Hunter did a great job in his little performance. That's him front and center in the striped shirt doing a little twirl. He told me where he was going to stand and that he had a dancing part. I about had a heart attack. If you don't remember his first day of school and what a freak out he is new situations, well, lets just say he doesn't do well. The last time he was on stage about six months ago for his child dedication at church, he cried for about an hour first and spent his time on stage trying to hit Ainsley.
I was a good mommy and just smiled and said, "that's great, Hunter!", when he told me. And much to my surprise he did great! This boy is growing up. He was so pleased with himself, that he found me in the crowd afterwards right away gave me a thumbs up as the song was ending. That's my boy.
Now our tree doesn't look half bad in the above picture (sorry for the blur...it was taken with my point and shoot). This was taken about a week before Christmas after the kids were in bed and the house was semi decently picked up.
And then there is the aftermath on Christmas day about one hour after opening presents. Oh help! They all had to open and play with their new toys right away including the big child who received Guitar Hero Rock Band and had to try out the new drums right away.
Now I realize that the reason for the season shouldn't be all this hectic hurry scurry. And for the most part, it wasn't. We did advent activities every night, we read the Christmas story many times, and sang lots of Christmas carols. We baked cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve, sent out cards, visited family and friends, and enjoyed the season thoroughly. It's just that for me, this is not the season to be posting idyllic posts of my decor. Every thing about my house and life during this season screams "I have two little kids!" There is kid crafts everywhere, sticky cookie hand prints, and clutter galore. I mean my kid's favorite piece of Christmas decorating is the veggie tales nativity set. Hardly the photo op. So this year, I enjoyed it through the eyes of my children, and didn't worry about having a perfect house. Sorry blog for the lack of pretty pictures!
I do have some new fresh ideas for shoes wandering around in my head, but those will have to wait because next week we are visiting Tone's family in Missouri. Life marches on!
And a vacation at Papaw's house always includes shooting BB guns off the front porch at cans on the pasture fence . What? Well, OK, the Stover kids grew up country and we like to be a little redneck, even if we appear very cultured now.
We drove straight from three days at Papaw's house to my Aunt's house here in Fresno for three more days of eating. My Uncle is an excellent cook, and makes sure we can only roll out the door by the time we go home. The menu included two turkeys (one smoked), AND a ham. Speaking of hams...these would be the sisters.
What can I say? A week with family included a whole lot more fun such as badmitton tournaments, a golf course set up in the horse pasture with manure standing in for sand traps, lively games at night, laughter, goofing off, many jokes, and making table decorations for my sister's upcoming wedding (yes, this was our one dignified thing we did). I am so thankful for my crazy, laughing, loving family. It's the spice of life don't you know?!
Then we walked out down to the Coast Guard pier where the sea lions love to hang out. That one trying to get up on the rocks was particularly loud and noisy.
Most sea lions ignored him however, and slept peacefully in the sun.
We were enjoying the outdoors too much to go home, so we headed out around the point to Asilomar beach where the tide pools are. Hunter and grandad are scouting out sea anemonies, star fish and hermit crabs.
I popped out very quickly with Ainsley too, but luckily I slowed down to normal size after about 4 months. Here is a picture of me a week before she is due and one hour before my scheduled c-section with her. See! Normal size. So I'm not too worried. I feel 
Luckily, Ainsley informed me she wanted to be a ladybug. Good something completely normal. Something you can buy at Walmart for $12. My kind of costume. 
Then we went to the pumpking patch for a birthday party. Actually, we had two birthday parties and a block party to go to on Halloween. I think we were home for all of one hour that day. It was pretty tiring to say the least. In fact, this next picture is at about 4:00 and napless Ainsley is starting to show a little attitude.
Pink fleece with a satin yoyo and pearls posy.
And lastly (my favorite for adults), a grey fleece cap with a cream felt flower.
She looks as cute as a button though and didn't mind putting her bare legs on that rock. The things I put my children through for a picture. I didn't have my super duper nice camera then, so this was as good as it got with a point and shoot. She was wiggly and it wasn't until after I took as many pictures as she would let me that I realized that I had cut off part of her head in the best photos. Oops! I've gotten better since then....but I digress.....
It probably didn't help that during my main "work" time when Hunter is at school and Ainsley is napping, I found this cheerful face asking to get out of bed. This happened a couple of different days this week where she never did actually nap and I ended up giving up after an hour or so. *Sigh* So much for sewing.
We did attend a fun halloween party. Somebody, somewhere took a picture of our whole outfit, but alas, it's not on our camera. Tone was the Dread Pirate Roberts and I was Princess Buttercup from the movie, "The Princess Bride". I had the full red dress on with boots, and Tone was in black from head to toe with black pants, a sash, and cuffed boots. We watched the movie a few times to make sure we got their outfits just "so". Call us nerds, but it was totally fun. I ended up having to sew mine because nowhere could I find a dress with a full red skirt. And yes, Tone nursed that stache a full two weeks so he could trim it just like Westley's. We did win best costume though. I believe we won because of the mustache.
And here he is now. This was taken at five years and two days old on his first school field trip to the pumpkin patch. Such a big boy. Actually at birth he wasn't that small either at 9lbs 15 oz. That's 10 pounds of baby folks! It made for some kissable cheeks though.
His pants never stay up and you can see all his bones, so I wonder where all that cute chub went? Oh well.
Can you read her shirt?
If you can't, I'll read it for you. It says, "I'm Going to be a Big Sister (but I'm still a little princess)."
You can see in the mirror that I even have some crows and pumpkins on the shelf on the other side of the room.
