Quiet Christmas

For the first time EVER we stayed "home" for Christmas.  We typically have a tour of the midwest/south and this time we just stayed home.  It was fun and not quite as quiet as we originally thought it may be.  We went to church on Sunday and it was a nice service.  The kids sat around the pastor and he tried to keep them all engaged as opposed to sending them to children's church.  The kids kind of let us sleep in and woke us up by telling us Baby Jesus was in the manger.  All month (through Advent) they kept wanting to open the "last" box on the calendar and put Baby Jesus in the manger.  They finally did it and were super excited. :) I personally like how the calendar changes a bit every year.  We get random things like camels in the sky. This year A was significantly more concerned about making it "right" though which kind of makes me sad.  G still didn't care if he put a star on the ground or a camel in the sky. :)

A's favorite present this year has been a snowflake waffle maker.  The kids have been asking for snowflake waffles since then.  Hopefully tomorrow we will get some made.  She keeps exclaiming that "This was the best Christmas EVER" so that's nice at least.

G's favorite present was the train tracks and trains that he received.  He also got some Jake and the Neverland Pirate sheets and had to sleep on those Christmas night.  We also managed to find a killer deal on a "train" table that G desperately wants us to bring inside the house.  It was a display table for Hobby Lobby and they are trying to get rid of them.  They are like 6' by 2.5' with a small ledge and just G's size for reaching the middle.

We made "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake.  I made a spice cake and then added carrots for Chris and me since the kids won't eat food with "stuff" in it.  We can tell them that there is "stuff" in the food and they won't even touch it.  No we don't use it to our advantage ever.

For those of you who are unaware -- G did get glasses the end of November.  We had both kids' eyes checked and he really needed them.  He really likes them and takes them off to eat and play.  We've finally convinced him to wear them and they definitely help him see.  

Christmas Baking

Well, not really Christmas baking but the weekly baking so that we have some easy snack for everyone during the week. It just happens to be around Christmas.

So far Advent has gone remarkably well. We are counting down days to when baby Jesus is born like fiends. A is really getting into it and G is simply following his big sister. Big sister also only has one day of school left this year so we will see how that goes. We aren't sure that her being off for 2 weeks is really a good idea. Since we aren't traveling for Christmas this year we are going to try and do some fun things. It is just weird to not have several places to be all at once.

Anyway, Chris has finally gotten the kids to bed so I'm going to go say hello.

Christmas Pageant

Last weekend the kids were in a Christmas pageant at the church we are currently attending.  A was an angel and the angel chorus had a few lines. One of our advent calendars has the lines in them so A will say them most days.  G was a I'm going to wait until the very last minute star. He practiced as a star, but come Sunday morning he decided that he didn't want anything to do with the costume. Then when everyone lined up to go on stage he decided that maybe her did want to wear the costume.

A is wrapping up her second term of kindergarten. We will see how it goes. She has started asking if she can read books instead of doing the work set her by the teachers. Realistically since it is simple things like letter sounds and recognizing words in sight, we are okay with this plan. We get kind of bored with the work she gets sent home with. G won't even sit with her to do it anymore either. Tonight he was going to sit and cuddle with A and me, but when he found out we were doing her homework he went to help Chris finish dinner.

The Christmas party for work was last Saturday. It was quite a party and Chris got to meet a lot of the people I work with. There is always a bit of self segregation based on job function, but for QA people it seems to be even worse. I suppose it fits our personalities, but we all sat together for supper. We had fun.

Growing Up!

Yesterday A lost her first tooth. It has been lose a little bit and she had played with it since she has friends at school who have lost teeth. She is super excited and support proud. Now GMan wants to follow in her footsteps.

Yesterday we also had a surreal experience with Miss A. At a friend's house she was told she could help her friend by cleaning a bathroom so she and friends could play later. She opted to clean the bathroom so that she could play with her friend later. Talk about growing up!

Post Party Pictures

These are kind of in backwards order but enough that you should get the idea. We did a "Thomas" snack with graham cracker raisins bananas and mousemellows (Thanks Skippy!) all held together with peanut butter.  It was a lot of fun and hopefully our new friends will come back.  

Sister couldn't resist helping blow the candle out

The "Thomas" A and Chris put together

G fixing the wheels and refusing to get in the Thomas while A gladly got in the Thomas. 

I Will Be...

We have had anti bullying week here recently. We had anti drug week when I was in school, but now it is anti bullying because bullying is a bigger problem than drugs. This was part of A's journal from the week. We know the ffiend is misspelled, but it is great we think!

I Voted!

Well, this week had been interesting. The kids didn't have school on Tuesday since most of the schools are polling places. I can only imagine the craziness of the security involved if they had both school security and voting security at the same time. Chris took the kids to vote with him and they got stickers as you can see below. G put his to good use.

On Monday it was great. As we were talking about what to do Tuesday with no school and why, A mentioned that she voted at school that day. We discussed the importance of voting and asked who she voted for. She told us, "the woman with the flag of the United States of America flag." We asked if she meant Stein or Hillary. She said Hillary. We asked why and she said, "because it was a girl."

This week I've finally gotten the nasty bacterial infection that's gone around my office. I saw the doctor on Wednesday and have a few explicit instructions about what to do in different scenarios and a nice antibiotic prescription.

We are also getting ready for G's bday and party. He picked s Thomas the Tank Engine theme, so expect some fun pictures tomorrow. We found out yesterday that he will win the first glasses of his class award because he needs glasses now. Chris was surprised at how bad G's vision was. Next week we get to start weaning him into wearing the glasses so hope that goes well.

More pictures and stories tomorrow after the party.

Happy Haunting!

We got to go out in our own neighborhood this year. It was novel and a lot of fun.  G figured out pretty quickly how to get extra candy, most of it revolved around him being cute. He was also NOT shy about asking for an extra piece of he wanted one. We went as a Star Wars family and everyone seemed to enjoy seeing is all dressed.  Chris went Anaken with me as Padme.  We did children with a strong force. A video of Kylo Ren and Rey wishing everyone a happy Halloween.

https://youtu.be/wcW-9VEiY0c

Recently we've worked on painting the kid rooms. Both are blue and green and fun, the kids picked out the colors. It is also nice to have non white or pale yellow rooms. After renting and everything it is quite a nice change. The paint will hopefully hold up well to kids too.

We got to go to the zoo last weekend and saw the elephant parade. There were 7 or 8 with two younger calves. It also looked like one was pregnant. There's a gestation period I don't envy, it takes 24 months to grow a baby elephant. A couple of the elephant's played in the water and we were certain another was going to try and spray us with water, but she didn't.

Second term is going well for A and we all enjoy having her back in school. We will see how the rest of term goes.

Hope all is going well by you!

Painting

We decided that after years of living with whatever color walls the landlord wants, we wanted different colored walls.  We may eventually go back to a more tan/neutral color, but for now we picked a nice blue for kid rooms.  A actually picked it out and convinced G to agree.  After we got it home we were able to paint the room, with help of course.

Not much new is going on here.  We're working with A in school and she continues to do well.  She is better if she doesn't think you are paying her attention or asking her to do something.  She knows what she is doing, however she doesn't want to demonstrate that to anyone.

After a difficult weekend of behavior from the kids, we got to go to a park. We missed out on all sorts of things over the weekend because of children refusing to get dressed or clean up toys or really anything they were asked.  One of G's and Chris's favorite things to do is feed the fish at this park.  There is a place to get food for a quarter and the fish definitely come up for food.  The kids both got a kick out of it, and the first few startled A.  They don't quite jump out of the water, but come awfully close.  These pictures are from the fish feeding.

Our other really big news is that G has decided he is NOT a baby and will wear underwear to bed each night.  We've been working on the potty training for what seems like forever and it has finally stuck! He will still often wait until he REALLY REALLY has to go and dash to the washroom.  However, we manage one pair of underwear and pants most days.  The funny thing with him though is that if he gets his shirt sleeves or shorts/pants wet from water he has to change that article of clothing NOW.  However, if he has a little pit of urine on his underwear he stubbornly refuses to change the underpants with a drop or two of urine on them.

Rock'N'Roll Fun

Yesterday was the third half marathon I completed this year.  I did Chicago in July, one in Philly in Sept, and then St Louis yesterday.  For completing the Chicago and the St Louis races I completed a special "Midwest Quest" for the Rock'N'Roll Series. I got a special medal for it that is a license plate which flips back and forth between the two races.  The kids like just flipping it back and forth.  It was quite a challenging course, and I look forward to a rematch with the course next year.  Hopefully it also won't be so hot next year.

Today I took off since A was out of school and we explored the Missouri Botanical Garden.  Thankfully the children's garden was still open and it had lot and lots of stuff for the kids to explore.  We played with boats in the water ways section for about 45 minutes.

We are looking forward to school starting back tomorrow, and I think A is as well.  It will be just a few short weeks until Thanksgiving though.  Hopefully we get back on the school schedule easily.  We shall see.

Hope all is well by you.

Done with Term 1

Today we had our first parent/teacher conferences with A's teacher.  It went well.  She is doing well in school and marches to the beat of her own drummer as the teacher said.  The teacher also doesn't think that A gives a good picture of what she knows -- similar to us.  When we do her homework and such we always get the impression that she is purposefully not showing all she can do and taking much more time than is necessary to get stuff done.  The teacher agreed with us but she's a bit more patient about it since she's been teaching for 20 something years.  It is obvious that the teacher and A have a good rapport system going on.  It is just hard to believe that term 1 is done!

The past month has been busy though.  We've managed to buy a new to us minivan that was in our price range and sell the Focus.  The Focus has been a good car and we are sad to see it go.  However it is what needs to happen right now for us.  It is going to a good teenager who needs a dependable car and so that fits the bill quite nicely.

We also managed to do a few things in the area here.  We had a neighborhood night out a couple of weeks ago that was a lot of fun.  We walked and surprised everyone by walking.  Not sure what else was supposed to happen in the neighborhood. We had fun until the mosquitoes decided we were a yummy dinner.

Last weekend we managed to go for a bike ride on the Katy Trail.  We did about 15 miles round trip with a group from a church around here.  Of course G fell asleep on the way back.

We also managed to get to a festival around here last week.  It is at the Botanical Gardens and was a lot of fun.  The kids got to decorate pumpkins and milk a cow.  They could have done more but refused to take naps and we refused to go until after naps were taken.  Eventually they did cave and take naps so we went late.  We got to make silly hats as well.  The kids had fun and we were impressed with the gardens so we shall go back.  They also have a butterfly garden and a nature reserve that we can visit since we just bought a membership.  Here are a few pictures from that day.

Labor Day Escape

I think the last time we made it to the lake for Labor Day was the year a friend toppled an ATV onto Chris's foot.  It then involved a trip to an emergency room and quite a stressful few weeks until we found out that it wasn't broken like the ER doc had said.  Chris was ridiculously lucky and it had simply severed the artery on top of his foot.  We had a much better experience this time around and the kids had a blast.

From the moment we started talking about going to the lake G and A started asking for Uncle J.  We drove down Friday after work (it is nice being close enough to do such things as it is one reason we wanted to be closer to family) and then back to STL Monday.  Saturday we went out in the boat and Sunday we just played around the house.  We also had Gma and Gpa Sehorn show up on Sunday so it was great to see them. 

Plenty of pictures capture a bit of what we did so here they are!  They are in reverse order though so keep that in mind.

In case you missed it G would ride with anyone on the Badger (pink four wheeler). He also liked riding the waverunner but was not super interested in just swimming.  We were brave and let A swim without a life jacket if an adult was near.  She did quite well after her swim lessons during granma camp. 

I guess we will see what else this fall holds. 

Creative Thinking

Yesterday afternoon the kids played in a nearby creek. After getting them home Chris decided they needed a bath as they were already wet and muddy. After they got out they were charged with getting dressed and told, "any bare bottoms I see I'm going to spank."

Mr G decided he wanted to go around in his birthday suit a while. He essentially made it into a game. While the bath was going I started making pizza, so G was more watching me on their stool as I was finishing. He would perch on the top step and any time Chris came around the corner he would sit down. He wouldn't so much as sit, as plop on his bottom because he would be reminded that he needed at least something covering his bottom.  He would then sit in wait, dangling his legs until Chris left the room. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Eventually G did go get clothes. He is actually going quite well in the potty training front.  He really likes standing up.  Somehow this though he managed to slip while standing and got a traditional toddler chin cut from the toilet, not the traditional coffee table or anything but the toilet.  Though yesterday was his last easy accident for us. We had a deal going that would cut up pacifiers if he did his bm in his pants. Well, our last one is now gone. See above for his creative thinking ability so we have some new challenge ahead of us to get him to go on the toilet. Ideas?

Last Night of Freedom

Tomorrow we officially start school.  Well A does but that means we all have to work to get her out the door and to school then home from school.  She is kind of nervous but is trying to be excited.  She's gone really quiet the past couple of hours.

Last week she went to grandma camp and had a blast.  They did swim lessons and all sorts of camp/grandma things. Everyone had fun and I don't have any good pictures to share yet.

G went to daddy camp and worked very hard on potty training. (We told him to go to grandma camp he has to be potty trained.) He also thoroughly enjoyed having mommy and daddy to himself. 

Today I spent a fair bit of time baking because I have a busy week ahead of me.  I made quiche while the kids were playing across the street.  Once the kids across the street had to go to church A and G came inside.  They wanted to know what was in the oven. According to A "Mommy everything you make that comes out of the oven is yummy." G seconded her and started watch on the oven.

He then sat like this for a long while and let everyone trip over him.  He was super upset when they came out and he didn't get to have one since they are for breakfast over the course of the week. 

I tried a crust-less quiche and wasn't super impressed by it so won't be doing that again. I had enough egg to try one of the muffin cups as a crust-less quiche and just wasn't that impressed to be honest. 

We are off on a new adventure now though.  Everyone says that time so far has gone by quickly but that after schooling starts it really speeds up.  We will see!

Car Exhaust

Yesterday Chris took the car to get an inspection to finally get a new tag. It didn't pass because there was an exhaust leak. We've know about the leak for a while but thought we'd see if it would pass inspection. Chris was able to fix the leak today with some help. As we were eating supper, he says, "Well honey, your car isn't going to sound so cool. It might be quiet now." A pipes up, "Except when kids are in the car. We will be loud and obnoxious and make lots of noise." And thus we guess we'll keep her for entertainment value if nothing else.

Saturday to Play

The past few weeks we've been quite busy! For the fourth of July Chris and the kids went to OK for a lake trip! It was a lot of fun for them and I joined them Thursday that week.  The weekend brought a wedding for Chris's cousin that the kids were in.  We had a slight hicc-up when they were asked to carry a sign (we had prepped them for being a ring bearer so carrying a pillow and a flower girl) instead of what they were prepped to carry.  They did very well though and were definitely the "cute" factor of the wedding.  Then last weekend we went to Chicago to visit friends and so that I could run a half marathon. Whew.  We are kind of glad July is over as it has been a very busy month.

Here are appropriate pictures. I'll leave you to guess which was what event.