Pre-Christmas Fun

We crammed a lot into the week before we left NJ for our Christmas holiday, being that the kids were finally over the worst of their sicknesses (although Austin ended up with an ear infection that I didn't know about until later since there was no fever or crankyness!).

The unseasonably warm weather that everyone had was awesome for riding bikes - and Amelia's first adventure on her new bike with training wheels. She was stoked.

Family outing to the park - after a long walk, we stopped to throw stones in the river.

Mom- dirty hands!

She dragged this branch into the water and had fun beating the water for awhile.

Amelia pulled out this other branch from the river and spent considerable effort to remove all of the debris and leaves attached to it. She actually cleaned it out by the time that we left.

We drove to see the zoo christmas lights. While I didn't get any good ones of the kids and the lights, they did enjoy visiting animal friends.

Llamas

First family train selfie

Our Community Bible Study had a little Christmas show for the moms. I thought for sure that Austin would come running to me as soon as they paraded them out (since he was the youngest of the group), but he sang with gusto and hand motions.

Amelia's preschool Christmas pageant - she's in the 3rd row, right next to the wall. Her class was all dressed up as lambs; she sang songs but wasn't too enthusiastic. I think she was more distracted by looking at everyone around her. 

Her preschool only allows the class mom to attend parties; our class mom couldn't make it so I had the opportunity to go in and meet the other kids and stick around for the party and some games and a book afterwards. It was a fun time.

A Slow Beginning to December

After all the busyness and fun of November, December has been surprising slow on the activities front, but busy on the somebody-is-sick front. The kids have gotten back into our routine and are enjoying the unseasonably warm weather we've had off-and-on for the last 2 weeks.

A few photos of our goofyness these weeks.

When we first returned from our Peru trip, we gave the kids the sleep masks we had. They have been loving playing with them.

 My mom had sent me a link to a website that has fun activities to do with different books. There is a book called "Too Much Glue" that looked cute. I never dreamed the kids would become obsessed over it once we got it from the library and ask to read it about 6x an hour. But we made the fun craft and they are still talking about it.

Big kid helping me make meatballs

They asked if they could watch football while we were eating dinner. 

A little family park outing - playing 'pooh sticks'. It's so much fun to see what type of things kids remember from books and ask to do.

We've finally figured out how to teach him to keep his hands off the ball - hands in hoodie pockets.

A quick mall run ended up including fun at the lego store.

Mr. Rohit & Mrs. Ishita came over one evening and the kids basically led him to the couch and presented him with books to read.

While clothes are optional, he quickly figured out that sitting  next to the heat vent was preferable.

We've been taking walks around the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. The kids love to point out which lights are new, which are their favorites and which aren't turned on yet.

We had a rough week where Amelia had bronchitis and Austin fought off croup. But they're actually at an age where 5 pj days at home were still full of fun playing. I was surprised that I really didn't pull out that many special activities because they were so content with many of the 'new' christmas books and toys and their regular toys.  We had one morning where we started building houses from duplos and ended up with a duplo city that they played with all day.

I was cleaning up lunch one day and they called out to me "Mommy, come look! We made an L!"  Too funny.

In the middle of daily bickering I still turn around to find these sweet moments.

Aunt Diane - we have to tell you the funny story about your Christmas gifts. They arrived in their LLBean box and the kids asked if they could open it. I hesitated and suggested we wait until we were opening other gifts.  Amelia takes the box and stares at the printed packing slip and says "It's a sled!". Sure enough, the word 'sled' was printed on the paper among many other words and somehow she noticed it.  We didn't know she could sight read 'sled' and asked how she knew it - she pointed out that it's in a few of her christmas/winter books. So they were able to open their sleds early and have been pulled around the house many times.  Thank you!

Still fitting into small spaces.