#3

I'm afraid that once we reach #3, we are out of ideas, and much energy. We have already tried everything and nothing much is new. Thankfully, by the time #3 arrives, it appears that they magically grow up on their own without too much parental guidance! Look, just add ponytails and she's 6 months older! Yeah, I have to watch this one, she is growing up too fast. I do feel badly because we rarely read Emora books. I will try to do better with this. Of course Emora doesn't want to sit long for reading either, it would only take us some seconds to read her a one word a page book, so I need to get the older kids involved in reading to her too.

Tonight we opened gifts. The kids, Brian and I bought Emora her own computer. It has a mouse looking mouse and about 9 buttons with different settings. We were trying to let her play with that while the big kids opened their gifts with small swallable parts. Everyone got what they wanted (umm-requested). The fun part was that Ivan wanted the kids to get everyone things too. So we helped guide them in selections for everyone and they paid for the items too. The kids gave me hair clips, chocolate mix and cappucino mix and they gave daddy warm socks. Ivan gave Dominique a little package of 8 nail polish colors and she gave Ivan a Lightning McQueen game set with checkers, Rummy cards and a puzzle. They have been so excited about it for so long and are presently curled up with their warm rice bags listening to the nutcracker cd. Tomorrow we hit the road for Houston. Abilene may get a white Christmas while we are gone. It was raining with thunder a bit ago and is supposed to drop below freezing at night. But if we miss it, we won't be too bad off, we'll have plenty of white Christmases in the years to come.