Renaming the Toad

Bear has been quite dissatisfied with Toad's real first name for a long time. Often times when we are in the car, he will ask me if we can rename him when he grows up. Well, the topic of conversation came up at dinner again last night. Nena jumped right on board with this one too. She hopped up from her enchiladas and ran to get a piece of paper.

The two sat and discussed names and asked me to list them as they discussed them. Toad jumped at a couple of the names. His favorites were Diego, Elmo and Stinky. Unfortunately, he was out voted. Apparently, when Toad starts kindergarten , he will be introduced by his siblings as Jack.

Poor kid. He is going to grow up very confused. His real first name starts with the same letter as his siblings names. He has two middle names both starting with the same letter. He has one distinctive nick name. Now, his siblings are choosing to rename him.

Good Luck Toad... or is it Jack!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year from my monkeys to yours! Here is wishing all who read this a very Happy New Year! May all your wishes and dreams become reality in this new decade. We wish you success, love, hope, faith, peace and the very best that life has to offer!

Can I Just Tell You.........

What an awesome family I have!

I love being a part of my family. Really I do!

My brother is in town for the holidays. He is going to school for anesthesia out of town and comes home as often as he can. When he does come to town, I like to try to spend time with him as much as I can. Yesterday we had planned to go to lunch but, there was a huge snow storm and the roads were slick.

My parents called and invited me to dinner but, I was nervous about driving on the roads. So, what did they do... they brought the entire family to me! They showed up at my house with pizza and snacks and a stack of movies. We spent the evening eating laughing and watching the movies.

I just have to give props to having amazing parents and awesome brothers and sisters! I really enjoy spending time with them. Thanks for making such a huge effort!

Christmas Charades

Usually on Christmas, my family comes over and we spend the afternoon at my house playing games, eating too much food and enjoying each other's company. This is a great chance for my kiddos to show off what they got for Christmas and my chance to enjoy my family a little bit.

This year, we decided to play charades. So, my brother, sister, sister-in-law and I sat around the table and all wrote down different charade ideas on pieces of paper. Most of them had to do with funny memories from our past and some pretty current ones as well. We made up a rule that if you wrote down an embarrassing one about someone else that you had to do one about yourself. It turned out to be so much fun. I am certain that this one will make its way into the Griner Family traditions.

Christmas Morning

Christmas Eve

In my opinion, Christmas Eve arrived in the blink of an eye this year. I was so excited for this year. I had put a lot of thought into the gifts that I got for the kiddos and what they really needed or wanted as opposed to what would just be fillers. It was fun.

In the past, Christmas Eve has been a series of house hopping and eating eating eating. This year we took it a little bit slower.

I finally finished the last of my orders Christmas Eve morning. Yes, I know... I don't need to hear it. We then hopped on into the car to deliver some gifts to friends. The kiddos were thrilled when we got to stop and get doughnuts as a treat! What a great day to get out. The traffic was terrible, the stores were packed to the brim and my house had exploded into a mess of fabric, sewing notions and wrapping paper!

In the afternoon, we went over to my parents house for Christmas Eve dinner and our annual present opening. Dinner was fabulous. Nena is my little carnivore and ate so much spiral cut ham that I thought that she might pop. She loves it though and waits all season long for the ham dinner. What a strange little cookie.

This year, we decided to draw names for gift giving. This is the first year that we have done this and it worked out fairly well. My cute sister got my name and gave me the world's greatest gift: a certificate for a mani/pedi! Woo Hoo! Now I can get rid of the black Halloween polish on my toenails (ok, I could have done that 8 weeks ago but, I only seem to think about it when I am in the shower, church or other moments where breaking out the nail polish isn't the greatest idea.)

The kiddos were spoiled rotten. They were not in the name draw so, everyone bought for them. Bear was shocked to receive a cute and (here comes the great part) indestructable camera. Oh, he died over that one! Nena's favorites were a clock radio and a baking outfit! She was so excited! Toad got a bucket of blocks and the night was over for him. He loved loved loved it.

My parents spoiled me with a gorgeous necklace! They always look for such interesting and unusual gifts.

My parents are hard ones to shop for so, we decided to go in together and get them a subscription to Netflix. They are always saying that they don't need anything. However, everyone loves movies so, we continued with our tradition of getting them a years worth of movies.









One of my favorite parts of the evening was that Nena was so worried about missing the arrival of Santa. Eight O'Clock was approaching rapidly and so was her anxiety. She had a hard time sitting still. I kept telling her that Jingles, our little house elf, would tell Santa that we were at grandpa's house and that we would be ok. She was not convinced.

In a moment of brilliance, my dad told my brother to go in the other room and to be jingles. Well, obviously my brother did not understand the point and when my dad called and put my brother on speaker phone, Dusty answered in his deep gruff voice (no attempt at disguising his voice,) "Hi, this is Jingles." My dad sat trying to talk to "Jingles." Nena was not convinced and glanced over to the phone, "If you are talking to Jingles," she questioned, "How come Dusty's name is on the caller id?" They were caught.

So, in a second moment of brilliance, I called a friend and explained the situation. I asked for them to call and in a DISGUISED voice tell Nena that they were Jingles and to not worry, Santa would wait for them. I had just enough time to change my ring tone to "Here Comes Santa Clause" and the phone rang. Nena's eyes went to the size of dinner plates as she heard the unusual ring. She answered with speaker phone. The cutest little voice on the other side told her that everything was going to be ok. He would tell Santa that we were on our way home and that he would wait for us.

As she got off the phone, her voice got loud and shrill as she shreked, "I JUST TALKED TO JINGLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Crisis averted.

In short, as soon as we walked in the door that evening, the kiddos were up into bed faster than they I have ever seen them do it before. It is now another treasured memory!

My Beautiful Children

I gotta say, I love them. I just have to squeeze them every time the walk past me. Yep, I really do! They are the air that I breathe!

I haven't had a professional picture taken of them in such a long time. I really need to do that asap! However, I enjoy the candid shots that I do get on occasion. Here they are waiting for Santa. Oh, and I didn't notice until waaaay too late that Kaeson wasn't wearing socks.

Gingerbread Houses

Every year we make gingerbread houses and this year was no exception. We just did it much much later in the year than we usually do. I have had so many irons in the fire that this little tradition just seemed to get pushed back time after time. However.... we did it and the kids loved it.

Toad was especially interested in his house and did his almost completely on his own. That was so much fun to watch. He is a little control freak and it is eeking out all over the place! I love it... sometimes.

Oh, and pay no attention to the mess in the background. My kitchen was turned into my sewing triage center for several weeks for me to finish up my projects and enjoy my kiddos at the same time.

My Latest Projects

I loved the colors in this one. I may just have to make a duplicate of this one. Kyra loved it and wanted one for herself.


Yeah, ignore the fact that I haven't had a pedicure in.... forever and still have the black toe nail polish from Halloween on my toes. Anyway, I love these off set heart jammies. Kyra did get her own set of these ones. Of course, she doesn't know that yet.

My Little Elf

The other day, we were getting ready for bed and Bear handed me a note from his Kindergarten teacher. Apparently, the next day would be spirit day for his grade and they asked for all of the children to dress Christmasy: socks, pajamas, shirts, whatever. Well....... We didn't have a thing and Bear was insistent that he wanted to look like Jingles our house elf. When I told him that we didn't have an elf costume, he said (in his little indignant tone) "Uh, you can MAKE one mom." I have instilled too much confidence in my children in my limited sewing abilities.

So, after tucking everyone into bed, I tried to think of what would be an easy way to make an elf costume. I was looking over my overly huge stack of fabrics that I had sitting on the table for the orders that I was finishing when I saw these giant stockings that I bought for inventive wrapping paper at the dollar store and a light bulb went off over my head.

So, 15 minutes later, I had his very meagerly created elf costume out of three of those stockings. He was THRILLED!!! I think that it looks a little Brady Bunch but, as long as he is happy.... right???? Plus 15 minutes and $3 for a costume isn't bad.

Now, go on down and read the next post.... When he is older, that is how he is going to look at that elf costume.

?????

Just take in this image for a second........ I am pretty sure that my kiddos are going to look back at the things that I make for them to wear with the same reaction that I had to this picture. A little telling isn't it.

Mistletoe!

If you come to visit me over the HOLIDAY SEASON.......



Make sure you REALLY LIKE the person that you are standing next to.

Our Elf

When I was younger, I always had the most amazing Christmases. Every year we were not only visited by Santa but, we also had the elves. The elves came to visit, to check to see if our rooms were clean and to see if we were doing everything that we could to be good. They would leave us little treats or gifts or do magical things like leave our sleeping bags under a lit Christmas tree or make us special coookies and leave them on the counter when we were out seeing the Christmas lights.

Well, our little family has been adopted by a little elf. Jingles chose us last year and has been a sneaky little thing. He has wandered about the house looking for a place to perch and watch the kiddos. He has left them advent calendars and has become pen pals with Kyra.

Now that we are getting a little closer to Christmas (and mom is getting more on the ball and destressing a bit) Jingles has been getting the kiddos really excited about Christmas. Tonight he has left the kiddos a little treat. I hope that my kiddos have as good of memories of their Christmases as I do about mine.

Why You Haven't Heard From Me

For those of you who have been trying to get a hold of me over the past couple of days and have concluded that I have disappeared into thin air, alas, I have not. I have been busy. I am finishing up the remainder of my Christmas outfit orders. The past two days have been doozies in that everything that could go wrong did. I have had frozen laundry pipes preventing me from pre-washing my fabrics, misplacing much needed parts to my sewing machine, fabric malfunction, and oh yeah... I still have my kids and a splitting headache. However, I finished the last of my "shipped" orders today and they are (whew!) all off to their new homes.

I still have a few local orders to finish but, those shouldn't be nearly as time consuming. I will say this, in a moment of panic yesterday I realized that I couldn't finish the "shipping" outfits until I found a certain foot to my sewing machine, I just about had a heart attack. After searching to with no luck, I called the Bernina store near my house to find that the foot was $40! I didn't want to buy a new one knowing that I would find mine in a day or two but didn't know what else to do.

So, I sent myself downstairs for one last search through my sewing room to find it. I didn't find it but, I did come to another realization, I own 2 sewing machines. DUH! Although I prefer one over the other for sewing purposes, (one is a sewing / embroidery combo that I use mostly for embroidery) I put the second one to work and was able to finish it! Crisis slightly averted. I am going to put myself to bed early tonight and start up again tomorrow. I am hoping that somewhere along the way, I find that foot... and my sanity!

My Nutcracker Princess

I have the most adorable little girl in the entire world. Last night, she had her ballet recital. Their dance company put on a performance of "The Nutcracker." I have to tell you, for being the youngest group in the company.... THEY DID AWESOME!!!

I was so impressed with how well their little group knew their dance. I was floored with how darling their costumes were. They were (in my never to be humble opinion) the most entertaining dance of the evening. They were so stinking cute!

All of the little ones had their hair pulled back which thrilled Kyra. Her hair is FINALLY long enough to pull back in a ponytail and she was as high as a kite with the fact that she could wear a ponytail. She loves her hair short and every few months will ask me to take her to get it cut but, now that she is to ponytail status, I think that she will want to keep it there for a while.

My pictures didn't turn out perfect. My beloved camera is on its way out I think but, I love the pictures that I did get. Please ignore that some of them are a bit fuzzy.