Alex’s Holiday (Christmas) Party

Is it wrong for me to find it highly amusing that even though it is called a holiday party, everything that you do is included in Christmas? Anyway, I was able to volunteer at the school for Alex’s kindergarten party. He loves it when I am there. I think in Kindergarten it is a point of pride when your parent shows up in your class room. It was also pajama day so it was not really like a school day at all.

We played all kinds of fun games. they got to decorate cookies.

Eat the cookies they decorated.

Be wrapped up in toilet paper.

Become a snowman with a scarf and buttons.

And they even had food and drinks.

Plus, the day ended an hour early due to the anticipation of inclement weather. There is no better to put you in a good mood more so than a kindergartener celebrating a holiday.

The first Snow of the season!

Oh how the children have been waiting for this day to come. Every day they check and ask and even listen to the weather to see if it will snow. It finally did and they were out of the house for most of the putting their tiny child prints in the snow and building the first snow man of the season.

Of course, sadly the next day was a bit warmer and after that it rained so there wasn’t much left of the snow man besides a pile of hardened snow.

Guess that’s what pictures are for. Oh and then there’s the crazy dog  who completely loses her mind in the snow and runs around in circles at top speed for hours for no reason. The dog that hates the water loves the snow.

St. Nick’s Day

So this is definitely a Wisconsin thing because until I met Andy I had no idea that this day even existed , much less what occurs. Seems as though on December 5th St. Nicholas visits all the children's homes and fills their stockings so when they wake on the 6th if they have been good they get gift and candy or if they have been naughty they get coal. This apparently is a different person than Santa Clause who I always assumed was St. Nick and is separate from the stocking stuffers given out at Christmas time. Actually I am super unclear of what the whole back story is, but suffice it to say the children’s stockings were miraculously filled with a few goodies indicating they had been more nice than naughty this year. this is also a good indicator for their Christmas time as it serves as a reminder that somebody is watching you to make sure you are indeed behaving nicely.

Alex was super excited to get the gold Batman… because he’s made of gold!

Jack had me wait to take his picture until he was able to line everything up so that it could all be seen. Stocking stuffers Assemble!

So Thankful

We had a really good Thanksgiving as usual. the first thing we did was hang up our Christmas  lights because it was a fairly warmish day and it was only getting colder. Let me tell you, it is no fun to hang Christmas lights in 20 degree weather... at least that’s what Andy says, I wouldn’t know. He he he. We spent the day with Andy’s parents and brother who was so nice to cook dinner. He made this stuffing that was so amazing seasoned with herbs from his own garden.

I had the boys dress up to look nice for dinner being as how it was a special occasion. Alex loves to dress up. He immediately went and put his suit on and was so excited to wear it.

He likes wearing his fancy clothes… Jack not so much.

I managed to coax Jack into wearing the top half of the ensemble with the promise that he could remove it once we were done taking pictures. Not just pictures at my house, but pictures over at Grandma’s as well.

They both packed extra clothes to change into because there was a scarecrow burning to attend to later in the evening when it got dark as well as a little geocaching before the turkey was done cooking.

The first picture I took of both the boys together is somewhat off as Jack refused to smile because he was still angry that I made him put his suit on. Then he laughed because I made a remark about how bad the picture looked without him smiling and I took another one before he could stop. What you don’t see is him being angry that I caught him laughing.

We had a little archery going on in the front yard in which two arrows were mangled. This was followed by some geocaching at Valley View Park as well as a little Frolf which resulted in the loss of yet another Frisbee, but the finding of two arrows to replace the ones that were broken. I call that a win.

We had a very nice sit down dinner with a full course turkey dinner with all the fixings. Following that there was much relaxing while we slowly fell into turkey coma.

 

The scarecrow is just an old scarecrow that Ann was going to throw out in the garbage, but what better way to get rid of it than with a theatrical burning.

Just a few warnings here. The picture above is not how fire behaves in a normal setting. It is actually how it behaves when a bottle rocket has been stuffed inside the burlap clothing of the scarecrow.  This also explains the pyrotechnics shooting out the side of the scarecrow into the yard.

Did I mention there were sparklers, lots and lots of sparklers, stuffed inside the scarecrow as well?

I think it is also worth it to mention here that just out of the view of the shot below and to the right is Andy’s parents house. There is maybe a space of about ten feet from where the end of the fire is burning and the actual house.

And yes, that is my seven year old pretending to fight a dragon with his wood sword and garbage can lid shield.

Luckily, even with the wind blowing the fire in the direction of the house and the massive amount of fireworks involved there were no injuries to either animate or inanimate object and the evening was a success. I was even able to get a family picture in to boot before the children changed.

Aww, such a cute little family. Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and remember to be thankful for everything you have.

Pack 38 Presents the Colors

How cool is Cub Scouts? Not only do the kids and the families get to attend cool little adventures like going to hockey games with their pack mates, but they even got to present the colors during the opening ceremonies and stand and salute while the national anthem was sung.

This is the second year in a row that the kids have come to a hockey game. The kids really do enjoy watching and being out and about with their classmates. The best part is the  fights, but we try not to encourage them to cheer for that kind of thing even though half the time I think they are just for show for the audience.

I didn’t realize Jack knew the national anthem, but I caught him on video singing along to it. That makes for a very proud Momma. Alex got to participate by default. No one in the Pack can say no to him so he does what the Pack does even though he’s not old enough yet.

They even got a few shout outs from the announcer and their name put up in lights.

In the end the Admirals lost 2-1 and there were only four fights, but the kids had fun and it made for a good family night out.

Hope your Halloween was Happy

Our little spooky creatures went out twice for Halloween and provided twice the scare. This has become somewhat of a Halloween tradition for us these last couple of years.

We always start out on the Sunday prior to Halloween as this is when our city designates its time for Trick-or-treating. This was somewhat a new concept for me as I have always celebrated Halloween on the 31st and there was not really a designated time, i.e., 4-7pm, where you were supposed to go trick-or-treating. Weird. Anyhow, that is how it is done here so we went along with it and had our little goblins out from 4-7 doing their thing.

We always start with our next door neighbors house as they are older and really enjoy seeing the kids come over in costume. Every year  since we moved in they have made up special little treat bags to give our kids so we do our very best to spend a little extra time with them so they can enjoy the kids as well as a little visitation because they aren’t able to get out much.

Normally we would have gone to Andy’s mom’s house and then continued the romp around her neighborhood, but this year after stopping to see Grandma and Grandpa we decided to head back to our own neighborhood and see if it would be somewhat easier on the kids and us as the homes in Grandma’s neighborhood are very spread out and the kids usually give up after about an hour which is usually about one entire block around. Throw the cold in and you can see how the excitement can wane just a bit.

So we came back to our neighborhood and went to the subdivision directly behind our house. It was way more fun if only because we would run into the kids friends from school as well as their parents. It would break up the monotony of just following the children from door to door and the bonus of being able to go straight home when your done was pretty nice too. The kids seemed to enjoy the Trick-or-treating experience a bit more and were pretty happy with their stash of loot. It was also nice to see all the different decorations up in the neighborhood.

Following three days of school, when the 31st actually rolled around, we were invited to our friends house in their city where they actually hold Halloween on Halloween. Something I am a little more familiar with. This time, even though we didn’t stay out quite as late, it was nice for the kids to go out with other children their age and see them literally run from door to door with the excitement of Halloween that only children expecting free candy can have. Follow that with a  little party back at our friends house that had to be cut short because of school in the morning and it made for a perfect evening of haunted fun.

Now all we have to do is figure out what to do with all this candy from two very lucrative nights of Trick-or-treating. I don’t mind letting the kids have some candy each day, but after awhile we try to taper off and put the candy out of sight out of mind. Perhaps I will take some into work and leave it for my co-workers.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween this year and hasn’t yet overdosed on sugar.

School pictures!

Hurray! I have been waiting for the school pictures to come and they finally arrived. No retakes this year. I am pleased with the results if not slightly amused. Alex has yet to learn how to smile normally. Every time some one points a camera at him he comes out with a super cheesy grin. Jack looks cool as a cucumber and they are both SO grown up!

They are so adorable I can hardly stand it.