A horse farm!- Henry.

Monday was a cold, rainy day, so we were stuck inside. (Well, everyone else was stuck inside. I was at school.) Since mama was trying to be the best Aunt ever (at least for this week since Oliver kept calling her Aunt Jenni), she called up Clemson's equine center to see if they could go visit. They were very nice and said we could come down for a tour.

Natalie asked mam to bring her camera so they could take pictures and make a book out of them. We saw a lot of horses (even baby horses) and Natalie made a great book and even wrote all the words by herself (with a little spelling help from her mom).

The trip was even good for Oliver because he found a tractor with a hay lifter on the front.

Because little girls tend to get into trouble, they stayed home with Aunt Elizabeth while everyone was at the horse farm. In the afternoon, the big kids were getting restless and rowdy while the little girls slept. So we all went to the park, while mama stayed home with the girls. Little did I know they took the opportunity to sneak into the office and play with my trains!

Tessa is so fun right now. She's teeny and huggable and is even starting to say a few words. She probably has more than June. Plus she isn't a babbler like June so she's not as loud-unless some takes a toy from her. With two older siblings, she can really hold her own.

Not only did June try to mess up my train set, she wore my rain boots around all afternoon. And she wore this ridiculous outfit.

And for a few brief moments, both girls played together at the same toy without fighting. They may be cute, but they sure don't know how to share.

GG Grandma sent down 3 pounds of pretzels and 3 pounds of tortilla chips. With all these kids in the house, we've actually made a good dent in the pretzels, but needed help with the chips, so we declared that Taco Tuesday was getting bumped up to Nacho Monday. Us kids didn't want anything gross on our tacos, like beef or tomatoes, so we just had ours with cheese. Tessa stuck around to steal chips from her dad.

June sat in the chair and pouted that no one would give her nacho chips.

Put she perked back up once a jumping contest started. In the Seibert family, most of us are pretty uncoordinated (or otherwise hindered by young age). Look at me, after all. But we think June might turn out to be somewhat athletic. We think she's saying "Ready, set, go!" when she jumps.

Another birthday party-June.

Sunday was pretty low key. Unkie and Aunt Kate left in the morning to head back to Ohio. Henry and Oliver played in the garage while Uncle Kevin and papa watch the Bengals on the laptop. Henry and Oliver particularly had a good time moving leaves. Oliver picked up leaves in his loader and put them in Henry's dump truck. Then Henry drove his dump truck out the the yard and dumped them. This kept them happy for a long time.

I played inside and had a little snack while trying to be quiet during nap time. We were all pretty impressed at how everyone managed to sleep, even with the house at 80 decibels. Oliver was so tired he fell asleep on the couch and slept until Henry came down from his nap and jumped on his head.

Since Natalie doesn't take naps anymore, she and mama made special birthday cupcakes. Papa brought home this recipe from work and it contains no less that 3 sticks of butter. We didn't have enough eggs, so we split the recipe in half and made it into cupcakes instead. Made made the batter and spread raspberry jam on the cupcakes. Natalie was in charge of sliced almonds and mini chocolate chips. You can see that hers don't have any jam or almonds on them. We covered them with the other half of the batter and Natalie got to work on the sprinkles.

Here's the finished product. They were very good, very dense, and very chewy, just like a perfect brownie.


After supper, we got down to celebrating. Natalie turned 5 on November 29 and actually got to celebrate on her birthday. (And yes, mama is wearing Henry's very small apron. She was trying to pan fry sweet potato patties. And the entire experiment was a disaster, much like the apron.) Natalie, the kid who can chew for a year, stalled in blowing out her candle, but got the job done when she realized it was cake.

If you thought Henry was a picky eater, Natalie can really put him to shame. Mama made her eat peas with her lunch on Sunday. Natalie was so adverse to eating the peas, she didn't throw a temper tantrum, but instead threw them up all over the floor and yelled "I told you I didn't want to eat them." We were worried for a minute she might actually be sick. Luckily, she immediately asked for a cookie.


Next up, slouchy Henry turned 4 on December 2nd. It took a few tries to blow out his candle.



Last but not least, Oliver turns 3 on December 6th. Luckily, everyone's birthdays are in order of age. Natalie thinks its funny that for 3 days, she's two years older than Henry.

Everyone liked the cake.

Even though it's not my birthday, I got a cake too.

And managed to talk mama into giving one to Tesser too.

Henry was so excited about birthdays, if you can tell from this very screechy rendition of "Happy Birthday to You."

After supper, we got down to the business of opening presents. Mama was pretty smug about her gift- little horses and the girls from Saddle Club- Natalie's favorite TV show. Natalie exclaimed "This is just what I wanted in the whole world!"

Oliver got to open the trains that Henry painted for him. Mama wrapped them each individually and learned the hard lesson that even if it is a hand painted $7 train set, the number of presents matter to the other kids.

Henry opened some dinosaur themed presents from Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Kevin- always a huge hit!

And I brought the T. Rex over to check it out.

But the best boy present of the night belonged to Aunt Jenni and Uncle Jim. They sent down color-changing Hot Wheels cars that change color in hot and cold water. This kept the boys busy and the floor very wet until mama moved the activities over to the sink.

Here are the cars in action. They are so fun! Thanks, Aunt Jenni and Uncle Jim!

After we cleaned up the water puddles, Natalie and I worked on the maze workbook that Grandma and Grandpa Seibert sent me!

Saturday night- Henry.

Grams and Aunt Girl left before supper and not an hour later Uncle Kevin came rolling in with his family! By this point, mama was too tired to cook (and the kitchen was too messy), so she took the opportunity to call up the local pizza place and order the 28" pizza she'd been dreaming about.

Look at how big it is! Uncle Kevin has a funny picture of papa holding in the van. Check out there blog when they get it updated (hint, hint, Uncle Kevin).

It was so big, it could hardly fit through the door.

Tessa couldn't wait to get a bite.

Six kids. June and Sadie still need boosters, because they stood up way too much. They also took a lot of liberty with getting down, running around and then coming back to eat more. What a mad house.