Ben, Becky, Kara, Kiersten,and Evie: February 2018

NYE and Playoffs in KC

Here are a few New Year's Eve pictures. We spent the evening with our friends down the street. It was a lovely night, and the kids had a blast kissing and making noise at midnight.

Evie specifically wore a twirly dress so she could swing it around when the time came.

I live for pictures just like this! So much fun was had.

The Chiefs were in the playoffs again this year so we drove out to freezing Kansas City with friends.

It was a fun time, but hard to watch our team choke.

It was very cold, but dry, which is really what matters to me.

We have never taken so long to get out of the parking lot ever. We were fine, and just rolled with it, but there were plenty of blowups. These guys were standing in front of cars to try to stop them so they could get their truck backed out. The car in front of us rolled forward into their legs, so they slammed their hands down angrily on the hood. Then the driver got out and shoved one of the guys clear out of the way. I thought we were about to see a true fight, but these guys were clearly drunk, and sort of stumbled out of the way. Ben let them back out in front of us. We were relieved and disappointed not to get to see Ben break up a fight. It's a thing he excels at.

We had to get pictures with the waterfall in our hotel. That was fun.

Then we headed out to Power and Light district to hang out. It was pretty tame out there with the loss, and the Titans fans were so shocked to have won, that they were not being awful about it at all. We tried a new pizza place and were happily surprised how much we enjoyed it. We'll still keep going back to Minsky's though. There was a convenient shuttle bus that took us exactly where we wanted to go and back. The least pleasant part was the high as a kite guy wandering back and forth through the train, mumbling to himself and making sure everyone on board saw that he had 2 guns on him. I was glad when he got off at his stop. Ben disappeared while we were waiting to go back to the hotel, and had gone wandering. He made us all come see the old train station. It was definitely worth seeing.

January With A Cat

The undisputed star of our show right now is Jingles. If I can't find the kids, if they are laughing, if they are fighting, if they are running late... it always comes down to this innocent looking kitten.

She gets carried, wrapped up, pushed in the stroller, basically everything that a self respecting feline absolutely hates. There have been some scratches, and the shocking realization that she was hissing at Evie because of her cat ear headbands. For the first few week, headband on, she hated her, headband off, she was cool. She has learned to accept Evie in a headband, but it was funny for the girls when they realized they could scare her out of her wits by putting on a headband. She even hated me with a headband, ME, her bestie.

Evie and her friend wanted a picture wearing cake and ice cream hats. That ice cream hat was originally made for Kara, and now too small for Evie. Isn't it sad? Maybe time to make a new one. A bigger one. A better one.

We have all learned to leave Jingles alone when she is in her castle. Ben named it her feisty castle. If she's playing on it and you dare to touch her, you are likely going to be bitten or clawed. She occasionally sleeps there as well, but mostly she just tries her best to tear it apart.

That ball hanging down, swung around a few weeks ago and trapped her by the paw, she was quite distressed, but I think if I hadn't happened along right after, she'd have gotten untangled on her own eventually.

On career day at school Kiersten dressed like a "diva" (though she wants to be a football player), and Evie dressed as a pop star (though she wants to be a cruise ship captain). I asked Kiersten was a diva does, and she said, "Does a Diva need to DO anything?" Good point. Evie helpfully pointed out that you can have any type of job and be a diva.

Didn't know pop stars go around wearing unicorn heabands and tutus, did you?

Kiersten had a special chorus concert at school. She was very excited, and they sang great songs.

Kara ran in ahead of Evie and me and got us a front row seat, so that was nice.

Evie decided to wear her Christmas dress in an effort to steal the spotlight. Notice the Fairy Tail tattoo on her hand.

They have to do things like this, just because.

I did ask them to try at least one traditional pose for me. Kara said I was a boring photographer. I reminded her I'm not any kind of photographer, and she agreed.

My TWELVE Year Old

Little Bear is 12. TWELVE. This year I pulled out some old Minnie Mouse decorations from her 3rd birthday and put those up. I told her for weeks she was too old to have her door decorated. She gets up at 6AM for school, so it was just me and her on her birthday morning. She was a happy girl.

I did put 2 balloons on her bedroom door so she would think that was all she was getting this year, being such a grown up, big 12 year old. Then I went out and put streamers on the front door so she could be surprised when she left for school. It was really cold, and my fingers all went numb. When I was almost finished, I was startled to realize I had streamered myself out onto the front porch with no way to get back in without disturbing all my hard work. So I called Ben over to let me in through the garage.

Here is how it looked from the outside. By morning it was a little saggy, but all still there.

I forgot, Jingles was up with us too. So it wasn't just Kara and me after all. She has started showing up next to my bed every morning when my alarm goes off, and then we go wake Kara for school together.

I also put up Kara's birthday decorations from our first Disney cruise on her 7th birthday. She wasn't as annoyed with all the Mickey and Minnie as I thought she might be.

She really wanted a Fairy Tail cake. I came at her with several ideas, but she was insistent on white frosting with rainbow around the edge and a pink fairy tail emblem. She was very pleased when she saw the cake. I made the emblem out of melting chocolate. I printed it out, and then put parchment paper over and traced the design with a piping bag of the chocolate. Luckily, it was a simple design.

I also did her name and a #12 with the chocolate. I was glad I had because the frosting ended up a little soft, and would have been hard to write nicely with. I really struggled with the rainbow design, but ended up with something acceptable.

I told Kara to leave for the bus stop in 2 minutes, then I snuck outside to be ready for a picture. She didn't come out for 4 minutes, so rang the doorbell so she would come out. She was distracted by playing with the cat, and by Evie who had woken up and come down stairs full of birthday salutations.

She ducked when she burst through, which left a good amount of streamers up top for me to crash through later to Kiersten and Evie's delight. Our neighbor walking his dog was pretty happy about it too.

For dinner, she weirdly wanted mac and cheese from Outback. Ben and I couldn't figure out when she'd even had it before to know she liked it. But we obliged and the way Ben ordered, there were small sodas for the little girls, and 2 large sodas. Since neither Ben nor I wanted a soda, Kara got to have 2. She was pretty happy, but I don't think she was able to finish both. Probably for the best since she had to go to Tae Kwon Do that night.

Ben was home early enough that we had time for her to open her gifts after dinner before she was picked up for TKD.

Evie gave her a Kagome keychain and an Inuyasha skin for her 3DS. She was pleased with that.

Kiersten gave her a pack of Fairy Tail emblem tattoos with various colors. She wanted to put them in a big box so Kara wouldn't guess what the gift was. I thought it was a long shot that she'd ever have guessed that. She likes to wear the tattoos in the same place as certain characters from the show. She even shared a few with her sisters.

I tried to talk her into wanting a "Happy" cake, which is a blue cat from her favorite anime. But she really wanted the cake her way, so I instead crocheted her a hat that looked like Happy. Kiersten was my model, and was so excited for her to see it. It did not take me very long to make, so Ben was surprised to see it when I was wrapping her gifts. I guess I hadn't even mentioned that I was making it. Though I'm certain I had told him that I needed to run to the store for yarn to make it.

She was happy with her Happy hat, and I was happy about that.

She has been complaining about her purple flower bathroom rug and barbie toothbrush holder a lot lately. She was asking me to get all new stuff for her bathroom for Christmas, and I did not come through. When I got started looking for her birthday, I became concerned that I would pick out things she didn't like. She is still sort of in the "if Mom likes it, it can't be cool" phase. So I had Ben get her a giftcard so she could go pick out what she liked. She did use every penny to get new teal bathroom accessories. Everything I pointed out at the store was deemed "babyish", so it's good I let her pick. It was also fun to make the giant laminated card.

She was pretty eager to open her new bike. Her old one is very small, maybe too small for Kiersten already. She knew she was getting this. She had asked for some specific bike qualities and the box was in the garage for over a week. It was still exciting to open it though!

Ben made her help put it together so she'll know better how to fix it if anything goes wrong and how to maintain it. I thought it would be more fun to have already assembled it and have it waiting to greet her on her birthday. Let's be honest, if it ever breaks, Ben will be the one fixing it.