This is what the girls were doing while I was packing to visit my family for a few days before Christmas. I think Tansy would put everything in the dress-up drawer on if I would let her. She actually ended up with more than this before she was done.


We got a lot of snow while we were at Grandma Olsen's house. Sydney was ready to go build a snowman as soon as the storm hit. She hadn't been able to before because the snow was too powdery. This snow, however, was wet, dense, packing snow. Tansy was pretty upset when I put her snow stuff on because it was so big. Once she got out in the snow, she got really happy and had a great time waddling around and patting the snowman.

We also had the kids put on a nativity play, but because of illness and weather, we lost four of our cast quite suddenly. We had to draft some others in quickly. Ben go to be a wise man as you can see in this picture of his awesome turban.

Christmas was great. All Sydney had asked Santa for was dinosaurs. This is a picture of her counting her new dinosaurs, which temporarily distracted her from further present opening. There were twelve, by the way.

Tansy was our meticulous present opener. Each one took a long time, but when we would try to help her so she wouldn't get frustrated, she would say, "No." She wouldn't get upset or anything. She just wanted to do it her way. Her long, tedious way, one square inch of wrapping paper at a time.

Zack got these froggy rattle slippers from Aunt Kim. He was hooked. We ended up opening most of his presents while he was napping since Tansy's gift opening made the morning take FOREVER.

But the greatest presents of all: the elepant and lion from Santa that were big enough to sit on. Sydney named the lion Asland (I can't convince her that there is no D at the end of Aslan) and the elephant Tika (from Barbie as the Island Princess, for those of you who are not up on your Barbie culture). The girls spent a lot of time on these on Christmas and pull them out quite a bit.

Now for the reason that I did not post on Sunday. On Christmas Eve, Sydney's cough got really out of control. When she coughs really hard, she throws up. That night she threw up in bed and told me that she had tried to hold the throw up in her mouth so it wouldn't get on her Christmas jammies. We had to change her pants, but these pajamas also had a pair of shorts that matched. Fortunately, she missed her shirt.

On the 26th, Tansy started coughing. The next day, Zack joined the party. I was pulling out every home remedy I had, but when Sydney still hadn't improved by Monday, I called the doctor. They ordered a chest x-ray that came back clear, so Tuesday morning we went in to get her checked out. The doctor concluded that she has Reactive Airway Disorder like I do and would need a steroid to stop the cough. He gave us enough to keep on hand for colds in the future.

On Tuesday morning at 4:30 a.m., Zack cough got really bad. He was coughing up a lot of stuff and working really hard to breathe. We took him in to the doctor as well and learned that both of his ears were badly infected. The doctor also said his wheezing sounded really bad. He decided to forgo the chest x-ray, because he felt fairly confident that it was pneumonia and he was putting Zack on an antibiotic anyway for his ears so he prescribed one that would treat both.

The longest stretch of sleep I have gotten in the last week is four hours, which felt amazing. This morning I was so tired, my hands and feet were tingly and I felt like I was going to throw up. I'm so glad Ben is out of school right now. I don't know what I would do without him.

Sorry, no pictures this week. We are in Orem with my family, and I don't have a way to load anything up.

On Wednesday, we had our ward Christmas party. Of course, Santa was there. Thank goodness they had him start seeing the kids at the beginning of the party. He spent so much time with each kid (which they loved) that the line moved SO SLOW (which we did not love). Ben and the girls were near the middle of the line, so when I realized how long this was going to take, I decided to hit the quick and efficient food line so that we could eat right when we sat down. Sydney actually sat in Santa's lap this year, which surprised and worried us a little. She has never let him pick her up before, and I knew she would be expecting whatever she asked him for. All she wanted was dinosaurs, which we had safely packed away in our closet already! Score!

On Thursday, we headed down to Utah Valley. We had originally planned on Friday, but came early to go to Jake's kindergarten program. This also meant that we were ahead of the storm that came through on Friday. Anyway, we drove down right after Sydney got out of preschool on Thursday, but had to stop to put air in a tire and gas in the van. We made it to the program, which was an very pleasant half an hour, and watched Jake sing all of his songs. Shortly before Jake's speaking part, Sydney had to go to the bathroom. We ran as fast as we could, but we still missed it. Emily played it back on her camera for us though.

We have been played hard with cousins for a couple of days, so we all decided to take a day off from each other today to get some rest. My entire family napped this afternoon so we have peace and joy in the house again.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, and I look forward to posting and looking at pictures next week.

On Monday, Zack had his four-month well-child visit. I am glad to say that on Monday, he was actually a well child. He weighed 16 lbs. 1 oz. and was 25.5 inches long. Sydney was 11 months old before she weighed 16 lbs. and Tansy was 8 months old before she was as big as Zack is now. He is currently going into some 6-9 month clothes, which totally throws me off because Sydney wore that size when she had her first birthday. Such a big, cute, cuddly guy.

On Friday, we found out that Tansy is allergic to penicillin. While I was putting on her pajamas Thursday night, I noticed about a dozen tiny, red spots on her tummy and back. I decided to check on them again in the morning, and this is what I found. I called the doctor as soon as they were open, and the doctor decided that he wanted to see her. Since there was nothing new in her environment, it was decided that this was linked to the amoxicillin she was on to treat her ear infection. Her ear had healed so we stopped the amoxicillin and started her on Benadryl and Claritin. By Saturday evening, she had totally cleared up. She actually got even worse than what you see in the picture. Poor girl.

We got our first good snow yesterday. The girls begged to bundle up and get outside late in the afternoon when the wind had finally died down. It felt like looking at a giant snowglobe every time we looked outside. We got several inches of very "fluffy" snow, as Sydney puts it. That means that it doesn't make very good snowmen, despite their best efforts. However, they did manage to get a snowball or two off and made snow angels. Sydney wasn't very happy that there were not gloves to fit her. She ended up wearing mine. Sydney is fascinated with making footprints in the snow. Who am I kidding? Sydney loves to make footprints in water, mud, etc. They came in cold and wet and ready for some hot chocolate.

Ben finished his finals this past week. He is officially on Christmas vacation now. It's fun to have him around more for a little while.

By Monday, the kids were feeling well enough to help decorate the Christmas tree. Sydney felt that if Grandma and Grandpa Olsen had their tree up, we should too. She is actually still in her pajamas in these pictures because she had been so sick all day. In fact, this is about the only time that day that she moved from the couch.

This is the decorated tree. Notice the abundance of ornaments around the bottom of the tree. There is one spot so heavily ornamented, you can't find a free branch if you wanted to.

After that excitement, we settled back into the business of being sick. The cold finally hit me on Tuesday. Sydney missed the entire week of preschool and couldn't believe that they would actuallystart without her.

On Thursday, I surrendered and took all of us to the doctor. The main reason for this choice is that, although it is difficult to really seen in this picture, Zack woke up with pinkeye. We were within a few doses of being done with the girls' eyedrops so I had thought we were safe. Nope. Sydney wasn't breathing very well either. It turns out that Sydney was still moving air well enough, Zack did have pinkeye, and all three kids had ear infections. Zack's were really bad. He said that mine weren't infected yet, but that I had better stay on my decongestant to make sure it stays that way. So far so good. I have five bottles of amoxicillin in my refrigerator. Sydney says they are peach flavor. I love our pharmacy.

Then Ben started coughing on Friday. Not fair! The thing that gets me through long, hard days with sick kids is knowing that my husband, who is impervious to illness, will be home at the end of the day. Not only is he noticably sick, but I saw him taking medicine! We're doomed.

The good news is that Super Saturday is over! Things went really well with only a couple of mishaps. We had a great time, but I crashed really hard yesterday afternoon when it was all over. We watched Elf last night, and I had the hardest time keeping my eyes open even though I love that show. Don't worry, I got to watch it again last night at 2:00 a.m. while I was up with a coughing Tansy. How's that for a silver lining?