It's Time to Party!

Today was C's last day of school for the year! Hello Christmas vacation!! So, we of course are celebrating! First off, everyone who was home took a nap during rest time. This does not happen very often but man it makes for a wonderful afternoon of not crabby people!

We spent the afternoon coloring the puzzle C got as a party favor at the "Happy Birthday Jesus" party they had at school. The fifth graders also came to their classroom and brought treat bags. Such an inexpensive thing that made a big impact. Now all he can talk about is going to the big school.

We also read through a big chunk of the books in the Christmas book basket. Including reading The Polar Express.

Husband brought Chinese food home for dinner and now we are all snuggled in for a movie night, watching The Polar Express obviously.

It's about the very best start to Christmas vacation I could imagine. Partying it up kid style. 

7QT of Pointlessness

one. Things I will never ever correct my kids saying:

• M: "Pet-za" for pizza.
• C: "Patter-rens" for patterns.

They are among my current favorite things. Every single day M loses one of her cutesie words and it just breaks my heart. I mean I know it's good she is progressing and building a great vocabulary but it's still hard.

two. Here's the thing, I love Growning Pains. I have a bunch of the seasons on DVD  and I just totally dig that show. In grad school, BJ Thomas came for a concert and he actually dedicated singing "As Long As We Got Each Other" to me. I am not kidding. (I'm pretty sure he also added it to the set list for me too.) So the passing of Alan Thicke saddens me greatly.

three. We watched Fuller House over the past week. I really enjoyed season one and I love Full House, but man, this season was rough. The majority of the episodes I felt like I was just losing brain cells, they were that dumb. But the last five or so episodes were really pretty good and I even got teary in the season finale. So... I grade the season a C? It is not must watch Netflix. Except the last few episodes. (And the cameo appearance of Alan Thicke was still dumb even in light of his death.)

four. We are getting a new couch sometime today! When we got married we bought a decent $300 couch and in the past year it has really been showing it's wear. Finally about two weeks ago some wire snapped or something and now it's really saggy. So we bought a new $300 couch! It has some improvements over the old couch. We figure if we get another six years, that'd be good. $50 a year is great. I see no reason to buy an expensive couch considering the age of our kids. Out of sheer curiosity, I looked online at the local rent-a-center and I couldn't rent a couch for cheaper than the new one!

five. I am almost done Christmas shopping. Normally I would be excited about that but this is really late for me and I am actually kind of stressed out about it. I decided to spread it out over many pay checks but I regret that. Next year I am going back to being done by Thanksgiving. Now to wrap. I am so bad at wrapping.

six. I know that this actually is the longest possible Advent but seriously this has been the longest Advent ever. I don't even know how we are still only on three candles!?

seven. We are expecting another storm (for the third weekend in a row...) but luckily Husband has the day off. So he took C to school and is taking M to art class. And then he is going to pick up C and go to the grocery store. I am on couch delivery duty. I am a little bit sad to miss art class but it's fun for M to get some special time with her dad. I get her to myself almost every morning so I can share.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Getting So Big!

Last Friday was the Preschool Christmas program.

God bless Catholic schools for have Christmas programs. I loved every. single. second of it. (Okay, maybe excluding the part where the principal started talking about Kindergarten round up.) It was awesome. My parents came down for it and it was just wonderful. The kids decorated the gathering hall with four different art projects and after the singing there was juice and cookies to enjoy. 

My guy did a pretty good job. I was so proud. And not that it's a contest, because it isn't, at all, but the morning preschool video has double the views, comments and likes over the afternoon class video. And probably, I myself am like 100 of those views. 

It's all going so fast. My guy got an invitation to a birthday party. And no one was more excited than I. Seriously, no one even came close to how excited I was. You see my biggest hope for him starting school was that he'd make friends. A birthday party invite certainly suggests to me that he is doing that. (And because it was an evite, I know for a fact this was not an invite the whole class party.) 

Did I mention that it was a party for twins? He really likes them and has talked about playing with them since the first week of school. So he was thrilled. He picked out the wrapping paper, bows and candy to go on top all by himself. 

He also wrote the names on the cards and signed his name all by himself. Which was also a big deal because my guy isn't the biggest fan of writing. I told him to write a "big E" and so he did... note to self, next time, say uppercase. 

He was very excited to head out to the party this afternoon. 

It was a drop off or stay party for parents but of course C wanted a "drop over" party. But the party venue has a restaurant upstairs too so I just went up there, had some cheesestix and read a book. My seat overlooked the play area and every once in a while I would catch a glimpse of my guy having a ball. 

So some big moments for my getting big C. He just melts me. Why can't they just stay little?! 

Our Annual Gingerbread House

At our house we have a few sacred traditions at Christmas time. Every year since C was born we have gone to see Disney on Ice and we build gingerbread houses. For C's first Christmas he was just six months old and even though he slept in the swing for most of the gingerbread house building experience, I love that he doesn't know any differently.

So both of these things just mean so much to me and really put me in the Christmas spirit.

This weekend was gingerbread weekend and oh, I am so thrilled with how it went. Because M is two now she got her own house to decorate and she loved that. C got his first house at age two as well.

We always bake our gingerbread from scratch and make sure that everything on our house is edible. Even though we never eat them. (Though, I will be honest, it is highly likely that the kid houses will be nibbled on in the not so distant future. I am kind of shocked they've lasted the twelve hours.) It seems like such an effort to do this, and part way through rolling out dough Husband declared that he wished he would have just let me buy the kit five years ago! But it is all worth it at the end and it makes the house smell so good.

C had some big ideas for his house. He told me exactly where he wanted the frosting and even helped squeeze the piping bag. He did some patterns with the M&Ms and also just random. He told me hours before we even began baking, that he wanted a Hershey Kiss chimney and after he was done with the rest he asked for his kiss and he put it on so proudly. 

M pretty much just wanted to eat M&Ms, which is about what you'd expect. Her house kind of collapsed due to a mishap with a chair being pushed in while she was decorating but it turned out okay. She did better with the regular sized candy over the minis. 

After they went to bed in a royal icing/candy stupor, we got to work. 

And there it is. Our whimsical 2016 gingerbread house. We did decorate the sides before building it this year which worked extremely well. We saved all our our templates so at the very least we won't have to reinvent the wheels on the kid houses next year. 

Other things we learned this year was that meringue powder makes for much stiffer royal icing. I wasn't a fan so I will make sure we get powdered egg whites for next year. I didn't hear my phone ring when I was at the grocery store, so I didn't get parchment paper which wasn't the best. Also next year we hope to do cut out windows and maybe try our hands at making glass. 

We didn't work too late on the house this year. We were done with the whole thing by 12:30!! That's like a new record. But then we still stayed up late because of the sugar and adrenaline. 

I love our traditions and time spent as family. It makes my heart full. 

St. Nicholas Day!

Well... Happy St. Nicholas Day!

Last night we set our shoes out. It was a harrowing journey because both kids thought they were putting their shoes on and they were tired... it was kind of a mess. But we prevailed. The shoes were set out, we read the story of St. Nicholas as our bedtime story and the kids went to sleep.

Immediately upon coming back downstairs I set out the stuff because I didn't want to forget.

Typically St. Nicholas brings a book and something little to share. This year he brought each kid a L.L. Bean Adventure Small Duffle  and the Kids in Motion/Kids in Action CDs I bought back in October. Well and a clementine. 

We have been doing this thing since C was a baby where, when we go somewhere, all the stuff goes into the same bag. Well it's not super practical, especially when you have to take everything out to find the tiny little sock ball for the toddler. So even though these are technically the "big" present this year, they got them today. Because they are exciting but not like a toy exciting, and also because then when we pack for Christmas, they already have them. 

It's selfish really. But, L.L. Bean lasts forever. I am still using my yellow Adventure Duffles from college, I have an XLarge and Medium and I love them. I figure the kids can use them as duffles for a good long time and then maybe as gym bags when they're older. 

I hope you are having a wonderful St. Nicholas Day! 

When 1-3 Becomes 7-10

My super not impressed face has been on today.

It snowed. I know. I know that it is December. In Iowa. And this is really just normal. But I don't think I have ever been quite so bothered by snow as I am today.

The forecast said 1-3 inches. Fine. That's not really that much. Maybe the forecast would be wrong and it would barely snow at all. I could handle that. I was not expecting that the forecast would be wrong, but in the opposite direction. When I woke up this morning to already more than 4 inches of snow. And it was still falling.

But the kids loved it!

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We were outside for a good long while and it was actually really fun. The snow was really coming down. We shoveled and got the first 5 inches off the driveway and sidewalks but it was quicker than us. At a certain point we admitted defeat and to wait until it was done snowing. 

So we went in and had a brunch lunch. 

We got out some of the frozen strawberries from June and made some strawberry topping, then we made waffles, eggs and bacon. We kept it educational with our placemats. (We also have the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, The United States Map and Learn about Money.) 

It was a great filling meal after hard work and outside play. Plus it warmed us up. C decided a long time ago that he was always going to use bacon to warm up after coming inside. He doesn't care for hot chocolate and I guess bacon was a suitable alternative?! 

Later on we went back out to finish the shoveling job. It was even wetter and sloppier in the afternoon so I am glad we had a good chunk of the snow shoveled already. All told we wound up with about 8.5 inches of snow. At least it's pretty right?! 

Hello December!

Last night we kicked December off with a bang! We went to our 5th annual Disney on Ice! It always comes to town about this time. It's such a fun tradition for us. I find it incredibly hard to believe my guy was just a little tiny smush and only 6 months old when we first went. Now both kids can sit and watch and be entertained? That's pretty great. 

We are doing the Little People Advent Calendar this year and even though we are only on day two I am loving it. 

We are deep into Little People and playing with them at our house right now. It's really fun to see what they do, so adding some Christmas and winter characters into the mix feels right. Husband and I are taking turns opening the doors every day. Since if we went every other day poor M would get the lame things. Yesterday was the little boy, today was his snowboard. Etc. 

And that's really all I know. No big plans for the weekend which is just the very best kind of weekend. Hope your December is also off to a good start!