NEW BLOG

Well I seem to have finally filled up our first blog.  And since I am super cheap and don't want to pay for additional storage space - and it is too sad to delete all those cute itty bitty baby pics - viola.  A new blog.  Of course since I do print out my blog as a book each year, this is going to create issues for that.  But otherwise, I feel like the 10 of you that read this will be able to insert a 2 into the address!

The new address is: http://www.haddensbabies2.blogspot.com

Hope you enjoy!

Countdown to Christmas: Days 1 - 5

I have had the cutest little advent house for several years and we have never done anything with it. So this year I decided that I would put (sort of) Christmas activity behind each little door.  Not to toot my own horn or anything - but the girls LOVE it.  I mean it has surpassed the excitement of Elfie.  And as I have zero memory ability anymore, I thought that I would document our 25 activities.

Day 1: Eat a Christmas treat - always a popular option with these girls (which is good as I have used this as a filler cause 25 things is hard to come up with!).  For the treat, the girls got to split a 3 pack of the new peppermint Peeps that have bottoms dipped in chocolate.  Let me say, these are THE BEST TREAT EVER!!!!  I am concerned that I am going to be a giant hoarder of these.  On the upside, they are Peeps which I assume have the shelf life of at least a decade.

Day 2: Make popcorn garland for the tree.  This was not a win at all.  They did enjoy eating the popcorn.  They each strung about 5 pieces and were done.

Day 3: Make a family video singing Christmas songs.  Huge excitement here as this combines two of their favorite activities - doing a performance and making a video.  They sang Jingle Bells and Rudolph.  Normally I would post the video here, but apparently I have used up all my storage here and am unable to upload anything.  So now I have to figure out what I am going to do - delete, create a new part 2 blog, or pay.  Hmmmm

Day 4: Make chocolate covered pretzels, complete with sprinkles. Another win.  And sadly these have already been consumed.

Day 5: Have a family dance party to Christmas music.  What's not to love about this? Lights off in the den and dancing to the twinkle of the garland and the tree. 

5 year stats

The girls had their 5 year well-visit/new patient/flu shot appointment with their new doctor.  Her office is super close to our neighborhood and we had heard very good things about her.  She did seem very nice - though the appointment was not overall successful.  I had to pick them up early from school and they missed their rest time and it all went downhill from there - based on the hysterics and tears you would have thought that the nurse actually cut off their fingers for the iron test rather than just did a finger prick.  And after finally getting them calmed down from that, the doctor came in and was asking them questions which they just did not answer.  I kept saying "they really do usually talk."  I mean Brooke would not even answer questions like what foods do you like to eat.

During the visit, I did remember to bring my immunization records from VA.  The doctor was quite surprised that they did not get some shots last year and in fact questioned it.  But I was johnny on the spot and whipped up my blog post from last year and did confirm the records.  So they had to get two shots and the flu shot.  What a great way to end the appointment.

Here are their stats for height:
Brooke: 3' 8.5" which is the 86th percentile
Audrey: 3' 6.9" which is the 60th percentile

And here are their stats for weight:
Brooke: 44 lb 2 oz which is the 77th percentile
Audrey: 40 lb 6 oz which is the 57th percentile

Lost Tooth

Audrey lost her first tooth last night. It was very exciting!! Her bottom tooth had been a little loose for almost a month - she came home from school one day saying that it hurt when she was eating an apple.  Since then it had not changed much until Wednesday when I noticed that it was looking really different and at an odd angle.  So I thought that a visit from the tooth fairy may be in our near future.  But I did not know that it was going to be the very next day.

After dinner, she reached into her mouth to get out what she thought was a piece of food.  Instead the picture below was what she had rather than food:

Unfortunately D and I made the (rookie) mistake of telling her that we were going to have to pull it so that it did not fall out in the middle of the night.  Well after we finally got her calmed down, we explained that really all we were going to do was wiggle it.  In fact D told her that it would probably fall out after only 20 wiggles.  Here is a video of most of the tooth pulling experience.  Please excuse my horrible singing voice and ignore the fact that both of the girls are running around without their shirts (everything seems so normal until you see it on film!).  I can't seem to get the video to upload from my phone, so I'll put a few more pics up:

 Here we all are in the bathroom working on wiggling the tooth.

 So happy and proud of herself!

 Showing off her new space in her mouth

 Posing with her dollars and note from the tooth fairy.  It may not be visible but the money is sparkly from the tooth fairy.

Birthday Party

The girls have LOVED their birthday this year!  I feel like we have been non-stop celebrating for ages for this one.  Saturday was their party.  We had it at a local place (which seemed totally sketchy - but we didn't feel like asking a bunch of people that we don't really know to drive down into BR) that is really a daycare center but they set up bouncy things in their gym on the weekend for birthdays.  And it turned out to be fine (thank heavens!).  The girls selected who they wanted to invite to their party and I went with it - though I did convince them that our neighbors in 10th grade and 6th grade probably did not want to come.  In a crazy whirlwind of, well, craziness we did let the girls open their presents at the party.  Always a risky move with 5 year olds, but the kids get so excited to both open and see their presents opened.  The rest of the day, the girls played with almost every single present.

 Taking a drink break

 Almost all of the kids

 Blowing out the candles on their cupcake cakes

They are just so cute!

On Sunday we had church, then went to lunch with 4 other families.  The adults sat at a table, the girl kids all smooshed into a booth - 7 of them in one ordinary booth.  And the 3 boys in another booth.  It was fun times.  Then we gave the girls their big present - a trip to build-a-bear with a friend.  They loved it! Audrey picked a cat and named him/her Jewel.  Brooke (and both of the friends) picked reindeer.  Brooke named hers Reiny.

So so happy making their animals!

Monday, their actual birthday,  the girls got to have cupcakes with their class.  And let me tell you they certainly look at you funny at the grocery store buying 40 cupcakes on a Monday morning.  Then for dinner the girls selected their favorite restaurant, McDonalds.  Nice.  Though after the build-a-bear bill, that was a nice treat for me :) And as a special surprise treat one of our friends met us there.

 Waiting for the bus - of course with their new guys!

Veteran's Day and Pep Rally

In honor of Veteran's Day, the girls have been learning some patriotic songs at school.  Here is a little video of them singing them....though I will say that they were doing a much better job earlier in the day when they did not have their silly boxes turned on :)   Audrey has really enjoyed singing these songs and she has been one of the leaders in her class to be up front doing the motions.  She has been very proud of herself!

Totally unrelated video - except we were having so much fun doing videos!  The schools had a community pep rally a week or so ago to celebrate Zachary being the number one school district in the state for the 8th year running.  Each school had a time to cheer and this is what the ZELC did for their turn to show their spirit. (the last part says I'm a pony and I know it - supposed to be sung to I'm sexy and I know it)

Here are some pictures with their teachers from the pep rally too:

 With Brooke's teacher Mrs. Favaloro and one of her classmates Gracie

 With Audrey's teacher Mrs. Mestayer

And after the pep rally, Audrey posing in her pimp hat (though she calls it her cowgirl hat)

They are 5!!!

New Orleans Trip

This past weekend, D and I took a little trip to New Orleans.  D was running a half marathon and I was just along for the ride!  It is so great living so close to my family cause Gramma and Gary are just a quick drive away and are eager to watch the girls and help out.  Match made in heaven as we are eager to have the girls watched :)

We had a great time and and ate a great amount of food.

 Listening to some random, excellent opera singing off of a balcony in the Quarter

D's favorite part of New Orleans

My favorite part of New Orleans

The actual reason that we came

Our fancy night out

Happy Halloween

Every year we take the girls to get their pictures taken in their Halloween costumes...and take our birthday pictures too!  This year the girls selected their costumes on-line.  I was a little concerned how they would turn out, but they both ended up totally adorable!  Audrey really loved her little flamingo - though she frequently would not hold its head up and it was therefore flapping around her knees.  But they both made it through boo at the zoo (for 5 hours!) and being worn to school all day and a full evening of trick-or-treating.

 

Love this picture of Brooke the Tiger!

On the way to school dressed in costume!

At a party before trick or treating.  Only the in costume adults were pictured.  I planned for me and D to be in costume but my costume was an epic fail...twice.

We trick or treated for a little while with the Musselwhites.

During trick or treating.....note the sad little flamingo head hanging down :)

An action shot during the trick or treating

Second Dance Performance

The day after the homecoming parade, the elementary schools had their Fall Fest (which was hard to classify as fall at all as it was BLAZING hot outside). There were lots of games, food, and booths for the kids.  And the girls' dance class was invited to perform again.  The girls were adorable again!  Here are some pics:

Homecoming

Homecoming is a pretty big deal around here.  The theme for this year was Hooray for Hollywood.  Each school is responsible for putting together a float.  Since I have done a little volunteering at the school with the PTO, I have gotten to know Ellen, the person in charge for the early learning center PTO.  So I was part of the group of people working on and creating the float.  The theme that we chose for our float was Finding Nemo.  Due to various issues, we did not start working on our float until the Monday before the parade on Friday.  But in a surprising turn of events, our float won first place!!  And even more exciting was the girls and I got to ride on the float and throw out candy.  Which was hilarious to watch cause all the crowds got very close when they saw a float full of little kids - but those kids had some arms on them and were whopping people in the heads!!

Here are some pics from the parade:

 Lots and lots of pomping!

 This picture is with Audrey's teacher Mrs. Mestayer

Trip To Houston

For Columbus weekend, we took a trip to Houston to visit friends and go to a baby shower for our friends the Florezes....and ate a ton!! We arrived late Friday and checked into our Galleria hotel - that we got on priceline (I am still so excited to get such a cheap room....I never get my bids accepted!) Saturday D took a run in Memorial park while the girls and I walked around the Galleria.  Saturday afternoon we at lunch at Lupe Tortilla with Emily, then had the shower while the girls got to play with their aunt Amy and cousins.  To end the evening, we ate Texadelphia with the Flemings. 

Sunday morning we met up with the Bridges and Tewes families at the zoo.  It seemed like a great idea but the weather did not totally cooperate as it was COLD!  We had lots of fun at the zoo and followed that up with lunch at Freebirds.  That afternoon we got to visit with our friends the Bradleys.  It was cute to see how well the girls got along with all of our friends' kids!  To end our day we had a delightful dinner at Chuys.

Monday we finished our mini-vacation by eating at Star Pizza and getting Ruggles Bakery dessert for the road.  Can you tell that we have missed the food of Houston?

On Tuesday the girls were off from school for teacher conferences.  Both went well.  The girls seem to be doing very well both academically and socially.  Mrs. Mestayer did say that Audrey if very quiet in class and rarely raises her hand.  We have been trying to encourage her to be a little more outspoken in class.  Both of the girls had taken some sort of assessment (letters, numbers, sorting, etc) and both did very well on them.  Apparently they take this little assessment three times during the year - though with different teachers the next two times.  Brooke still seems to be a star in her class.  She was nominated for student of the year (which we are not sure if all star students get or what and it seems so weird to do that in October).