Happy New Year

From our family to yours...

Happy New Year...

May 2009 be filled with happiness, health, and prosperity

xoxo

Welcome to our "mew"est addition!

Meet Sammy, the newest addition to the Witkowski clan!!

Santa "Claws" left a note for the kiddos telling them to please visit his favorite animal shelter to pick out a new friend for our family, so today we piled into the car and drove through the fog and drizzle to meet our new little buddy. He passed the "Bitsy" test-you know, can he handle a rambunctious two year old tugging his tail (yes), trying to pick him up (yes) and trying to smother him with love (yes, he even purred) We knew he was the cat for us when Gabe leaned down to talk to him and Sammy moved his head up to meet Gabe and rubbed his cheek on Gabe's cheek. He also decided that Geo's lap is a great place to sit and purr and rolling over to have his belly rubbed is a wonderful thing. A week from today we will be picking up our new baby; he needs his last vet check, his nails clipped, and a bath...and we will become the proud new owner of Sammy...or should I say, we will be the proud new pets of Sammy ;)

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas...I'm still in the process of uploading pictures, expect a picture post in a few days!

Merry Christmas

We'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas...

It's 8:30, Santa came last night...but the house is still very quiet, my little darlings aren't to the age yet where they get up at five a.m. to rip open gifts, which is nice. Time for Momma to relax and enjoy the peace before a crazy day. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday, surrounded by loved ones!

just one...

Just a little picture of SarahAnne that I snapped tonight, too cute to not share :D

Two-for-One

Today you get two posts for the price of one :D
The other night the kids and I made sugar cookies, despite our rough start (yes, I messed up a simple cookie recipe) I only took a few pictures because I didn't want the camera covered in dough, so here's one of them, proving that, yes, these two can and do share once in a while!

Little Miss Bitsytails

SarahAnne, upon waking most days, goes into the bathroom, points to a hairbrush and her container of hair goodies and says "me pretty hair. please?" At 21 months she is already a diva :) The photo above is my first attempt at braids, not too shabby if you ask me...or her!

Have a lovely day everyone!

*note to self*

Four and a half year olds are notoriously bad with secrets. If there were ever any doubt in my mind that this is true, last night was a true case-in-point of that. I made George a special dvd containing pictures of the kids from the last year or so and needed to watch it to be sure I hadn't made any mistakes (and it turned out I did, so I was glad I "prescreened" it so to speak) Gabe and SarahAnne are huge narcissists fans of watching themselves on the big screen, so they watched with me. Last night after George came home, Gabriel loudly asked me if we could "watch Daddy's movie" I tried my hardest to ignore him and prayed Geo had gone temporarily deaf. He asked again and then said "Come on mom, it's on your desk" and walked over to it. *sigh* So Daddy got to enjoy his Christmas gift early from the children, both of whom were exceptionally pleased to see themselves on the television again.

Lesson learned, those who can talk will talk! Booo

Keep us in your thoughts today, we are looking at the very real possibility of a crippling ice/snow storm moving through here in the next twenty four hours, hopefully we won't get hit too badly...and Geo is off tomorrow so that's a good thing too, we may need to be dug out tomorrow.

Ice ice baby

Yesterday afternoon we celebrated "Christmas" with Grandma and Grandpa Witkowski. It was a balmy 46 degrees when we came home around eight o'clock last night. By midnight, it had fallen to 19 degrees and had started to sleet, quite heavily. We woke up this morning to a thermometer reading at -13 and a layer of ice covering everything. To say that it was crummy out would be an understatement. Gabriel, of course, wants to go outside, because there's an 1/8 of an inch of snow dust on the ground and the sun is shining. He has no concept of "wind chill" or "sub zero temperatures" thankfully.

HOWEVER, because it's so cold and they can't go outside, they have both become a bit stir crazy. I finally got Gabe settled watching a movie online and had SarahAnne help me clean the bathroom, however, we have two hours until daddy gets home and I'm out of movies AND ideas he he. Too bad they are too little to learn to crochet or quilt, right? ha ha.

Hopefully wherever you are, you are warm and doing something fun, unlike the boring Witkowski's of Illinois :D

Christmas Spirit

One of my favorite Christmas movies is "Elf" It's a sweet story about Buddy the Elf who goes looking for his family and restores everyone's Christmas spirit in the process. In one of the scenes, he is answering phones, he says "Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?" SO today, everytime the phone rang, I would say "Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?" to make people giggle. I belong to another online community and posted there saying "If you call me, that's what I'll say" One of my girlfriends emailed me and told me her kid's names and what they wanted for Christmas...and then the phone rang. Buddy the Elf talked to these two sweet children and they got off the phone in disbelief that they had talked to Santa's head elf :) I hear from their mom that they are STILL wandering around talking about the Elf they talked to. Oh man oh man, do I love children at Christmas. They are still too young to be cynical about Christmas, they don't "hate" Christmas music, and they certainly don't get offended by the words "Merry Christmas". My Christmas wish for all of you is that you'll all be a bit more childlike at Christmas and revel in the small things that make this time of year so magical for some many people :D
(and if you'd like Buddy the Elf to call YOU, email me and I'll arrange for it hehe)

Just a quickie...

On a personal note, for *me*, I've been asked to do some contributing to a natural parenting blog ;) It's in the early stages, but I'd love for you to come by and check us out-and offer your expertise, if you have one and are so inclined. Feel free to pass the link along to other parents if you think it'll be helpful!



www.naturalmommas.blogspot.com

snow angels!

Last night after Geo arrived home safely-after an HOUR on the road-we all ate dinner, then decided to go play in the snow while Geo shoveled-he drew the short stick LOL The kids and I had a BLAST running around in the yard, making snow angels. SarahAnne, however, was the best of the bunch last night. She kept laying down in the snow and looking up (at the snow falling) and giggling her little head off. She didn't know that Geo and I were watching her, so the giggle was our of sheer enjoyment of the snow. It was fantastic. After about 20 minutes in the snow, my butt was frozen and they were both apple cheeked, so we came in and took a warm shower. We put on warm jams and sat down to watch a movie. Bitsy fell asleep part of the way through the movie and Gabe snuggled in between Geo and I with a comfy blanket. Over all it was a pretty wonderful night!
They aren't calling for any more snow for the next four days, so hopefully that time outside last night was enough to tide the kids over for a while :)