Merry Christmas!

 

The last few days have been jam packed with family, food, and exhausted, but happy kids. It didn’t help that both kids came down with colds this week and have been trying so hard to behave normally while feeling miserable. Besides that, we have had a wonderful Christmas being back in Oregon and breaking in the house with family. It started with baking some cookies for family/Santa:

We then celebrated Grampa’s birthday on Tuesday. The kids were very happy to help blow out his candles:

On Christmas Eve, Meema, Boopa, Teresa, and Bravo joined us and we did our 2nd annual gingerbread house building. This year it was Henry’s turn to have his house fall down:

  

This morning was a lot of fun. The kids were thrilled that Santa came. Claire was so worried that Santa wouldn’t bring her number one requested item: a ukulele. She was so happy that one showed up. Henry loved all his Spider-man gear/toys. And of course, insisted on wearing a new dress-up dress or his Spider-man robe most of the day. The kids were exhausted, running on sugar and adrenaline by the end of the night. It was a great day spent with our family and we are so thankful that holidays no longer mean cross county trips!

  

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. As you can see, no baby yet. He is still perfectly happy staying put. For me, he better evacuate pretty soon because I’m exhausted carrying around a basketball all the time!

Evening Entertainment

The kids love putting on shows. While downstairs getting dinner ready the kids called us upstairs to see their animal “show”. This is what we went upstairs to see:

 

One thing the kids do not need for Christmas is more stuffed animals… Seriously, where do all of those things hide in the house?

Still Cookin’

Paul’s been bugging me about doing a blog and since I’ve been extremely lazy with pictures there might not be many pictures in this one. We had a nice Thanksgiving in Eugene and it was great being able to spend the week with family. The kids had a bit of a rough start to their school week afterwards. We have a countdown until winter break that has helped with the anxiousness.
Here is a bit of an update of how the kids are doing.
Claire:

• She is doing great with reading. Every night she reads us a story and then practices reading with another book by herself. It’s so much fun seeing her love books.
• Her favorite quiet activity is making “books” for her friends. She tries to stretch out words for spelling, draws pictures, then staples the pages together. I now am needing to be very organized with art supplies…
• She loves the gymnastics class she is taking and is constantly trying to do cartwheels, handstands, and somersaults. Tables are moved often for more room.
• Claire still is keeping her own sense of style when it comes to clothing. She has her “sporty” dress which means her soccer uniform, sweats, or jeans. Her “nice” clothes which are dresses/skirts with whatever pair of tights she can find. I love it. I hope she always keeps her funky sense of style.

Henry:

• Loves board games. Or at least taking out all the games and playing with his own sense of rules.
• “Tackle” and “Good” football. Paul plays tackle football with both kids in the house. (Yes, I’m crazy) The kids love it, especially Henry. When they play catch Henry calls it “good” football. He has been learning the value of being a good loser.
• My helper. He loves to help me around the house and running errands. He really is so helpful.
• Playing “hide and seek” is huge with both kids. Of course Henry reveals himself about two seconds after someone tries to find him.
• Claire’s shadow with a bit of independence. He is always so happy when she comes home from school so he has someone to play with. Although she is at times just wanting to be alone and he wants her to follow his activity it is still nice to see they enjoy being around each other.
• About three weeks ago we finally took away his pacifier at night(better late than never, right?). He only got upset the first night for about 20 minutes then slept straight through the night.  The funny thing is when he is sleeping, his mouth is still in the shape it would be in if a pacifier was there. Also it seems to have “unplugged” him and bedtime now includes a 15 minute conversation about the most random things.

I am feeling ok. Totally ready for this little guy to come. The kids are getting excited although Claire has had a bit of separation anxiety with school drop offs. We are working through it and she is getting better. I thought Henry would have a harder time with a new baby, but Claire is showing a bit of behaviors that I think are related. I am not a fan of pregnancy photos, but by the looks of this one (37 weeks) I really have no idea why he isn’t here yet. I feel huge!

Early Risers

 

The kids were up way too early this morning (6:10), which is about an hour and a half before we leave for school. Since they had so much time after getting ready this is how they spent their extra time:

 

They took out every single plate, cup, bowl, and lid from the kid stuff drawer and lined it around the island. They were so proud. Guess who got to clean up that after they went to school? At least they worked together and weren’t fighting!

Happy Halloween!

 

Our house had a great night Trick or Treating with our neighbors. Thankfully it stayed dry! The nice thing about all the kids being younger is that they have yet to catch on to the concept of going to as many houses as possible. We went to about 15 and were done in 40 minutes. Perfect. It was a lot of fun seeing both kids just very happy and excited about trick or treating. Unfortunately the kids love to hand out candy but since we are on a small side street we don’t get that many trick or treaters coming through besides neighbors.

Claire decided about two months ago she wanted to be a cat with a purple tutu so a ballerina cat was created:

     

Henry thought he wanted to be a dinosaur until he saw a Spider-man costume. The masked lasted only for these pictures:

 

The whole neighborhood crew getting ready to head out:

The kids have been begging to carve the last two pumpkins we have. I had no desire to carve again so we compromised with painting the pumpkins:

Happy Halloween! I had great hopes of the kids sleeping in this morning, but Claire was up at 6:30 saying she was starving. Oh well. Maybe someday she will learn to enjoy lazy mornings!

Pumpkin Carving

 

Since getting our pumpkins a few weeks ago, the kids have been asking nonstop about carving them. As much as we tried to explain waiting to carve until closer to Halloween they still asked daily. Finally today was the day.

The kids having their turn scraping out their pumpkins:

 

 

 

They didn’t’ really last too long until Daddy had to help out:

 

This was the point where Henry checked out and decided to dress up instead:

After Paul and I attempted to carve a face in the pumpkin the kids painted their pumpkins with glow in the dark paint. When Paul asked Henry if he liked his pumpkin Henry replied, “No, I don’t like it.” The kid has high standards.

Finished product on the steps! (I need to do some spider web repair. We had quite the wind storm that blew the other side of webs off. It also resulted in us losing power in the middle of the night that caused Claire to be too scared to sleep in her room without a nightlight. We didn’t get much sleep…)

We are hoping for a dry Halloween! (HA!)