Virtute.org

Few things bring me as much joy as seeing the love between my children.

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Everything is different when all the kids are home from school.  Thomas and Ila are the only ones not in school, so they spend their days together, but when everyone is home, Ila is glued to Charlotte’s side.  Isaac does his own thing and Thomas and Nicole end up together.  They’re the worst combination because they don’t understand each other.  Nicole has autism and doesn’t understand social rules and Thomas is too young to be able to compensate so they are regularly having mis-communications that turn into yelling and fighting.  They do enjoy each other and seek each other out to play, I just have to be nearby to facilitate.  Here they are playing with blocks together and generally having a good time.
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I’m not taking as many pictures lately.  I have mixed feelings about this.  Sorting through the massive amounts of pictures I’ve taken over the years is overwhelming, but I still love them and I’m glad I have them.

Here are my boys reading together.  One of my greatest joys as a mother is to see my kids enjoy being together.

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Charlotte was a little Jealous when we turned the guest room into Nicole’s bedroom so we decided to redo the girl’s bedroom for their birthdays which both fall within a week of each other in December.  Here are the before and after pictures:

BEFORE:

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I figure this is probably just one step up from just sharing the automated facebook thing this year.  I think I write Christmas letters mostly for my own Family History, because I’m really bad at sending them out.  The idea of writing all those addresses and buying all those stamps is really daunting especially with 3 birthdays in our family in December and all the craziness of Christmas.  So here’s the letter that I finished sometime in between Charlotte’s birthday and Christmas, but haven’t sent out to anyone (I did hand deliver a few).

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We started our Christmas decorating the day after Thanksgiving.  This is a picture of the kids watching Zach put the lights on the tree. Read more »

Charlotte’s birthday fell on a Sunday so we split up her celebration.  We had the party on the Saturday before the party.  Unfortunately, Charlotte wasn’t feeling so well on the day of her party.  I thought she was just tired and I sent her down to the couch to rest and watch movies.  When I called her up just before the party she just buried her head in the couch.  She had a fever above 102.  I gave her some Tylenol and Zach gave her a blessing.  This is what she looked like when her friends started arriving:

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Ila turned 5 on December 8th.  She started the day off by helping me make Poppy seed muffins.

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Popcorn party with some of Ila’s best friends:

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This is our Elf on the shelf.  Charlotte picked the name MaryBelle for her.  I know that not everyone is a fan of this tradition, but I love that my kids still believe in magic and this adds a little more magic to the Christmas season.  This tradition also proved to be helpful in getting my hardest to wake up child out of bed because she wanted to be the first to find MaryBelle.

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Last year I didn’t find the time to write about Charlotte until February, so this year I feel pretty impressed with myself getting this post done on her birthday considering how crazy busy I’ve been.  Charlotte just happens to have a birthday in the busiest month of the year.

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It’s Ila’s birthday tomorrow.  She has been counting down the days till her birthday.  She’s very excited.  We made a paper chain so that she could stop asking me how many days.  

 

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This boy is just too cute!  I thought it was adorable how he says “taquito.” It sounds like “hot kiko.”  Anyway, once I had my camera out to record him saying taquito, I thought it was a great opportunity to record some of the other things my little smarty pants can do.  Often when I do reading lessons with Ila, Thomas insists on having a turn reading the words too.  He’s actually learned several of them.  He loves numbers and letters.

I had to break the video up into two parts because YouTube didn’t like it as one.  So here it is:

 

I feel like I’ve hardly taken pictures lately, but I did get my camera out a few times over the last week.

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Thomas loves watching when Zach builds a fire.

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Sometimes everyday moments make the best pictures.  This is Grandpa Cochran helping Ila wash her hands:

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I have so many pictures to share from today’s adventure that I thought I would give it it’s own post.

 

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Football is just a fun game to watch.  Isaac’s team played in the rain a few weeks ago.  It was raining for the entire game and by the end, he was wet and dirty and cold, but it was a win for his team. Read more »

One day I’ll get back to regular blogging.  But for now, here is a picture of each of my kids.

Isaac:

Charlotte:Nicole:   Ila:and Thomas:

 

 

 

 

Here are some of the other things I didn’t share over the last month or so.  Isaac and I removed the fence slats between our house and the neighbors.  We have a wood fence on the other three sides.

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