Christmas celebration with friends

The Friday before Christmas, we got together with a bunch of our friends and their kids for a fun, casual Christmas get-together.  The kids all drew names for gifts to buy for each other and the parents did Dirty Santa gift exchanges.  The kids all had a blast playing together, giving the parents time to have fun by themselves.  I hope we get to do it again next year!

The kids about to dig into their gifts.

Catie loves her little tea set!

Will's gift was a batman costume, but Catie had fun being Batgirl!

Will's Christmas Party

On the last day of school before Christmas break, Will's class had a little party.  They read a Christmas book, ate some yummy treats, and then exchanged gifts with their teachers.  Then, I brought him home for 2 weeks of vacation!

Will's Christmas Program

A couple weeks before Christmas, the kindergarteners did a little performance of Christmas songs for the school.  It was short but very sweet.  Will loves to sing and, honestly, is the LOUDEST singing kid in the group.  But even though he is loud, he sings very well!  I'm trying to get him to join the choir at our church but thus far he has remained uninterested...

Decorating for Christmas

Ellis and I both had a lot of fun decorating our new house for Christmas this year.  We had a great space to put up a beautiful Christmas tree that Ellis picked out.  Carter "helped" me string up the lights and then the kids all had a hand in putting up the non-breakable ornaments.

Picking out a Christmas Tree

Markle the Elf

Markle came to visit us once again after Thanksgiving.  Ellis and I despise Markle (because its takes a lot of effort to remember to move the darn thing).  But the kids were extra cute this year about it.  The girls and Will would run around every morning to find Markle and would exclaim in excitement "Markle Markle!" when they found him.  I suppose because of their excitement about him, Ellis and I got a little more carried away with the mischief Markle got into this year, and I am afraid have set the bar a little higher for next year.  Unfortunately, this is the only picture I took of Markle, looking down from the TV in the playroom to the mess of toys he made one night.  He also drew a smiley face on Will's mirror with toothpaste (bad idea!), cut out a cape to look like a superhero and flew from a light fixture, made some mess with cookie ingredients, TP'd the kitchen, spelled the kids names out with marshmallows (it was marshmallows for breakfast that morning), played with all the toys setting up little "stations" of the toys throughout the playroom... WHEW!  Needless to say, we were rather thankful when he hopped on Santa's sleigh Christmas Eve and got out of here for another 10 months.

Although one thing Markle does do is remind me of the absolute innocence and magic in little children's eyes at Christmas. The fact that they believe in what Santa does and that this little elf comes to life at night and does fun things and visits Santa - it makes me stop and just smile at the magic of the season.

Significant Events

Some significant rites of passage for the kids these past couple of months:

1) Will learned to ride a bike with no training wheels.  He just loves to ride his bike, and now I am especially thankful for our circle driveway and cul-de-sac.  

(He has also learned to become quite the tree climber with the trees in our yard.)

2) The girls are potty trained!  Whoo hoo!  We have officially ended the chapter of diapers in this family!!  We still have potty accidents.  The girls do very well at school.  But at home, Catie tends to tee tee in her pants but is a champ at going poo poo in the potty.  Carter is the exact opposite.  So, while we are out of diapers, Daddy and I are still up to our elbows in a heck of a lot of dirty laundry around here. 

Sweet Faith and Justin came over for dinner on the night he was sworn into the Bar, and she brought over these t-shirts that she made for the girls (along with match bows) for Thanksgiving.  So cute!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!  A recap of the rest of 2012 and all of our Christmas fun will be posted before the end of this year - that's my pre-New Year resolution!

Happy Halloween 2012

Iron Man and the princesses had a great time trick or treating, even if it was super cold that night.  We had to improvise a little with the girls' dresses because of the cold.  Catie is obsessed with pirates and the "A Pirate's Life for Me" song lately, and loudly proclaimed Halloween at about 2:00 that she was not going as a princess but was going to dress up like a pirate.  Thankfully, I was able to sway her back to the princess-side.  Having an older brother, these girls are way more interested in super heroes, cars, trains and pirates than they are of princesses, dolls and babies.

Halloween in our new neighborhood was lots of fun.  Our street itself was a little dead, so I got a little worried as we set out.  But one street over was filled with houses completely decked out for Halloween with tons and tons of kids running everywhere.  The girls did pretty good going door to door, saying trick or treat, and getting candy.  Will was happy to meet up with his friends from across the street so they could take off at a faster pace while Grandma and I brought the girls back home.

October

A few pictures from Halloween coming soon.....seems we lost the device to downloading pictures off of our good camera in the move.

In the meantime, here are a few Bapa took from earlier this month when the kids hung out with Bapa and Grandma.  Those little girls - well, and Will too - are just growing up so fast.  I try to slow down every once in a while and just savor their cuteness at this age.  Maybe one day soon I will take some time to write down on my blog what they are up to nowadays....maybe.  :-)  Sorry girls - I know this blog was way more detailed when your brother was your age, but its a heck of lot easier keeping up with just one of you than all 3!

Happenings

I can't believe its October and time to get Halloween decorations out.  Will seems to be loving his new school, and the girls are excited to head to "Miss Emily's class" every day.  Will has also become good friends with neighbors across the street.  They have two boys - 4 and 6 years old - and a 9 year old girl. Catie and Carter love the girl and squeal if they hear her voice in the other yard when we get home.  The kids all play well together and its fun to have kids crashing into our house playing with our kids and vice versa.  (It gives mom and dad a little break!)

Here are some other happenings as the summer officially comes to an end:

We took a trip to the zoo ...

We finally got our swingset back just in time for cooler days!  In the move, we discovered that all the pieces were rotted through and full of termites!  It was so awful!  But Bapa was awesome in helping us find out what pieces needed replacing, helping me figure out what to tell the Rainbow people on the warranty, and then re-staining the whole set and putting it back together.  It looks better than it did when we first bought it!

Will had a teddy bear picnic at school that Mommy joined him for (teddy bears went to school for the week with them and it ended with a picnic on Friday).

The girls went to their first "official" birthday party for one of their classmates.  

Will's school had a book fair/reading night event where the theme was sports.  Every classroom had a different sport or activity the kids could participate in with the book fair in the library.  Will had a great time.  Ellis and I seriously could not be more happy with his school. It is just awesome!

And Will went to a superhero birthday party where all the boys wore superhero costumes.  I took advantage of getting his halloween costume early so he could get a little more use out of it.  Yes, he is Iron Man!