All 4 Front Teeth Gone!!

Due to what Doug calls a "New Years Day Debacle", Gabriel is now missing all four of his front teeth. Are you wondering why the weird name for this next milestone in our son's life?

Well, let's back up a couple days to 12-30-08. Gabe has lost his two bottom teeth, and the two top teeth are getting really wiggly. I was out grocery shopping so we would have food for our visitors. I called Doug at one point to ask about chili sauce and beans. (We were having chili and Doug is the chili maker. I couldn't understand what I had written down about how many cans of which to get.) So, I here Gabe wailing in the background and asked Doug what happened. He didn't know, because Gabe had just started the hysterics. I let him go to investigate and told him to call me back. Well, he finally got part of the story from Gabriel and Anna. Apparently one of Anna's beanie babies made its way into Gabe's mouth. ??? Anna wanted it back, so she gave it a big yank. Out flew Samson and out flew one of Gabe's top teeth. It wasn't quite ready, so it hurt and it was bleeding a little. Hence the hysterics... I am a horrible mom, but I couldn't help laughing when Doug told me. How many times do we parents tell our kids not to do something and yet they still do?? This time it proved that mom was actually right!

So, now we still have one tooth on the top. But, it has tried to take over the entire spot of both teeth and it is hanging sideways because one side was really loose. So, he looked so funny, yet so cute going through this phase. Now, we are at New Year's Day. And you know from my previous post that my sister is here visiting. She is a nurse and her kids are older, so she has been through this already. Doug and I were looking at Gabe's tooth in the bathroom and she wanted to see also. Well, she took a tissue and just pulled it out. Gabriel was horrified and had a little waterworks. Apparently it was stuck just a bit, so it hurt a little. He told Aunt Wendy that it hurt and he was mad at her. Once again, I am holding back laughing at him, but I did hold it in because he was being so sincere about it. I think he likes sticking his tongue through the front "hole". So, he is missing all the 4 front baby teeth and he looks so different to me.

This past Wednesday Doug and Gabe went to get haircuts and Jack noticed that a bottom tooth was already started to poke through the gum. I looked yesterday and saw that both are starting to poke through. Gabe thinks that is just so silly!!

Now, about the picture of Anna. She wanted her teeth to fall out also. She kept telling us that her teeth were loose and made us check them to see if they were ready. So, I decided to humor her and take her picture each time we took Gabe's.

Happy New Year!

This year the kids got to stay up all the way until midnight!! After church we had a "game night" in the fellowship hall. We were pleasantly surprise with the amount of people that stayed to play games with each other. We got home from that a little after 11p, so we decided to see if the kids would make it until midnight. Along with the excitement of getting to stay up late was the fact that my sister and her family were only about 2 hours away. They were coming to visit and celebrate Christmas and both Gabriel's and Anna's birthday.

Wendy and Jay made it to our house about 1am, but we were all asleep by then. The kids got to see the ball drop and make some noise, but then we were all off to bed. It was going to be a long couple of days with visitors, so we wanted to get some rest.

Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. We have been blessed by many since we have been in Slayton. We are all healthy also, so that is something to be quite thankful about. I wish it didn't feel like we were so busy some weeks, but from what others have told me, it will only get worse as the kids get older.

We have church service on Christmas Eve, but not Christmas Day. After church Christmas Eve we took some pictures of the kids all dressed up in front of the tree. (We didn't get any of Doug and I, but I figured we would do that and a whole family picture when my sister we here visiting. Well, they have come and gone and I still don't have those pictures this Christmas. Very frustrating to me. I am going to have to figure out the timer on the camera and see what happens.) They received a few gifts from friends at church, so we let them open a couple gifts tonight. They had a blast.

We let them stay up later than normal so they thought that was cool. Mainly it was because we wanted to sleep in the next morning. Well, we got to sleep in until about 8:00 so that was nice. We finally made it downstairs about 8:30 to start presents. (I guess the kids forgot or something. hahah) Since we didn't have church and we didn't have family and we didn't have anywhere to go, we took our time opening presents. It actually took us close to 3 hours to open presents. Not because we had that many, but because the kids wanted to open them up and play with them before they moved on to the next. So, we let them because we were in no rush. It was so nice to just be relaxed and spend time together.

We stayed in our PJs until about 2p and then decided it was time to go sledding. The temps had hit 21, so it was a heat wave. There was only one other family most of the time we were out there. It was so nice not to have so many people sledding down at the same time. We all had a blast!! There were a couple bumps in the snow towards the bottom, so that stung a bit for the old folks.

We finally headed home because we needed some hot chocolate and to warm up a bit. Then we snuggled on the couch with a movie and had a nice supper together. It was just a nice, relaxing, fun day and the kids even got a couple toys.

I forgot to mention the favorite toy of the day for the kids. It was a tie between their laptop computers (play ones, don't worry) and their dogs (play ones again, but they do bark and wag their tails.) Anna still carries hers around everywhere she goes. We have had to replace the batteries in both already....

Anna's Christmas Program - Dec 18, 2008

Please forgive me, but I have about a month's worth of fun to share with you. Hopefully I will have it all done between today and Thursday while the girls are at preschool.

Let's start out with Anna's Christmas Program at Preschool. She was an Angel in the program. (Pretty fitting for her huh??) Actually she did a good job singing, but had a little difficulty with the actions for the songs. She thought it was more fun to stick her arms in her angel costume and do the actions under the costume. But, she did look like she was having fun. She didn't even manage to bring her arms out of the costume when she got to ring the bells or use the wood sticks for "music." She did bring them out when it was time for the angels to say "Glory to God in the Highest."

After the program we had cupcakes to celebrate Jesus' Birthday.

She did look like a very cute angel, especially with her gold halo. She talked about being Mary...maybe next year. Now, she starts her Christmas vacation. She was off a long time and both her and Zoey were ready to start back to school! (Maybe I was also!!)