Where Have I Been

I'm sure that most of you haven't noticed I've been lax in my posting, but I've been away for a while. No real reason, just trying to catch up. I keep telling myself that if I can get caught up then I can post things again. Well, catching up is not something that is happening anytime soon. But since I woke up this morning at 5:00 am and couldn't get back to sleep, here's an update post.

We are getting extremely excited about Christmas around here. Kendall and I are actually done shopping for all of the kids, and just have a couple of little things left to buy for other people. I am having a really hard time not giving the gifts to the kids now. In fact, a couple of nights ago we actually did let Mercedes play with one of her new toys and I've never seen her have so much fun! Her only quandary was the she didn't have enough hands to hold all of the blocks at the same time. So she would pick up two and then look at the others on the floor and back at her hands, like "what am I going to do?" I was having so much fun watching her! Here is a picture of the kids looking at the Toys R Us Big Book of Toys. We've gotten 2 of them and Avri carries hers around with her.We've actually been working with Avri because she says "I'm going to ask Santa for that" about pretty much everything. So I told her that if she asks for more than two things that Santa will think she is greedy. So she decided on a dollhouse and a wagon for her dollhouse. The second item keeps changing, but the dollhouse stays constant. (Hmm, I wonder what she will be getting...) Talmage still doesn't get the Santa thing, but he does get the present thing. His birthday is a week and a half away, so we already have all of his birthday stuff sitting out in a pile and he's excited about that. (I don't have any new good pics of him, but here he is falling asleep in his lunch.)Mercedes has gotten to be quite the little trouble maker. She scoots around now. When she's on her tummy she goes backwards and gets stuck in corners. When she is sitting up she bum scoots forward. But she hasn't figured out how to do it to intentionally get somewhere. Her other favorite past time is emptying the wipes. Here she is with a few of them, and Avri thought they would make a good hat for her. I'm obviously cleaning, hence the mess in the background.Avri and I continue to play with her hair. This one is her favorite because it looks like a flower. Not a perfect picture, but you get the idea!This is just my little sweety. I try not to have favorites, but on any given day I just might due to behavior on the older childrens' part. She has a small head for her age and this hat really shows it!! Although I think the hat was made for a child with a HUGE head.Mercedes LOVES her Daddy. She now says mamamama and dadadada and she seems to direct it to whichever parent she sees or wants. But you can tell that she plays favorites sometimes as well.

I have such a funny video to post, so I'll see if I can get it to work. If not, too bad for you. But it will have to come a little later since I'm leaving for Thanksgiving breakfast right now. I hope you all have (or had) a fantastic Thanksgiving!!