Bring on the Holidays

As in many households the upcoming Christmas season brings lots of extra activity - decorating, shopping, increased school functions, wrapping, shopping (because it is hard to get it done!). The past weeks have been filled with those activities and we still have two more days to go (to finish it all!) before we hit the road for Christmas in Michigan. Here's a look back at what's been keeping us busy: Decorating the tree, finally! The boys have been asking to do this since Halloween. Unfortuanately I didn't get many pictures since I was more focused on keeping the ornaments from having accidents ;)
Watching the Packers play: 'Tailgating' on Santa's annual trip through the neighborhood as part of the fire departments food drive. This involves bundling up, putting the seats down, lots of snacks and sometimes a movie. We almost had to call it quits before Santa showed up due to it being so late, Santa must have taken a different route this year! Bundling up for some outside fun! And then coming in to warm up with hot chocolate and cake. Some very rosy cheeks! A nice afternoon visit with our friend Jess and her two kids, Ethan and Grace. Grace really likes the kitties - a lot! Ethan wasn't as enamored with the cats, but did have a good time with the toys. Unfortunately before they came I had a little stove mishap so lunch was delivered and the house was a little smelly and cold due to many open windows, I'll explain more later ;) So, I was going to make lunch for Jess and the kids. I had cleaned up the counters and in the process put one of Brendans 'experiments' (consisting of rocks, sand, water and chalk) in a plastic bowl and set it in the oven where I wouldn't spill it and it would be out of the way. Yeah, you guessed it, I preheated the oven (to 450 no less!) and walked away. Obviously plastic and ovens don't mix very well - the result was a very stinky smoke and a huge puddle of melted plastic on the bottom of the oven. Thankgoodness for delivery to save the day for lunch! Here is the result: Wellyn celebrated the big 3-6 this past Monday, but due the kids having school a preschool program, work, etc we celebrated on Saturday morning. The kids were having a great weekend playing dress-up and doing all sorts of adventures so they were in pirate costume for the gift opening. Some birthday pie ;)

Playing in the snow after our first real storm of the season:

A little baking with the babysitter while we were out shopping. (thankfully all cleaned up by the time we got home ;) Last Monday was Aidens first preschool program, the Birthday Party for Jesus. He was so excited about it - unfortunately he was feeling down with a cold, but there was no missing this performance! Brendan with his buddy Mason, buddies from their year in preschool.


Enjoying the cupcakes and their friends afterwards!





This will be the last post before the holidays and we wish all of you a safe and joyous Christmas and New Year. May the new year bring many new joys, adventures and memories.

Lots to be Thankful For

I actually started this post over a week ago but due to many interruptions and half the post not being saved before the computer restarted... well, let's just say it's been a rocky road getting it done!

After having a cold October, November was a much welcomed if not unexpected treat weather-wise. We were able to take advantage of some really nice sunny days and get out to play. Brendan has been perfecting his technique on the monkey bars at his school playground and wanted to show off his new skills so off we went for some play there on a sunny Saturday.












We participated in Operation Christmas Child this year for our first time. The boys each filled up a shoe box with small toys and school supplies to send to another little boy in need. The cool thing is our boxes have tracking labels on them so after they are on their way we'll be able to track their progress to the intended country. It was so much fun to fill the boxes - they would have filled many more if they could have ;)

Also new this year, we've adopted a family for Christmas through the Salvation Army. We will go shopping for them and then meet with them to give them their gifts. The kids are pretty excited about it and I think it will be better than Toys For Tots at this point since putting toys in a box at a store or filling a bus with them doesn't really let them see where the toys are going. Our family has two boys the same age as ours as well as a ten year old girl. I'm nervous about shopping for a girl that age since I've never done that before!

Our Thanksgiving was spent here in the cities this year. Wellyn doesn't have any extra vacation time left after we take the days at Christmas and given the distance to get home it's hard to make the trip for just a couple days (after subtracting the days for traveling!). The boys had a good time playing with friends, using their endless imagination and going out for some fun family activities. One of the best was going to a theater grill - very cool. We ordered our dinner and ate while watching Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. The kids thought it was really cool and Brendan scored us some free popcorn by having the same birthdate as our server! Wellyn built a rolling storage shelf for our basement so some of our time was spent organizing and reorganizing the space.

Here they are with their imaginations running full throttle:





And playing in the garage while Wellyn was working on the shelf:


This just cracks me up - we've had the iPod for a couple years now, but over the holiday everyone kind of 'rediscovered' it. It was a huge deal whose turn it was to play with it: Wellyn, Aiden or Brendan. I think the biggest contributor to it was time; Wellyn doesn't seem to have a lot of just downtime here to do stuff for fun so a few laid back days here and he was able to download a bunch of new aps for it and it became the hot toy of the weekend.


Earlier this week we put up the tree much to the boys delight! They've been asking since Halloween when we're going to put it up ;)




I have just about all of our decorations up now; the Christmas village is up as of last night, all the decor is out and the outside of the house is lighted. I need to run out and throw some lights on a couple of bushes and the kids are going to decorate two little trees in the basement and then we're done.

This week will be busy wrapping up gifts and trying to finish up our shopping. The kids are anxious to go shopping for each other although it is so hard for them to wait to give the gifts they buy ;)