And FINALLY the day came when those tutus that filled my every waking hour were put to good use :)

Monday the 13th was their first performance and it worked out that Flower Child's dad was able to attend and the Boy was out of school so he could too! Usually these types of fun things happen when he's at his mom's house so he misses out. He was REALLY excited to get to go to this one!

The girls looked ADORABLE!!

This was Flower Child's first RUN on stage lol. Her first part was Mercury (the planet) and she runs on stage, speeds through her lines (because she's the fastest spinning planet) and runs back off. A total of 22.5 seconds I think ;)

OH BOY was this play science-y. There was so much science jammed into this HOUR LONG PLAY that it was practically OOZING with nerdness. lol It's a GATE play and so I guess I should have expected it but OH MAMA was it JAM PACKED WITH THE SCIENCE.

Then for her second part she was a Venette. Which is the back up singer for Venus who sings about how hot she is ;) LOL Oh how my camera sucks at the action shots >:-/

The final dance number a sweet forever later ...

And the group shop of all the players :) Note the SWEET space ship to the right ;)

Their budget, it's limited lol


After an all to short minimum day, I had the kids all sit down and do some fun Valentine's stuff :)

While I worked on the teacher's gifts, they worked on some cards for each other.

I found this super cute set at Walmart of 24 foam cards with foam stickers to decorate with. They had so much fun decorating cards and filling them out with what they love about each other :)

Teen decided she wanted to make some goodies to take to her friends so she busted out her brownie/mini cupcake maker and used this AWESOME recipe I found on Pinterest. They tasted JUST LIKE the box mix only WAY better!

And then because my plans for a perfectly lovely Valentines Dinner didn't exactly work out, we had pizza with Valentines plates ;)

We were together though, and that's what counts :)

After the kids went off to bed I brought down a few things I got for them.

We don't do a LOT for Valentines Day, but I did get them a little something. I found these adorable mail boxes at Target in the dollar aisle and had totally planned on decorating them but time was against me. Something to do for next year! I got them each a card, pencil, sucker, candy, and then they had each others cards to read too :)

I had planned on making something for breakfast too buuuuuut ... well you know ;)

So I picked up some raspberry and orange scones and strawberries and they were pretty excited about it :)

Then they got to go through their mailboxes and were so cute reading all of the little love notes :)

My girlies on the way out the door :)

That night we had Flower Child's evening performance! I was just barely able to get this picture since my camera hates movement of any kind.

DH made it JUST in the nick of time. He'd been working about a month straight with no day off, had just come off of 3 days straight of 20 hours EACH. He was headed home and he could have gone straight home and taken a shower, had dinner or just gone to bed - but he went straight from his 3 hour drive home to his step daughters play, and was happy to be there :)

If that's not love, I don't know what is.


Flower Child and her bestie :)

The players

The next day was tough. It started with a LOT of attitude from a few of the kids that didn't end til they were pushed out of the car to school, and didn't improve much through the day.

The hubs has been dealing with some pretty horrible conditions with his work and they were BEYOND stressing him out. Which of course, stresses ME out. And he was off again for another few days to work.

He knew things were getting to me and messaged me throughout the day to see how *I* was doing. I usually try to be strong and not let him know how much this all gets to me, but he can tell.

So he sent me these :) Not for Valentine's Day, but just because I was having a REALLY bad day. Love that man of mine :)

My favorite thing about Christmas is that the kids get so distracted by the new toys that I actually have moments of QUIET that I don't have to sell my soul for.

Teen went to a friend's house so it was just us girls most of the day and it was actually quite lovely! In the morning we purged their closet and Lil Miss was surprisingly helpful! She pointed out the games that had missing pieces or that she just didn't play with anymore so we were able to get rid of those. I also helped them organize and make pretty the rest of their room while putting away all of their new toys.

Then I made a deal. I told Lil Miss if she "gave her salon to a sad little girl who didn't have one" = donate this HUGE AWFUL looking plastic thing that she never plays with, then I would open up this "color me playhouse" she got from her Gramma. Well ... I had no idea what I was in for.

OH.MY.WORD. It's huge. It's 3 feet x 5 freaking feet and 4 feet TALL. It's tall enough for Lil Miss to stand up in. It's big enough for all 3 girls to sit in comfortably. It's so large, one of them may have to move in and start using it for a bedroom.

On the bright side though, they ADORE it. They had SO much fun playing in it that it's hard to hate the thing.

Well ... it WAS hard to hate it ...

Until they started to color it.

Oh how my OCD hurts.

Seriously. Thinking about possibly putting this monstrosity somewhere I will have to look at it and knowing that it's appearance is in the hands of a 6 year old who thinks the Gingerbread House Look is CLASSIC is making my eye twitch.

I had hope at one point. DH can't walk away from an artistic opportunity ;) So when Lil Miss was getting ready for bed, he got out his sharpie and decided to give the house a "distressed cottage look" with some "exposed brick and broken stucco". I heard "cottage" and thought HEY! Maybe this won't be a total eye sore!

And they were so cute working on it together :) I had visions of adorable cottage looking playhouses running through my head. Until Lil Miss decided she liked the Gingerbread House Look better ...

And started to color EACH SHINGLE A DIFFERENT COLOR.

EYE.TWITCHING.

On the upside, it might fit right in. It looks like the only place in the whole damn house where this thing will fit would be where the Christmas Tree goes in the living room. So next year we might just be decorating and singing carols around the Christmas Playhouse instead of the tree. But hey if we add a wreath and some lights to the GIANT GINGERBREAD HOUSE we could always take family pictures in front of IT and use it as our Christmas card.

Christmas morning came oh so quickly to our house!

We set the alarm and woke the kids up at 6am so they had time to open stockings and Santa gifts before heading to their other parents' homes.

Lil Miss didn't seem to mind ;)

After opening their gifts and DH left to take The Boy to his mom's, I started the cinnimon rolls (our standard Christmas tradition :) and the kids started playing with their new toys. I LOVE Christmas for that! The kids will just play and play ...

and play ...

and play! ALL DAY! I barely hear a PEEP out of them!

Poor Flower Child was fighting a pretty good fever and was pretty beat, but she seemed to perk up after awhile.

Meanwhile Lil Miss curled up with daddy ...

and he played with HIS new toy too ;)

Just before my girls left to go with their dad I had DH take a few pics for me ... I can't believe how big they're getting :) They are so beautiful and I just adore them so.

And shortly after they left I had my annual Christmas Meltdown, complete with tears. I don't know what it is, but it get so quiet and I realize that they are off having Christmas with another family, and they aren't HERE ... with ME ... where they SHOULD BE. It's totally selfish and I don't like it, but there it is. I get all sad and cry and overwhelmed with the craziness of the house even though it didn't bother me when they were there :-/ Egh ... it just sucks. It's hard to explain.

So I poured myself a glass of champagne, changed into my jammies, and took a nap LOL

It helped ;)

Christmas Day for us came a day early this year. Today DH went to get The Boy early and I finished up some last minute gifts.

As soon as the men folk got home, I sent all the kids to get dressed and we commenced with present opening!!

Lil Miss just about broke her face from smiling so much when she got this color-your-own playhouse from her gramma :)

Flower Child is loving that she's starting to get 'older kid stuff' and LOVES her bracelet ... and the money ;)

The Boy enjoyed his Air Hogs aaaaaaall day ...

And Teen literally CRIED when she opened her phone :)

*I* literally cried when I opened this :)

It's my grandmother's wedding ring. She and I were VERY close and I used to LOVE trying on her ring. She would let me dress up in all of the family's wedding dresses and wear her ring :) She died about 13 years ago. She and my grandpa had the most amazing relationship. It's something I've always looked up to. Recently I find myself in a very similar life situation as what she had. I've felt very close to her, come to understand her in a way I couldn't before. My mom had her ring but couldn't wear it so this year she finally passed it on to me :) I just can't express how much it means to me :)

The kids ran through their gifts and finally got to MY gift to them :) I made each of them a blanket. Now, it wasn't a hard blanket to make, but I did OBSESS over each one to the point of exhaustion so it means a lot to me ;) I had them each open them at the same time and it was SO cute! They were SO happy with them! It made me so happy to see each of them look at their blankets and know how much thought and time I put into each one :) They are GREAT kids!

Lil Miss playing with her stuff :)

My pretty simple table set up.

I have been pinning and pinning and pinning all kinds of ideas for Christmas tablescapes and THIS is what i did lol.

It's not bad I guess, just kind of ... boring. Maybe next year :)

MMMMM one of my favorite things about Christmas is PRIME RIB!! DH asked if I wanted to just do turkey this year to save money and I think he must have looked over at me because he said "I guess not then." lol I am just SO DONE with turkey lol

My sweet baby girl :)

After dinner and some yummy pumpkin pie, the kids got wrapped up in their new jammies and it was about time for Nana to head home. I'm so glad she's able to come out for Christmas :) Hopefully this time next year, she'll be living in town!

Then it was time to get ready for Santa! They each picked out a good to put out for the big guy and it was time to head to bed! Another thing I love about our set up this year is that all of the gifts are DONE except the stockings and Santa's gift so I only had 2 things to wrap and I was DONE!! I filled the stockings, set out the gifts and was ready for be bed! Which was a good things since we have to get up at 6am Christmas morning to make sure The Boy is off to his mom's on time :-/

It was an AMAZING Christmas :) I couldn't ask for a more sweet and loving family, this was the BEST year yet!