4 Days Left

Here is my Thursday post..somehow it didn't publish!
Everyone is getting super excited for Christmas around here.   Today was the last day of school before winter break.  Mer survived her first experience with "finals".  Jack's classroom was transformed into the Polar Express today, which was really fun.  Max and Jack's School was chosen to be a "Blue Ribbon" school and they had a big ceremony for it today where they all got tattoos and ate ice cream together. Celebrations everywhere!

Every year we go caroling as a family and take a treat to our neighbors, we had planned to do that for FHE this week.  Unfortunately that didn't happen.  We had planned to make some caramel apples but they totally flopped. the first batch of caramel burned, the second got too hard then I ran out of ingredients. Then Jack came along and coughed all over the dipped pretzels we had made.  We spared the neighbors our germs and grumpy voices and stayed home.  

It has been fun to have a bit of down time this week, the teachers gave almost no homework and we aren't rushing off to a sport.  I pursuaded the kids to wash my car in their spare time.  I love that they think its fun, and yes it's still warm enough to run around in swimsuits here.

Here are some other shots from the week...tug-o-war at Luke's last day of Little sports.

Luke only had one day of preschool this week so we have been playing a lot.  Here he is with his BFF Alice.

I took Luke to the zoo today. He begs me to go everyday.  I love that it's close enough to go for just a couple of hours. It really is the best little zoo!

The Highlight of the day was that we got to see a skink.  We saw one once around a bush when we were on a walk in our neighbor hood a long time ago.  Doug has been taking the boys on walks to find a skink over the last month.  Today we saw one up close and even got to pet it. 

Okay that's all for now. I'm off to make dinner and let the big kids out of their "time-out" for not getting along.  Keeping it real over here. :)

12 days till Christmas!

One of my favorite things about Christmas is watching my kids decorate the tree.  

They all dig through the ornaments and find ones that they made when they were younger and they just get so excited about them.

Inevitably there's a fight about who gets to put the angel on the top, and we never remember who did it last year, but in the end it gets resolved. and sometimes it gets put on the top multiple times.

Excitement is in the air.

We actually put two trees up this year.  Our old Charlie Brown one is in the front window.  I love the twinkling lights glowing in the evening.

Luke had his preschool Christmas program last week. It was adorable of course. Here he is marching in.  When he's embarrassed or nervous he pushes out his cheek with his tongue. I wonder how old he will be before he stop that habit.  It is very cute though.

 His class sang a few songs together.

I have been meaning to get his rendition of the "We Three Kings" rhyme on video.  Hopefully I can before the season is out.

And here was my attempt at an after program shot.

Another highlight of last week was when our college friend Brett came to visit us.

We haven't seen him in years but it was just like old times.  He even showed the boys some new dance moves.

As you can imagine, loads of funny stories were shared.  

I think this one was about peeing in soda cans and other situations.  Bathroom humor is funny to boys of all ages!!  Okay, I admit I was laughing too.

We were also laughing at the height difference.  We miss you Brett!

We all performed in our ward's Christmas Fireside on Sunday.  Meredith played a beautiful song on the piano "Still, still, still".  She is really getting good.  Doug and I were in the choir and the boys were the wisemen in the nativity.   It was a tough job to stand still for so long.

That evening Jack came down with a fever and has been home with me all week.  Someone said there were 40 kids checked out of school on Monday.  Yeesh! He has been fever free for 24 hrs now and will be heading back to school tomorrow.

 We stayed busy... he made his wish list and played with Luke a lot.  Here are some shots of lunch monkey business today.

12 more days till Christmas!!! Are you ready?  I'm not.

Catching up...Thanksgiving weekend recap.

Phew!! We just had a fun evening with friends decorating Gingerbread houses.  Let the holiday festivities begin!! I will post a picture or two of our masterpieces soon but tonight I am catching up.  So many fun things have happened over the last couple of week that I just don't want to forget.  It started with a day of pie making. One of my favorite traditions. Cherry, apple, Lemon Meringue, and pumpkin

We declared our Gratitude for soccer, new cars, "weasels", Christmas, etc.

I am thankful for this fun bunch. 

We took our pies to dine with our neighborhood friends.

Then Friday we took off for a little spur of the moment family vacation to St. Augustine.  Some highlights include...driving our car on the beach and exploring a bit.

Jack found a new treasure every few feet.

 

Seeing an old canon shoot...

 ...and seeing a demonstration on how to launch an "atl atl".  The weapon experts were all ears.

A lady saw me taking a picture of the kids on a cannon and offered to take a shot of the family... I just might declare this our family picture for the year. (except for Lulu's closed eyes and Doug's face covered with glowing hair, it didn't turn out too bad.)

We went into a cathedral.

Our favorite might have been the tour of the Whetstone chocolate factory.

I love those cute pointy cheeks! 

This was probably our favorite because we got to eat chocolate. :)

I took a bunch more phone pictures which you can see on instagram @smark007.  I don't have the energy to transfer them over tonight.  All in all it was the perfect get away.  We ate delicious food, enjoyed beautiful weather, and very minimal child disagreements.  It has been too long since we did something like this. Vacations are so much easier and fun now that the kids are older. It was actually relaxing. We just might have to do that again.

On to Christmas!!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!!

Too Much Awesome

Wow, it's been too long since I posted.  We had an eventful weekend here.  Friday afternoon I came home to a flooded laundry room.  Oh yes, somehow the washing machine sprang a leak and we ended up with a 1/2 inch of standing water in the back part of the room.  Awesome! The water leaked under the walls into the garage and a little into the carpeted area of the "dining room". It was a bit of an ordeal to clean it all up and the laundry room now looks like this.

We think the leak shorted out the motor that makes it spin so we went ahead and bought new washer.  It will be delivered on Tuesday.  Tuesday can't come soon enough.  In the mean time we wash clothes in the tub then hang them in the bathroom until they are dry enough to put into the washing machine. It reminds me of my college days when my roommate hung up her delicates to dry and called it her "underwear wonderland" 

Saturday was Max's last soccer game.  Jack and Mer had games too but they have their last games next weekend.

 Breakfast

This is what everyone else did during Max's game

And this is what Mer's dirty sock looks like after walking around in the mud.  I told her she had to wash her own socks out in the tub that night.  Gladly she said.

 We went shopping Saturday night and we found a shirt made just for Max.  (this is his favorite description of himself, he reminds us of this constantly)

Jack wanted to show off the bird house he made Sunday night.  Can you see his big teeth coming in?  This kid is getting a new grin.


Today is a day off.  We will totally enjoy doing NOTHING!