Josiah's birthday!

Josiah's new bike

water balloon target practice

(note to self: don't use construction paper...which is raised...on a pin the ___ game again)

Pirate cake

We survived 8 other kids in the house for 4 hours! :) I think they had a really good time...we played a few games, ate some hot dogs, watched a bit of a movie (they didn't sit still for that, soo....) and played some games. One little boy, as he was leaving, said "This is the best birthday party I've ever been to!"...a little dramatic, but nice to hear. :) It's always a little crazy this time of year trying to celebrate Josiah's birthday and keep it separated from Christmas stuff, but this year it worked out well. I cannot believe he's 8 years old!!

the crazy busy-ness of this past week!

Tom and I got to go the kids' classrooms and play some guitar and sing some christmas songs last week.

Kylie's class
Josiah's class

cookies from the mom's morning out cookie exchange (yummy)

sweet sisters (aj had just woken up...she looks so old to me)

more sweet sisters (leighton in her 2 pigtails)

the kids sang 'little drummer boy' in church this morning...so cute!

matthias fell asleep while watching tv today...i have a great video that tom took of it, but it wouldn't upload. bummer.

Recent pictures...

Life's been crazy, as usual....this time of year is always crazy busy...anyways, some pictures of our lives....Leighton getting her first hair-trim...we cut the mullet off. It's shorter than I would've gone, but I'm told it'll grow faster now.

Kylie and Josiah were in an after school music club and had a performance at the school's family night this past week.
Our little babies are growing up!! We took the cribs down and put the toddler beds up after church today. The 2 of them spent their entire naptime laughing and playing with each other....sitting together in one of their beds and reading books. Needless to say, they were exhausted tonight and fell asleep in minutes.

It was a little sad to take down the cribs. Lord-willing (can i hear an echo from grandmother's?) we are done with having babies...it's hard to believe that every stage the twins go through is it. Bitter-sweet.

Owl pellets and Leighton update...

My friend, Niki, gave us 3 owl pellets last week....the kids LOVED it! Now, what I first thought owl pellets were...they weren't. It's actually undigested bones and fur that the owl vomits (like a big furball!)...we picked at it with tweezers and pins and came up with this:
Amazing, isn't it???


Tom gave the girls a shoulder ride a few days ago...

...and then the boys got a turn!

Little Leighton was the last of the Mirabellas to get the "bad cold" that started with grandma (we love you, grandma!!)...she fell asleep on the sofa several times monday. AJ had it on Thanksgiving day and fell asleep on the floor while the rest of us ate our Thanksgiving dinner. :(

We finally pulled out our sad-looking 6-foot Christmas tree from storage. We decided to put it on top of the train table so that the twins wouldn't be too tempted to push at it and such. Matthias didn't want to be in the picture, but here they are! I, personally, miss cutting down our christmas tree after tromping around in the freezing cold trying to decide on the perfect one...but the kids had a blast with this one and really don't know any different.

Leighton:

Tom came with me to All Children's today b/c they were planning on sedating Leighton for her contrast CT. Poor baby wasn't supposed to eat or drink anything 4 hours before the procedure, so we woke her up at 5:00 (4 1/2 hours before the procedure) and sat her at the table with a bowl of cheerios. She just sat there looking at us like we were crazy! After about 2 minutes we realized she wasn't going to eat or drink so we put her back to bed....and of course she woke up an hour and a half later and ran to her booster seat saying "cheeros, cheeros!". That was hard... to not give her anything to eat and know that she didn't understand at all why we were torturing her. Anyways, I could go on forever...but long story short she did great for the scan...they didn't have to put her under! Tom was at her feet, I held her hands and leaned in by her head and we sang songs for the 10 minutes that they did the scan. We got the the dr's office afterwards and he said that everything looked great!...the mass pushing her trachea is still there, but has definitely improved. She had several nodes in her lungs....some have gotten smaller, some have not changed, but overall they are encouraged that we are on the right track. We will continue to go in every 3 or 4 weeks...probably until she is totally back to normal. Thank you for your continued prayers...we are so glad about how things are going and will keep updating you as we have check-ups!