Butterfly Bazillion :)

So, this might be confusing - I know I'm POSTING this in November (!!! Where has the time gone??) but back in MARCH we went to the Butterfly Pavilion (or Bazillion as the kids call it) for the first time. Bradley is very into all things animal (or anything at all living for that matter) so he was really excited to see all the creatures and hold Rosie the tarantula. Gracie was excited too and said that she would hold Rosie too. When the time came down to it she is the only one that was brave enough - well she and Tammy :) I wouldn't do it, Kevin wouldn't do it, and Bradley got too scared. Even though, as I expected, as soon as we got in the car he was saying he wished that he got to hold her. It was a really cool place, and the kids loved it, so we'll have to go back again soon and we'll see if Bradley goes through with it this time :)

Party x 2

I've been asking Gracie for a while now if she would mind if she and Sammie shared a birthday party this year. At first she was against it, but after I explained that she'd still get her own cake and her own presents, I don't think she could figure out a reason not to. She picked the theme again - flowers. I think I took probably 100 pictures of the two of them for the invitation until I finally got a good one, I just could not get both of them to smile for the life of me, and I got tired of trying so I just picked the best of the choices I had. I think they had fun. I got little flower pots and had them decorate them with markers and stickers and then they could all pick out some fake flowers to put in there. They looked really cute. I'm pretty sure all the girls did one, of even two, for some reason the boys weren't very into it :) I had to grab Bradley from running around for 2 minutes to do one. Of course AFTER the party (when all his friends were gone) he probably spent a good half hour making a beautiful pot, he definitely takes pride in his work and takes his time. Of course a lot of the kids just wanted to squish the foam that was in the pot - that was more exciting :)

 

 

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.