Addie's Birthday

On the actual Birth-DAY Addie got to open some presents.

She was excited to get a "church bag" filled with things to do during church service. Now that she is a big 5-year-old, it's time to sit with Mom in "big church" (Dad sits at the sound booth in back).

She also got a new dress-up dress, a Toot & Puddle book, and

another book by Holly Hobbie (yes, like Holly Hobbie that I knew of as a little girl).

In addition to gifts, the birthday meant Addie got to choose dinner- she went with lasagna and helped me make it- and also we went on an exciting outing that night, which I'll blog more about soon.

Quasimoto

This blog is supposed to be all about our family adventures and Greg's first trip to the local emergency room certainly qualifies, so I thought I'd blog about it.

We were sitting on the couch one night, minding our business, watching TV, when Greg started going at his eye. Thought he got a speck in it, and it was really irritated. This went on for quite awhile, him mentioning it ever 20 minutes or so, and we noticed his eye was starting to really swell. We gave him some Benadryl, waited a little while longer, and now his eye was almost swollen shut!

He went into the bathroom to rinse it out, and called me in to see THIS-

WARNING- gross picture to follow

the bottom of his EYEBALL was bulging out. Ew gross! (it looked worse in real life than the picture shows, but gives you an idea). At that point, we looked at the clock, realized it was after 11 at night, did a little WebMD research, and realized we were gonna take a little trip to the ER.

Here's how he looked before we left.

We were so thankful for our friend Michael Channel who was able to come over and stay with the sleeping kids while Greg and I took off.

Getting in the car at 11:30, when it's below freezing outside, and Greg's eye is now swollen all the way shut, and he declares "date night"! :)

We found out the local ER is quite close, not at all busy late on a Sunday night, and really pretty nice. The doctor took a look at it and thought it was an allergic reaction to some random speck Greg got in his eye, gave his a steroid shot, and sent us on our way.

It took two days for the swelling to go away, but eventually Greg was none the worse for wear, and we came out with something to blog about that isn't our kids!

Addie's Gingerbread Birthday Party

LONG overdue in posting, but here are our pictures from Addie's fifth birthday party. We had a few girls from church over to celebrate. There are even more lovely young ladies at church, but we had to limit the numbers since our apartment isn't all that big. Nevertheless, we were joined by friends Grace, Acacia, Julia & Isabelle, here seen holding the gingerbread dolls they took home.

The theme this year was "gingerbread", so we made gingerbread paper dolls...

and read the story of the gingerbread baby (better than the gingerbread boy!)

Addie also opened gifts, and was delighted with the card the Worsley girls made for her.

Birthday Cake

This year's birthday cake was a giant cupcake with pink frosting and glittery sparkles (that didn't really show up in the picture).

I can hardly believe there are FIVE candles on that cake!

When asked to make a wish, she had to stop and give it some serious thought.

(also notice the Blue Bell ice cream in the foreground- it was "Birthday Cake" flavor)! Y-U-M

And finally, blowing out the candles!

Making Gingerbread Houses

One of the main events of the party (besides cake and ice cream or course), was that each girl got to make her own miniature gingerbread house. There was lots of mom help, and lots (and LOTS) of candy used, and each girl seemed to enjoy herself!

Julia and mom Melinda

Grace & mom Shaleah

Isabelle and mom Heather

And me and Addie of course!

Scotty

I realized I had several random pictures of Scotty that were cute, so I'm stick'n 'em all together for this post!

Checking out the tree ornaments at Christmas

Haning out in the parked car with Dad

Learning to vacuum.

Going in for the hug.

First Frango

For Christmas, my sweet sister sent us down a box of Frango mints. For those of you unfamiliar with these treats, they are chocolate truffles sold in the Northwest (and I've heard Midwest too?!) only at Christmas time. They used to be made by a company called Frederick & Nelson's, which had a big downtown department store we used to visit at Christmas time. There was an old-fashioned soda shop in the basement that made all kinds of delectable Frango goodies. Anyhoo, they are a happy holiday memory for me, so I was really excited to have a box here.

We let Addie try her first Frango after dinner one night, and she of course, gave us a large and dramatic reaction to show her pleasure with the treat.

Updates Coming

Please forgive my mommy, who is horribly behind in updating the blog. She has good intentions about catching it up with a lot of pictures very soon!

In the meantime, just look how cute I am.