Christmas Eve

It was just usand it was nice. We made some Chili and cornbread. and Swisher the elf dropped off some PJ's and electric blankets! while we were making gingerbread housesThere is Rowdy's

Here is Cody's
I love Cody.

and powdered donuts and Jesus. (not in that order)

I love Christmas.
It was noticeably different to see Rowdy this Christmas though. Caught up in the magic of it. I hope we drove home the reality of it.

Elliot KAYS Bowler

Here is where the Kays came from..

Kathleen

and Kitsy

What a lucky girl
(and a lucky Mom and Dad)

ch ch changes

There is a mountain of backlogged stuff to blog about. But I have a second. and I was just in awe once again at how fast these little peas grow up. Elliot is getting so big already! She is so cute I just want to squeeze her all the time!and so do Rowdy and Ezra. and actually pretty much anyone that meets her. She is starting to wake up more and more and you can see her little wheels starting to turn. We have been getting smiles out of her here and there. (And thats the best!)

Ezra likes to hold her now for a little but then he will push her away and say, "done!" yet another I would squeeze all day if I could. I am just trying to hang onto every moment. I can already see them grown. Aww. Speaking of, Today was Rowdy's first day in primary as a sunbeam. He was so handsome in his little suitcoat with his Dad's scriptures. He was so cute and so little! I had myself a moment.

tear. tear. what sweet children. Thanks HF

Some of December

Livee bought Elliot her first Christmas hat!
The Carmacks are awesome neighbors and babysitters ;)

see!

visions of sugarplums

He didn't learn that on his own

a nice game of Quelf with the nieces.
You had to put a target anywhere on your person and if you caught anyone loking at it they had to move back 2 spaces

My great helper

Can you believe this little girl was in my belly?!

Christmas baking... usually before dinner

Decorating the tree

Christmas Totem

Bedtime stories.
We would unwrap a Christmas book every night

Ezra's superglued thumb,

which by the way, w/o insurance cost was..$624.74!

Good thing we got that figured out.
Yay! for the Christmas Season.

housekeeping

Elliot and Ezra had Dr. Appointments today.
I felt so efficient.
Then I went to go do the copay stuff and the lady's like Uhh.. Your insurance has been cancelled! anyway someone made a mistake. Its in the midst of being taken care of but.. wow!
So... Elliot weighs 10.14 and I already forgot how tall she is. All I know is she is cute.
We were looking at blogs past and saw that Ezra at his month checkup was already 11.4
It is so crazy to be on diaper changing duty and have them be laying down side by side. They were both champs for their immunizations. We gave Ezra a sucker before the shot and he literally just said, "Oww!" then kept on suckin'.
And poor little Elliot has a cold that manifested itself today. With mini baby boogies and sneezes and the runny eyes :( few things are more heart wrenching than a newborn with a cold.
And another sad../ funny story. The boys, especially Rowdy, have been a little needy for attention the past couple days. I guess the honeymoon is over. And timeouts in general are starting to loose their effectiveness. One of our peeves over here is sticking the finger in the nose and then in the mouth, and that honestly in the long run is not so bad, but right after we talk to him Rowdy is being outright defiant and in our face about it. So Cody sat him on the counter last night right after he did it and dipped each of his fingers in hot sauce. Oh my sad funny! Rowdy is mortified of hot sauce because a couple of the Bowler cousins are punished with hot sauce. He has never even had any or seen anyone be traumatized by it. Its just been mentioned here or there by a Bowler, but He was sooooo upset to have it on his fingers. He was paralyzed with fear, hands out and big crocodile tears crying screaming, "Please! Please! I don't want hot sauce on my fingers!" ohh. the please please part was really heart wrenching and funny sad.
And, I have not had to put the kids to bed all by myself yet. Cody has been home in the evenings, but I am finding myself feeling victorious when they are all asleep. Whew! The evenings seem to be insane. I am nervous to try it on my own.
Oh and to add to the chaos. Like 2 days ago Ezra, out of nowhere, discovered he likes to climb up onto chairs. Our kitchen ones are really light and sketchy for Ezra to stand up on. So even when we tip them over he just tips them right back up again! and he's not the best at getting down. He's had a fat lip the past couple nights in a row. Oh and last week we got our Christmas tree and Rowdy was cutting the twine off with the kitchen scissors and Ezra just walks right over and grabs them. He sliced his thumb open pretty good. He had to get it glued shut. Cody and Lynda took him to the ER while I stayed home and ate a half pound of M&M's because I was so nervous about whether he would need stitches or not.
Things are good though. We have no complaints. Its yet another one of those times I can feel the prayers of our mothers helping to buoy us up. These are exciting times and I want to do better at recording them so I will never forget what fun these little munchkins are.

Merry Christmas and the Runner ups

and here were our other options :)

hee hee.

A friend of our checked to see if I was wanting to babysit and I told her I really didn't know if I could handle my own three kids on my own yet because Cody had been home or company had been over so I better not, just because I didn't know what I would be in for. and not 10 minutes later I was cracking up because I was alone with all my 3 kids and they were all crying or jumping on each other and it was too funny. I had to pat myself on the back for my intuition.

Lynda thanks for capturing our real life :) and Letti the kid picture came out so cool.

Happy One Monther Elliot

What a good baby.
She is uber patient
cuddly, cute
and a good sleeper.
Can't remember life without her.
We love you sweet Girl.

Guess who came?!

Nan Pops and The Byrds surprised us on Sunday! (as in 11/28/2010)
They just hopped in their car and came out!
Aww, It was such an awesome surprise. It was so cool for us to get to introduce them to Elliot.The boys played plenty of golf, the girls did plenty of shopping. We had some great play time and we all ate our hearts out. It was a super fun week. Degan and Kodi Lynn came up from Round Rock so it was super cool to have all the little boys together.

The fab five as it were.

and the terrible twosome.

J/K that was D's mess. and I can't really talk because a couple weeks later I spilled a whole box of Trix and had Ezra and Rowdy help me clean it up

Yay for Letti's pics! She is so good

and Yay for Letti the baby whisperer.
She always makes us feel so loved

Thanks for the fun surprise Bowler/Byrds. We love your guts

The Golf Course in Round Rock

We followed the Byrds and Nan and Pops down to Bobby and Tiffany's house at the end of their week here in Texas. It was good fun hanging out and playing on the golf course behind Bobby and Tiff's house. Cole busted out his pro-minis and the kids tried to hit. Rowdy was mostly just wanting to do his thang and didn't want help. Ezra and Paisley were loving the sand. and the big Boys were out looking for golf balls. Letti had Elliot and it felt so good to run around and rough house with he little boys.

After this we went to Genghis Grill, a Mongolian BBQ, and Cody and I pretty much decided we won't be eating out for a while. (and one kid was even asleep the whole time!)

Thanksgiving Week

The kids with Dad. The kids with Yaya

My mom flew in on Nov 20th because Elliot's original due date was November 22nd. So anyway Elliot had been here for a week already and we were all getting used to each other. Elliot has been such a good sleeper from the start. Which just blows my mind because that sort of thing only happens to other people. So we were all feeling pretty good. We had been well taken care of by our siblings and our friends the week before. It was such a nice relaxing week. We just hung out around the house, recuperated, played and cooked and dabbled in a few more nesting projects.
Cody had cut some windows in a big ole' box for the kids to play in and color on. and it was only a moderate hit until my Mom started playing the three little pigs with the boys. Then it was AWEsome! We had hours of good fun with that box.

Here is the boys room before

and here is my mom in front of a green screen about to report on the weather or something

The other color is a really light blue so we put the kids prints in the corner

Fun!
Hopefully we will get some tie the room together pieces up soon.

I love this little polar bear.
and as a side note Elliot had a big chubby swollen face when she was born and after two days she had a skinny minnie face. She looks a lot like Rowdy when he was a wee baby.

The weather was pretty nice while my Mom was here she treated the boys to Mr. Frostee our ice cream man.

Ezra ate until he was too tired to eat anymore

Yaya did a ton of fun baking projects with the kids. My personal favorite was the gingerbread men they made and then we told Rowdy one ran away and he ended up finding him at the park down the street where we gobbled him and his friends up.

We spent had Thanksgiving dinner at Tad and Amelia's house. It was a really nice day. And there was obviously much to be Thankful for.

New babies are a good excuse to slow down. It was nice for me to actually have the boys on my lap too. I felt really good. Except you know when you lay on your tummy for the first time or something like that and it just feels odd and squishy like all your organs are remembering where to go.

It was such a nice Thanksgiving week. and Having friends and family around to celebrate Elliot's birth was a great reminder of all we have been blessed with.

Here are more pictures of Thanksgiving week

Cody and I came over for Thanksgiving dinner at Tad and Amelia's in our wetsuits. To grace their new pool with our presence. good thing there was no water in. It was cooooold outside.


Horses down the block