What a great day!!

I know, I suck at posting lately. We've all been sick lately, our house is a disaster because of the sick factor, laundry seems to be everywhere, we're trying to get stuff all finished up and ready for Christmas since we'll be packing up the car and headed to VA in a couple of days, and then there's the lovely all day morning sickness that I have unless I'm constantly eating! Anyways, before we all got sick we made one batch of cookies and the boys helped decorate them. The problem with the rest of the cookies from this batch is that Jacob got sick the night we made them. I know what you're thinking and it wasn't the cookies that made him sick!! I swear it was a stomach bug since we all ended up getting it a few days later. However, since he breathed all over the cookies I'm thinking about just tossing them! Regardless, they turned out cute:

So, obviously Jacob wasn't allowed to use the jar of sprinkles anymore after this. Yes there was one of those shaker things on it but that doesn't stop little tiny sprinkles from pouring out!

This cookie actually had a lot of sprinkles on it (out of the one's Zach did). He put exactly 1 sprinkle on all of the others.

Tater Tot being Tater Tot. Cute.

Now, fast forward to today's fun! I had my first trimester screening scheduled for 8am this morning. Zach woke up feeling miserable so Daniel hung out with him while I headed to the hospital. This is the screening where they check for things like Down's syndrome, Trisomy 13 and Trisomy 18. All of my measurements looked good and now we're waiting for the bloodwork to come out to compare all of the numbers! Anyways, since it was an ultrasound we have MORE PICTURES!! I need to come up with a nickname for the little booger...we won't find out the sex until my next scheduled ultrasound (Feb 10th! my daddy's birthday!! wouldn't finding out he's having a granddaughter be an awesome birthday present??? fingers crossed. another boy would be fun too!)

 Little booger's profile.

 Another profile where you can see the belly too. 

Look closely and you can see one of baby's feet above the "y" in belly.

There's a hand right at baby's chin too!

Front view of the face on the left and you can see a left arm and hand too!

The boys were both so excited to see pictures of the little one. I'm going to try to take both boys (and Daniel of course!) to my next ultrasound. I think they'll love seeing the baby move! They are both loving this baby so much already.

Now, even more excitement!! Christmas came a few days early for the boys. We've been promising them bunk beds for a while now. My parents bought them bunk beds for their house and they love sleeping in them there...we figured this was as good of a time as any to get them for them. We went ahead and set them up for them today since we wouldn't be able to actually give them to them on Christmas day (well, I guess we could've hauled them to VA and back but yeah, that wasn't happening). Anyways, they love them.

I'm not sure whether they were more excited about actually getting the bunk beds or the fact that they could reach the pull string of the ceiling fan/light. We had a discussion about nobody touching them without permission. And yes, I know Zach's sheets are boring. He wants tractor sheets like his big brother so I'll have to see what I can find! I'm thinking of making each of them a quilt! (and yes, I also know that I need to fix the paint stripes in their room). 

Jake trying out Zach's bed!

Zach in his new bed! Of course he'd climb under the sheet to check it out but won't actually sleep under the sheet! He only likes his blankie!! I also had to put a white pillowcase on the pillow before he would sleep on it. My kids are weird like that. I tried to convince him it matched the sheets...he didn't care.

yes, that would be Jacob.

Jacob again in the box from one of their mattresses. He wanted us to cut a window in the box for him which wouldn't have been a problem if we hadn't been trying to put the bunk beds together. He went downstairs and got one of their butter knives (which is really just a rounded piece of metal with a plastic handle) and sawed away until he "carved" his box (much like his pumpkin that he did totally by himself for Halloween). He's really pretty stinkin' creative (& very determined!)!!

I had to include this one of Ringo too. Daniel sent Jake's old mattress down the steps and Ringo apparently thought it was a doggie trampoline. He kept jumping on and off of it...

should I mention that Jacob and Zach kept doing the same?

Dear Santa...

Jacob told me today "I want to write my letter to Santa. How do you spell 'Jacob wants a go-cart?'" I wasn't exactly sure how to respond to his request! Lucky for me, I was in the middle of addressing Christmas cards so I could honestly say "mom needs a minute to finish this up and then we'll talk."

When we saw Santa at the mall (yes, before Thanksgiving) the elves taking the pictures seemed to have camera issues ...so the boys got to talk to Santa for a LOOOONG time. Long enough that they had an entire conversation with Santa about all of us having go-carts. Santa was asking them if they had a garage to keep them all in so they stayed out of the weather and if they had enough room to ride them. I think the verdict was if we don't have enough...Granny and Pa have enough. Grandpa would then be able to work on them too. Regardless, I was thrilled when the camera started working again and the picture was taken so the go-cart talk could finally end!!

It might've ended there temporarily but it was brought back up today.. Jacob wrote his own letter to Santa entirely by himself. I told him how to spell the words but the rest was up to him! He's really getting good at writing his letters without needing any reminders.

He had the whole letter written by the time I was helping Zach with his...when he heard Zach say he wanted hotwheels he thought he needed to add it to his too!

He drew his picture on the back of his letter.

I love his hair.

Zach dictated his letter to me and I wrote it for him. Before we wrote it though he drew his picture on the paper so Santa would know who it was from.

Isn't it sweet that Jacob asked for 2 cups with twisty straws so he could make sure they both got them? Really, he just doesn't want Jacob to steal his.

We'll mail them to the North Pole tomorrow...and pray that Santa's sleigh is big enough for a family of go-carts. hahaha!! yeah, right!

Cecil County Christmas Parade...Russell Clark and Friends!

I got an email from a friend a couple of weeks ago asking if we wanted to march in the Christmas parade as our own little group. She was looking for ideas on what the kids could do or dress up as and Daniel (of course) had the brilliant idea for them to all drive their John Deere vehicles. Anyways, we decided that would be lots of fun for them and they were all really excited. I was worried it was going to be super cold so I had the boys all bundled up but it turned out to be quite nice outside! By the time we finished the parade and pulled over on the side to watch the rest we were able to take our heavy coats off!

Before the parade actually started...

Zach being silly with his reindeer antlers.

Jacob and Baby Brett (Russell's little brother) relaxing in the gator.

The boys being silly.

He thought the antlers were fantastic!

Santa's little helper...

We finally started moving!!!

The yellow line was our starting place so we had barely started moving!

Jake was very excited about being in the parade! He was supposed to drive the gator and Zach was going to drive the tractor but the tractor was malfunctioning....and would only work in 2nd gear (faster than I wanted Zach to drive for the entire parade). We figured Jacob would be better at stopping and restarting without running into the trailer in front of us! It took some convincing but he finally agreed to drive it!

And, we're off! Jacob, Russell, and Nathan took off at this point! Thank goodness Nathan's mom was paying attention and was right with them! (since I was too busy taking pictures...while walking in the parade!) Zach and Brett got a lot of attention!

Cute!

I think Brett was worried about the nut behind the wheel who was more interested in watching all the people than where he was going so he bailed on Zach! And I think it was about this time that Daniel let Zach switch into the higher gear to catch up!

This was me making Jacob wait for Zach to catch up....

And Zach took the lead! (Even if it was just for a few seconds!)

Our little group of Russell Clark and Friends....Russell was waaaaay in the background! He was so excited to wave to everyone that he didn't want to drive any faster!

We were at the end...so I figured I'd attempt to get a picture of my boys together. This was the best I could get!

such a sweetheart. 

watching the parade after we were done

The kids all had such a great time. After we were sitting and watching it for a few minutes Jacob said "I want to march in the parade a second time." I told him maybe next year! We were pretty close to the front of the parade so we got to see most of it. The grand finale was Santa and Mrs. Claus and they were all excited to see them! The kids even ended up coming in 2nd place in our category too! What a fun and exciting day!