Cheese Face

My camera has a red-eye reduction on it and shoots a quick flash just before snapping the picture. Ephraim has started to look toward the camera and give me a big smile when he sees that flash. Some of his smiles are genuine, but most are silly. I'm so glad to see all these goofy smiles. It hasn't been too many months ago that we weren't able to get a smile out of him at all. If we could just put an end to his hair pulling and scary-hard eyelid pinching and pulling when he's falling asleep, I would be a happy camper.

By the way, I'm sure everyone has noticed that the front of Ephraim's shirts are just saturated in many of the pictures. That boy is drooling like a faucet! I have to change his shirt every couple of hours. I have never had a kid who can drool like him! We can feel the tips of four molars coming in all at the same time, so I'm sure that must be the cause. I've attempted to keep bibs on him to keep him from being wet and cold, but he'll have nothing to do with them. When I put on a bib, he yells, yanks and manages to get it off within seconds.

Our First of MANY Christmas Celebrations

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I'm afraid I'm very behind on blogging, so be on the lookout for multiple posts per day over the next day or two.

On December 6th we had our first Christmas celebration. Ben's dad, Richard, and stepmom, Gladys, spent the weekend with us. Richard grows a killer garden and Gladys is an awesome cook, so we were thrilled that they brought an entire Christmas dinner with them. That was the best present of all! At least it was for me. The kids and grandparents had a great time visiting, we ate way too much, and we spent the evening opening presents. It felt like Christmas was already here!

The kids all hammed it up. All the little ones wanted a picture made with *each* present, so I would have to take one picture with a box of crayons, another with a coloring book, and a third with the crayons and coloring book together, on and on and on. Ephraim hammed it up more than anyone else. He got a book that makes noise when you push buttons and a stuffed creature that yells when you push his button. He thought they both were hilarious! He laughed and laughed more than he ever has before. It's so nice when a gift is a hit with the kids and they show genuine excitement!

Ben's mom is coming up on the 20th for the weekend, so we'll have our second Christmas celebration at that time. Three of our grown kids and my mom are going to be able to be here on Christmas Day, so that's our third and main celebration. In fact, my mom is going to spend ten days with us this year, which is the longest time she's ever stayed with us. She's 85 years old, and I'm an only child, so I hope she's up to the noise and chaos! Brooke, our oldest daughter, is an NICU nurse and has to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so we'll be having Christmas #4 with her family on either December 30th or 31st. Whew! By the time 2009 arrives, Ben and I are going to be exhausted!

The Baskets are Ready!

We have finally finished our Christmas baskets! We made a dozen baskets for grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and neighbors. They were truly a cooperative effort! Bailey made the oatmeal cookie mix and banana nut bread. All the younger children helped with the candles, the Russian tea, the granola and the salsa. They decorated the baskets with bows, candy canes and tinsel, and they put the cloth caps on all the jars. I didn't remember to take a picture of the final results, but I did get some photos of the baskets still in process.

Cute Pictures

These pictures were taken by our eleven-year-old daughter, Jensen. Didn't she do a good job?

What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?

Your Christmas is Most Like: A Very Brady Christmas

For you, it's all about sharing times with family. Even if you all get a bit cheesy at times.

What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?

Thanksgiving

Whew! It's been hectic.

Bradford and Griffin were both able to come home for Thanksgiving, which was special. Neither one is able to come home very often. In fact, Griffin hasn't been home since he began college last August. Griffin's school is about seven hours from home, and his car is less than reliable. In fact, he had trouble coming home last weekend because he had to replace a burned-out headlight and get a part to fix his heater once he got down the road a few hours, and it became dark and cold outside. While he was at WalMart buying the parts, he left his keys in the car and had to call a locksmith. Needless to say, those little repairs slowed him down by several hours and didn't help his mood. I think Brad has been home only once since the start of this semester. He's just five hours away in Atlanta, but he works at a church every weekend, so that makes visits nearly impossible. Brooke, Logan and Sasha couldn't come home, but we did have nine of the twelve with us. I guess that's pretty good odds with our children getting older.

Bailey, our 20-year-old daughter, decided she would cook the entire Thanksgiving for twelve people all by herself. She did an amazing job, and she didn't cut any corners. She used all fresh ingredients. No boxes or cans! She cooked turkey, glazed ham (which she glazed herself), duck, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (snapped the beans herself), squash casserole, deviled eggs, yeast rolls, lemon meringue pie, sweet potato pie, pecan pie and cherry pie made from fresh cherries. She even made the whipped cream from scratch. That girl needs to be a professional chef!

Thanksgiving evening we pulled out all the decorations and put up the tree. This has to be the earliest we've decorated for Christmas. We made the mistake of mentioning it though, and the little girls bugged us to death until we complied.

By 2:00 am Friday morning, Ephraim was awake and crying with a 103 degree fever. We spent the rest of the night cooling him off and trying to encourage him to go back to sleep. During the day of Friday he seemed to be fine, although pretty grouchy, but again in the wee hours of Saturday morning he woke up again. This time his fever was over 105 degrees. We stayed up the rest of the night giving him cool baths and alternating the Motrin and Tylenol. Again on Saturday he seemed to be doing better, but he repeated the last two nights' performance spiking again at 105 degrees in the early hours of Sunday.

On Thanksgiving Day, we had received calls from all our relatives and booked all our weekends from Thanksgiving through New Years for our multiple Christmas celebrations. Next weekend Ben's dad is coming, the following weekend we go to Atlanta for Brad's graduation, the third Saturday Ben's mom comes for Christmas, and that Sunday my mom comes for a nine-day visit. With Ephraim's fever, we just knew he had the flu and figured it was time to start canceling our weekend plans. By the time the flu ran through our entire tribe, we figured we would be into 2009.

Sunday morning Ephraim woke up much happier but COVERED with spots. He had roseola! That was a relief because all the rest of the kids have already had it, so we no longer had a month of sick kids to look forward to.

Yesterday started out with a bang. Until Thanksgiving Day we didn't know Ben's dad was coming for Christmas so soon, so we were suddenly in a rush to finish our Christmas presents. This year we are making baskets filled with homemade gifts made by all of us, and we'll be sending baskets back to Birmingham next weekend for all of Ben's brothers and aunts and uncles too. All day yesterday, most of last night and all day today we've been baking, baking, baking. We're finishing up the baskets tonight, which I must say look pretty nice. I'm so proud of the job all the kids did. Tommorrow we're going to frantically clean the house for Saturday's guests, and I'm going to try to do my best to take the first of the kids to Goodwill so they can begin buying presents for each other. They are so excited! It's good to see them more excited about what they are giving to their siblings than what they can get, get, get.