Jan 15

 Ember has the best time playing with her barbie house!  I cant wait till after her birthday so she can have another room full of furniture for it :)  we got her the really cheap knock off barbie furnture and it just keeps falling apart.  Should have got just a couple rooms of the more expensive stuff because its all just sitting in pieces on the top floor of the doll house.... live and learn :)

 I am really enjoying hanging out with Ember and Daxon during the days :) We spend most mornings at a fun activity, Joy school on tuesdays, library on thursdays, playgroup on fridays, grocery shopping on mondays lol.  I carry Dax around in an Ergo i got as a hand me down from a friend and i love love love it,  so does he! He is a crazy mamas boy and I am eating it up

 We have been having as many fires as we can! Texas weather is funny,  it gets really warm for a week then really cold for a week. Like turn the air on warm then turn the heater on cold.   So we take advantage of the fire place as often as we can!  We really really like to roast marshmallows,  my kids are getting really good at making them perfectly brown.... well Wil is.

We put the swing set up that we got for Christmas the second week in January and the we are getting a ton of use out of it!  There are a couple neighbor kids who are in the backyard with my kids almost daily. Ember is getting braver at playing too,  not too brave.... but braver

 Wil got a solar powered robot kit for christmas so Nick help him put it together one saturday.  its just a little thing but crazy cool,  it would just keep going forever out there in the sunlight :) Wil is big in to building things, kits and legos and electrical circuits. he got a snap circuit set for christmas and that thing is way awesome.  it is like legos but with electricity and you can make designs and use switches to make different pieces work......  hard to explain but super fun.

 I have been extremely enjoying baby Daxon. I know he is my last one, so every moment is easy. I am much more calm and chill about things with him,  and I let him get away with a lot of things that I would never ever have let Wil do. I am still nursing him and plan to go till he is at least 1. The other babies I stopped at 6 months,  with wil i went 9 months. With Dax nursing has been the go to to fix any situation or grumpiness,  Nick and i both are sleeping so much better when  just bring the baby in to bed and let him sleep and nurse all night long lol. Im not worried about him needing to sleep with us till he is 5, because i know they all grow up so stinking fast..... as long as they are happy and quiet and we are all sleeping than I am happy and things can just happen when they happen...... Im not forcing food down him cuz i know he is getting proper nutrition from the milk he gets,   he is big and healthy. Im not stressing about him and Ember learning alphabet letters and numbers cuz I know that they will pick it up eventually. We just laugh and play and snuggle and sleep on the couch and eat chocolate for lunch.  Wil got so bg so fast and i ache to have him cuddle like he used to :(   When Wil was a baby i was so much more stressed out..... This time around I have real stress in my life and could care less about the baby stress...It really is great. although Daxon is getting way too big way too fast too......
I looooooove this dimpled butt!

 Daxy finally cut some teeth at around 9 months old :)

 Ember loves ballerinas and to twirl and dance,  We got a big bag of old leotards and skirts from a friend and she wears them every day,  and I have to do her hair in a bun like a "flowerina"  thats what she calls it....... She has a little music box/jewelry box that has ballerinas that dance and spin when it is open to music.  she will hang out in her room and spin and dance to the music .  its desperately adorable.....  We have decided to not push her in to dance classes though..... It will be best i think in the long run.  we dont want her to be one of the hyper sexualized dance girls in middle school and high school,  there is a whole slew of problems that goes with that,   so even though i really want to dress her up and let her dance we are going to keep that fun to home and she will never know the difference.... she also loves baseball,  and sommersalts,   maybe we will do gymnastics instead :)

december 14

remodeling the house for the first few weeks of december felt like the longest time ever... We didnt have hot water for 2 weeks, which was awful,  trying to figure out who was going to pay for it when we were told it was working in the inspection and that the remodeling money wouldnt cover it,  and trying to find money in places when there was no more money lol........ oh gosh it was hard.   but i had a nice new stove to boil water on in four differnt giant pans so i could gives the kids baths...  I would go over to friends houses for preschool or playgroup and ask to use thier showers lol,  I got so sick,  the worst cold of my whole life couldnt sleep for those two weeks either because i was coughing soooooo much, I was wiped out physically mentally emotionally,  and on top of that we found out during this time that Nick wouldnt have ajob at this same school next year. So he is now on the job hunt again........ Life is really scary and not funny sometimes...... Im not sure what lessons we are supposed to be learning but I hope and pray that we learn them fast :)

 Wil got his own room and his own big comfy bed :)   he loves it,  i like it more than my own,  too bad its a double or we would trade him!

 Ember wearing the dress I wore for christmas when I was 2!  i love it, and she loved it, even though it was ugly red velvet and had a huge collar.  shes so cute and loved how it twirled out when she spun :)

 She was so very scared of Santa.  and then was scared of the library for weeks after. she would cry when we pulled up "Noooooo mom im scared of santa! i dont want to go in there!

My cutie kids!   They are seriously the best things ever..... like ever,

Ember helped me make the puppy chow for christmas!

 Christmas Eve Eve we had a party and invited a bunch of people so that we could have an end date to all of our projects,  so we pushed and pushed and had the house ready by then,  so that we could chill and enjoy christmas!  

Christmas Eve was awesome,  we had a nice fire,  baked cookies and frosted them all day long,  had ham and potatoes for dinner,  Ember and Cooper were Joseph and MAry in our Nativity and Daxy played baby Jesus. It was a beautiful calm and awesome day, just what we needed.

Christmas morning was an awesome one!  There was a giant present for Ember, My mom and my Grandpa Oesterle made her this gorgeous and huge barbie house,  You can play on it from all four sides, its 3 floors and has stairs and rooms,  she got a bunh of princess barbies and furniture to fill it..   it was awesome and she was spoiled,  that doll house will last her alifetime though, it is one sturdy awesome piece of furniture!

The day after christmas we packed up and headed to Galveston for a week!  Nick's parents rented a gorgeous yellow house on the ocean for us to stay in for the week!  THe weather did not cooperate with us and it was cold and rainy pretty much all week,   but we are Michiganders and a little cold weather didnt stop us!!!!  we still played and saw the sights and ate great food. slept listening to the loud ocean right in the backyard,  it was truely an amazing vacation spot.

Nick and I got to go out for dinner on New Years eve alone!!!!!   we ate at this cool little place on a pier. super fun and yummy,  we tried to put the stress of life on a shelf and enjoy eachothers company n not think about real life for a while,   easier said than done though :)

my kids are exhausting.....  lol   dax was crying because the nosemakers were too loud and Wil was pretending to smoke his.... lol