I needed this today...

Today has been really emotional for me so far. I don't think my sleep was very restful. I did not have breakfast. May not help that I am leaving my entire family tomorrow for 5 days. Or the fact that M and I are trying to decide if R will be attending Kindergarten at the end of this month.
That is probably the root of it. My baby, old enough to go to Kindergarten, but still not yet 5. He just doesn't seem ready yet and I am having a hard time not putting that blame on myself. Not that there is blame to put. He is a very smart child, that is not it. We just are trying to figure out if we are doing him the best service to send him to school, on a bus, to be out performed by children who are almost a year older than him in some cases. I do not ever want my child to think that he is not as smart as other kids and I do not want him to be dogged by that his entire schooling, nor do I want him to hate school. Everyone I talk to - friends who have been kindergarten teachers, parents of children born later in the year, Michael's doctor, our parents - have supported what we have said and agreed with the things we asked them about. Now it is just figuring out what we are going to do. Is there a preschool out there that we can send him to that is not full? One that will teach him things, so he will learn and grow and not just have play time?
Aargh - I didn't need another thing on my plate today. I'm busy enough packing and getting my family ready to be without me for 5 days.
I got video forwarded from my mother-in-law today. It helped a bit, though I cried. Watch here.

Imperials

Oh, this post by Dixie took me back down memory lane. I love, love, love "I Believe" and it has been so long since I listened to it. Thanks for the refresher, Dixie!
My growing up years were filled with the Gaither Vocal Band, The Gaither Trio and my all-time favorite group is The Imperials. I still love their music the best and looked them up on YouTube today and cuddled K while listening to the songs from long ago. Apparently Imperials are now recording again as "The Classic Imperials." Now that I no longer work in a Christian bookstore, I am out of the loop. :)
My favorite all-time album of theirs has to be "Imperials Live (Baylor University)" from 1978. "Sonshiny Day" and "Sail On", "Bread Upon the Water" and "The Good Old Gospel Ship" all great songs. Armond Morales' bass voice gets me every time. I love the deep bass from gospel songs, they do four part harmony better than any other genre.
I will leave you with "Bread Upon the Water" from the 70's, I believe just for Armond Morales' vocals.

and couldn't resist "One More Song for You".

Mr. Mom

My neighbor girl, M, was over tonight for supper and the early evening. We always laugh a lot - my DH tends to have her and I in stitches through supper, usually causing M (my neighbor, not my DH) to have liquid coming up her nose. Anyway, she showed us this video that she said she thinks of my DH whenever she hears the song.
So this it for all you SAHMs out there who's hubbies love you and do so much to help (like mine), but you just don't feel like they totally understand how BIG a job it is to be the CEO, COO and CFO of your home.
I cannot embed the actual video from YouTube, but here is the link - the music video is hilarious, so it is worth clicking on the link and watching.

Love for a Lifetime

I hope M & I are still having fun and are this in sync in 50 years! :)
Here is the description from YouTube - "Fran & Marlo Cowan (married 62 years) playing impromptu recital together in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic. He turned 90 in February."

We Are the World 25 for Haiti

I meant to put this on a week ago when M downloaded it to his new iPhone. (BTW, I want one of those badly - SO COOL!) I love this song, loved the original and I love that they did the 25th anniversary edition for Haiti - I believe it was in the works already, but when that tragedy hit they got together sooner and put this amazing video together. I love that they included artists that are popular with all the generations. Seeing Miley Cyrus, the Jonas brothers and then Jennifer Hudson, Pink, Fergie, will.i.am, even Vince Vaughn in the back of the chorus as well as Barbra Streisand and I am sorry but I don't know the older gentleman singing solos, but him, all coming together and singing it as one. It was amazing. I seem to remember reading somewhere that there was over 200 people, but I my be off one way or another on that number.
It is quite a long video, with a intro and a closer. If you just want to see the music video itself, it starts at 1:05. Enjoy!

Some new videos...

The kiddos enjoying the twinceses Christmas gifts...

A getting some horsey rides from Daddy-o. In case you are wondering the person laughing really hard is our neighbor, M. We figured out that day that with her turning 12 at the beginning of May, she could've been our honeymoon baby. Boy do I feel OLD! :) I think K was in bed still napping at the time of the video shooting.

Family Mountain Day - December 28, 2009

The promised video...

K and R had so much fun. A on the other had, not so much! :)

Guess who stole the show...

...with all her animation.

It is almost 10 minutes, so watch if you want, but the best part is around 3:30-5:00 minutes. M's parents are in MX for the winters, so have never seen our kiddies on Christmas morning - this is our way of being able to share it with them. Never realized how animated I am as well. Apparently Christmas morning is quite exciting at our house! :)
It was a good Christmas this year - started with M being off from the 23rd to the 4th of January - YEAH! And on the 24th we met my parents for supper, then Christmas Eve service at church, then off to the Zoo for ZooLights. We got home around 10 p.m. and needed to give the kiddies their Christmas jammies to wear to bed so they were ready for Christmas morning gift opening and video. K cried the entire time, she was so exhausted. M and I got jammies too this year - loving mine! Fleece, how can you go wrong with fleece? In the morning we got downstairs after I prepped and Daddy got into position with the video camera and well, you can watch the video. We took it slow this year - opened the stockings and R's gift from Santa first, then only a couple other ones. We then had breakfast and went back to gift opening after that. Were only finished at about 11:30. R was less hyper and demanding this year. Maybe had something to do with the girls' having gifts and sharing the limelight with them. It was good.
After we were done opening all the gifts under the tree, M asked me if we were finished and I said yes. We'd agreed not to exchange gifts this year and I had shopped for all my own - the stocking ones that we did do. He all of a sudden pulled out two more bags from behind the tree.

I was more than a little surprised. In one was a gift that his company gave us - turkey carving set - very nice. Also a nail set and bod lotion and salt scrub for me. Then in the other bag, I opened it up and there was a SPENCE gift bag in there! (For those of you not in Canada, Spence is a diamond store. :) He had bought me a beautiful white gold necklace with a Herculean knot and diamond chips. Sorry the picture is not that clear, but you get the idea.

My parents came in the afternoon for supper and M and I actually tidied up in the evening. This year I was convinced not to expect Christmas Day to be any different than any other day. With children you are doing the same things that you always do, actually even more as you need to put toys together and clean up after the gift opening. It is nice to have low expectations and then anything bigger than that is a bonus. It made for a wonderful, relaxing Christmas.
On Boxing Day, we braved the mall - went at 8:30 - out by noon - to get some clothes. Even took the kiddos and they did amazing. I love my kids, they are such a blessing. M got a new leather jacket, some sweaters and a hoodie. I got a pair of jeans, a sweater and 3 hoodies from my new favorite store, Aeropostale. They have the softest hoodie material of any I have found yet. I actually got our 4 hoodies for $50 bucks and they are good quality hoodies.
In the afternoon we headed down to my parents - my aunt, uncle and cousin were at their house - I had not yet met my cousin, they adopted him from Russia 3 years ago and they like int he States. D is just over a year older than R and the boys had such a great afternoon playing together. My other aunt ad uncle and my gramma were also in town, so there is lots of family stuff going on. On Sunday we went to my aunt's house in Airdrie for a big family get together. R had so much fun playing with cousins. Though he and the girls have no first cousins, my cousin and cousin's kids are the same. It's kind of nice because presently my cousins' daughter and son have no cousins either, though they have lots of opportunities in the future for it to happen.
Today we went to the mountains for an outdoor day. R got his first piece of gear - SNOWSHOES - for Christmas and we wanted to try them out. He took off in those things like he'd been born with them attached to his feet. I will upload video of our day tomorrow.
Well, that's all for now. Hope everyone's Christmas was as good as ours!

Girlies moving

M made some videos of the twincesses the other night after their bath. There's not lots of action - but boy are they cute! :)

The New Reality at our House

They are both walking - K a little more steady on her feet then A. Enjoy the video!

The annoying voice in the background is a new website that R has found off of pbskids.org called EkkoWorld. It teaches kids all about the environment and being green. It is great, just the voice is ANNOYING as all get out. I am waiting now for R to start telling me how to conserve energy and be better to the environment though. I am hoping he has learned that he needs to shut off the water right away when he washes his hands - drives me crazy how he pulls the plug and lets the sink fill up!
M also made another video for his mother so she could see the girls and what they are up to - she lives in Mexico part of the year. Here is the link if you want to watch it too. I would've included it, but it is 10 minutes long. Oh, and yes, K does stand at the table for long periods of time when she is allowed. I was at a much needed massage while M was taping all this - and before you feel jealous - it was massage THERAPY, so painful, not relaxing. :( Gotta go back this week again - my neck and shoulder are killing me!

Lost Generation

I really believe that our youth are the future and wanted to share this with you all. Watch it until the end.

The Fun Theory

Saw this on another blog today and thought I would share it -

I would love to climb a set of stairs like that. You could do it with me. Actually, I would probably be one of those people jumping on it, trying to play a song. If you would like, we could play a duet and if not, I make ask you to step off so that you don't ruin my beautiful music. :)
Apparently its a whole initiative by Volkswagon in Europe. Here's my other favorite video.

I'd be more excited about glass recycling with this "video game", although I do like glass recycling because it's a great release to throw them in as hard as you can to hear the crash. A little like "OPA!" but you don't have to clean up the mess. :)

The Black Eyed Peas

The U2 concert that we are going to is in less than a month now in Las Vegas - I am SOOO excited - I booked our tickets for flights and the hotel last week and I am getting PUMPED! We found out that The Black Eyed Peas are opening for them, so Michael and I went to YouTube to familiarize ourselves with their songs - most of which we already knew as they are a pretty popular group. Their hit for the summer "I Gotta Feeling" which is being played EVERYWHERE was on Oprah's 24th season opener (really? She's been on THAT long!) and they did a mob flash dance to it. It is REALLY cool. Check it out below.

I Dare You NOT to Choke Up

I got this forwarded to me with the line "This is so true, please share my tears!" Now, I am asking you to share mine.

I love you, my DH, thank you for being so beautifully imperfect for me!

Momsense 2 and Dadsense

You may remember the video that I posted before by this lady - apparently her name is Anita Renfroe. I really like her sense of humor - here is her Momsense 2 video...

And I also had to include her Dadsense video for all you dads out there!

Don't know about you, but this has already started at my house. :) Check out some more of her videos on YouTube - she's pretty hilarious!

Pachelbel Rant

Just a funny video I thought I would share. I agree, you hear it everywhere!

Random facts

I watched the last few episodes of America's Best Dance Crew and was sad that I never saw it from the beginning. I love hip hop dance and will probably eventually go back and watch the entire season, even though I know who ended up winning. I think people who can dance like that are AMAZING - it's incredible what people can do with their bodies, though I cannot help wondering how much they hurt themselves practicing to get to the point of doing it well or perfectly. And how many of them should have some serious chiropractic work done. I do not like most rap music though as I think the lyrics are often rude and crude, so liking a style of dance that is based on it is a little surprising to me.
Here is a little sampling of the winning crew's routine Week 3...

My new favorite YouTube video...

I wish life was like this!

The Things You Don't Say to Your Wife

OK - so I stole it. It was on Mark's blog first. But it's funny, so hey! ENJOY!!

Walrus Sounds

Ever since I saw 27 Dresses and they butchered the lyrics so badly I have been wondering the lyrics to this song.

Bennie and the Jets
Music by Elton John
Lyrics by Bernie Taupin

Hey kids, shake it loose together
The spotlight's hitting something
That's been known to change the weather
We'll kill the fatted calf tonight
So stick around
You're gonna hear electric music
Solid walls of sound

Say, Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet
But they're so spaced out, Bennie and the Jets
Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful
Oh Bennie she's really keen
She's got electric boots a mohair suit
You know I read it in a magazine
Bennie and the Jets

Hey kids, plug into the faithless
Maybe they're blinded
But Bennie makes them ageless
We shall survive, let us take ourselves along
Where we fight our parents out in the streets
To find who's right and who's wrong

And for your viewing pleasure the clip from the movie...