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. :)