Happy New Years!

Well, one of my resolutions is to stay organized and on top of things, and that includes the blog... more pics, more posts.... So, since I am pretending today is the start of my new year, here we go.
Also, I have been blogging for one year~~~for you new readers, you probably don't see posts going back that far, that's because my blog accidentally got deleted and they are non-recoverable by blogger. Thankfully, Brandon, one of my college friends, somehow found an archive that contained the ENTIRE blog and so I have a PDF and a Word copy on my computer! Thanks again Brandon... so now, I have started this one and will be more careful with it in the future. I have a ton of Christmas pics to put up, but they are on the other computer, so I will have to do that later tonight. So, for now, I will skip the Christmas post and go directly into New Years.
Our New Years Eve was awesome. Josh and I met Kara and Scott at Red Lobster and had a great time together. We all shared our resolutions and had a fun 3 hours at RL.
We've enjoyed our Christmas break and have tried to stay at home as much as possible. Every morning of break, Noah woke up and would say "no school today!" with a huge smile on his face. Sweet boy! I think he's going to have a hard time waking up this morning, and I dread it, but it'll be good getting back into our routine, I am so ready to get back to the gym!
I have been in the process of taking down the tree and the Christmas decorations and Noah has had the hardest time with that. If you don't know Noah personally, you need to know how sentimental and sensitive he is. He saw me taking down the tree and immediately started crying. He was saying "no, not my tree, Christmas not over." So, I felt so sorry for him crying about that tree, I thought it wouldn't hurt to leave it up and just do a Valentine's tree, an Easter tree, and 4th of July tree, etc... and the kids would enjoy helping with all the different "holidays tree" decorations. So, I told Noah to go ask daddy, who immediately said "No, the tree is coming down." His argument was that it wouldn't be as special at Christmas time if we had it up all year, and I get that too, I just felt so sorry for Noah. So, I didn't touch it the rest of the night... the next day I was taking all the "ball" ornaments off first and had a big bag of red and gold balls. Again, Noah noticed what I was doing and ran in to stop me. I told him nicely, that we had to take it down, but I didn't have to right then. So, I started doing something else and a few minutes later I came back to the room and Noah is down by the tree hanging the ornaments BACK on--- HOW STINKIN' CUTE IS THAT? He was SO PROUD and ran up to me and said "Mommy, Look I fixed the tree!" So, I left his up for a couple more days. Even in passing, if he looked over and saw the half taken down, half decorated tree he'd cry. Finally, last night, we finished, through a few tears, the beloved tree is now in it's box awaiting the arrival of next Christmas.
Pa has spent a lot of time at our house during the break also, he can't wait to retire to be able to see the kids more. They loved it, Harper and Juddson started to play "school day" with Pa. They will answer questions, or have Pa answer questions and will run to the wall and draw an imaginary mark and say "check mark" and then go on to the next question. It's so cute to hear Judd say "check mok." Harper and Juddson have also started playing "overboard." They pile up pillows and their HUGE stuffed animals they got for Christmas up and jump off her bed into the pile while yelling "overboard!" Judd says that too "ove bord" and he'll count too, "1, 2,5,6, 8" and then jump-- at least he's got most of them down!
Cory made Josh an awesome marshmallow gun for Christmas (thanks for that Cory...) And Josh likes to shoot our children with it... well, he had it out and was going to shoot Noah, and Harper ran in front of him, and said "No, he's my friend!" and when she stepped in front of him, Josh had already shot and it hit her arm at pretty close range. I don't think it hurt her, just shocked her that he actually shot her, and she cried and cried... it was so sad because she was protecting Noah and she took the shot. Now, Josh will get it out to play with Noah, because Noah loves to get shot with it, and she'll grab Judd's hand and run him into the bedroom to hide him so he won't get shot and she'll scream at daddy to not shoot them.
Another thoughtful thing she did was when we were all playing Hungry Hippo. We tried to play in on the bed, which was a terrible idea because it slanted to one side, the side with the most weight-- where Josh was laying. Anyways, we played and since I was opposite of Josh, I ended up with like 1 ball, Harper, who had several, grabbed a handful and gave me some... I think that's so sweet of her, she didn't want me to feel like a Hungry Hippo failure.
They got a little fun to learn table and it has a flip top, one side is music and the other side teaches you to write numbers and letters and draw, when that side is down, Harper says she is "doing my job" and no one can bother her.
The other day we were in the office and Noah flipped the light switch on. After a second, Harper said "Nice reach Noah" and I said "Nice reach? What do you mean?" and she walked over to the switch and said "I can't weach, I too wittle, Noah had a nice weach!"
Two nights ago, they were all 3 in the bath... it was cold in our house and the water was pretty hot. Noah was standing up and the steam from the bath was around him and concerned Harper pointed to Noah and said "He's burnin'."
Judd is currently loving the song "head shoulders knees and toes" and I have to sing it a hundred times a day, especially when I am rocking him to sleep.... our new favorite routine. Last night he sang along to the Richard Scarry ABC learning song with me and it was precious.
Yesterday we made Noah turn off his computer, because his time was up and he was crying and whining about it while sitting in my lap. He said "My heart..." and I said "what's wrong with your heart?" and he said, "It's broken." and continued crying over his computer games.
Well, I didn't get to post this Monday, it's now Tuesday morning. Our routine started off well and Noah was all smiles about school-- which was surprising and wonderful. Yesterday was super hectic with school, gym, therapy, a trip to Lowes, home to meet the electrician, back to lowe's for different stuff, came home with the wrong stuff after an hour, Josh had to pick us up pizza for dinner, showers, and to bed... that's why I didn't get to post this yesterday! Today should be much calmer, although Judd messed up my new workout routine because he got sick and threw up in the gym childcare today and we had to leave. I tried to work out at home, but you know how that goes, with 2 toddlers climbing all over-- not so good... Anyways, here are some pics from the past couple of weeks... You'll notice Noah got a haircut and he'll remember it or think about it and cry "my beautiful hair gone" and we have to reassure him that it's still beautiful and will grow back.