Arya

Zoie found a great way to entertain Arya -- pull her by her feet around the kitchen and the living room. Both girls had a GREAT time.
Arya loves to hear "Bath time" and see the water run.

And believe it or not, she sometimes is mad.

SNOW!!!

As I slept in bed, I soon heard my 2 kids come in . . "Mom, look outside. It is snowing" Yeah! They were so excited to go outside and play. It was an ordeal to get 2 kids dressed for the snow. It will be a challenge with 3 next year. Vance totally understands the concepts of snow and snowballs, as you can see in the first picture. After Zoie was done in the snow, I pulled Vance around the yard in the wagon and we played together.

Nutcraker Performance -- Sat. night

Saturday night both my mom and I helped backstage with the Nutcraker performance.

Here is Zoie's friend Victoria. As soon as she arrived in the dressing room, Zoie says "Victoria, do you want to play with me?"
All the "children".

Silly faces.

Zoie sits patiently on the stage with the "parents" dance.

A proud gramma.

Nutcraker Performance 12/11

Nutcraker Performance -- Dress Rehearsal 12/11

I apologize for these not being order. Here is a variety of pictures taken on Friday, December 11 at the Nutcraker Rehearsal. Zoie was a child in the Act I of the show.

Backstage snack -- cookies!

Hanging out backstage in the dressing room.

Wake up Zoie -- it is 6:30am and it is time to eat breakfast and get ready for rehearsal and a show.

Fake Hair!

Zoie's Gingerbread Person Project

Zoie's family homework was to decorate the plain gingerbread person. Here is what we made.

Trying to Decorate with 3 kids

I did not think this one through first . . . we brought in the tree and the holiday decorations up from the basement. As soon as the boxes were open, Zoie have everything out and kept asking "Can I put this here? And there?" Ugh! I didn't even know what was in the boxes. Vance was not interested till I started to decorate the tree. They were taking ornaments out of the boxes faster than I could look up. Like a typical kid tree, there are many ornaments clumped together. Oh well. I just hope Arya doesn't grab for them or we will have to move some.

About Santa -- Zoie told me tonight that we will have to remove the glass panel from our new fireplace cause Santa won't be able to get through. And that we will need to turn off the fire. I said, "Can't he just use the front door?" "I will write him a note". Ha ha!

Vance and Zoie -- 2 peas in a pod

Zoie and Vance are glued together. As soon as she gets off the bus, "Where's Vance?" If he can not find her, even if she is in the other room, he'll ask "Wear Wooie?" She has to outdo him. They play together till they get mad at each. But they will step away and within a minute or 2, they are playing something else together. I love them so much. I hope they make room for Arya to join their playtime.

A new house ?

No we are not moving. But here are some pictures of our new gas insert and the spectic escapade.

Instant fire is great. I just need to paint the rest of the brick that used to be covered by a panel.

Dismantling the swing set.

Keep digging.

This is the last step of the project -- covering the 46' by 10' hole in my yard taken from the bathroom window since it was raining and winding.

Arya

I was try to photograph Arya in this shirt. It says "Property of Mom" followed by a 3 on the right. It's funny since she is #3. Of course, it was Vance's shirt.

If you look closely, you can see the deep blue in both of their eyes.

What else now?

After about 2 weeks of Vance and Zoie being sick, Arya has gotten a bug. Besides the flu, she also has a top tooth trying to pop through.

Since June, we have been dealing with the kid who stole our money to do the roof. He is in jail and has a trial date in December. We will see what happens with that.

On Friday, we got a beautiful new gas insert in our living room, replacing an old wood stove that we may have used once in the past 10 years.

Then, we had the septic guy come to pump our septic tank since it was backing up. Well, it was not that easy. And I am glad Ty was home too. First, the company shows up and the probing and beep out back to find the septic tank. Low and behold, it is UNDER the wooden swing set. So Ty comes in and gets the saws-all. Apart comes the swing set and the 2 workers help Ty lift up the heavy swing set. Then they dig. And dig. And dig. Two giant holes in the yard. So I open the window to try to listen to the conversation.

I hear . . . "If I pump this, then I will have to report it to the health department." WHAT!!!!!!

At first glance, it does not appear the previous owners ever replaced the tank as agreed prior to the sale. But they did. It was illegally installed, then a permit was applied for and issued.

Once Ty went into down to deal with the county about our issues, we found out some more. The location of the drain field is under our circular driveway that we have been driving on for 18 years. Not good at all!

Conclusion: We need a new drain field, which is 10' by 46'. That is a huge hole that needs to be dug in our yard. Once we have the money, hopefully the monstorous project can begin. Until then, we are on a limited water supply (kinda like being in Mexico). No laundry. Limited shower/bath use. (Kids and I have been showering at my mom's). No dishwasher. Converse toilet flushing.

Ugh. . . what else could go wrong?