Valentine's Day and Parties

Both boys were so excited and looking forward to their Valentine parties at school! This was the first year we had cards made for them to hand out (with their pictures on them). So cute!

Aaron's class made their own boxes to put Valentines in - we made a tank!

 

I got the shirt Aaron is wearing especially for him to wear - it says, "The ladies love me!" It is true. He is my social butterfly. Last session his teacher told me he had a lady friend he liked to walk and sit with. Such a little flirt.

 

The same afternoon I went to Nathan's class for their party. They decorated cookies, played Valentine bingo, had snacks/pink milk, made cards and got to look at their Valentines.

 

 

The boys then were so anxious to come home and dig into their Valentine "junkies" as they called all their handfuls of candy.

Valentine morning brought heart bagels!

 

That afternoon we took the boys out for lunch - we had planned for a picnic lunch at a nice outdoor spot. The weather was perfect!

 

 

We literally spent two hours eating and letting the kids run around.

 

The rest of the afternoon was spent getting ready for Nathan's birthday party the following day. While Nate helped me, I set Aaron up with some Valentine activities.

 

 

 

That evening we made a delicious dinner - steak kabobs, twice baked potatoes, veggies and chocolate dipped berries for dessert. Yum! It was a good day.

Happy 7th Birthday Nate!

Celebrating seven years of this almost Valentine baby being born! He's been so excited of course leading up to his birthday (I knew quite awhile ago how he wanted his day to go) and now, maybe even most importantly, he's looking forward to celebrating his big day with pals this upcoming weekend.

But, per my yearly breakdown, here is some Nate stats !

--Most especially, it's been obvious this past year how he's grown to show a lot of mommy traits. Well, after his parent-teacher conference this week it was discovered he's doing well especially in math, which isn't a mommy trait. But, he started Running Club (more on that), he likes things to be clean and organized, and, cutest of all, keeps everyone in line. Cautions Aaron if he thinks he will get hurt, etc. It's good to know I have someone to count on in case I'm not around :)

--Has his first loose tooth! Yes, his first.

--Has been enjoying the two "outside school" activities he's currently involved in - Running Club and Cub Scouts.

 Running Club is actually getting ready to end the end of this month. I'm proud of Nate in particular for him doing Running Club - it's hard stuff having to practice before school, especially when that means having to wake up a few extra minutes early to get homework done first. He's also had a few meets already (where they run 1.5 miles to see how they place amongst two other schools). The top five finishers from each grade level (in both boys and girls) received ribbons. Nate hasn't ribbon-ed yet, but I'm glad to see despite that he isn't discouraged. Pretty tough when there's twenty boys!



Excited for his first meet

 

I love the various activities he does with Cub Scouts. It too teaches good character, they do charity work, etc. They just got done collecting food for a food bank and will be taking a tour of the food bank in another week. Last month the boys got to participate in a Cub Scout tradition - Pinewood Derby Car Racin'! Nate's car almost made the finals - he got 3rd place in his den (group of boys his age) and Most Original.

 

 





 

--Like any other typical boy, his favorite food remains kid fare. Pizza, chicken nuggets...off and on in little bits he'll try new things - now only recently because of Dr Seuss' book, "Green Eggs and Ham". Because " the cat tried green eggs and ham, and he liked it". So maybe it's okay to try new things...every now and then :)


--Favorite toys to play with include now anything he can put together , especially Lego based these days (cars, planes, etc). He and Aaron generally just like to play with trains, cars, planes...and outside in our good weather they especially like their cars they can drive. Typical boys I guess!


--Our "Mr Fix It". He loves to be the "toy doctor" and fix all the batteries. Take things apart, put them back together. Yep, he's got daddy's engineering mind.


Blessed to have such a good, sweet boy in our lives ! 

New Mexico...or Not...

One of the fun parts about the beginning of this month was a trip to New Mexico for Josh's oldest brother's marriage. Well...Mother Nature had other plans I'm afraid. The night before we were due to leave (Josh and I, the kids were going to stay home with my parents for a long weekend) I had a really bad gut feeling...the day had been full of hearing about stomach bugs going around. My gut was right! That night Nate woke up with a bug. No Bueno. Long story short, I'm thankful that it was a less aggressive form of it (as in one of those 12 hour long things, and he wasn't too feverish) and that it didn't spread. Those are two big things I'm super thankful for. However, because of course I was worried about Nate, about it spreading, and then about giving germs to my parents and those taking care of the kiddos, I decided to stay home :( Josh still left as planned.

Super bummer. We were so excited for a "couple-ly" weekend. Nate too, was bummed because he missed his grade's field trip that day and they were no longer getting to stay with their Nana and Pap-Pap (once I was sure we were healthy, I made sure we did fun outings and things of course...I was feeling bad for the kiddos too).

So, a few tidbits about hubby's trip to NM!

He arrived to Albuquerque (where his brother lives) and they had dinner together - along with Josh's parents who also travelled that day.

The following day Josh visited some breweries, had lunch with our awesome sister-in-law's family, and that night helped to make luminarias for the wedding the following day.

The day of the wedding hubby went snow-shoeing (darn, an activity I hoped to partake in!) and I think otherwise did a little shopping and hung out until wedding time.

Josh with his brothers - Peter (far left), the wedding man Matt, 2nd oldest brother Ben, Josh (far right)

Happy Josh doing shots with new sister-in-law, Lenny

Tequila donkey! Literally, the donkey brought shots upon shots of tequila. Howdy!



And that is that. Josh drove home (eight hours from Santa Fe, where the wedding was located). He seemed to have a good time, we're glad he went, I think we just are a bit bummed we weren't able to enjoy it together.
 

It's A New Year!

Happy New Year! We celebrated "Noon Years Eve " with the kiddos since they still go to bed at their usual time. Cupcakes and "adult drinks" (they were so tickled by this idea, it was cute!)

The hubby and I had a nice date dinner out- something we haven't done in years!  A lot of fun. As with most years lately, we didn't make it to midnight ourselves - in fact we slept through any midnight hoopla in the neighborhood even!

As usual, we hope 2015 is a fun, safe, happy and healthy year.

 I realized last year that while it was nice having a break from training for any sort of race (I only ran one official race), I missed the challenge of getting ready for one. So...I am signed up for my first (small) triathlon the end of March!

I have been toying with the idea of one for a little over a year now. As I did with running, I'm starting off small - 400 meter swim (a full 8 laps in a lap pool), 8 mile bike and 2.4 mile run. Feeling confident about the run, but I haven't ridden a bike in years as well as done any "serious" swimming.
I just started going to the lap pool last week...one thing about training for a spring triathlon - the yucky winter swim hours! Very limited. However, next week  I will begin swim lessons - purposely for someone like me training for a triathlon, who needs help with my stroke and distance (those lanes are longer than they appear once you're trying to swim them!) I'm looking forward to the extra guidance, I think I'll need it to feel more comfortable. Already eight weeks away!

Can't believe that as I write this we are already halfway through January. We have a very busy (and fun) first part of February coming up!

Christmas Festivities!

Another fun holiday with our families! Christmas Eve we spent with Josh's family, as we normally do. This year we trekked over to his brother's house and mingled, had a glorious meal (he had smoked turkey that was to die for), homemade stuffing, yummy potatoes...and cherry pie to top it off! All so good. Then we opened gifts. This was the first year we drew names on his family side, which was great. We then headed back to our side of town so that we could attend evening church service at our home church. We actually haven't been to our home church in years for Christmas Eve service, so nice to have gone.

Pleasantly surprised that the boys slept Christmas morning until Nate's alarm went off! (7:30am for winter break!) Mom and Dad actually got to wake fairly refreshed ;)

Most years after we open gifts we usually go to my parents house to celebrate with my siblings, but this year I hosted Christmas at our home. It was nice not having to leave the house!

Nate was the "elf" this year - meaning he got to pick/hand out everyone's gifts

The Christmas highlight - a battery operated car to drive! Nate has already just about reached the max size for it, but I figured Aaron would at least get a few years out of it.

The adults then played games and ate dessert goodies while the kids played with their new toys.We are so blessed to have such wonderful families to spend the holidays with!

And oops...yes...I did forget to mention my birthday, which happened shortly before Christmas. Our tree was looking a little frumpy (though better than I thought it'd look after such a journey to our house) so the boys decorated it a bit better - the Christmas tree turned into the Birthday tree!

We left it the way it was ;)

Lots of birthday celebrations with friends and family. I went with all my boys to see The Nutcracker- first time we've all gone as a family.

The evening we celebrated my birthday with my parents and siblings we ordered a cool birthday cake - or I should say, a "hot chocolate mug" cake!

So yummy! Chocolate cake with raspberry cream filling.

I may or may not have finished cake leftovers the following day...as in entirely. Oops.

Other Holiday Fun

Other than going up north, the kids met Santa a few other times - Nate went with his Cub Scout group to our city's holiday parade (some of the older kids got to be on a float).

Santa!

Our tumbleweed tree got lit

We also got to have tea and cookies with Santa, Mrs Claus and some elves one Saturday afternoon. Nate was always on top of making sure we brought his list to show Santa!

We met Santa at the mall....

Nate sang carols with his Cub Scout group at a local nursing home

To Nate's delight I made him a holiday lunch for his last day before winter break!

Nate's school also had a Reindeer Run the last day (a run around school for fun, I was excited to take part and run with him!) and his class made gingerbread houses the last day as well.

Aaron's school for the month of December was all Christmas oriented...which I thought was fun...Christmas songs, stories, crafts, etc. Since our public school does away with a majority of that now I'm glad Aaron got to have "fun school" for a bit! Holiday parties and events have always been cherished parts of my school memories. 

Christmas craft sampling

Winter Wonderland

Last weekend we took the kids up north to Flagstaff for some cabin/winter fun. They also knew we were taking them for a ride on the Polar Express! We took Nate a few years ago, and after visiting Flagstaff last winter and not being able to get tickets for it, decided we would buy tickets to ride as soon as they went on sale for this winter. With Aaron especially being into transportation, he was excited to ride a train for his first time.

As an added bonus, we got snow! The boys were stoked. Usually we've seen snow but haven't actually gotten to watch it snow.

It was so relaxing to spend the majority of our first day there just chilling at the cabin, watching it snow off/on. We lit a fire, had hot chocolate, built a gingerbread house and the kids played. So glad we didn't make any other plans before driving to Williams for the train ride. And...it was wonderful to have a break from all the hustle and bustle we would have otherwise been in had we stayed home! At first I was bummed because of all the activities we were missing being away that weekend, but it was worth it. The snow itself made it worth it!

Now...onto the Polar Express!

Perfect weather for going to the North Pole!

Our hot cocoa/cookie servers

Passing out bells

On the way to the North Pole we read the story and got hot cocoa/cookies. There were a bunch of twinkle lights as we arrived and Santa boarded the train , passing out bells to each of the kids. Then we sang Christmas carols going back to the station. Both boys enjoyed it.

The following day we hung out at the cabin for a bit more, but by lunchtime we left and headed to a tree farm to chop down our own tree! Our first experience with this. Well...now we understand why people go early. The farm wasn't too much of a farm, pretty picked over. But, we did (luckily) find a tree we liked. It even made the 2.5 hr journey ride home! I was afraid we'd have nothing left but branches. It's not like the "full" trees we're used to, but it's kinda fun that it's unique and made getting a tree a little bit more special this year.

Goodness. Now Christmas is right upon us. December seems to be one of the fastest months of the year if you ask me. The kids have just started their Winter Break. Other holiday fun coming up in another post ;)