Check, check, check

My three little critters all have fevers today. Before you feel sorry for me, if you were going to anyway, just know that they just have fevers, nothing is coming out of them in any way shape or form. I've wiped no noses, I haven't to clean sheets, clothing, carpet, or couches due to "spilling" and diapers have been normal. So my day is actually going great! (You can still feel bad for the kids though being sick is no fun) Happy slept in until 9am and then he went straight to the couch for some sick TV time. I bought ice water and dry cereal downstairs for everyone and hardly heard a peep all morning while I cleaned the  main floor.  For lunch I made them smoothies which they devoured while cuddled on the couch. Then it was off to bed for naps. I do have to mention that Pax was actually pretty bored most of the morning. With siblings not reacting to antagonizing behavior, he headed upstairs to see if he could harass Momma....and he did. 

I got a great amount of work done though. Dishwasher unloaded and loaded, dishes cleaned, two loads of clothes washed, clutter put away and floors vacuumed. What's great about the children being ill is that they aren't making messes right behind me while I'm cleaning. Another upside to this family illness is that it's the week before Christmas. All events are cancelled this week and we'll most likely be done with this by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest so (hopefully) no on will be sick on Christmas.

I have a detailed checklist for the week to make Christmas preparations simple since we are having 25 people for dinner Christmas night. Today I made the cranberry sauce and I'll make some sweets later. If I have time and energy after dinner Mr. Sloth has offered to help me make 20 pounds of mashed potatoes. (I don't think we'll eat twenty pounds of potatoes on Christmas but might as well make them since you can freeze them.) Last night Mr. Sloth and I got some wrapping done. He doesn't usually do the wrapping but he did manage to wrap two gifts, it took him 45 minutes but he did it! 

If I stick to my list and get the few things I have planned for each day done,  then we should actually have a pretty easy Christmas day. Christmas Eve dinner is already in the freezer. We're having pork pie (trust me it's way better than it sounds or looks) with salad and bread. And remember we are having our Jesse Tree "Tea" for lunch on Christmas Eve. Christmas day breakfast will be bagels with cream cheese and fruit. We'll snack most of the day in anticipation for a big dinner. If I do might job right on Saturday we should have deviled eggs to snack on Christmas day, yummy!

Advent

I thought I would fill you in on all the excitement of Advent in the Sloth home. First of all, even though this is the longest Advent it sure flew by for us, only one week left and so much to do. We bought our last real Christmas tree for a while the Second week of Advent. We plan to purchase an artificial tree (and a number of other Christmas decorations at the end of the season when everything is on super clearance. We usually decorate our tree purple until Gaudette Sunday, but my brothers family was going to be in town that weekend and I didn't forsee redecorating the tree in our plans. So I just decorated it right away. This year I wanted to do a gold/silver/white theme. I love how it turned out and the best part is, Pax hasn't touched it once, can you believe it? Just not like him. Mr. Sloth got into the spirit this year as well. He went out and bought three wreaths for outside our garage, one for our door, and a beautiful planter for our front stoop. Then he out did himself when we decorated our banister. In his words, with him, you either get the Grinch or Martha Stewart. Welcome Martha!



The few months I spent putting our new Jesse Tree together paid off. (I suspect that Mr. Sloth had his doubts it was worth the time and effort). It was a lot of cutting and gluing but it's done and we have a tree for years now. We've been pretty good at doing it everyday, although we switched from doing it at night during Rosary time to doing it during the day. For one, some nights just getting a decade of the Rosary in is hard enough let alone a Bible reading and fighting over who's turn it is to put the ornament on the tree. Secondly I moved the tree from our dining room to the homeschool room. Since we don't have a dining room table and that room is in it's own corner of the house we never walk through the room, but we walk through the homeschool room all day. I started reading the suggested corresponding Bible passages but it was getting a bit long for 5, 2, and 1 year olds. As it turns out, I read the fine print and we actually had the Children's Picture Bible that they suggested using. All the right stories are in there and they are pretty short and have a picture which the kids love.



Another thing I wanted to do with the Jesse Tree is to have a "Jesse Tree Tea" this year. It seemed like a lot of work so I tried to convince some friends to do it with me but no one seemed interested. With time running out I was starting to think it wouldn't happen this year but then it dawned on me we have no plans on Christmas Eve so we could do the Tea as a brunch that day and it would help celebrate the day and the end of the Jesse Tree as well keep the little from bursting at the seams. After going over the blogs that more than inspired the idea I realized that not every symbol is represented, just use what you can. That I can do. So here's my list.  

Adam- Apples with gummi worms for serpents
Noah- Animal crackers with deviled eggs for arks and rainbow goldfish for the rainbow
Abraham-....we'll see what I can find at the store,probably something "star" Isaac- bundle of pretzel sticks Jacob- ladder made of pretzel sticks
Joseph- colorful sprinkles in the shape of a coat on peanut butter bread
Burning bush-broccoli with cheese sauce on top
Moses-Milano cookies (and if time, with chocolate Roman Numerals..
Jonah-....if I can find whales
Root of Jesse-carrots
Davids Star- Star shaped cheese sandwiches
Bethlehem- "house of bread' loaf of bread...and we still get a free one from Panera this month how perfect. John the Baptist- honey which they can put on whatever or just eat
Angel-??
Mary- White flowers for the center of the table.

So it's really not so bad, and actually very little prep work. Our kids wont' drink tea or cider so we'll probably just have some sparkling juice as a treat. I'm sure you've guessed that those aren't our only plans for the week. We're not doing any school this week and most activities are cancelled so we should have enough time to get everything ready. Demand has been sick so we still have Christmas treats to make. If Mr. Sloth remembers to bring the gifts back from his office I have gifts to wrap. Demands Little Flowers group made fleece blankets for babies in need so ideally we'll be heading to our favorite LifeCare Center to drop off the blanket and some no longer needed baby stuff and maternity clothes. Demand and I haven't been back there to volunteer since Happy was born so it will be nice to get back there. We were planning on getting the last of our shopping done yesterday but with Demand sick we were forced to stay home all day. I'm sure a few trips to the store our in our future this week.

Here are the plans for Christmas day. First off,gifts. We wanted to keep it simple this year and not only cut back on the amount of gifts but only buy quality gifts that our kids will love not junk that I'll want to throw out in a month. The only toy that has batteries or makes sounds are the walkie talkies that I can't seem to find at the price I want so we'll see if those happen. I also tried to be more creative in the gifts we gave, not everything is a toy. I made a photo album for Happy of just pictures of him and I'm framing some pictures of Demand and her friends for her bedroom. Each of the kid is getting a pillow pet which they've been talking about for years....well not Pax, but he's still getting one. Demand is getting a pretty canopy for over her bed that I got for a dollar at a garage sale this summer as well as a pair of ice skates that I also bought at a garage sale for $5 brand new and in the box. Speaking of garage sale, for $5 I bought a giant tote full of boys action toys. Pirate ships, dinosaurs, soldiers, canons, things that shoot other things. It's insane! So the boys are both getting that toy. I'll just have a bunch of it out and set up Christmas morning. The kids are also getting felt boards (super clearance at Michael's this summer) and Happy is getting an inflatable bed for Traveling. Demand has had one for years and we love it! Pax was a little tricky as we have every baby toy we could want and quite honestly I don't want all we do have. So he's getting a pillow pet and the action figures as mentioned, as well as more wooden train tracks for Ikea train set and Wedgits. Wedgits are AWESOME!

I love the idea of getting the kids three gifts just as Jesus received from the Magi and once you add in the gifts from Mom and Dad, grandparents, godparents and eachother, it really adds up.

Speaking of gifts for each other, yes I'm going to keep writing. Here's the run down.

Demand: She bought Happy the "Nemo" book for the Tag pen (one of or favorite toys) and bought Pax a set of foam building blocks.

Happy: He bought Demand "Plum Pudding" for her Strawberry Shortcake collection which she has been wanting, and Pax a container of Dinosaurs.
Pax: He bought Happy a little "Mater" to go with his Lightening McQueen and Demand a four pack of "Hello, Kitty" puzzles which she already found under our bed, although she only thinks there are two puzzles. But she did want to make sure I didn't forget to wrap the puzzles and even requested the red sparkly wrapping paper.

Stocking stuffers. I thought long and hard about creative ideas that didn't involve stuffing the stockings full of candy and junk toys. We decided to give each of the kids their own pint of blueberries. They will love them!! And I don't care if they sit there and eat the whole container on Christmas morning. I'm also giving the older kids their own bottle of vitamins. They usually share a Trader Joe variety but I thought it would be a treat to have their own character bottles (Lighting McQueen and Tinker Bell). Each kid is also getting their own little rolling pin as I'm sick of them fighting over the one we have. And if I find them, Demand will be getting sticker earings. I will be giving them candy, don't fret, but I will give them an amount that I don't care if they eat it all in one day. Candy tends to stick around forever in this house. So that's our Advent rundown, I'll save the part where I have 25 people for dinner on Christmas night for my next post.

Another lovely aspect of this most wonderful home is that we finally have a proper place to hang our Christmas stockings. We really didn't have a places in our old home so we just taped them to the wall somewhere. All the stockings were made by "Mena" my mother except for Mr.Sloths. His was $1 clearance at Walmart and that's just the way he likes it. Mine of course was made.....a while ago, and Mena works on the stockings before each childs first Christmas. And, Mena, if you are reading. Happy cannot stop talking about his train stocking and how much he loves it.    ....Till next time!

Part Deux

Following up with my....follow up I left you at Halloween. Here are some pictures.

Buzzlightyear of course. I bought this for $5 at a garage sale this year (The only costume I bought)and thought it was perfect. Little did I know that he had his heart set on being a bat. I had no idea he even knew what Halloween was, but apparently he had plans. I actually panicked when he refused to try on his costume in the morning and I'm embarassed to say I tried to find a bat costume before I came to my senses and thought, "He's 2! He'll wear what I tell him to wear." And then I bribed him with candy. After that he Loved the costume. He even got a blinking clip on light which looked like a laser pretty cool!

And here is Pax. He is the third child to be an Elephant. Those old navy costumes are the best! Cute as a button and that kid loves costumes so he's really fun to watch.

Here are the kids trick-or-treating. Our new neighborhood is full of kids, it was so much fun that night to see a sea of children and parents out trick-or-treating. We went with two other families and our neighbors so our group along was about fifteen-people. The kids got so much candy they were dragging their bags but the end of an hour.

And here is Miss Demand. So I was actually willing to drop an embarassing amount of money to buy her a St. Therese costume but she informed me that she would make her own. I had my doubts but it turned out pretty cool. She wanted to be a ballerina-princess. I added the jacket and we decided that she was a Rockstar-ballerina-princess. (She has an obsession with rockstars)

And here is Pax in his after hours costume. It's acutallly just regular clothes but like I said he likes costumes so he leaves the hood up and looks like a little monster.
Ok, I need to go, a certain 2 year old is throwing a fit because I won't put batteries in a princess wand.

Catch Up

I've decided to come back. Sometime next week I'll explain why I left for a while. In the meantime I'll try and catch you up on life in the Whine Cellar.


At the beginning of September we went to the State Fair. Here are some pictures of that fun day. First one, Happy was collecting corn for the "Helping Hands" Farm exhibit for kids. They get to pretend to farmers. Next we got to meet Super Why! Don't we look excited? Worth the half hour wait in line? Next picture is all the kiddos in their strollers. Yep, it was actually cold when we go there that morning. And the last picture a nice family took their baby goat out to show us and we got to feed and pet the goat.







Then on Sept.12th, Pax celebrated his first birthday with a Jungle Party!


In his new (bought at garage sale) coupe.

First juice box. Isn't he just adorable???

His Jungle Cake.

His own personal lion cake.



Happily playing with some of his new toys. He's a very easy to please kinda kid, he's Pax!



Bloggers is having some issues now so stay tuned for more updates and pictures.....