• Feb. 9, 2007
Movie Night

We went to see "Night at the Museum" at the base theater tonight.  What a great movie!  If you have not seen it, go see it now!   I have not had so much fun at a kids movie in ages...we laughed hysterically.  From here on out, when The Man wants to talk, I will let the girls know that "My Dum Dum wants to speak."

The coolest thing?  One entire row was taken up by homeschool kids from here on base...and it was not a planned field trip!

In other news...we got 5 packages in the mail today, including our Ancient timeline from Knowledge Quest.  I have also decided I am in love with older books!   Today,  we got "Hero's Every Child Should Know.  I am so excited about this book as well as  "Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare," I can't wait to start reading them to the girls.  They are both in very good condition (especially for their age), but show the marks of well loved books. 

We also got Teaching Textbooks.  I am a little nervous about that one.  Since the sixth grade will not come out for a few more months, and Chaney placed in the 7th grade on the placement test, The TT lady said we should try 7th out.  We have 30 days to send it back if it does not work out.  By that time we would be closer to the 6th grade coming out.  David and I talked after looking it over this evening, and he thinks I should just let her finish the Abeka (she has about 25 lessons we were just going to leave), and then try the 7th grade TT.  By time we gave it a good shot, it would be to late to send it back, but we could just buy the 6th anyway and save the 7th for next year.  I made sure and reminded him how much we paid for it...but, he is sure, so I am going to be sure as well :)

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• Feb. 6, 2007
Mail's Here, Mail's Here...

Yesterday and today we saw our first shipments of homeschool supplies come in.  Yesterday we received all of our IEW supplies.  I am very impressed with the quality of the binders and CD cases.  The information looks fabulous, but I am very glad for the DVD's. 

Today we received our science curriculum from Creation Sensation.  We ordered the Aplologia Elementary Astronomy and the science kit from CS.  The text book is amazing!  I can see the girls using this as a resource for years to come...not just use it this year then be done with it.  The kit is wonderful as well!  There is NO way I would bother to hunt all that stuff down on my own.  They even included the tootsie rolls for one experiment ! 

We also received Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare by E. Nesbit.  It is an older book, but in wonderful condition...and I am so happy to have it.  I am also looking forward to getting Tales From Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb.  I think Chaney will love both of these books.  I plan on going through these two books with all the girls this year, then study actual plays with Chaney next year.

I can't wait for the mail tomorrow :)

Finally, back before Christmas  in this post I mentioned Homeschool Radio Shows.  My girls enjoy listening to these each week and can not wait for the next weeks radio show to be sent out.  Last the HRS email had a link to a brand new resource, You Need a Story.  Each week the Greens will send out a link to download a new story read by Mr. Green.  Mr. Green has a wonderful reading voice and in the first story we received (Rikki-Tikki-Tavi), my girls were totally drawn in.  The stories will come out every week on Tuesday.  I have already downloaded Rikki-Tikki-Tavi to Riley and Kennedy's FP3 player, and they have listened to it about everyday.  If the future stories are even close to being as thrilling as the first one, I think your family will be as happy with these as mine!

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• Feb. 5, 2007
Colts WIN!

Well, it didn't start out pretty, but in the end the Colts pulled it off.  The Man is thrilled beyond belief!   Our Superbowl  Party was a blast!  We had a house full...including 15 kids!  Here are the highlights with pictures...
 

 
The food


Mingling.  Notice the tasteful decorations...remember that...


David (The Man) and Gary



The back of Jon's head.  Jon has a phobia of having his picture taken...


Michelle and Terri.  We will talk about the shirt hanging from the lamp later...



Emily and Nadeen


The Man can *taste the victory...



Long suffering no longer!

Remember the tasteful decorations from above?  Emily and I put those up Saturday night, along with a few balloons in the living room...well, I guess The Man did not think our decorations were "Redneck" enough for a Hoosier...so he added his own little touch...

 

Yes, my husband decorated our living room room with a t-shirt!  I don't even have words...

One last picture showing the girls and David wearing their Conference Championship shirts sent by Davids sister.

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• Feb. 4, 2007
Superbowl Party

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• Feb. 3, 2007
Sniff :(

Kennedy lost her tooth tonight. She has been waiting for this tooth to come out for weeks!  I can not believe how fast she is growing up :(

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• Feb. 2, 2007
Burning Plastic...

If you noticed the distinct smell of melting plastic…that was my debit card going up in flames!  We ordered *all of our curriculum today.  We are expecting shipments from 16 different venders!  The grumpy mail lady is going to love us the next couple of weeks.

 It was so nice to be able to order everything after planning for months.  I made a couple of changes.  I decided to hold off on Rosetta Stone.  I have been hearing a lot of good things about the Elementary Spanish program from United Streaming.  Dish Network also offers the Elementary Spanish for only the price of the workbooks…so we are going to give it a try when they start their new schedule this fall.  If it does not work, then we will go with RS. 

 I also decided to go ahead and order Phonetic Zoo from IEW.  Spelling has had me pulling out my hair for the past couple of years.  I thought Abeka was ridiculously hard, but nothing else jumped out at me as being any better.  I decided to take a chance and try PZ because it sounds like the kids really get the words down by time they finish the list.  I also like that she (Chaney) can do it mostly on her own, freeing up my time to do other things with them instead of trolling the internet looking for spelling words every week.  I really hope it is worth the money…because if The Man ever figures out that I spent $99 on a spelling program, he may start to pay a bit more attention to what I am buying.

 I had originally planned on getting most of the reference books for Biblioplan from the library, however, I ended up going nuts at Alibris and Amazon buying all of them.  Most are coming from used booksellers.  We will still get the readers/read alouds from the library, but I wanted the girls to be able to go back to the reference books anytime they wanted…not just while we were studying that particular subject. 

 Now I have to figure out where I am going to put over 60 new reference,  text and literature books!

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• Jan. 31, 2007
Me as an M&M?

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• Jan. 29, 2007
Rainbows...

Well, sickness has hit the Wagle house...specifically me.  I wrote an update the other day about why I have been AWOL so long,  but HSB ate my post, and I just did not have the energy to re-type everything again.  That was my first clue that my stuffiness was not merely a small sinus problem. 

I have a confession Internet, I am a HUGE baby when I am sick.  Luckily, I have The Man, who will bring sushi home to make me feel better.  On day two of my sickness, however,  I was not singing about his wonderfulness... when he POURED MY PEPSI DOWN THE DRAIN!  It was like he was staging some kind of intervention! 

OK, Internet...so I got a little dehydrated.   I.don't. like. water...really, who needs water when Pepsi meets *my definition of "fluids?"  Who knew that copious amounts of Pepsi not only would *not keep you hydrated when paired with cold medicine...but could contribute to you being flat on the bathroom floor at 3 a.m?

I did manage to drag myself off the couch yesterday, to take pictures of the amazing (double) rainbow over our house.  The Nyquil is starting to kick in, so I will leave you with these pictures.  You can see the rest of them if you click on my Flikr badge in the side bar.

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• Jan. 12, 2007
A Day in the Life of The Man...

I am sure, having the television remote in his possession, makes him feel like he is in charge.

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• Jan. 11, 2007
More of what I do...ramble.

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• Jan. 9, 2007
THUD!

* First an update on David.  He went to the Cardiologist yesterday for an echocardiogram/stress test.  He passed with flying colors!  They said with his mother's history, he should have one done every couple of years,  but his episode had nothing to do with heart problems.  I am so thankful!  Thank you all for your prayers!

In other news...we started back to school yesterday.  Yes, I know I said we were going to start last week...but that did not happen.  Did you know that taking almost three weeks off from school, would totally wipe any knowledge of basic math from the memory of an otherwise very smart 10 yr old?  The same 10 year old who scored well into the seventh grade on the Teaching Textbooks placement test.  If you heard a distinct thud. Thud. THUD yesterday...that was me, banging my  head against the wall!  It could have been worse...I could have been banging HER head against the wall!

So, after two days reviewing...I think we are ready to start canceling fractions tomorrow...I PRAY we are anyway!

Remember those grandiose thoughts of lesson plans?  What was I thinking???

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• Jan. 7, 2007
Thinking Out Loud...

So, I am trying to figure out our curriculum plan for Chaney, and I have to visualize things.  Since I have not blogged in a couple of days, I thought I would "visualize" here and kill two birds with one stone :)

You can see our curriculum plan in the sidebar, but I thought I would explain a couple of things.  I have decided to follow Amblesides schedule for Shakespeare reading, Art Appreciation, and Composer Study.  We will also be going through The Age of Fable in Literature (It will take two years) at the same time as other books on our reading list (see sidebar.)

TT only has 115 lessons in their 7th grade math.   So, going on the assumption that the 6th grade will be similar, I am thinking of having her only do math 3 times a week and the other two add in the IEW.  I am not sure about this though...still mulling it over.

I *hate poetry...I have no idea why...I just do!  What kind of homeschooler am I???  It makes no sense to me.  Instead of reading a poem, then try to decipher the writers thoughts,  I would rather dive into a book and lose myself in the story.  I have not made our children memorize *one poem (smack my hands, Internet, I deserve it.)   Oh. The. Shame.

I doubt I will make such a big leap and have them memorize a bunch of poems (I feel that Bible verses and things like that are more practical.)  HOWEVER, I *am going to make a conscious effort to have them *read more poems.  I just hope they don't have a bunch of questions...because I really won't have a clue.

Logic???  I have no idea!  I know they need it (I think.)  They would have fun doing it...but I have *no idea where to start.  I pull out my Bright Minds catalog and next thing I know, they need everything in the book!  I have heard Fallacy Detective mentioned quite a bit...but really I am pretty clueless.  If anyone has any ideas on this (for all three girls) I am begging for would love some input!

One last thing...we like to take breaks...lots of breaks.  The Man's schedule makes it hard for us to do things on the weekends (he only has every other one off), or in the evenings (he sleeps till 3ish, and leaves for work about 6pm...add in the showering, shaving, ironing of uniform, and shining of boots, and we have about 20 mins.)  So when he is off, if there are things to do, (not pertaining to school) we do them.  That being said, the Mon-Fri is just so I can get a good visual...there are *many weeks where we do  not do 5 days of school.  I am planning on just doing lesson plans (gasp...what is that?...I have *never had to write one of those before!)  for about 180 lessons and instead of giving them dates, or days, I am just going to number them.

So here is what I am thinking (at this moment anyway)...Geez...written out, it looks like A LOT!

Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri
History	Science	History	Science	History
Composer	Shakespeare	Shakespeare	Shakespeare	Artist
Language	Language	Language	Language	Language
Spelling	Poetry	Spelling	Poetry	Spelling
Literature	Literature	Literature	Literature	Literature
Math	IEW	Math	IEW	Math
Handwriting	Copywork	Handwriting	Copywork	Handwriting
Spanish	Logic	Spanish	Logic	Spanish
Free Reading	Free Reading	Free Reading	Free Reading	Free Reading
Piano	Piano	Piano	Piano	Piano

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• Jan. 5, 2007
Sob :(

My baby is right now, at this moment, sleeping in her own bed :(  I can't remember the last time she has slept in a bed on her
own...certainly not in the past 1-1/12 years! 

None of the girls have ever liked sleeping by themselves.  We have, at different times, thought to make them sleep in their own rooms.   However, one day it dawned on us that they *liked being together. Why would we want to force them apart.  So, from that day on we have allowed them to sleep together.  Sometimes that has meant that they all slept on an "egg shell" placed on the floor.  When The Man was in Iraq they slept with me.

When we moved into this house, Chaney and Riley decided  they wanted to officially share a room.  We bought them bunk beds (the kind with the full size bottom), and though she has her "own" room, Kennedy goes back and forth between Chaney's bed and ours. 

Tonight, as The Man was putting them to bed, out of the blue, she declared she wanted to sleep in her room.    I do not even know what to think!    One part of me is proud that she is growing up...but mostly I just want to cry.  I *should be relieved.  David and I have often commented on how it will be nice when we are able to sleep without having a little fist to the eye.  But honestly, I want to go get her and put her in bed with me.  How could you not want to curl up with that little oven??

I won't go get her though.  I know that as much as I hate it, she is spreading her wings, and I have to let her.  If this sleeping in her own bed thing lasts...I just hope she gets a little homesick once in awhile.

  But look at those dimples Internet!  Don't you just want to eat those up???

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• Jan. 3, 2007
Quick Update

A quick update on David.  He woke up this morning feeling perfectly fine.  It is very strange.  He had a follow-up appointment with the base clinic today.  They (thankfully) do not think that what happened was anything serious however, because of the history with his mom they want to run more tests.  The doctors are sending him to cardiology to have a stress test on his heart, and an ultrasound. 

We are going to start some school tomorrow.  I had planned to start on Tuesday, but a little trip to the ER botched that.  It will be nice to get back into a routine.  I am not sure the girls are as eager...but such is life :)

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• Jan. 2, 2007
What you do not want to hear at 6:23 a.m...

"Ma'am, I am calling to let you know, the medics are taking Sgt. Wagle to the ER."

Talk about giving me one of the biggest scares of my life!  The Man is never sick.  Literally!   In nineteen years of being in the military, he has missed two days of work.  The first, was a couple of years ago when he had a kidney stone (and he tried to go to work that day), and the second was this evening.

Early this morning (about 5am) he was toward the end of his shift when he started feeling "not right.”  He was nauseous, a bit light headed, then his heart started racing.  He thought he could walk it off, but after about 30 mins it would not go away. 

When his mother was 47, she died of a heart attack, I have been paranoid about his heart ever since.  I do not feel the military doctors here take it seriously.  At his yearly check up, he is always told his heart must be fine because his cholesterol levels are normal.  (?) 

After awhile David’s troops thought the medics should be called.  After the medics decided to take him to the ER in town, the Desk called me.   By time I got to the hospital his heart was not racing, however, he was still feeling light headed and nauseous.  The doctors do not know what happened.  They put him on an EKG, took blood work, and a chest X-ray, and everything came up fine!  He had a couple of things on the blood work come up a bit high/low ...but nothing remarkable...and nothing that should have caused his heart to react that way. 

He is home and feeling better, but he still gets nauseous and is feeling a bit weak.  The weakness may be because he had not slept in about 24 hours...but I do not understand the nausea.  We asked the doctor if he could be coming down with the flu and that the heart racing was his body adjusting.  He thinks the nausea is a coincidence, which makes no since to me at all...how can it be a coincidence if they both started at the same time?

David is supposed to follow up with the base, it probably was a fluke thing...but they just are not sure.  He had aspirations of working tonight (he has a much better work ethic than I do!)  However, by 1pm he still was not able to go to sleep because of the nausea.  You have no idea how it pained him to call his boss and tell him he could not come in tonight! 

Right now, I am just relieved that it does not seem to be anything serious, and that he is O.K.   I am so grateful for great neighbors who came right over to take care of the girls, wonderful friends who called and brought dinner over for us, and a fabulous church family who I know was praying all day.  Most of all, I am grateful for a loving and merciful Father who shows us his love everyday.  Sometimes, by scaring us *just enough so that we remember to not take ONE day for granted.

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• Jan. 1, 2007
Happy New Years!

I had company over tonight.  I say "I", because I ended up being the only Wagle here!  The girls ditched me for a NYE Party/ Sleepover, and The Man had to work.  Our neighbors on either side of us came over...and we had a blast.  Terri's husband also had to work, so she came with her two daughters, and Emily came over with her husband John.  We played some Wii and I just about died laughing watching Emily and John Wii boxing.  Terri and I played first, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack...Wii playing actually takes physical exertion!  We also played Turbo Yahtzee and Uno Attack.  It was very nice actually hanging out and doing silly stuff with adults!

Terri and her girls playing Wii Tennis in the game room (garage)

Britley and Kailey playing Wii Bowling

Emily playing bowling

So, here I am in the middle of the night all by myself!  I have not spent the night alone since before we had Chaney.  It is very surreal...almost spooky!  Kennedy normally sleeps with me when David is at work...I am not going to know what to do with all that space!

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• Dec. 31, 2006
Here You Go Christy :P

My friend Christy noticed that I did not post pictures of The Man and I, during our midnight Christmas extravaganza.  Being the technophobe that he is, David refuses to go anywhere near the new camera, so I was the only one taking pictures.  Here is the one picture that has me in it.  Riley picked up the camera when I was not looking and snapped a picture of me and my new "computer" socks. 
I tried to spare you, Internet, but here it is...blame Christy

And here is one of The Man...although, I think his is way more flattering!

He is very excited about his new video game...you didn't know I was married to a 17 year old boy did you?

I had planned on posting about the other changes in our curriculumn this year...instead I spent hours trying to decode the blog template so I could organize things a bit. 

If I don't get to post tomorrow, I hope that everyone has a Happy and Safe New Year!
Me :)

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• Dec. 30, 2006
One Last Post Today...

I just wanted to share one more picture of the girls. This was the last picture taken the other week when we did our little photo shoot with the new camera. Chaney suggested it, and I only did it to humor her. I did not really give it a second thought, until the other day when I was playing with the photo editing programs. When I saw it, it took my breath away! I am going to have this made into a larger print, and put it up over my computer. What do you think?

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• Dec. 30, 2006
Stop Me...Someone.

***Warning...before reading this post, go get a snack and something to drink (something with caffeine would be my recommendation)...you could be here awhile :/

Someone stop me PLEASE!

Now that Christmas is over, I am looking toward our new school year which is coming up in February. Over the past year or so, a multitude of issues (funding, deployments, LICE, moving, just to name a few) has put us on a February-February school schedule. At first, I had plans to "catch" us up with the PS...however once I realized that it was not going to happen this year, it dawned on me that this would work better for us. We can take the time off we want and since we always get our tax returns in February, there will always be plenty of money for curriculum.

We enjoyed a very relaxed year this year. My friend Christy gave me the wonderful idea of staggering start times with the girls instead of trying to get everyone going at the same time. I was pulling my hair out the year before trying to go from one child to the other, from one subject to the other. Now, we start with Chaney. Riley and Kennedy play games or puzzles during this time. I spend about 45min to one hour with Chaney going over the previous days lesson in Math. We correct her paper and work on any problem areas. We then move on to the new concept. When I feel like she has that down fine, we move on and do the same thing with Language. I then give her a premade form that I made up giving her daily work. This lists all her work for the day including worksheet papers, test/quizzes, reading assignments, History etc. She is then on her own unless she needs help with something.

Next, I move on to Riley. I work with her in a similar fashion. I spend about an hour going over her Phonics, Math, Spelling, and Reading lessons. We check the previous days work and assign work for that day. She does not have an assignment sheet like Chaney, I just use the reusable sticky tabs to mark her seatwork. Once Riley is working on her own, I can devote all my time with Kennedy.

This has worked amazingly well for us this year, however, I see problems coming in the next few years. We have used mostly Abeka since we started Homeschooling. I am very happy with Abeka. One of the things that drew me to it was it was almost like "Homeschooling For Dummies." I liked that everything was laid out in the curriculum guides..there is no guess work on what they needed to do, and they even bolded the parts that I needed to say! Abeka is a very solid curriculum...I thought I would use Abeka forever. The only problem with Abeka is that it is very teacher intensive for every subject. By time I get done teaching three math lessons, three language/phonics lessons, and read with the three of them, there is no time to do three History/Science lessons. I have not *taught one History lesson to Chaney(I assign her reading in her History book, and she does the question and answers), very few with Riley and Kennedy...and we have not even cracked open the science and health books this year. I am feeling very guilty. I LOVED History when I was in school because I had great teachers who helped me to visualize what was going on. I did not love Science so much...but the girls are very interested in science. Honestly, the thought of doing three science lessons is painful for me...but I do not want to ruin their love of History and Science before it is even begun.

I realized a few months ago I needed a History and Science curriculum that I could do with all of them. So, I started researching. What I found (for History) is SOTW and Biblioplan. I am very excited to start *teaching History this year. We are going to use Biblioplan for the spine. Biblioplan incorporates SOTW as well as *many other resource and reading books. I am praying that by using Biblioplan and SOTW I will be able to teach History in a fun way that fosters a love of History.

During my research, I stumbled on the Classical Education school of thought. I *knew that there were different "styles" of Homeschooling, but I really was not all that interested in them. I was very happy with Abeka and how they do things...there really was not a need to learn another way of doing things. Once I started looking into CE though, things really started to jump out at me. I loved the idea of learning history in chronological order...and I really liked the thought of incorporating Biblical history with the secular history.

Another thing that caught my attention and held on was Literature. One of Abekas best attributes,in my opinion,is their reading program. All three of my children have learned to read using Abeka, and all three of them excel at reading. I have always appreciated their readers. They have good wholesome-moral stories, with a Godly, and patriotic basis. It dawned on me during my CE research, though, that Chaney was not reading the "classic" books as part of her schooling. She on her own has read things like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Hedi, and Charlotte's Web but she could be reading more...she should be reading more in her school work.

After hours upon hours of reading websites and blogs, as well as talking to more experienced HSers, I decided to drop Abeka reading for Chaney and we are just going to start reading more classic books. Here is where you, Internet, need to help me STOP! Stop obsessing over this reading list. It is driving me crazy!!! Since I have never had to plan out anything on my own, I have *no earthly idea what is to much or to little. I *thought I had it for the most part worked out. I used the Veritas Press catalog to plan out her reading list for this year. I still did not know if it was to much or to little, but I figured we would wing it...and I was good with that...until last week when I I found Ambleside Online.

I have now become obsessed with Chaney reading every great work out there. For Christmas we bought Chaney and Riley the complete library of American Girl Collections as well as some of the AG Mysteries. The reading list I have now has morphed to the point where, between Literature and the reading list for Biblioplan, there may not be time for her to read the AG books...E.V.E.R!

But. I. Can't. Stop!

PLEASE, Internet, reel me in here. This is what I have so far:

• Eight Cousins/Louisa May Alcott
• The Railway Children /Edith Nesbit
• Cricket in Times Square/George Selden
• Witch of Blackbird Pond/Elizabeth George Speare
• Robinson Crusoe/Daniel Defoe
• Blackthorn Winter/Douglas Wilson
• Gulliver's Travels/Jonathan Swift
• Susan Creek/Douglas Wilson
• Beowulf/Frederick Rebsamen
• The Hobbit/J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Red Keep/Allen French
• King Arthur and His Knights/Howard Pyle
• Age of Fable/Thomas Bulfinch

Like I said, this is just for Literature...Biblioplan has more history books for her to read. Am I insane?

Tomorrow, I will post about the other changes we are making in our curriculum...and my obsessive need to get it all Just. Right. I am sure you just can't wait.

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• Dec. 29, 2006
Christmas

***I have a lot to post about so I am going to spread it out over a couple of posts***

No, I have not dropped off the face of the earth. We have been crazy busy...but in a good way. The Man went into a "Christmas Schedule" which means he had 6 days off over Christmas...but the trade off is that he will work 6 days over New Years. His first day off happened to be his birthday as well as the day my mom came up from San Diego. What every man wants for his birthday...a Mother-in-Law =:O

We had a lovely visit. The girls were thrilled over having Grandma here for Christmas. Being in the military makes it very hard on the girls. They have never been around family much, so they crave the few visits we do have with family members. My mom spent Christmas here last year as well, but David had just left for Iraq, and we were up to our ears (literally) with the fun we like to call "Lice Fest 2005/06" So it just was not the same. Oh, Internet, if only I had been blogging last year, you could have lived the fun and irony with me *snort*

So, this year Christmas was immeasurably better, for the obvious reasons...The Man: present, The L.I.C.E: NOT!

This year Santa brought the girls a Wii. They had been talking about it since Nintendo first started talking about the new system over a year ago. When it became apparent that the Wii's would be in short supply, we told the girls there would be no way to buy one without sitting in line for hours (true)...and that we were not willing to do that (not really true) for a game system. What they did not know however, was that Mrs. Clause had already sat in line for 6 hours outside Gamestop in November. Where, I might add, she was voted the coolest mother ever, by a bunch of very nice, self described geeks and slackers! Of course I was the *only mother there...in fact for the first 4 hours, I was the only woman there :/

Anyway, Chaney and Kennedy were pretty resigned to not getting one. The Wii was the only thing Riley had asked for from Santa though, so she was pretty confident that the Big Guy would come through...providing we were telling her the truth when we assured her she was NOT on the naughty list. She did not quite believe us though, when we tried to explain that as her parents we would be the first to know if she were put on the bad list. She was so cute this year, it breaks my heart that we only have a few short years to do Santa. Chaney found out this year...and I pray that when the other two find out we can leave out the drama that we had this year. I won't go into the long details, but to summarize: lots of Mom guilt, and much moola put into the therapy jar :/

After the girls went to bed, we set the Wii up in the game room. We were trying to think of ways for the girls to find it. Mrs. Clause wanted to hang the controllers from the Christmas tree...however Santa wanted to put them in their stockings. Mrs Clause relented, because she is submissive like that. Since I was a little girl, our tradition has been that Santa has put the stockings at the foot of the kids beds so that they find it when they wake up. Santa does this before we go to bed at 1am...

At 1:07 we hear the girls awake! We later learned that Chaney woke up and knew it was the middle of the nights, so she decided to go back to sleep, however, when she stretched out she felt the stocking and wanted to take a quick peek. Once she saw the Wii remote, all bets were off. Way. To. Go. Santa.

We all got up and opened presents...the highlights: pink (3 different pinks) converse hightops for Chaney, Black and Pink Heelys for Riley, and a Posty the Pig Snuggler for Kennedy. My Dad and Step-Mom bought them a laptop to do school work on. Chaney is over the moon about that...although I dont think it has sunk in that it is for school. They also got new DS lites. Chaney and Riley had the old kind, and Kennedy wanted one. When the big girls realized that the baby sister was going to get the new and improved DS, they chose to trade in their old one toward the purchase of the DS Lites. They have been mocking them from the top of my closet for a couple of months now :)

After we opened presents, we all played some Wii...VERY FUN! Even Grandma got into the action! She beat us all in Wii Bowling. She even played Tennis. It was like a Visa commercial...

Brand new Wii Game System: $249,
Wireless Wii Controller: $60,
Watching a 50 year old grandmother play Wii Tennis...PRICELESS!

About 4:30am we all were starting to loose our Christmas cheer, so the adults went to bed and slept, while the girls went to bed and taught Kennedy how to go on bark mode with Nintendogs and the new DS Lites. Here are some pictures of Christmas "Middle of the Night"...I could kick myself for not getting pictures of Wii playing!

Chaney and her new converse shoes

Riley opening her Heelys. I think these might be a bigger hit than even the Wii!

Kennedy was very happy with Chaney's gift to her...Nintendogs

They seem to think they can keep Mom away from the laptop...I don't think so

This should have gone at the top Grandma got to buy them their Christmas Pjs this year

I hope you all are having a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Me :)

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