Christmas

I sure love Christmas :) This year we did get 2 trees. Kevin got his fake, tall, skinny one for the front room, and I got my real one for the lower room - and I loved both of them! I just love watching the kids and how excited they get. Oh - and we started Elf of the Shelf this year and the kids LOVED it. His name is Cweedy (?) :) He likes to hang out in high places, which the kids can never reach, which is weird, but totally his choice :) Every morning they would run downstairs to find him and get super excited to show us. In the several months since Christmas I have heard over a dozen times how much Gracie misses Cweedy, it will be super exciting to see him again this year.

 

Bradley's 6th Birthay Party

Bradley has been obsessed with markers lately. He carries them around in his pockets :) And it's not just markers, also pens, pencils, any writing utensil really. We used to have a mug on the microwave with pens and pencils that we could use when we needed it - it is now empty. I also used to have one in my room and it's also empty. He has stolen every single pen, pencil, and marker in this house and added it to his 'collection'. He gets super excited when he finds one and has to try it out. He will come up to me and ask if one is 'permanent, dry erase, or washable' (in the last couple months thanks to his birthday and Christmas his stash has grown substantially. I even got him several large pencil cases to hold all of them and it's still not enough :)) So when I asked him what kind of party he wanted this year he said he wanted a drawing party, which I kind of transformed into a drawing/painting party. Kevin built one big, long easel for everyone to paint on and we did pictionary for anyone who wanted to play. I gave everyone aprons with their names on them, I wish I had a picture of all of them, they looked really cute with them on :) It was a lot of fun! I was too busy trying to make sure the kids were entertained enough, so Kevin took some pictures but we didn't get as many as normal. I think Bradley is getting too big to have his parties at home anymore, which makes me sad :) With the addition of his kindergarten friends this year, we had about 20 kids total, and when it's right in the middle of winter and we can't even go outside, and my house is small - it was super tight! And, it's getting harder and harder to keep all those kids entertained. I'm sure we'll have to rent out a place that does parties next year, we'll see what we come up with :)

 

Halloween

Once again, in an effort to catch up, here's some of my favorites from Halloween this year. Same traditions as always, except we missed doing our party this year. Being newly pregnant at the time, I was too tired and icky feeling, which is too bad because it's the first year we skipped it. I don't think the kids noticed though :)

"Fruits" of our labor

After two years of doing a garden, I have learned what my problem is :) I actually am pretty good about getting things to grow - it's keeping them alive that I have a problem with. For some reason, I baby my garden in the beginning, I will water it and check on it every day. Then once things start to grow it's almost like I think, "Ok, good job, you did it" then I stop watering it and expect everything to be fine :) So my garden dried out a little this time :) We still had a lot of zucchinis, but a lot of my tomatoes dried out. Squirrels and/or rabbits ate my watermelons and strawberries before I had a chance to cover them, and I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but I messed up my carrots :) For some reason I took them straight out of the package and stuck them all in together, in bunches, not spread out like I should have - so they were pretty funny looking :) Live and Learn, we'll see how this year goes :) I still think it's a lot of fun and the kids love it, so hopefully I can get better :)

San Fran

Ugh! Am I seriously this behind? And I was doing so well there for a while. When I get this far behind I really debate just picking up now and skipping the last 5 months, but seeing that I kind of use this for a little online journal (which I'm seriously considering making private for friends and family VERY soon - as a heads up :) ) I want to make sure I try to document everything. SO, they might be short and sweet, but I'm starting my attempt to catch up with - Our vacation to San Fransisco :)
So, Kevin and I, all 3 kids (remember aged 5,3, and 1) at the time, Poppy and Mammy all decided that we wanted to take a train ride somewhere. After a LOT of debating and going back and forth about times and prices we decided on San Fransisco, CA. Surprisingly, taking a train from Denver to San Fran wasn't that much more expensive than taking it a couple hours to Grand Junction. The thing is - the train ride was 33 1/2 hours - ONE WAY! We all had reservations about it, because that is a REALLY long time, and thought about only taking train one way and getting a plane back - but in an effort to save money, we stuck with the train. Also, we knew we'd be spending the night on the train, but to add a sleeper car it was an additional $1,000ish for that one night and it wouldn't even sleep all of us, we'd have to take turns, so I just couldn't justify getting one. In the end - the train was a lot of fun, but 33 1/2 hours seemed like 33 1/2 hours, we could have gotten the fun experience in 2 hours and been done :) The kids did AMAZING, they were very good about playing with all the things we brought and really were pretty good about sleeping in the seats, Sammie was tougher because we had to hold her the whole time for sleeping, so I think other than Bradley and Gracie the rest of us did NOT get a good night sleep. BUT now we can say we went on a train (and as soon as we got to the hotel we cancelled the train ride back and booked one way plane tickets :) ) Also in an effort to save money, we stayed across the bay in Emeryville and took the BART into San Fran which didn't seem like it would be a big deal - but it was a pain in the butt. And on top of it all, we only had 2 days to spend there before we had to come back. In conclusion, we had fun but the biggest thing I took away from this vacation is that my kids are AMAZING! I know most parents would say this, but seriously - 5 whole days of telling them "Hurry, we have to catch the train, bus, tram, trolley, boat, plane!" and I think we - the adults - definitely complained more than they did. This was definitely not a 'kid friendly' trip. We wanted to see the sights and didn't have a whole lot of time to do it, so we were running everywhere trying to cram everything in. We didn't even have time to go to the hotel pool :( I loved spending time with my family and was super super impressed with my kids. And now they can say they went there and have been on a train, bus, tram, trolley, boat, and plane :) And I can't tell you how many times they have mentioned our vacation and wanted to go on vacation again, so they obviously had fun and we made good memories :) I will say this - next vacation is going to be a relaxing one!!! :)