A Little Friday Cuteness...

Life is rough

Izzie attempting to zone out everyone around her

A new contraption for the babies

It wasn't long ago when they had lots of spare room in their pack n plays even with all four of them in their. My babies are growing.

"Why yes mom, I think that is a great idea."

"This toy just will not get out of my way."

"I'm a little confused, my mommy says I look adorable but my auntie thinks I look silly as Mrs. Claus."

We are a little short so we improvise with whats around us.

Now this momma must get back to getting ready for Christmas. Preschool Christmas performance to attend, finish shopping and a menu to plan. And in case anyone forgot...only four days til Christmas!!

The important things in life.

So this year I was not going to put a tree up. I had told Paul probably way back  in the summer that there was no way that it was going to happen. Between going to get a tree, the work to set it up, finding the room to even set it up amongst the baby paraphernalia that takes up our entire living room, then trying to keep three big kids from breaking touching the ornaments and the ever lasting clean up of pine needles. It just was not a priority. I have had our mantle and other Christmas decorations up for a while and the girls have a tree in their room with all of their ornaments and Drew's tree has his couple ornaments from his previous Christmas' and his tree also includes many ornaments from my childhood. I have some really interesting ones since my parents owned a nursery and each year we got to pick out new ornaments for our tree. I apparently had a thing for cats! So we were set. All the gifts were taking up room in our master closet and I hadn't figured out where the gifts were going to go on Christmas but I would deal with that on December 24th.

And then last Friday happened. I have never been so shaken by news before. When 9/11 happened it was shocking to me and I was mesmerized by the television and saddened for all the lives lost but it did not have the same affect that this tragedy has had on me. I can not even imagine those poor parents. I still get choked up thinking about sending my kids off to school in the morning and for them to never return home. One of the children that died was a twin. His sister survived and this has torn me up. I can not imagine Natalie and Aubrey without each other. The are sisters but more importantly they are twins. There is a special bond between them that they could never have with another person. The loss of these 26 lives has reaffirmed what is really important in life. So Friday afternoon with a tear streaked face I turned to Paul and said that we WERE having a Christmas tree. Those parents would give anything to have a cluttered living room, broken ornaments, and pine needles in bedrooms til May because that would mean their Kindergartner was at home celebrating the birth of Jesus. On Sunday the big kids and I found the perfect Christmas tree in the very back corner of a lot. There was no time this year to go cut a tree but that's okay the kids will not remember the year that we went to a mall parking lot to get a tree. The lights were strung Monday afternoon and the kids sat watching me telling me how pretty it was and "helping" me get the lights just right. After they went to bed Paul and I decorated it and it was perfect. We then stayed up til midnight wrapping all the presents so that when the kids woke up this morning they could go through all the gifts trying to find ones with their names on it. The girls did come and tell me that there were a couple with weird names on it and I having a feeling those are ones that say Mom and Dad!!

Today our house feels a little more Christmasy and it is perfect. And tonight when I tuck the kids into bed I will thank the heavenly Father that I got to spend another day with my children here on earth. Celebrating Christmas with children has to be one of the most awesome joys in life. They believe in the magic that so many of us lose as we grow up and its fun to get it back for a short while during the holiday season.

It took all of 5 minutes for the kids to rearrange all the gifts!

Need a bigger mantle!! No room for nine stockings...time to move!

4 Month stats & you guessed it more family pictures!

The babies have not been to the doctors since they were 2 months old and so I was very excited to see how much weight the babies had gained. I had not weighed the babies at all because well I knew they were growing and that was good for me! I had my guesses of what everyone weighed and I was thrilled when everyone was about a pound more than what I thought. So little Kenzie who started out at 2.6lbs now weighs 8.9lbs, Isabella (3.9lbs) is now 10.9lbs, Rylan (3.10lbs) came in at 10.11lbs and Tate the Tank (3.15) is just plain huge! He is 13.9lbs!! At least we know that we are not starving Tate. I asked the doctor if we needed to give Kenzie higher calorie formula with her two formula feeds and he said he was not concerned because her height and weight are both in the third percentile so she is proportionate. It amazes me how far the babies have come in four months. So to celebrate their awesome weight gains we toasted with four bottles of milk!

One of the things I love most about December is getting Christamas cards in the mail. I love displaying them during the month and the kids always ask who everyone is. Then at the end of the season I put them all away so that next December we can pull out the ones from years past and see how everyone has changed. I knew that their was no way I could get our family all in one picture looking decent by using a self timer for our Christmas card so it was time to call for help! I think we are done for awhile having pictures taken but if the opportunity arises I won't turn it down. I love pictures but don't come to my house expecting them to be hung all over. I am just not good at that part so most of them stay on my computer. This is something I need to get better at in 2013; I think I just came up with a New Year's resolution! So enjoy the wonderful work of Monica from Studio KYK.

2012...what an amazing year

The bestest of friends

Tators

Drew

Isabella

Natalie

Aubrey

Kenzie

Rylan

The "Little Kids"

He has the most awesome personality

The "Big Kids"

Monica told them to say poop. Drew said it and this was his reaction! He couldn't believe that he could say it and not get into trouble!!

The Lesnaus

Love him!!

Newborn Photo Shoot (A totally out of sequence post!)

(This post is only two months late but it was because I wanted to get my birth announcements out before posting the pictures and between having four newborns at home and issues with actually getting the announcements printed it has taken this long. Well better late than never sounds good to me!)

One of my favorite ways to officiate that our babies are home is to have a photograper come to our house to capture the littleness and perfection of our new babies. With both the girls and Drew we had someone photograph them at about 10 days old. The quads were eight weeks when we had their newborn pictures taken but they still acted like a brand new baby. We had contacted a friend of ours, Michelle, months ago about taking the quads newborn pictures but we knew one photographer would not be enough with four babies. There's lots of posing that needs to be done with four babies so she contacted her friend and fellow photographer. Michelle and Jessica had months to search the wonderful world of pinterest for ideas on what to do with four babies! We still did not have a family picture with all nine of us so Michelle met us at one of our outdoor malls to accomplish this task. We took these pictures on October 1. It was officially fall and should have been starting to cool off here in California but not that day. The car was showing 101* and we were all dressed in long sleeves! It was hot but the babies did pass out nicely because they were all nice and warm! It was a good thing that Michelle is as amazing as she is because we were done in about 15 minutes and back in the car. There was no fooling around and thank goodness it was mid afternoon and not crazy busy. I only had one person stop us. That is a huge success people!! I did laugh because the person that did stop shared with me how her friend just had twins and hated how people would always stop and ask if her kids were twins. Really lady and what are you doing right now? She just kept standing there even though the babies were covered. I finally looked at her and said well have a good day. She finally figured it out and moved on!!

After the family photos were done it was time to head home. Of course it was feeding time so we stripped the babies and got the babies nice and full. Now should have been the time that my newborns should have fell asleep but umm no we were awake and ready to party. Kenzie and Isabella did decide to give in about an hour and a half into picture taking but Tate and Rylan wanted to be up for the entire session. So for any of the pictures were it looks like the boys are sleeping it was either done by pulling a pacifier out real quick or Michelle and Jessica would take pictures one after another to get them to blink with all the flashes! Boys will be boys!!!

We can not thank Michelle Ravencroft Photography and Jessica Bowers Photography enough for capturing our little miracles. These pictures are ones that we will cherish forever. Michelle has been so gracious that if any of our blog readers book a session with her for 2013 and mentions the Lesnau quads she will give you 20% off a sitting fee. 

Pictures are moments in time that will always stand still and capture the love people have for one another...when was the last time you had pictures taken and everyone, including mom, where in the pictures?

Our four amazing miracles...how lucky are we?!?