It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

We had a very Christmassy weekend. Saturday started with making chocolate chip pumpkin pancakes, listening to Christmas music, and drinking egg nog. Then I got the cookie dough made and checked to see if we had all the proper toppings. After finally getting out of my pajamas and letting the cookie dough chill, we got to some serious Christmas cookie making. This year we tried making stained glass cookies for the first time. It was a good way to get rid of all the Jolly Ranchers we had piling up in JR's candy bag. They turned out pretty well; not incredibly pretty, but yummy. We also made our own frosting and colored it for lots of decorating. JR's friends came over throughout the day and helped with the cookie making. We ended Saturday evening with a trip to a Christmas show by the El Dorado Hills Musical Theater Company. We got to sit around candlelit tables filled with plates of cookies and treats and watch Christmas song and dance performances. Sunday we headed out early for a trip to church where we heard Christmas stories and sang Christmas songs. JR continued his Christmassy weekend with an invite to his friend's house to drink hot chocolate, make gingerbread houses and watch the movie Elf. I think we are all fully in the spirit now and ready for Saturday.

Fall Fun

Fall Fun in December:
We had a gorgeous warm day on Dec 11th and the tree had just dropped most of it's leaves. It was a perfect day for playing out in the leaves and the boys played out there all day. They raked them into a pile, jumped in them, slid in them, swam in them, buried things in them. I helped them out with that last one; after lunch I buried some candy in the pile and they dug away for over a half hour trying to find them. My bad because I buried M&Ms and Hershey bars, both of which have brown wrappers (the same color of the leaves). The last candy wasn't found until the next day.

'Tis the Season

We got our tree today and tonight we did the traditional decorate the tree while listening to Christmas music and drinking egg nog.

My first ever picture of the kids with Santa

We are not big into forcing our children to sit on strangers laps if they don't want to, especially if we have to wait in long lines to do so. Because of this, I have never gotten a picture of my kids with Santa. Until tonight. Tristan's and JR's daycare had a holiday show tonight and Tristan was very excited when he found out Santa would be making an appearance. So after the show we stood in line to see Santa. JR even came up for a pose.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Tofurkey

Cooking

Tristan getting ready to eat

JR ready to eat

The table

The feast

Cheers!

He's officially 8

JR's birthday was today, and just like his birthday party, he had the day all planned out. Most importantly, JR has designated it as a family only day (the main reason we had his party last weekend). His big day started out with opening presents at 7AM.

7AM presents

The main items on the agenda were John's Incredible pizza and a movie. So after present openning some breakfast was had. Then JR filled the time until it was time to leave with building some of his numerous Lego sets he received.

The Lego building begins

John's Incredible Pizza was lots of fun. We filled up with pizza and pasta buffet followed by the dessert buffet. (I think I was the only one who hit up the salad buffet). Then we hit the games. Although it took a while to get to the games because we sat in a room called "Toon Town" filled with TV's playing cartoons. The kids were a little distracted by the TV's and had a hard time remembering they had food in front of them.

Eating pizza in Toon town

JR went off with James to win some tickets. Tristan heard there were rides so we were off to the roller coaster and some Drop-Zone type kiddie ride. It was entertaining for all.

Riding the rides

Winning some tickets

We cashed in our tickets for some really cheap toys and then were off to the movie theater. The only kids movie playing was Megamind. JR saw it this past week on a field trip with day care, but he was up for seeing it again. Tristan was super excited to see it. It was a good movie but we consumed (and by we, I mean JR, Tristan, and James) way too much popcorn and Mike and Ike candy.

At the movies

So we headed home where I made them eat spinach and butternut squash before indulging in some cheesecake for JR's birthday cake for dessert. JR spent all remaining time working on his Lego sets. I think he enjoyed his day.

Cheesecake

More Lego building

Happy Birthday JR!

Monster Tristan

JR's art

JR has just recently gotten into detailed drawings, or at least drawing for me. I am really pleased with his level of detail and his imagination. Here are some of his latest works.

The fair.

The beach.

The jungle.

JR's sick day creation

JR has been home sick yesterday and today. Today he is feeling much better so he and James built the marble run.

The white marks at the end of the track mark how far the marble made it.

The ultimate 8 year old's birthday party

JR turns 8 next week so this past weekend he had his birthday party. I told him he could invite a few friends over and I would take them out someplace special. He came up with a great birthday plan: a trip to Monster mini golf, followed by a pizza dinner and ice cream dessert, and then a sleepover and to conclude with a 5AM wakeup and Wii playing for the rest of the morning.


He invited 3 friends over and we took them out to Monster mini golf and video games.

The Monsters

Then we came home and they all played Wii while James and Tristan went to pick up the pizza.

Playing Wii

After dinner, James set up the strobe light in the living room for some dancing so the kids could burn off some energy while we cleaned up dinner. When we had finished cleaning, we had the kids play a game of freeze dance with prizes. After that we moved to the kitchen for a game where the kids had to find gummy bears in a plate of whip cream with their face - the first one to get all the gummy bears out wins. The kids loved both of these games. After we cleaned their faces a bit, we scooped ice cream into their gummy bear bowls and let them build their own sundaes.

Ice cream sundaes

The night ended with a viewing of "How to Train a Dragon" and then some shushing and separating. And as promised, they woke up at 5AM and played Wii for 4 hours only to be interrupted a little bit by some pancake and egg breakfast.