagos" (translation = they're both rectangles)
(so I now pronounce "rectangle", "rat-tag-o")
Q: "these shapes are different because..."
David: "lis fat lis not fat" (translation = this one is flat, that one is not flat")
(just funny!)

He got all those answers correct, his teacher is a good translator!

Greg is learning sounds of letters and sings the alphbet song with words attached, "a: annie's apple, b: baby's bottle" etc etc...it's really amusing because he will mispronounce some of the words in the song, such as "M: my cacaroni,..p: purple kencil" ...it is very very cute...I have started to sing along, and just get quiet during the part he mispronounces...I think he is figuring it out, but I love it so much that I don't want to correct him! (I am sure the teachers would be more successful if they had a parent that helped them!)

I find a lot of humor in words everywhere. One of my favorite things is when I leave a comment on someones blog and I have to type a security word, I always make up definitions in my head of what the word could mean...for example, one time I got "skineia" , my made up definition was an adjective to describe someone who was extremly skinny,a synonym for "skin and bones", or another one was "pufeat". to me it would mean any failed attempt when trying to accomplish a feat...it was funny when paired with the visuals in my head... I also find humor in playing scrabble with Dale. It has become a game of who can bluff more successfully...we have come up with some pretty amusing made up words.. Last night Dale's amusing word was MYTE...(as in Dyno-myte!) ...myte is not a word, but it was to cute to challenge, so I didn't...I did have to challenge "ques" (we don't speak spanish!)

I gotta run so I can get some "trismas" shopping done and then we can start to put presents under the "trismas tree" !

My weapon of choice

the spray bottle! whoever invented the wonderful spray bottle is my hero and best friend to moms everywhere!

fill it with Murphy's oil soap and water and spray and mop wood floors in a jiffy...

fill it with windex and clean all windows, appliances and ceramic all day long!

spend a dollar on a concentrated bottle of spic and span (or my favorite FABULOSO) mix a cap full with water in the spray bottle and you can clean EVERYTHING for a year!

Make a bleach mix and sanitze everything!

Fill it with water and it can dewrinkle an entire load of clean laundry even after its been sitting for a week straight! It can fix a wayward hairstyle in 2 seconds flat! It can remove cemented oatmeal and day old syrup spills off the counter with ease!(just spray, let soak and wipe it up!) It can make ironing almost completely obsolete! It can get a dirty face clean in no time!

The possibilities are endless if you own a collection of spray bottles!

HodgePodge Barage!

(boring alert!)

Thanksgiving break is over, and to use the words of Shawn, "this has been a GREAT holiday!" We did so many things, that I decided to just write about them all in one random post ...I never remember my camera, so I have just a few random photos!

The kids started the break with half days, the first one Dale and I spent in parent teacher conferences...with four kids in one school it takes a few hours...the next day I took the kids ice skating. I have been taking them regularly so David can get some practice time for hockey, and because Mel;issa really wants to do figure skating and needs some practice..the other three just like skating. David has been moved up with the 1st and 2nd graders on his hockey team.

On wednesday, we moved my sister and her family out of their house...they didn't know where they were going yet, so the plan was to keep the stuff on the truck and stay with family over the holiday...Dale's mom and sister took the younger three kids for a sleepover Wednesday night, so we dropped off the older two at my brother's and decided to go to dinner and a movie...then we found out that my sister got a house, yeah!! so we went and moved her in! it didn't take that long, so we still managed to catch dinner and a movie..

We spent Thanksgiving Day with Dale's family. Cindy hosted at her house and we had a great time and the food was incredible! (Thank you Alison and Cindy and Wendy!) We played games and hung out, it was very nice!

Dale, Shawn and Alex went to the Wizards game that night. My neice Sydney and nephew Drew came over to our house for a sleepover.

Friday we put up our Christmas tree and all the Christmas decorations! I did manage to get a few pictures of that!

Melissa and Alex hanging decorations on the tree




Drew and Greg setting the train up under the tree....


Dale on the ladder trimming out the top of the tree....

I have such a good time each year looking at all the ornaments and taking in the little memories that each one represents...we have homemade ones from the kids, ones from mine and Dale's first Christmas together. We were so excited to decorate our house so we went and bought out a dollar store full of ornaments. I have gotten rid of most of them , but saved just enough to keep the memory of that first year! We have ornaments from when I was a teenager, we have photos of the kids on ornaments from Christmas' past. Each year we add more to the collection. Last year my foster mom gave me a little box of special ornaments from when I lived with her. She had made an ornament for me and my sister Theresa the first Christmas we lived with her. When my sister was younger we called her Tara, she hated that name, but my dad always called her that. My foster mom couldn't fit "Theresa" on the little ornament, so my foster mom just wrote "Tara". Last year when my foster mom gave this ornament back to me it not only represented the memories I have of my sister, but also of my father. Our tree is really big, and has so much space for so many special ornaments, and I placed this very special ornament on the tree at my eye level so I can enjoy the special memories that it represents...

On Friday night, Dale took David to a Capitals game and they had a great time. It was a great game and David has been all smiles about it since!

On Saturday, I took Shawn and Alex and played paintball with my 4 foster brothers as a last "hurrah" for my foster brother Brennen, who is leaving for his mission in a week. We had a blast and can't wait to go back!

On Sunday, we drove over to Delaware for the Davis family thanksgiving. we had a great time watching footballl and playing games. the kids LOVE being with all their cousins and friends...I am not sure how many people were there, but I would have to say at least 50...my family is a big crew when we all get together...once again I forgot to take pictures, so I will try and get some from my brother!

So there it is, a weeks worth of posts crammed into one!