Holiday Madness

After a morning of being up early, the frenzy of opening gifts and stockings, and having bellies full of "breakfast casserole", you can't help but flop down and relax...


*grin*

Holiday Spirit

Ignore the ugly plastic in the background of this photo... Our neighborhood is having a new water system put in (which has been going on for what feels like FOREVER now!), and someone decided that the shoulder where the school bus picks up the kids would be a fantastic place to leave giant piles of dirt covered in plastic (which still manages to make a really disgusting muddy mess in the rain!).

That said, here are the kids sporting their holiday hats! Connor's is a knit Christmas tree hat I made back when he was just a baby (one of my very first projects, and obviously I wasn't too clear on how to adjust patterns properly! LOL! This tree hat will fit him forever, I think!). Em's is a crochet hat I whipped up for her this month (she wants me to make sure and point out that the white stripes and the white flower are sparkly), and Jared's elf hat is a crochet hat I actually used a PAID pattern for.






Jared likes his hat so much, he's even been sleeping with it on!

Seattle outing

We bought tickets for our family to see Trans-Siberian Orchesta at Key Arena this year. It was our first full-family concert, and the kids were REALLY excited to get to go. The concert wasn't until 3pm, but we headed up earlier in the day with plans to spend the morning at the Seattle Science Center.

While we were having lunch in Center House, we ended up at a table right next to the guy doing characatures of people, and we were very impressed with how much the drawings still resembled the actual person. We've seen plenty that look NOTHING like the person. The kids loved watching the guy draw while they were eating, so we decided to have drawings of the kids done as well. I don't really see Emily in hers, but I totally see the boys in theirs!



The drawings were bigger than my scanner screen so the signature at the bottom is cut off, and some of Em's hair




(love the missing front teeth!)


After paying for the drawings, we went straight over to Key Arena and found our seats, WAY up in the nosebleed section!


There were TONS of lazers, and pyrotechnics, etc during the show. Dan said it was the best visual effects for any concert he's ever attended (and he's attended A LOT).
This picture doesn't even come close to showing it off!


There were some parts that were a little too slow and "foreign" (not songs we knew) for our tastes, but for the most part, we LOVED the concert and had a great time. Connor must have said at least 20 times "THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!!!", while he rocked out to the music and the lights.

The concert lasted 2.5 hours (without an opening band!) and it was dark when we came out. The Space Needle looked really neat all lit up, with the light tree on top



We tried to take a self-shot family photo, which didn't work out very well... LOL

Halloween 2012

Posting these quite a bit late, but better late than never! Life's been busy and we've been dealing with a number of curveballs...

Dan and I attended a Halloween party at our friends's house. Dan went as Mr. T


I was a "cereal" Killer. Got the idea from a Bunko friend from last year! Easy and comfortable. LOL


Jared and Connor were "blobs" (Don't ask...), and Emily Grace was an old lady for Halloween:


The boys were MAJOR hams in their blob costumes. They were actually pretty hysterical to watch. The costumes got a LOT of positive feedback around town!

Fair Fun

I'm belatedly sharing a few pictures from our time at the fair a week and a half ago!

Grandma Marlee gave the kids each $8 so they could have turns in the "walk on water" bubble things. They LOVED these!!! It was pretty funny watching them trying to maneuver around inside them.


Emily (I JUST missed getting the picture of her upright and running)


Connor, as he's just about ready to topple sideways


Jared standing up and trying to get going


Connor, getting ready to Mutton Bust! There were 28 kids waiting in line for their turn, so the cowboys were rushing and were basically just tossing kids on and flinging open the gate without giving them a change to get situated. I was looking at Connor when they flung open the gate and he hadn't even fully grabbed on with his hands yet! He fell off after about 3 seconds, but he still had a really good time!


Emily and Connor decided to be brave and test this ride out. They both regretted it BIG TIME! Connor got off and threw himself into my arms and burst into tears. I truly didn't think there was a ride that would ever scare Connor! He's such a thrill-seeker... At the point I took this picture, the ride was paused for unloading a car at the bottom, and Connor and Emily were stuck tipped to one side. The cars twist around too much so I couldn't get a good feel for how he was liking the ride, so as soon as it paused, I hollered up, "Connor! Was it fun?" I got back a very LOUD, very FORCEFUL, "NOOOOOOOOOO!" (oops!)


Em talked Jared onto one of her favorite rides. He's not much of a thrill-seeker, but agreed to go one time (and ended up liking it!)


Think someone was a little wiped out on the drive home??

Here Fishy, Fishy!

We caught NOTHING (unless you count me getting nauseous from all the waves rocking the boat, and Jared getting a bloody nose!), and truthfully weren't really set up to try all that hard. We're inexperienced, but the boys really wanted to use their poles, and had fun in the attempt.

One of the kids' favorite parts of boating is driving under the bridges!

1st day of school

There was NO talking the boys into anything even remotely nice for the first day of school...

Jared, entering 3rd grade


Connor, entering 1st grade


Emily was happy to froo-froo herself up! (But where are her glasses?? The little stink!)--entering 5th grade


She sure loves Charlie!


Can't get by without taking some silly photos as well...






Emily Grace gave Jared bunny ears, so he flashed some bunny teeth to go with! ha!


Some obligatory sibling photos...


I love Charlie and Heidi sniffing noses in the bottom corner. LOL


Bummer about the hair flipped up over Em's chin (which I didn't notice until the kids were gone!)

Fun with chalk

I'd been seeing pictures on Pinterest where you make chalk drawings on the ground, and pose your children near or on them. I made Emily be test subject!




We called the boys over and made them play as well


I can't wait to try some more!!

Geocaching with Grandma!

The kids and I took my mom geocaching last week on her birthday. I'd purposely mapped out some caches near my favorite coffee stand so I could drive through and treat my mom and I to coffee.

The first cache we took her to was one we'd found previously, so I made the kids stay in the car so they wouldn't spoil it for her. (I always take new people to caches I've found before so they are guaranteed at least one successful experience.) After she found it, I let the kids out of the car to pose for a picture. Fun Fact: This cache was also the first one that Emily Grace found! (It was actually her suggestion to do this one first so she and Grandma would be matching)


We drove through for coffee and then made attempts at finding the two caches just down the street. We couldn't find the first of the two. The second one I had found before, but none of my kids had, so I figured it would be a fun one to watch my mom and the kids searching for it. When we arrived, I could tell right away it was not there. Very disappointing!

So far we were 1 for 3 and I was feeling bad that my mom's first geocaching experience wasn't all it could have been. Time-wise we were running short on time so we picked two more caches to try (one near-ish to where we were, and another very near home).

We tromped off-path for a bit to find the first one. The kids actually found some things they were interested in trading for (a lot of times the caches are just full of major junk). We drove to the last cache for the afternoon, and got to explore an old cemetary. The clue for the cache said we didn't need to enter the cemetary to find it, but after unsuccessfully searcing for the cache, we figured we might as well peek at all the grave stones. We found two that we're pretty sure are relatives of ours (through my dad's side). The kids enjoyed looking at the old dates on the graves and recognizing some last names of people we know (whether or not they're relatives of people we know is another story!).

We ended the afternoon 2 for 5, my most unsuccessful geocaching outing to date, but we enjoyed the warm sunny day, and the time spent together!

Camping

We got invited to go camping with my good friend and her family (her family, her sister's family, and her parents) over this past weekend. The kids had a BLAST!

Our campsite was very near a shallow creek, so the kids got to spend a bunch of time building little dams, splashing around, etc. We let Emily bring a friend because there weren't going to be any girls close to her age (the only other girls were 15 months, 3.5 years, and 4 years old).


My friend's son is the same age as Connor (we met while the boys were in preschool together!)


Even Charlie got to come camping with us!


The kids all had bikes so they did a bunch of bike riding. Connor, especially, LOVED having all the extra room to ride his bike. At home, we just have a small driveway to ride circles in.




Em's bike is significantly too small, but it's too close to the end of summer to mess with it this year. It worked out well enough!


Who says you can't eat well while you're camping? Marinated flank steak strips and home-made fried rice. YUMMMM!


Speaking of food, I'll also just add in right here that the ziploc omelets were QUITE tasty, and I would totally eat them again! You take a quart sized freezer Ziploc bag, fill it with however much whipped egg you want, along with the toppings/fillings of your choice, seal it shut, then boil it in a pot of water over the camp fire or a camp stove. Took 5-10 minutes or so (especially for the more loaded ones, and we were also boiling a lot of bags at a time), but they came out great. Easy way to cook breakfast without much mess!

We took the kayaks with us, having heard there was a great beach to kayak off of there, but we only discovered miles and miles of MUCK!


I probably would have opted to keep Charlie at the campsite had I known ahead of time!


If you didn't stick to the watery pathways, you sunk it up to your knees in places. Even sticking to the watery pathways was slow-going!


Connor was a wild man, running all over the place, completely disregarding all the sharp shells he was encountering along the way. He regretted it later when his feet were sliced up in multiple places, but he sure had fun!


Charlie was NOT thrilled with any part of the beach. The other dog on the trip with us LOVED LOVED LOVED the water/mud and was prancing all around like a crazy maniac, splashing around, whipping sticks and shells into the air with his mouth, etc. Charlie just sort of stood around and looked pitiful, and resisted taking steps in certain areas. LOL


There was also a stage and seating area set up near our camp site, so the kids had fun putting on little shows for us.


Mr. Muscles working on perfecting his cartwheels


S'mores!! (I would have sworn I had Jared in this picture as well, but he must have JUST moved out of the shot as I was snapping the picture. I remember being really proud of myself that I managed to line them all up in there! POUT!)


Connor all but adopted this bag of peanuts as his own...


Charlie sat on my lap with his front paws resting on my thighs, and when he jumped back down, I was left with a perfect little pawprint imprinted in my skin!


I really thought I took a lot more pictures, but I guess I didn't! Nothing of Dan and I, nothing of our tent...

The kids have asked a few times already when we will get to go camping again. We were a little spoiled this time in that it was sort of a community food affair and we were each assigned items to bring to contribute, and everyone helped cook and clean-up. I'm sure any future attempts of camping on our own won't go quite so smoothly, but I definitely have the camping bug now!