It's beginning to look a lot like HO HO...

Josie has taken to call christmas and anything associated with it "HO HO" even our tree is a "HO HO" tree. So HO HO it is this year. The tree and the kids trees are up, now for the rest of the house. That is more of a chore but will hopefully be done soon.

The Dowd household has been very busy! Not sure where all the time has gone, but since I last blogged about it, we have had conferences for both kids. Josie's conference was great! Her teachers say she is ahead of her goals, so that is great. Brendan is doing well, just a few areas to focus in on, but second grade brings a lot of new things for him to learn. They are writing stories, so he has to get the sentence structure of paragraphs and story theme mastered. They are also working more with money, double digit adding and subtracting. And of course reading, which is always an area of struggle. But he is NOT a trouble maker, so that is good!

Turkey day was good. We celebrated as usual with Mark's family (we do easter with my family). And now the race to christmas....Started out with a little Black Friday shopping (never go to walmart! unorganized chaos).

*brendan reading josie the night before christmas*

I guess we are just settling in to a normal life. It has been 9 months since a surgery, and with no surgery on the near horizon, we are living day to day being THANKFUL at how far Josie has come and just how "NORMAL" she is. As I type I am watching her secure a bib on her baby and feed her a bottle. Most definently in a few minutes after she burps her, she will change her diaper because she will be "poopy" and then we may repeat that a few hundred more times until I tell her time for bed and she throws a major FIT! You see when you have a child born with a "rare syndrome" your future of normacly in unsure. So we are going to settle into our normal little life and enjoy us some HO HO time, heck maybe we will even get daddy to not be a scrooge this year....

Ho Ho Ho

Inevitebly christmas is coming...sooner rather than later. How can we deny it when it is shoved in our faces everywhere we go? Take for instance this weekend. It was a beautiful weekend her in Michigan (for november) so mark was fishing on saturday to "clear his head" so i decided to take the kids to Henry Ford Museum to see the Lego Castle Adventure. Being that is was the first weekend of the month, and I had my Bank of America Debit card...I got in free, Josie was free (under 5) and brendan was 25% of b/c of my card, and parking was free! So for 8.25 we got to enjoy the whole museum and the LEGO adventure! What a deal.

We had a great time at the museum. Saw the HUGE locamotives, old cars & campers and brendan could not believe that at some point in time McD's burgers were only 15 cents! I mean WOW mom. We headed over to see "Abraham Lincoln's Chair" This is a must everytime we come. Brendan has been so interested in it, since he learned about his assassination in kindergarden. This lead to a talk on equality and slavery. Pretty deep for a saturday and a 7 year old.

The lego's were amazing! bigger than life and I could not imagine how long they took to build....

Before we left brendan was made into a:

hot dog courtesy of the oscar meier weiner mobile!

And the kids made their "pennies"

Josie chose Rosa Parks Bus and Brendan chose the wiener mobile this time!

To get back on track....we stopped by the mall to use a free certificate i got from chilrens place, and to my amazement SANTA was there already! Have to admit it was a cool exhibit. Polar express & snow globes fused together. You even walk through a snow globe and get snowed on! Of course it was free *unless you want a picture of course. so we walked through. Josie a bit aprehensive of santa himself. To my wonderment, when we rounded the corner to santa, and jolly old santa himself asked josie what she would like for christmas, she simply said "a pack and play for my baby" no crying..nothing. And josie NEVER talks to strangers! But hey, a girl wants a pack and play, she will do whatever it takes. Brendan asked for a Nintendo DS.....

So to the root of my post, how do you "BRIBE" your kids at christmas? I told brendan that santa would not even consider such an expensive gift if he does not look through his toys and books and donate some to kids less fortunate and to mommies mom to mom boxes for the spring ($$$ in mommies eyes!) So we will see how he is able to weed through some of the discarded toys that he will most likely say "its my favorite mom" and "i was going to play with it tomorrow"

Josie on the other hand is EASY. We were going through some toys in her room and I asked if I could sell a few things and she said yes! and proceeded to tell me where her pack and play would reside in her room on christmas morning...lol

Of course after we seen santa and told him our wishes, I told them that since they already told santa what they wanted they better start being EXTRA good, because santa, mrs. clause and all the elves would be closely watching them!

Rest of the day was spent letting brendan pick out some clothes (since I usually do it for him, this was a treat for him) and hanging out outside. We had such a nice day, no yelling, no fighting....and no it was not a dream!

Wordless Wednesday

Pumpkin Heads

Due to overwhelming demand....well the demand of one anyways! Our friends at
All access to Jack asked me to post our pumpkin carving fun!

If you are a FB friend you can go here to see the fun, if not....enjoy the pics

So this year, we chose these four pumpkins!

One XL, one LARGE, one MEDIUM & one SMALL

WHEW, We know we had our work cut out for us:

 

It sure took a lot of elbow grease! Brendan did great this year, He took charge of his pumpkin, Max's pumpkin & even helped with josies! Luckily daddy stepped in to help him with the harder parts .

At last but not least....

 

One big happy family & one big happy

PUMPKIN family!!

I for one and pretty geeked that my "doggy" pumpkin turned out so well. I can only take credit for the drawing, brendan & daddy did the  rest.

For the first year josie was more into helping up carve pumpkins, which is great for her dexterity, she even helped a bit. But of course mommy took over, not wanting her pumpkin to look bad. Isn't that crazy?!? someday i will reliquish control over the little things, until then, yes our pumpkins need to look cute and the kids need to match when they leave the house. That my friends is a nother post all together!