Christmas Eve

Since we do dinner on Christmas and have family come over a big part of Christmas Eve is prep work in the kitchen. I try to get as much made or almost made so that I can enjoy Christmas day as much as possible. This year Kristin and Lauren were a HUGE help. They washed and cut up all the veggies and fruit for me, here's Kristin getting some of the fruit ready.
Lauren mixed together a cream cheese dip that later got made into the shape of a snowman. She also put together a crabmeat/artichoke dip. Like I said, they were a huge help to me that day.

After dinner that evening I gave each of them a gift that was from Paul and I. Paul being the one that paid for everything (though I did contribute since I'm working now :) and me putting it all together. Megan got a "babysitters kit," something she's been talking about for a year now so I had to put that together for her. Kristin got a box full of hair care, neutral make up, and miscellaneous personal care stuff. Since she started middle school she's beginning to care a little more about her appearance.

I had a tough time coming up with something for Lauren. I finally came up with the idea (with the help of the internet) of putting gift cards and miscellaneous things in an empty soda bottle. It was so funny to watch her trying to pull things out of the top.
She finally figured it out and got everything out though I won't tell you how if you don't already know. :)

Zach's present I've been working on since Halloween. He got a dress-up trunk that had his pirate costume in it, a ninja costume, a construction worker, a cowboy and even a prison outfit! There were a bunch of other costumes and accessories in it too, thank goodness for after Halloween sales!

Not only do we leave cookies and milk for Santa but we also leave food for the reindeer. Usually I just mix something up at the last minute but this year Zach brought home some reindeer food he had made at school. It was cold out, he didn't have his jammies on yet, so Paul wrapped him in his coat and they sprinkled the food quickly!
I outdid myself this year with the jammies and got everyone to match. I found out that if you order online from The Children's Place you can also get adult jammies to match the kids. (Plus I got them on sale, a % off and free shipping so it was a good deal too.)
So for Lauren I got a small adult size and the rest I just ordered their normal sizes. Apparently The Children's Place jammies run big so I think that they will be wearing these same pajamas next year too! I couldn't even have Zach wear his on Christmas morning since he had footie pajamas and he kept coming out of them, I was afraid he would trip. Luckily he had red pajamas that he ended up wearing so he still matched them somewhat.

So that's it, kids went to bed and Santa came.

To be continued...

Megan Skating

Megan spent her one day of school this week going on a field trip rollerskating. This was one of those trips they had to earn by turning their work in on time, getting good grades, getting things signed on time... She was so excited that there was school today and that she didn't get to miss her trip.

Paul took off work to go skating with her. He's done it with all the kids so far so he couldn't miss Megan's. Zach and I just stopped by to see her skate for awhile and take some pics and video. She's posing with her friend in this one:

I was a little video happy today, don't worry, they're all very short. This one is of Megan, you can see Zach's big head blocking her as she goes by :)

This one is of Paul, I thought it was cute how Zach giggled after Paul said his name.

The last one is of both of them waving to Zach.

After having a little snack from the snack bar Zach and I left and returned home to finish up the wrapping. I'm taking a break right now to post this and then on to either finish up cleaning the house or baking cookies. Not sure which yet, if I'm lucky I'll get both done, especially if I delegate the cookie baking to Kristin! (Would be nice to delegate the rest of the cleaning to Megan and Lauren but I know that won't happen, they cleaned way too much yesterday.)

Meet Jingles...

... our elf. He came to stay with us until Christmas Eve. He reports back to Santa every night and on Christmas Eve Santa will pick him up and take him back to the North Pole.

Jingles "comes alive" at night when we're all asleep and in the morning we try to find him and see what he's been up to. One night he must have been playing with Zach's trains because we found him riding one!

One morning we couldn't find him anywhere! We looked and looked and looked and finally found him sitting in our tree.

He's only been with us for about a week, maybe next year we can convince him to come visit us and stay longer.

Other News:

The girls did not have school yesterday or today because of the snow. Yesterday we managed to get to Five Below where the girls bought Christmas presents for each other and some of their friends. Today we stayed home and cleaned the house! Thank goodness they go back to school tomorrow so I can finish wrapping a few presents. That's one thing that's hard to do when they're home and about the only thing I have left to do. One day of school and then they're off for Christmas break.

This past Sunday Zach made us all place mats for breakfast. I put everyone's names on them and he went from one to another making them look pretty.

Snow, and lots of it.

Look how much snow we got, this was Kristin on Saturday...
...and here she is in almost the same spot on Sunday! The poor girl could barely walk in it.

Just kidding! That was Kristin's idea to do that. But we did get a lot of snow, just not quite that much! The total snow fall, at least the last I heard, was 17" in a town close to us. Philadelphia got almost 2 feet!

These next two pictures were taken on Saturday, earlier in the day around 10:30 or so.

This morning the kids and I went out again and Zach was only out for about 5 minutes when he lost both his boots in the snow. I turn around and he's walking through the snow in his socks! That ended his outside time. The snow was just too deep for him to walk in I guess.

So later in the day we try it again, with a different pair of boots. He had a much better time and his boots stayed on. Here he is getting ready to throw a snowball at me:

Megan went out too but didn't stay long. Kristin said she wasn't coming out but then came out a few minutes after we did. She pulled Zach around in the sled and Zach even pulled Kristin.

Of course the best thing about the snow is the hot chocolate afterwards. Zach put his own marshmallows in, I got distracted with something and when I checked his cup a few minutes later there were about 20 marshmallows in it.

So that was our weekend and now the kids don't have school tomorrow due to the snow so I have another day with them. Yay! The one thing I didn't mention was that our snow blower didn't work and that Paul worked on that thing all weekend to try and fix it, he needs a part that I'll have to go get tomorrow. Thank God for nice neighbors that helped us clear our driveway.

Preschool Christmas Pageant

Zach's class (and mine too) have been practicing and getting ready for the Christmas Pageant all month. My two's had it easy, they only sang one song, and an easy one at that. The only thing we had to get ready for them was a star headband to go with their song, Twinkle Twinkle Christmas Star. Now the 3-year-olds and pre-k classes had 5 songs to learn.

So the pageant went like this: the 4 classes of two-year-olds went in first, lined up in front and sang their 30 second song. Then they were dismissed to their parents which freed me up to watch Zach and his class enter and sing.

Here he comes dressed as a cow:

I snuck over and took a whole bunch of pictures of him after he lined up, before they started singing. His class was dressed up as animals.

This is the 2nd song that they sang. Zach didn't sing once during the whole pageant! His one teacher, Miss Pam, is the one sitting behind him. Towards the end of this video she points out to him where I am. I believe this one is 50 seconds long.

This song was their last song. He's still not singing but check out what he's doing during this one! I had to do a lot of editing on this one since the original was 2 minutes and 37 seconds long. It took me awhile but I finally got it down to 51 seconds.

Good thing they didn't do any more songs, not sure what he would have done during those! It was a cute little performance. Tons of parents were there which was why I stood in the aisle (I wasn't the only one) to take the video. Since I had to be with my two's I couldn't get a seat but really, unless I had been in one of the first 2 rows I wouldn't have been able to see him anyway without standing up. Plus the show wasn't long, 5 songs and a quick reading of the Christmas story. For me, I got to enjoy seeing my two's sing and then got a laugh out of watching my son, it was a very good day.

Angel Choir visits Friends

It was such a yucky day to go anywhere but we did manage to get to church where the kids practiced all their songs and then later in the afternoon we met at the nursing home. They did a good job, I think they sing better at the nursing home then they do at church! They sang 6 songs and Kristin accompanied them on the auto harp.

For this song each child had a solo during it, I cut the video down to just Megan's part. Then I pan over to catch Kristin playing.

I'll only put one more of their songs on here, this one has been shortened for you too.

Let's see, you missed seeing them sing: Jesus Loves Me, Sweet Little Jesus Boy, This Little Light of Mine and We Give Thanks. All of which, with the exception of Jesus Loves Me, I've probably posted before when they sang them in church.

They sing again this coming Sunday and Kristin is going to play an extra song where it's just her playing the auto harp with the guitarists (at least that's what she tells me). That will be neat to see.

Whew! We've been busy!

Let's see, Lauren has started indoor soccer with her school. She had her first game last week, of which I had to drive her to and from because there's no bus service for any of the games. I do really like watching it though since the girls can use the wall to redirect the ball. Plus the games are a lot shorter than a normal outdoor soccer game and they go by so fast. She has one more game this coming week and then no more till after Christmas break.

Megan is once again taking acting classes. She really seems to enjoy it and has already taken 4 classes so far this month. Hopefully she can keep taking lessons until the spring when she might have to stop again for a few months so I can caravan Lauren to soccer practices. At least her acting lessons are ongoing and she can stop and start them whenever. Especially good for me since I'm the taxi driver for the house!

Then of course there's all the holiday stuff going on. My work had a lunch this past Friday and then Paul's work had their company party that night. That was way too much food for me in one day. It all was good though, especially the pumpkin mushroom soup I had for lunch, delicious! Tomorrow I have yet another lunch to go to, this one is for church staff (I guess when you work for the preschool you also work for the church). Fine for me since it's at a restaurant that I've been wanting to go to.

Okay, onto some pictures! The tree is decorated, kid style. They put 100% of the ornaments on this year.

The finished tree!

No, it's not the camera that was tilted, the tree is actually crooked. :) Zachary kept wanting to go behind it and hang ornaments so that's why it ended up leaning a little. Of course I didn't notice it before I took the picture.

Now if only I could get those lights up outside...

Mr. Fix-it is at it again!

A shingle came off the roof so my little man took it upon himself to get the ladder and hammer and go take care of it. What would I do without him? First the desk, now the roof.

Afterwards he took a little play break to play some baseball with Aunt Kelly.

While he was having his fun he let his daddy go up on the big roof and fix yet another shingle.

He doesn't look too thrilled to be up there does he?

In fact, that was his second time up there. The first time I didn't have my camera and didn't want to run inside to get it while he was up there. The second time Kelly was here and I was better prepared. I swear I think the only reason he went up again was to get on my blog! At least the shingle did get fixed the second time.

Thanksgiving, Decorating and Bowling

With everyone being home it's hard to get on here to post anything so here's an update on the last few days.

Thanksgiving
We alternate years going to either my parents or Paul's parents, this year it was my parent's turn. Papaw came down and picked up Kristin in the morning so she could help with the cooking. She also set the table, doesn't it look pretty?
See the place mats on the table in the picture above? My mom said she made them the night before because she didn't have enough matching ones. She also made the coasters in the same fabric. Geez! Wish I had the time (not to mention talent) to do that.

After dinner we didn't let Zach go down in the basement at first. Here he is talking to Megan through the vent in the floor.

The girls had fun playing either pool or ping pong. Megan enjoyed playing ping pong by herself until I came down and then I just had to take her on. She doesn't play fairly though and kept thinking it was her point even if the ball never hit my side when she returned it. Oh well, I easily beat her but she thinks she won.

Lauren and Kristin played a couple games of pool and I think they each won one. When Zach came down he would either chase the ping pong ball around for us or put the pool balls in the pockets with his hands.

It was a very nice Thanksgiving afternoon/evening. The food was delicious (especially the sweet potatoes!) and it's always good when you're spending it with family.

Friday

No black Friday shopping for me! I used to do that but no way would you find me out there anymore. This year I slept till 8:00, got up, ordered the couple of things I wanted on the internet and was done my shopping. It was great!

Also that day I managed to get all the Christmas decorations out of the basement and brought upstairs with the help of Kristin and Megan. I had them put everything on the dining room table and then Kristin and I put the decorations around the house. I had even brought up the tree and ornaments and just set them in the corner not even thinking that I would get around to putting it up that day. Once all the decorations were out Kristin asked me if she could do the tree. Um...sure! She told me she remembered how I put it up last year and she did the whole entire thing herself. Yay! All I had to do was the lights and the beads. It still doesn't have ornaments on it yet because I like to do that when the whole family is here and Lauren was at a friend's house. I'll be super excited if that gets done this weekend too.

Kristin, my super duper Christmas helper!

Paul, Kristin and Zachary put the train together.

So now all I have to do are the outside lights. Some years I get them up, other years, like last year, I don't. Most likely they'll get put up this year since it's still early but I'll wait till a slightly warmer evening (or at least a less windy one).

Bowling

Paul suggested going bowling while we were off so we finally managed to go today. I had a coupon I had received through an email that was for 2 hours of bowling for up to 6 people. Perfect for our family of six. It included shoe rental for all of us plus a pitcher of soda. The coupon was for 34.99 and until we got there and saw their prices we didn't realize how good a deal that was. Bowling is expensive anymore! To bowl one game it's $4 which really isn't a big deal till you multiply that by 6. (That's just for one game, in two hours we bowled 2 games.) Then add 6 shoe rentals at 3.75 each. Even the pitcher of soda was expensive at 6.50. All I can say is good thing I had a coupon!

So for two hours we had fun and Zach had his first bowling experience. At first Paul helped him get his ball and helped him push it down the lane.

He quickly learned to get his ball himself and carry it to the end of the lane where he would practically drop it then push it.

Megan has been talking about bowling for awhile now so I had to take a pic of her.

We've been asking her what sport she wants to do and her answer is "bowling." I'm not sure if she'll still want to do that after today but she did pretty good for her age and for not having bowled since she was little. I think she was a little annoyed that she didn't do better, especially since she can beat anybody on the wii!

Children's Choir

Megan sang this past Sunday in church. Kristin is now too old to be in the children's choir, she has moved on to playing instruments to accompany the choir. This month it was the auto harp and I believe she's also playing it again next month too.

You can barely see Kristin in the video but I think that's how she likes it. She so does not like being in the spotlight.

The kids wrote that song and there are more verses (thanks for: Jesus, food, family and friends, our church, everything) so that each child got to hold something.

Thanksgiving Feast

Everyone was off today EXCEPT for me and Zach. Lauren and Megan came into school with us to help out and Paul and Kristin came later for Zach's feast. So the whole family experienced preschool in some way today.

Megan was really looking forward to being with "the little people" (as Lauren calls them). One of the little boys immediately took to her when he came in and wanted to play with her in the sensory table. So that was her buddy for most of the morning. Here she is building a block tower so he could knock it down.
She also read books to the children and helped get them ready for their feast in their Native American outfits.

Lauren was a huge help too. She did a whole bunch of die cuts to get ready for Christmas and winter. Then after all the fall/Thanksgiving stuff was taken down she put up a lot of snowflake and Christmas decorations around the room.

Here she is helping to get the kids ready to go to the feast.

So now we're up to feast time. Originally my class and Zach's class were going to be in the same room but somehow my class ended up being switched to another room. So after helping get my class seated I left and went to check out my boy.

He kept stuffing his face so I never did get a picture of him just smiling. He was way too interested in all that food on his plate. I hope he eats like that on Thanksgiving!

Here's his turkey that he made:

I'll have to work with him on making eyes! On the front of the turkey is a recipe for turkey casserole with the rice that is needed to make it inside the bag. I really only took the picture because I loved the fork feet!

So that's it! The next big thing (which will only be in a few weeks) is the Christmas Pageant. At least all the classes are together on that day.

Concert Night

Tonight was Kristin's 1st middle school concert. She lucked out and didn't have to wear that ugly blue vest that Lauren had to wear for 3 years because the 6th grade band is so big there weren't enough vests for everyone.

The Jump Start strings performed first, they're the beginner strings. Surprisingly they were pretty quick tonight, usually they take forever to play 3 songs. Next it was the 6th grade band playing 3 songs then finally the choir (the one you have to audition for) singing 3 songs.

This picture was taken when they first came in and were seated.

Here's a part of the 3rd song they did, you can only see part of her. It's 29 seconds long.

The band did pretty good, not too much squeaking going on. They'll just keep getting better and better each concert so I have something to look forward to. By 8th grade they'll be awesome!

Since I couldn't get a very good video of her playing here she is after they finished playing and stood up. It's short and sweet, only 11 seconds. Had to stop that one when the director blocked my view.

Yeah, that was a pretty exciting video wasn't it? She looked totally thrilled.

Not much else to say about tonight. Next concert's in February if anyone is interested in going...

A soccer day

Soccer season is winding down and next weekend will be Lauren's last game of the fall. We got really lucky with the weather today, it was so warm and nice out, very weird for November! She had a game near Reading today so it was Paul and I, Lauren (of course) and Zach that went. The two girls went to church with Mamaw and Papaw and stayed with them after.
It was a good game and Lauren played really well. Too bad they tied 1-1 but at least it wasn't a loss.

Lauren had a great play near the end of the game (no picture of it though). She saved the ball that the other team kicked from possibly going in the net with a header ball. She complained of a headache the rest of the night!

I had packed a bunch of stuff for Zach to play with while he was there but I shouldn't have worried about it since he played with a friend.

Zach is with another player's little brother. I think he's around 7 and he kept Zach busy with kicking a soccer ball and playing in the dirt. He ran around so much that he should sleep well tonight!

After the game we headed to the Reading outlets since they were so close. I just couldn't let that opportunity pass. :) We got a few good deals, a couple Christmas presents for the kiddos then headed home. I'm glad we got to enjoy today because next weekend at her soccer game it will probably be freezing.

Zach in preschool

Yesterday firefighters came to talk to the kids about fire safety. They broke the classes into 2 groups and it just so happened that my class and Zach's class were in the same group. Knowing this I took my camera in the hopes that maybe I could get a few pics of Zach. Sounds like it would be easy to do right? Wrong! Two-year-olds and firetrucks don't go together, at least not for some of the kids in my group, they were just a little scared. I did however get a few pictures taken.

His class is the only 3-yr-old class on Tuesdays and Thursdays so being older they were first to see the firetruck up close. Here he is wearing his red jacket walking next to his teacher.


They were lifted into the truck by one of the firefighters so they could check out the inside.

A picture of him sitting inside.

And that's it! I didn't even take any of our class, wasn't worth it since they weren't happy. The next photo op will be the Thanksgiving feast in a few weeks. Not sure how that works but even if I don't get to see him the girls are off from school so I'll give them a camera and have them document that one!

Pumpkins & Halloween

PUMPKINS
We didn't get a chance to carve our pumpkins until the morning of Halloween. So after breakfast Paul brought them all in and set them up on the table for the kids to begin decorating/carving. He cut all the tops off of them so they could get all the fun pumpkin guts out.

Zach didn't want to get his pumpkins' insides out so Paul did his. He did want to paint it though so we gave him some black paint and a paintbrush.

Kristin enjoying gutting hers.

Lauren did her entire pumpkin all herself, from start to finish, the only one to do so. She managed to keep all her fingers too which was a bonus!

A picture of all 4 of them at the table. Yes, Zach is just wearing underwear, we stripped him down because of the paint.

Zach watching daddy cut his pumpkin.

The finished products from left to right: Zach's, Lauren's, Kristin's and Megan's.

HALLOWEEN

Lauren was a cave woman, Kristin was an Indian, Zach was a pirate and Megan, well, she was a crazy woman! That's what she called herself, she put her costume together herself from what we had at home.

Kristin had two of her friends come over and the 3 of them went out trick-or-treating themselves. Lauren wanted to take Zach but not Megan so Paul ended up going with the other three. Here's Zach trying to fill his bag before going out!

Unfortunately it was not a very good night for trick-or-treating. It started drizzling then raining then eventually it down poured but we (luckily!) were home by then. I have so much candy leftover since not many kids came to the door. You think I can get away with saving it till next year? Nah, just kidding!

Here's what they came home with during their short time out:

And here's Zach enjoying his loot!

He's eating a peanut butter cup with an open box of Nerds next to him. He had 3 of those boxes opened before I could get the candy put away and out of his reach. He was really enjoying himself!