Sweet Baby James- Henry.

You can imagine our surprise when we found out our cousin Miss Christina had her baby on December 3rd. Sweet little James Ruijie Wagner was born just one day after my birthday, but 5 weeks before he was supposed to come! Mama was a little jealous of Miss Christina for being pregnant 6 weeks less than mama was with Georgie, but commended James good tax planning. (Full year deduction for a 3 week old baby!)

We couldn't wait to get up to North Carolina to see all 5 pounds 10 ounces of this little boy! That's a tiny baby. We were all around 5 pounds when mama was 6 months pregnant! The three month outfit we brought him looks ridiculously huge next to the little guy.

James looks just like his dad.

Miss Christina wanted him to wake up to meet us. Maybe that's because he sleeps all day and is awake all night. (Welcome to being parents!)

Miss Christina looks great for just having a baby!

Oh yeah, Mister Andy was there too. After about 45 minutes of cuddling James, mama noticed everyone else. What a good looking family!

What a difference 4 (5) months makes! Georgie looks like she could steamroll right over James! After holding a newborn again, mama declared Georgie too big and asked to trade in for a smaller version. Sorry, mama. You're stuck with the three you've already got.

Thanks to Mister Andy and Miss Christina for letting us come visit and run around your house like crazy people for an hour! We can't wait to see James again!

Baby, it's cold outside- June.

It's been unseasonably cold down here in South Carolina. Cold enough that our heat pump furnace stops working and we have to kick it over into emergency mode to keep the house warm. That normally only happens once or twice in January.

But the cold didn't stop the annual Clemson Christmas parade. We picked up the Pennas and headed downtown to brave 35 degrees to see John and Henry ride on a float with the preschool. Christopher looked like Randy from the Christmas Story. ("I can't put my arms down!")

Miss Juliet took a turn cuddling Georgie. Not only was Georgie warm, she looked good in a lined-fleexe flower Halloween costume that Aunt Kate found on clearance for a dollar. Who needs a snowsuit when you can wear Halloween costumes all winter long?

I had a good time at the parade until someone dressed up as a gingerbread man stood next to me. Sheer terror. And this person didn't notice that she was scaring the bejesus out of a two year old. So that pretty much ruined the parade for me.

Here's the only shot mama got of Henry's float. They all wore elf hats and Henry made it through the whole parade without falling asleep this year.

Speaking of scary things, this Subway sub terrified me. I was also scared of the Dunkin' Donuts donut, but I was able to control myself if only for my love of donuts.

Finally, the big payoff- Santa!

Thursday morning, mama woke up freezing. It was 22 degrees out. She sent Henry and I to school with John and Papa and vowed to stay inside. Her blood must be getting thin down south. Then she remembered that 22 degrees was a pretty warm January day up in Wisconsin and vowed to toughen up. So while we were at school, she and Georgie went for a long walk around the neighborhood.

Here's a better view of that flower costume. Pretty darn cute, kid. And don't worry, Georgie was also wearing a t-shirt, thick socks, cotton pajamas and fleece pajamas underneath her snowsuit. And she had a blanket on top of her. She slept most of the walk, so she must have been warm enough. And once they got out and walking, 22 degrees didn't feel that cold anymore.

Aunt Jenni must have been worried about that pretty little bald head getting cold, because this Christmas tree hat came in the mail today. Theme clothes never get old in this house.

How lucky can one kid get? Georgie got not one, but two hats in the mail today! Miss Norma must be practicing for those little twin boys her daughter Miss Colleen is expecting, because these strawberry hats are making their rounds this winter.

Finally, this isn't the best video, but it does capture Georgie giving us some pretty cute giggles.

Watch out for mama- Henry.

June has a constant runny nose that she likes to wipe across her cheek. So mama is constantly pulling hair out of snot. On Sunday night, it finally got to her and she got her scissors out and went to town.

Drastically shorter. I think it might have something to do with the fact that June has tons of hair and all of mama's is falling out in a postpartum hormonal change. Plus, mama just likes cutting hair, even if she's not especially good at it. I hope the grandmas aren't too mad at her.

I think it turned out cute!

Can we talk a minute about Sweet Georgie? She is pretty sweet, but she's always sticking her tongue out- and it's really long! We're grossed out by this picture, but also can't stop looking at it. Maybe she's half snake. Maybe she's Parselmouth (extra points if you know what that means).

I took this video of papa. He doesn't take direction well.

June brought home this Santa Claus from school. He seems to be the only Christmas character June is not terrified of.

Mama did let me stay up from my nap on Sunday (on the condition that I wrote the last of my thank you cards). When I was done, we worked on making Christmas ornaments. Mama drew the shapes, but I did all of the cutting, gluing and writing myself. We wanted to write everyone's names on them, but I can't write that small, so everyone gets one with their last name. Avert your eyes, cousins.

5 years old.

It may be a week late, but Henry is 5 years old all the same. How did that happen so quickly?

5 years, to me, is the official end of my preschooler. Henry is now a kid. And his number one priority is getting out of his daily naptime. (Not likely, kid.) This year, Henry had 4 birthday cake "occasions." The first was at his Thanksgiving birthday party with Sadie. Second was this little cake on his actual birthday.

The third cake was the birthday cupcakes at school. You get to be line leader on your birthday. An extra bonus was that Henry's class had a field trip to a Christmas Tree Farm that day. Papa was the lucky one to chaperone.

There's very little footage from Henry's birthday. Mostly because he decided he wanted to go to the Huddle House for waffles for supper. He was loud and rambunctious. June screamed about everything and Georgie cried the whole time. At one point, Brandon looked at me and said "I thought this was supposed to be fun." Not likely, papa. You can almost see and hear us counting down the minutes until bedtime in this video. Especially after Henry "blows" out his candles and really turns on the charm.

After cake, Henry got to open his present. I officially declare the fifth birthday the "Lego Birthday." We now have many very cool kits that keep Henry occupied for hours at a time. He also got this really awesome circuit building kit. All of Henry's engineer uncles and neighbors are drooling over this one.

We gave the Christmas tree shot one more chance. I guess this is as good as it gets.

On Saturday, we hosted a birthday party at the local Pizza Hut. It was the best party ever, if only for the fact that I didn't have to clean the house and plan too many activities. Here's Mr. Social himself watching tv during his own party.

Everyone got a tour of the kitchen, then they got to make their own personal pan pizza. I won't go into the politics of which pizza place is best (probably not Pizza Hut), but our Pizza Hut now has a special place in my heart. The building is brand new and very nice, the two girls in charge of the tours were great with the kids, and they opened the store an hour early so we could have our party and not disrupt business or other diners. And at $3 a kid, we may never have a party anywhere else.

After the pizza, we cut the cake. Henry requested an ice cream cake. We Seiberts like our cake one way: extra ice cream- hold the cake. That's my boy.

I was pleased with how the ice cream cake turned out. The bottom layer was chocolate, topped with chocolate graham crackers, a jar of hot fudge, and a layer of birthday cake ice cream and some whipped cream. Everybody ate it, so it must have been good.

Another birthday song.

5 years must also be the year kids stop being crazy (we'll see about that). Because this was the quietest birthday party I've ever been to. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that most of the kids are in Henry's kindergarten class, so they all know how to behave around each other. We invited 23 kids and 13 showed up. The perfect sized party. Plus, we had stickers and foam ornaments to decorate, watercolor paint sheets and coloring pages. What a great bunch of kids.

The little girls were so sweet. We really liked this little girl because she was named Georgia after her Great Grandma, almost just like our Georgie.

I can't remember if this is Anna S. or Anna C. I'll have to ask Henry.

June wanted to wear something especially pretty for the party and only got a little patriotic teasing over her Soldier Day outfit.

Even June handled herself well amongst all of the 5 year olds. She was especially taken with the little pizza box her pizza came in. She carried it around for an hour, periodically removing a slice of pizza to take a bite and put it back.

Whose kids are these?- Mama.

We hadn't been down to see the drive-through light display yet this year, so we loaded up the van on Tuesday night. You can park and go into a little house to visit Santa, so we thought we'd stop by to let the kids be frightened and ignored him.

Once June overcame the shock of the wooden snowman just inside the door (the horror), she climbed right on Santa's lap. After some prompting, she asked for dolls and books.

Not to be outdone, Henry also gave Santa a try. He didn't ask for anything and only would sit on his lap if Santa came to us. I think he just did it to get a candy cane.

It was very slow and early in the season, so Santa even wanted to get a shot with the sniffly baby. Who'd have thunk that after 6 Christmases, we'd finally get a shot of our kids with Santa? If I had known I would have dressed them in something a little nicer.

Outside Henry hammed it up.

Who is that mischievous elf?

The real highlight was the marshmallow pit. Henry was mad that we brought our own marshmallows instead of buying some at the concession stand. Do we need to have a talk with Dave Ramsey, Buster?

The lights were pretty awesome. Now we're trying to justify the hour drive to the light show on the other side of Greenville and possibly a drive through Winston-Salem on our trip to DC so we can see their spectacular light show.

4th Annual Kenny and Dolly Tribute.- Mama.

Our blog may still be stuck at Thanksgiving, but it is solidly the Christmas season. And for those of you that have been following the blog, you know that Christmas means it is time to dust off her CDs of country music from the early 80's. Since this is the 4th year, we recommend you visit the first entry for a walk down my memory lane as I share with you the GREATEST CHRISTMAS ALBUM EVERY RECORDED!

Just seeing the cover makes me feel happy inside. Here's the link to the original post:

Mama's comprehensive Kenny and Dolly Retrospective
You're really going to want to see this.

Here's the current family favorite, quite simply known as "Christmas song" to June. What other song could you ever need?

And here's June's rendition.

That's dancing that could only be inspired by Dolly herself.

When we're not listening to "Christmas song" (on repeat), June sings it herself. The best part is when she finishes chorus and yells "Sing one for me!" just like Dolly. And I made the mistake of taking the Christmas mix CD (also featuring the Judds, Reba, Anne Murray, Karen Carpenter, the Oak Ridge Boys and Randy Travis) in the car, so now she demands it on repeat there, too.

I would be remiss if I didn't post the video of "Christmas to Remember." Nothing says Christmas like taking a lover while you're vacationing in California. I defy you to not smile when you see this cinematic masterpiece.

This year, I also wanted to include a few other Christmas standards of the Turner house, but alas, it appears only Kenny and Dolly made music videos for their entire Christmas album.

The Judds may have recorded the second best Christmas album of all time.

I think we might have only had the Reba album on tape. The rest were (and still are) on vinyl in Grandma and Grandpa's living room. Features the charasmatic "Happy Birthday, Jesus!"

Brandon is a good sport about my somewhat unconventional taste in Christmas music. But I think he really loves the Randy Travis Christmas album. Mostly because Randy Travis has completely mastered the art of writing puns into his music (especially in his non-seasonal music.) For example:
"White Christmas makes me Blue"
"Oh, What a Silent Night"
"Meet me under the Mistletoe"
"How do I Wrap my Heart up for Christmas"

Randy Travis wins because he can write a good song about being lonely at christmas. And he scores double points for incorporating Jesus' birth into interludes of his Christmas love songs. You can't lose.

The only point of contention remains the Oak Ridge Boys Christmas album. Apparently, when Christmas was "Paintin' the Town," it missed papa's heart. Bah humbug, Brandon. He probably doesn't even know who "Christmas Carol" is. Hint- there wasn't a Christmas song she couldn't sing.

For more fun and musings on my favorite christmas music, visit last year's post, which also features links to all previous posts:

Last year's Christmas music post

Sunday at the Botanical Gardens- Georgiana

By Sunday, the Turners were the only ones left in town. We decided to take them to the Botanical Gardens. 

It was a little chilly. June was tired and coming down with a cold, so she was grumpy the whole time.

But she did spend a little time chasing after Henry and Sadie before insisting that she be carried. Now that she's on her new medicine, mama and papa should really insist that she start walking on her own more.

We walked around the duck pond to see the camellia gardens, which are now in bloom. When we went down to the water, we found one mean looking goose and two turtles sunning on a log.

The big kids decided to thrown sticks in the pond. No turtles were harmed in the stick throwing. But one did swim away after it got splashed.

The professor did some philosophical pondering while the kids threw rocks into the pond.

Now that's an outfit. We inherited some clothes from Sadie, which include a few very brightly colored sweaters. This heart one is a favorite of June's. She still demands a dress every day, but refuses to wear a sweatshirt over her short sleeved dresses inside the house. She'll keep them on outside, but insists on leaving them right beside the door. And now she's started to demand mama take hers off too.

Look at those big lips. Those didn't come from the Seibert side. Neither did those big cheeks.

Or that big hair! Mama is beside herself. At three months postpartum, she's been losing alarming amounts of hair. And she didn't have much to start with. June literally has 3 or 4 times as much hair as mama.

ANOTHER shot at a group picture. For the first time June smiled. I wasn't into it.

We think this one is cute. Especially of Sadie and Dash.

I refused to look and June;s got a finger in her mouth. Which is the new norm for June. Any advice of nixing that bad habit?

Did you notice this cool thing June is holding? It's some kind of berries on a stem that she found on the ground. (I swear we didn't pick it!) Or otherwise known as the perfect wood fairy wand. June really liked it until she broke it.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. The kids played and papa got some quality time in with the two cutest babies this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.