Catching up

I hope you all had a great Christmas.  Ours was....interesting.  Good overall, but interesting none the less.  Christmas Eve is always spent at church and with my family.  All 4 kids went to church with me.  Larry was in the band so I was a bit nervous about that.  They did fabulous.  Anya pooped right before service ended and then I realized I only had 4 wipes with me which was not nearly going to take care of the problem so I did the best I could and then rushed my stinky child home for a bath!  After that my family arrived and as is tradition, the food was out.  Unfortunately none of it was gluten free.  As I scrambled to find an alternative I could not take my eye off of Anya for one second or she would snatch food and have it shoved in her mouth faster than I could blink.  Larry was still gone so I was on my own.  That felt like a very frantic time for me and it was hard for me to relax.  When I finally got her fed and the food started to get put up it was much better and we were able to enjoy our evening.  Anya got the drift of opening presents fast but she wanted to open one and then play with it for 20 minutes before she opened the next one!  Oksana was a bundle of excitement and joy the whole night.  She was so excited for every single gift!  The boys had a blast with their cousin who they don't see much at all and got some nice gifts too.

We always spend Christmas morning at home and then head over to Larry's parent's house.  No food issues there, which was a big relief but we are learning that a whole day out of our house is too much for Anya.  When she is overstimulated she gets mean.  This is the third time we've seen the change in her so we finally put two and two together and made the connection.  When she gets mean it can look like scratching us over and over again or just having a major attitude which is really unlike her.  One time on Christmas she was playing a drum.  I cheered for her and normally she would get very excited, cheer for herself, and drum away.  This time she gave me the most evil look and then covered her face so I couldn't look at her.  Yep, time to go home!

Oksana was a complete joy through Christmas and then started to crash and burn about a day later.  The excitement of Christmas kept her afloat and then the overstimulation, together with the fact that she can't handle the lack of structure that the school break brings, led to a little kid with a big attitude.  She's still struggling but only for short periods of time during the day.

Here are some pictures of our Christmas and also from our first snow.  It wasn't much but my kids were thrilled.  It was Anya's first time in the snow and after some initial apprehension she loved it! 

Christmas Eve before church.

 

I love a gift that makes him use his brain :)

Yes, dear that is a nice toy but you have lots of other presents to open!

Christmas morning (Anya slept in).

This drum was the perfect present for her.  She LOVES drums!

This was the drum 5 minutes after opening it!  Oh well!  My mother in law had an old drum set that Clayton played on when he was little so we found her a drum anyway and she hit it ALL DAY!

Princesses were the theme of the year for Oksana!

 

Loving the snow!

 

She waited all day for enough snow to play!

 

This started as a snowman head that Clayton was protecting in the swing and then it evolved into our 5th child :).

 

The snow baby creators!

 

The snow baby took a fatal slide down the slide!

 

It was still snowing while we were out so she would look up at the snow and then say "OWWWW" when she felt a snowflake fall in her eye :)!