Merry Christmas!

A 'Big Girl' Week

Big Girl, Lucy, got her ears pierced this week!  I have been thinking about this for a while, but I wanted to wait until Lucy asked to make sure that she was really up for it.  About 6 months ago her friends told her that they got theirs done and it HURT.  After that Lucy didn't mention it for a few months.  However, now she was sure she wanted to do it, so we talked about it some more and watched a video about how to take care of them and even watched a few 'youtube' videos of other little girls getting theirs done.  Then we made the big trip to the store to get it done.  Thankfully, they had two people working so they could do both ears at the same time.  It did hurt and it took a few minutes for the tears to stop trickling,

Here she is after she got them done.  She said it hurt, but she was still glad she did it.

Here she is the next morning!

 She wanted to wear all of her hair pulled back so everyone could see the new earrings.

Big Girl, Ellen, gave up her pacifier this week!  Yay!  She finally found something that was worth trading it for:

O Christmas Tree

For a third year, we went to Hampton Hills Tree Farm to cut down a Christmas Tree.  This year, we found our tree pretty quickly and Jer and the girls got right to work.

Lucy and Bella carried the tree to the car by themselves!

 Ellen and Elizabeth pretended to help.

 Then the Carters found their perfect tree and Ted got to work.

 The ladies sent it over.

 The girls recruited Lucille to help this time.

Jer recruited a little help to tie our tree to the car.

 Then got another helper.

 And then the shenanigans really started.

 Hans and Ellen are pretty good behind the wheel.

We finished our tree hunt with a horse drawn sleigh ride.  Um, I mean, a mule drawn wagon ride?

The kids didn't seem to mind.

The whole gang was happy.  What a fun day!



I'm A Big Kid Now

We have had a major shift in the Kobie household.  Up until a few weeks ago, if you asked Ellen if she was a big girl, she would say.  'No, I baby.'  Now she says quite frequently: 'I big girl!'  I don't know how it happened, but it did.  Sniff, Sniff.

Since we are trying to embrace the 'big girl' mentality, we got her a Big Girl Bed!

She is such a little peanut that you can barely see her in the second picture. 

I'm trying to love this picture.  It is a real representation of how we are at bed time.  Of Course, I had the beds made and the toys put away.   I even vacuumed, since I knew we would be taking pictures of the big girl bed.  But then, life got in the way and by the time I got back to take the picture, our real life ended up on camera.  The toys are strewn about, blankets are all over and both of my children are in their natural state, which is 'au natural'.

So, this is really the best picture for the blog, right?  It is us, how we really are.  My two silly, energetic, big girls.    

Halloween Festivities

The girls got to wear their costumes a few times this year.  We started last weekend at a friends party.  Although the kids were playing like crazy people, so the only pictures I got were when they were eating.  Here are the 'Light Up Fairy and Minnie Mouse'.

We also had a special guest that weekend.  Our friends Hannah & Chris let us keep their little monkey, Cooper, for the weekend while they went up north.  It was so fun to have him!

Lucy had to have a fairy action shot

 The girls and I also made a haunted gingerbread house this year.  I helped put it together and they did all of the decorating.  Pretty scary!

 I think they might have sampled some of the black frosting while I was getting the camera. . .

 A few days later, it was on to pumpkin carving.

 Lucy did her own carving this year.

 Ellen had a little help.

We're not done yet!  We got to go to the MN zoo for trick-or-treating on Saturday afternoon. 

We even had a special guest with us!

 AAAaahhh!  A Moose!

 Then, on Halloween, they got dressed up one more time for Trick-or-Treating in our Neighborhood.  I get just as excited as the girls to see the awesome decorations that our neighbors come up with!

Here we are before heading out.

 Grandma & Papa came to see the girls too.  Grandma stayed behind to hand out candy so both Mommy & Daddy could go with the girls.  That black eye didn't even scare the other kids away.

Here are Jer and Papa taking the girls up to one of the houses.

Tired little girls can still dump out their candy to see how much they got!



Now, I have to run to go get more decorations for next year!

Fall Fun

This year we took the kids to a huge corn maze.  Ellen, Emma, Natalie & Lucy ran through the maze and kept track of all of the check points on their maps.

Lucy got to bring Brown Bear home from school that weekend.  He came to the maze with us.

Lucy also braved the giant slide.

So did Natalie.

And even Emma!

The maze was shaped like stars and planets this year.  The girs pretended they were astronauts.

A few weeks later, four of us crazy moms thought it would be fun to spend a few days at a water park resort in the Dells with 9 of our children.  Here are 8 of them on their way to swim.

Here they are at the end of the day before bed time.  They actually did sleep pretty well.

Here is Katie with Ellen & Emma, then the big girls racing down after them!

We are always up to something fun.  We are so blessed to have such good friends to share it all with!