MERRY CHRISTMAS 2010!!

(The kids in front of the Mississippi river)

Merry Christmas everyone! Since us Bundy's are once again too cheap/lazy to send out Christmas cards, we will once again be doing a Christmas card-ish blog. It's my cheap skate gift to you...Merry Christmas ;). And that's right it's done dictionary style, so you know you'll love it. :)

Bundy's (bun-dee-s) [aka awesome possums]

Davenport (dav-in-port) [aka "holy freak it's cold," "Wait, what happened to the moun-ins?"]

(picture taken out my front door)

In the spring of this last year we made a huge change and moved to Davenport Iowa so that Tony could go to school. We are loving it out here in the mid-west! It's cold and flat, but very beautiful!

(checking out the water)

Liam (lee-am; lee-um) [aka Liam Jameson, Eldest]

Liam has started kindergarten this year and is doing awesome! He can read many small words and knows many sight words. He is our artist extraordinaire. He loves building things, drawing, coloring, and making things out of paper. He is an awesome older brother and watches out for his younger siblings. He is almost always happy and loves to play, joke, and tease, but can be very tender hearted.

Emma (em-ma) [aka Luna, Emma Leederhoisen]

Emma is awesome! She has the best silly personality. She loves to play with her babies and stuffed animals. She loves to learn right along with Liam and has already learned how to write her and her siblings names, many of her letters, shapes and colors. She thinks Liam is the bees knees and Fox is the "cutest baby ever." She is our beautiful little girl that loves to do things just because they make her happy, and she could care less what people think of her. I love it, and I hope she never changes.

Fox (fox) [aka Foxaroni, Mr. Moo]

Fox is the clown of our family. He'll do things just to get a laugh out of the rest of us. He has decided that he is never going to walk because he can get around fine with crawling. :) He has several teeth now and a vocabulary that consists of three words; Mama, Dada, and Booya. Pretty awesome (he even does the fist in the air with the booya). He already loves to tease everyone....I think we are in trouble. :)

Tony (toe-knee)[aka Dad, Dada, Daddy, Anthony, An-Tony, honey-sugar-darling-most-attractive-boy-ever]

Tony is doing awesome. He is doing fantastic at school and pulling out great grades. He loves his work (medical billing) because of the people he works with (he one out of three men with about twenty women...what man wouldn't love that :)) He is an awesome dad and husband.

Kira (K-ear-ah) [aka, Mom, Mama, Mommy, the magical cleaning fairy, that one attractive lady (or so I like to think) ;)]

Me? I'm doing good. I am having a blast out here in the midwest. I love to play and tease with my kids, husband, family and friends. I love being a Mom and raising such awesome kids.
So really, that's it. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas full of happiness, joy, and love. Merry Christmas everyone!!

Oh, Stunted Christmas Tree

There's only 8 more days until Christmas. I know this because Liam made one of those green and red chain things at school, and every morning, first thing after he wakes up, he runs downstairs, tears one off, counts the ones that are left, and runs to tell me how many days. It's awesome. Anyways...

Here is our awesome midget (5 ft) Christmas tree

Notice all the presents wrapped in Red are on one side, and green on the other? That's Liam again...Sometimes I think he's a little OCD. I tried to put a green one on the red side and was quickly put in my place. So green with green, red with red. [edit: we just got presents from Utah that are different colors...lets see what he does with that :)]

I have been working a lot on crafty things the last little while (shock and awe to my mother and sister, who always tried to get me to do them in Utah...I guess Iowa just gets me in the mood ;)) I can't show the pictures of most of them because they are Christmas presents and I don't want to ruin anyones Christmas :) But here is my stocking that I made (after 6 years of Tony pestering to make one for myself)
I made Tony his when we were engaged and then each kids as they came along (I made Fox one this year too, but stupidly wrapped it before I took a picture. But luckily its only 8 more days (well 7, he'll be opening it with his pj on Christmas eve) until I can take a picture of it and put it on here. It's stinking cute. With a fox and everything :)) Tony's been harassing me to make my own forever and this year I finally did. I feel kind of bad though, because mine is clearly the cutest and best...hehehehe ;)
Remember how in November-ish Fox finally got his first tooth? Well over the last weekend he got 5 more! Three on top and two on bottom! This is the way this kid does things. He waits until I am about to go crazy and then does it all in one fell swoop. He did the same thing with crawling, rolling over, and I'm pretty sure he's going to do it with walking. Anyways- Here is the one picture I could get of his teeth so far. He kept flipping out and wanting the camera, so yes, it is a crying, fit throwing picture, but look at the two cute little nubs on the bottom. :)
And just for good measure here are some pictures of my two youngest cute kids. :)
I don't know. Really. Don't ask. I went to take a picture and this is the face I got. He was having a hard day...Well, with five numbs of bone pushing up through your flesh all at once, you'd have a hard day too.
hehehe
And yes, we couldn't finish it off without a Luna moment. :)
More Christmas joy to come...if your lucky. ;)

What the?

So between working out and being sick I've lost weight. But I'm pretty sure most of the weight I've lost has been in my boobal area...What the @#$! is up with that?! I look like a 12 year old in a training bra again. Dang it.

That's right I wrote boobal and @#$! in one post....that's how you know how I really feel.

Let it snow

It finally snowed in Davenport last week. Even though half of our family is sick, we decided to bundle everyone up and go play in the snow. It was a blast!

Fox was a little bit like Ralphy's little brother on a Christmas story, it was awesome!! If he fell over he just laid in the snow and yelled until I came and picked him up :)

Liam was a die hard, he didn't want to stop playing. He loves the snow.

Emma didn't want to stop playing so I could get a good picture of her. Until she got cold of course.

It's always a little crazy to get everyone dressed and bundled up to play in the snow for 15 minutes until they get cold (Liam played much longer, and I had to make him come in). It seems the getting ready takes longer than the actually playing, but it was still fun. :)

4 things I learned while sick

This past week and a half (well, a little bit more) I've been sick. The kind of sick where I honestly thought that I would be happier if Tony took me to the hospital and had them shove a feeding tube down my throat then actually have to eat any food myself. (I told Tony this, he didn't think it was funny). I wasn't throwing up, food just had no appeal and I had a fever for about a week followed by extreme exhaustion, and one sicko, nasty cough that has decided that its going to live in my chest FOREVER! But while I was sick I had some self discovery moments that I thought I would share with the blogging world, so here ya go:
1. If I wasn't a good Mormon girl I think I could be an excellent drinker. Tony would bring me shot glasses full of nasty medicine and I could take that shot as good any large, bearded, beer-belly man. I'm just sayin'.
2. You don't have to take drugs to psychedelic dreams. Okay so I guess if I ever became a drinkin' woman I really wouldn't be that good. I can't hold me liquor. The cough medicine I took had 6% alcohol in it and (Tony can attest) I was wasted. Some pretty crazy dreams though.
3. No matter how much I love Tony, he was not cut out to be a mom.

4. My kids need a Mom. After coming out of one of my sick stupors, I heard one of my children (Emma) chanting under her breath "S.E. Johnson, a family company," over and over again. I guess I need to step up and give our babysitter, LaWanda, a.k.a the TV, a break.

But all in all thing worked out well. I was sick over Thanksgiving, which stinks, but was a blessing in disguise because durning my worst sickness, when I was checked out, Tony was off of work and able to be with the kids. So now I'm over being sick, not going to do it any more. It looks fun in the movies, (okay really not) but it's not. Now on to more Christmas-present-getting-readiness and yule tide, and such. :)

What is Kira up to at 10:00 at night?

I know that you've all wondered what I've been doing at 10:00 at night the last couple of nights. Well here you go-

That's right- crafting.

You may now shout out in shock and awe. :)

Gratitude challenge

This challenge comes a few days before Thanksgiving...coincidence? I think not.

I few days ago Liam got a cold. He began coughing a nasty cough, so I kept him home from school. Four days into keeping him home from school I got a call from the school nurse. She told me that I needed to go get Liam checked for whooping cough. When I got off the phone with her I began thinking about what I knew about whooping cough. I had read about it several times, but I decided to get out my books and read about again and then research on the internet and see what it had to say about it. I was/am positive that he did not have whooping cough. I made a few calls to a few other medical-savvy friends and they agreed with me, that Liam did not have any of the symptoms except for a cough.
That's when I became frustrated. I thought, How can his school tell me what to do with my child? I knew it wasn't whopping cough and I wasn't going to spend the money, I didn't have, so the school knew it wasn't. I had made up my mind.
...I didn't sleep well that night. I knew, if I didn't call, the school nurse would be calling me in the morning and I wasn't excited (I hate confrontations). I kept going through the scene that I was sure would play out. Me screaming things like "You aren't here! You don't even know!" "You have no place to tell me what to do!" "This is ridiculous!" "When you want to fork out the money to pay to have him tested for something I know he doesn't have!" And the scene always ended up with me in the principals office yelling at the principal and then being asked not to return.
The next morning I wanted to just get the anger and humiliation over with. I quickly said a prayer and then made the call. I explained my position to them and then as they began to retaliate (okay I don't know if they were really retaliating, but they were going to say something:) ), I cut them off and said something I had not planned on saying. I expressed heart felt gratitude for their concern for my child and his well-being.

You could almost feel the whole atmosphere change. A phone call that could have ended in yelling and tears ended in thank-you's and love.
It's amazing what gratitude can do. James E. Faust said, "A grateful heart is a beginning of greatness. It is an expression of humility. It helps us develop such virtues as prayer, faith, courage, contentment, happiness, love, and well-being. Said the Lord, “And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more” (D&C 78:19)."
I sometimes wonder what would have happened with my horrible online book purchase experiance if I had not have gotten so angry, but expressed gratitude to the person on the other line for helping me. I don't know that I would have gotten much back but, I am sure, I would have felt much better afterword. For anyone who has ever worked in any job dealing with customers you know it is much easier, to work with someone who is kind and thankful that you are helping them. And it is much easier to be willing to do more and bend over back words for that grateful costumer.

So, this is where the challenge comes in. I challenge you, all three of my readers (Hi, Mom!), to find that one person, or experience throughout the week, that you know you want to blow up at and find something to thank them for. It could be the check out lady that rang up and charged you for your green beans three times instead of just once. I could be your husband who, after asking him repeatedly, still left his stinky, sweaty, socks in the middle of the floor. It could be that snotty neighbor who continually tells you, in the sweetest voice and words, that you are a failure at keeping your yard and house and children clean. Find them (and you know you will), and tell them thank you for something-- It doesn't have to be huge, it can be gratitude for their time, for their willingness to help, for their smile-- And see if the experience, your attitude, or the entire atmosphere changes.

Okay, off you go, scoot!

Happy Thanks Givings!