Breakfast with Santa

Santa came for a visit at church this morning so Zach, Megan, Lauren and I went to see him.

We had a breakfast of french toast, sausage links, fruit cup and orange juice or hot chocolate. There were also pancakes available but we all got the french toast. It was yummy but Lauren said on the ride home that daddy's french toast was better. (I agree!)

After we ate the kids did crafts on the stage. They decorated a frame for their Santa picture, made cards and even got a bag of reindeer food to take home. I'm not sure why they had rubber cement but Lauren had fun painting the whole inside of her card with it.

She got the whole stage area smelly by using that. Poor kids, bet they all went home with headaches!

Later in the day Zach got a surprise. I was checking my email and Santa used my email to send Zach something. Wow! After dinner I showed Zach and he watched it 3 times. Here's the link to his special message from Santa: http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/watch/guest/H6i59nydcuZRq7txtb6nNQ

Check it out! (Thanks Aunt Kelly!!!)

Band Concert

Kristin was part of the Winter Concert last night. Since she's now in 7th grade she's become a part of the "Symphonic Wind Ensemble" instead of just being in the "6th grade band." She's moving up in the world! Last night's concert was actually held at Lauren's school since they needed more space. Lauren went with me and volunteered to be my photographer. She said she never did get Kristin's attention but here's Kristin after they got on the stage and took their seats.
I showed Kristin the picture and she likes her hair!

Here's a short clip of one of the songs they played. You can't see Kristin since she's in the second row but you can at least hear how the band plays. They played 4 songs and I'm not sure which one this clip is from. It's either "Holiday Magic" or "Chorale from Jupiter". I don't really know, they just blend together after awhile!

It was a very long concert! The band was actually the last to play. We had to sit through two different chorus groups and then the strings. Of course each group had to do 3 or 4 songs and it took time switching from group to group. I was beginning to wonder if the band was ever going to play! I know I'm biased but I think the concert ended on a good note, the band is by far the best out of all the musical groups at her school.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

We went and had a yummy dinner yesterday to help her celebrate even though her birthday is actually today.
This time Zach got to play with Lehlan. They played bumper boxes! Kristin and Megan pushed them around.

Lehlan would always hide his face whenever I took his picture. Ha, ha, I finally got one of him.

Cake time! Five of her grand kids watched as she blew out her candles. There's Zach, Kristin, Lehlan, Lauren and Megan.

I won't say how old she is since of course you never tell a woman's age. :) I'll just say it was a milestone birthday and leave it at that.

Guess What I Did?

I put the Christmas tree up the Saturday after Thanksgiving!!! I don't think I've ever put the tree up in November. Not only did I get the tree up but we also decorated it! Usually that's the tough part, having to wait for everyone to be home to put the ornaments on.

Kristin actually put the tree together for me, she did it for me last year too. I was the one that put the lights and garland on. One of these years, and I say this every year, I'm going to buy a tree that already has the lights on and replace our tree. I guess since we don't have a cat anymore we could always go back to a real tree. We used to have a real tree until the cat started climbing it and knocking it over! That's when the fake one was bought. But for now we're sticking with a fake one simply because it's so much easier.

I have two boxes of ornaments that are mine that we start with. I don't even put all the ornaments on anymore, I just pick out my favorites. Once everyone puts those on the tree the kids then get to pick a few out of their own special boxes. Each child has a Rubbermaid box of ornaments that I add to every year (usually after Christmas when they're cheap!) Their ornaments aren't just things that I've bought them. They also have ornaments that other people have bought them or made them. By the time they move out and have their own tree they shouldn't have any problems with decorating a tree!

So... Saturday night after dinner the decorating of the tree began...

Megan looks so beautiful in her Santa hat hanging up an ornament. I believe she hung the first ornament too. (Well, not in this picture.)
Lauren was given a karate ornament from her friend that got her 3rd degree belt at the same time Lauren got her 2nd. She was being creative by doing a side kick to put her ornament on the tree.

Look how much Lauren loves her little sister Kristin...I just had to pose the kids for a group picture.

Zachary was being very uncooperative with his smiling so I never did get the "perfect" shot. I eventually just gave up.

I rarely get in pictures since I'm always the one taking them. I guess there should be some record of me on film every once in awhile. :) Here I am with Kristin...

...and also with Megan.

I also had my picture taken with Zach, with Lauren and even with Paul but I didn't want to put ALL of them on here.

Lastly here's a picture of a few of the new ornaments on our tree this year. I already mentioned the karate one that Lauren got. The top one is a volleyball that I found at Michael's this year, Kristin can put that in her box when we take the tree down, I might even put a date on it for her. The other one is Lightning McQueen and of course that one is for Zach. That was bought last year after Christmas. He loved it!

I went a little crazy with the ornaments this year. I bought several new ones and even got one for Paul that is a Texas Longhorns hat. I guess I better buy a new tree after all, a bigger one to hold them all!

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving this year was spent with the Hunter side of the family. We had a wonderful time with family and as always a yummy dinner. Here's a few pics from the day that I wanted to share.

Zach and Kelly posing with Lauren for a picture.The real picture I was trying to get. Lauren and Kristin in almost matching shirts with their Aunt Kelly.
Megan was entertaining Alex.

Kelly's itouch was entertaining Ryan and Zach. They did a great job with sharing it back and forth.

Even Lauren had fun with the boys. Ryan's playing with her phone and Zach has Kelly's itouch.

I always love when all the cousins get together especially now since the boys are older. We always used to watch the 4 girls play together and now it's the boys turn.

Children's Choir
Last Sunday the children's choir sang and Kristin played her clarinet. Megan wasn't there to sing since she spent the night at a friend's house so I just taped a few seconds of Kristin playing. It's hard to hear her but she really was playing. :)

I just figured I would add the video to this post since the song was called, "We Give Thanks." I thought it was an appropriate place to put it.

Time to Play Catch Up...

I haven't blogged much in November and I have a ton of things just waiting to put on here. I keep a separate folder for pictures that I want to upload to here and I really need to clean it out, especially before the Christmas season. So lucky you, you get to see and read an assortment of stuff.

Timber!...
Earlier this month my dad cut down a tree in their backyard. I wasn't there when it fell but here it is on the ground. Zach, for some reason, was afraid to stand on the stump so my mom had to stand with him.

Of course I wanted to see the tree but the real reason we went over there was to get my tire looked at. It had been slowly losing air over the past few weeks so I wanted to get it checked out. My dad found a small nail in it so he got that plugged for me. Thanks dad! Meanwhile, Zach had loads of fun playing in some of the leaves that were raked.
Yeah, he looks like a goofball in that picture because he was "swimming." The picture doesn't do it justice so here's a video I took of him...

Until Zach, I have never seen anyone swim in leaves. That boy sure is creative.

The dreaded flu shots...
I think I'm a glutton for punishment when I take all 4 kids into the doctor at once. I took them on the afternoon of Veteran's Day when they didn't have school. Maybe I should make my Christmas cards from this picture.

Or maybe this one? Zach has the comfiest seat of all!

Project time again...

We've just been hitting up all the Lowe's Build and Grow projects. Paul was busy (softball tournament I think?) so I took Zach to make this one, a periscope. It was an okay project, very easy to do at least.

Art time...

When Zach's class learned about fire safety they made this dalmation. They used their fingerprints for the spots, painted the hat red, had their dog say one thing about fire safety and then name their dog. As you can see Zach's not much of a painter since half his dog's face is red! He did say, "Stop, Drop and Roll" as his fire safety tip but when asked what he wanted to name his dog he kept saying, "I don't know." So his teacher wrote that on the tag. I want everyone to meet the puppy named, "I don't know!"
Here's my scary skeleton of a boy. I'm not sure if his teachers asked the kids to make a weird face or not. Probably not, I have so many weird faced pictures of him that I think it's normal.

Playoff time...

Kristin's volleyball team had playoffs (earlier in Nov.) and they won the first round that they played. They went to the semifinals and played very well against a very tough team. The first game they almost won, it went into extra points but unfortunately they lost it. Kristin started and played in that game. The next game wasn't as close (she didn't play in that one) but still her team did very well.

As the season progressed I could tell that Kristin was becoming more confident about what she was doing. She had some really great games towards the end of the season. I owe a lot of that confidence to her coach, he really helped her believe she could do it. Surprisingly her coach is in a wheelchair and he's probably taught her more than her past coaches. Now that's a good coach!

Zach's Thanksgiving Feast at School

It's a huge event at the preschool, the Thanksgiving Feast. It takes weeks (at least for our 2-day 2-yr.-olds!) to get ready for it since the kids need to make a place mat, a napkin holder, an outfit, etc... The teachers and parents get the table ready before the kids come in, here's Zach's place setting...
Zach's teacher asked them what they were thankful for and then wrote it on their place mats. Check out what Zach wrote...

In case you can't see it it says, "I am thankful for Megan." And no, he's not thankful for his sister Megan, he's thankful for the Megan that's in his class. It was a few weeks ago that his teachers told me about him having a girlfriend and I've seen the way he looks at her, he gives her the most adoring looks. It's really cute!

So those pictures were taken before he even came in. Lauren and Paul came to the feast and Megan came to work with me. Kristin was just being lazy and stayed home. Lauren got a picture of Zach walking in...

Here he is at the table with Paul, Lauren and Megan behind him.

Another picture that Lauren took.

Here she is... Zach's girlfriend. Her mom just finished taking a picture of Zach's place mat to show the rest of her family. She got a big kick out of what Zach said too!

Of course the teachers intentionally placed the two of them next to each other. They think it's cute too! I'm not sure how much Zach ended up eating. I know he ate his cookie and drank his juice! It's a shame that the parents go through that much trouble to make everything and bring it in and then the majority of kids don't even eat it. I threw away full plates of food when I was cleaning up afterwards.

That was Zach's last Thanksgiving Feast that he'll get to go to since he graduates preschool this year. I guess next year he can come in with me and help out like Megan does! She gets so excited to come in with me. This morning I told Megan to go sit down at the play dough table so that some of the other kids would sit there. Within just a few minutes all 9 of the kids were over there.

We got soooo much done in the classroom! We got all the Thanksgiving/Fall stuff off of the walls and even started putting up some of the Christmas/winter stuff. Thanks for entertaining those kids Megan!

Lauren's Black Belt Promotion

She's officially a 2nd degree black belt! Way to go Lauren! After a welcome introductory from Mr. Jim the 25 candidates came running on stage. They then started handing out the black belts. They did the first degree ones first and then the second degree which Lauren was last to get in her group. I do have picture and video of it but I need to edit it first. Once everyone got their new belt they were told to take off their old one and put it down, then pick up their new one. Before putting it on they were told to use their belt to wipe their forehead as a symbolic gesture of all the sweat it took to get it. Here Lauren is in the back row, middle of the picture. Then they were to tie on their new ones.

I guess they're not officially black belts until they take their oath. Here's a portion of it. They're told to memorize it which Lauren stressed about when she got her first degree. This time she didn't even bother since she knew all she had to do was repeat after Mr. Jim a few lines at a time. Near the end she goofed because the person next to her messed up, maybe she should have memorized it after all! The video gets a little blurry once in awhile, I think it's because I had it so zoomed in.

She demonstrated the kata she learned when she got to first degree, kata long 4, with one other person. During rehearsals Lauren was going to lead it but ended up letting the other person do it. I think she now wishes she had led! I have a video of her doing it but it's long, like over 2 minutes long so I can't put it on here. I was going to upload it to YouTube and just put a link here but after she watched it she didn't want me to. She said she did mess up once (I would never have known by watching) but the other guy messed up a lot. He messed up so much that quite a few times they were out of sync. She was none to happy!

So since I can't show you video of her kata I can show you video of her techniques. She partnered with her friend that is the same age as her (she got her 3rd degree black belt!)

She told me she messed up once there too but you can't tell by the video. They had to let their partners know ahead of time what techniques they were doing so they could be prepared and Lauren said she did something different from what she told her friend. They're both good at improvising so it worked out.

Next it was on to board breaking. Everyone had to break a board and Lauren did it by doing a side kick like this...

When she got her first degree belt she did a palm strike so she wanted to do something different for this one.

They took a short break for pictures, here's the group. Lauren is in the second row just to the left of the middle person.
A closer one of her and her friend.

The last thing Lauren and the rest of the black belts had to do was the "Rose of Appreciation." They were to recognize and give the rose to someone in their life as a token of thanks. Lauren said it was for both me and daddy. Yeah, he pays and I drive her there!

That was it for her, she was able to sit and watch the rest of the demos that the All-Stars and instructors did. The instructor portion is always neat to watch and this time they ended it with some board breaking using multiple boards. I know there had to have been at least 6, if not more, that one instructor did. I wish they could have done a funny skit or two like they did when Lauren got her first degree belt but overall it was pretty good. I wonder if she'll make it to 3rd degree...

Guess What?

Lauren's getting promoted to 2nd degree black belt! Yeah I know, everyone already knows but I have to put this on here, I'm excited for her. She had 3 nights of testing and then had to wait two more days after the last one to find out if she made it. Of course she made it so the big day for her promotion is next Saturday, the 20th.

Just for fun here's two pictures of her, the first is from when she started karate back in January of '04...
...and when she got her 1st degree black belt in February of '08.

She had her first rehearsal this past week, there's somewhere around 24 people getting promoted to either 1st, 2nd or 3rd degree black belt. Lauren, along with one other person, will be demonstrating kata long 4 on stage together. One girl will be doing a solo demonstration because she's getting her 3rd degree belt but everyone else are all in larger groups. Don't know why Lauren got so lucky to have such a small group, she even gets to announce and lead it, lucky her.

She has two more rehearsals next week, hopefully the two of them learn to do the kata in sync. It's a very long kata too so it should be interesting...

I Know it's Been Awhile...

...since I posted, I don't know what happened. I have a lot of info to post but for now I'll update about Halloween.

Zach was actually sick on Halloween. He got a fever Saturday night and continued with his fever on Sunday (Halloween). By Monday he was a little better, just a low-grade fever, but I decided to keep him home from school and get him into the doctor anyway. I'm glad I did because his tonsils were all pussy (sorry...too much information, I know) so he was put on an antibiotic and bounced right back to his normal self.

Anyway...back to Halloween. We weren't sure if he would be able to go out trick-or-treating but I was determined to get him to go out to at least a few houses. Everyday of the week before Zach would wake up and ask if it was Halloween. He kept saying, "it's taking too long" when I said it wasn't Halloween yet. So it was such a bummer when he got a fever. Right as we were getting ready to take Megan out I put Zach in the bathtub to get his fever down. It worked wonders and Paul was able to take him out. He dressed in his race car outfit with a hooded sweatshirt underneath (it was cold out).
Luckily as we were dealing with Zachary some of Megan's friends came by and wanted her to go with them. So off she went with a group of her friends. Lauren was at a friend's house trick-or-treating in a different neighborhood (isn't 15 too old???) and Kristin didn't want to go out even though she could have gone with Zach. Kristin did dress up to hand out candy...she was an angel (minus the halo.)
For some reason I never did get a picture of Megan but she went in her rock star outfit she wore for her acting class that one time.

Paul took Zach out and I was expecting him to only go to a couple of houses and be back. I was surprised that they were out for almost an hour. Paul said that Zach was trick-or-treating then all of a sudden he just said he was done. On the way home he bypassed a whole bunch of houses. It wasn't that he was feeling sick, he said that he had enough candy! He was proud to show off his loot when he got back.

He never did get a high fever back so maybe the cool air helped him. I'm glad he was able to go out trick-or-treating.

A few more pics:

Here's Zach wearing Kristin's favorite wig.

I think it's a good look for him, what do you all think?

Zach has been into dancing lately. Here he is dancing to a kid's CD. There's 2 clips, both short.

He dances all over the place anymore. This is from the kid that never danced when he was younger, except for when that Men's Warehouse commercial came on. I loved that commercial...