November Events

Time to catch up a few more months.

I believe I mentioned how our school does a special Thanksgiving type meal for the school. Here are the pictures of Aaron going, as Nate felt under the weather.

Aaron's teacher, Mr Morris and students

We love this school tradition.

Jaxon started at a new doggie daycare. We love it. We wanted to get him used to it for future travels...now whenever those will be. They have special events which we love, too. Makes it fun for the pups.

Thanksgiving Feast day

They both go to NASCAR twice a year now

 We hosted Thanksgiving for Josh's family and went over to my sister's for my family. To look back at spending holidays and time together is now bittersweet. More on that a few posts down the road. 

Halloween 2019

Just a short little blurb about Halloween this last year. Continuing to take advantage of Nathan being willing to dress up (and family dress up at that). This past year we dressed up as the crew from Peter Pan. I'll let you see who was who!

Preston is definitely enjoying the holidays more each year which is so fun. He was very excited and into "trick-or-treating". 

Other Fall Break Fun...meet Jaxon!

The first week of Fall Break included some of our trip to Florida. The second week of Fall Break brought a trip to a pumpkin  patch, one where older brother would be entertained a bit more with rides.

We went to the zoo with my parents one day. Nathan has been on a kick about getting a dog, in particular a husky. I started to get the itch to have another dog again, but had wanted to be sure the boys were ready to take on some responsibility in taking care of one. I promised Nathan we would see the husky at the shelter but wasn't going to promise that we would bring him home unless we agreed it would be a good fit. 

Well, while we didn't think the husky was a good fit for our family, we did find another dog that we thought would. Peanut as he was called there was described as a one-year-old lab retriever mix. Much like our last dog, Lily, he was quiet in the kennel but was excited to see us and licked our hands. We took him out and fell in love- he seemed sweet and was playful, another important part for the kids. We decided to bring him home! That day, the kids agreed on the name Jaxon (and to make it short). He had accidents for the first month, consistently getting better each week, but you could tell he knew some potty training and some basic commands. He sleeps in Nathan's room and goes right into a crate with no problem. We were preparing that he may not sleep well, but he surprised us with quiet nights from the start. He is definitely still puppy like. 

So happy with their dog, they carved him in a pumpkin

Enjoying his first Starbucks puppucino

Comforting his doggie at his first vet visit

Now, four months later, he knows his family and whines when we leave and excitedly pees when we get home. He seems to be a good guard dog, barking when there's noise or when he sees people/animals outside the window. The last two months we have started to take him to a doggie daycare/boarding facility to start getting him used to that. It has been so helpful in socializing him and burning off some of that puppy energy! This will be the first time we will be needing to use a facility for boarding as we travel this year. 

Over the last four years since Lily passed, what I've learned is that we will never get any less sad over our loss. So, if we're waiting for that to ever get better it won't. With my days still mostly at home, it's nice to have a companion back. We finished our Fall Break on a happy note!

Disney World!

 As I mentioned before, we left on Preston's birthday to Orlando, Florida for a week full of Disney World fun! Nathan, as he's grown to be an adrenaline junkie, has wanted to go to Disney World for a quite a while and has been discussing it for quite a bit. It had always been an idea that my brother-in-law, a fellow roller coaster rider and sister would join us. Well actually, the original plan began that Nathan drew a name from a hat (which happened to be my sister), and that person would get to go on the trip with us ;) We had a lot of fun and it was handy to have four more hands than those of Josh and I to help go in different directions with each child, basically. We went to each park with 1-2 parks where we spent two days. We discovered it is a better place to go for older kids, unless you do plan to just do Magic Mountain which seems to have a bit for everyone (and is most like Disneyland). Everyone had differing opinions on their favorite land. Some highlights!

On our least busy day, we went to the Medieval Times for a big meal and jousting. The kids enjoyed it!

Waiting on brothers, daddy, Aunt and Uncle

Main Street Magic Kingdom

Aunt Angie and Aaron were besties. They enjoyed the same type of rides. 

It was warm and humid some days in particular (that was my excuse)

That was Aaron's excuse too. 

The best $25 toy while we were there - entertainment while waiting for brothers on rides. 

It's safe to say we came some for the food.

Meet the Characters buffet in Animal Kingdom

Food in France

Visiting China

We had lunch at a German restaurant. The kids enjoyed the entertainment and the adults enjoyed...the beverages. 

Fun desserts

One of the hardest reservations to get - that we got lucky to get on cancelation - Be Our Guest! Eat a French meal inside the castle of Belle and Beast

Such a beautiful atmosphere inside - ceiling 

We sat in the main dining/dancing room. Snow was falling outside the windows. Basically my sister and I were in love.

This was a fun restaurant we had lunch one day : we sat in classic cars as sort of a drive in atmosphere

Toy Story land was neat, had some of the longest wait times for rides

Epcot! We liked one ride but enjoyed the different countries to experience their food.

Disney World : where donuts are as big as your face! Nathan earned Student of the Month for September, so this was a good celebration the day of the ceremony he missed 

Preson knows Mickey Mouse!

Have to try the blue and green milk in Star Wars land

Star Wars riding crew

We enjoyed the hotel's hot breakfast (where we filled up on Mickey Mouse waffles) and spent the day at the parks, but were mostly back at the hotel in time for early evening to decompress before bed and enjoy their nightly snack/adult beverage happy hour. Nathan stayed with my sister and husband in their room, which he enjoyed a lot - getting that time away from his brothers and getting a bit of independence-minus the incident where we will now not let him use a microwave unsupervised as he put his leftover pizza in a bit too long and almost caused a scene....

We came home tired but happy. Josh and I were very happy with how the kids behaved over those seven days; waiting in lines, not complaining over the walking...we're excited for our 2020 adventures! 

Preston Turns 3! And Other Milestones...

As I write this, Preston is a few months shy of being 3.5 ! :( He is growing by leaps and bounds (which I'm sure I've said probably every post!) Rather than have a birthday party, we actually (very coincidentally) left on the day of his birthday for a trip during Fall Break, so that became his present/party. Therefore, the weekend before we just went out to dinner and had a cake to follow afterwards. He is going through a Baby Shark moment so it was Baby Shark themed!

We started the birthday weekend at the Farmer's Market where he got this blown up shark! 

His actual day was not too exciting since we were airplane and airport hopping, but the week to follow was spent at Disney World! (more to follow in another post). He is familiar with some of the characters so that was pretty exciting. 

Other big things happening with Preston! We (finally) got him potty trained. I'm mostly going to put this note here for myself to laugh at down the road, but believe it or not we got the to the point where we reached out to a professional this time for help. As there are sleep experts/consultants, we discovered there are potty consultants as well. Earlier in the year Preston did not take to the training as he was scared to even sit. I looked into a consultant as we needed help with his outright refusal to sit this time around (not that he scared, now he just didn't want to sit). Josh was the first to get him to be able to do so, and once we discovered he cared for a particular potty seat to use then it started to come together. 

Preston had been at a small preschool program before that allowed non-trained kids, which was good for us, but ultimately I wanted to get him into a program with kids more his age and where I could drop him off. Once he was trained, he was good to go! All of December he went to his new program, which I'm also thankful for the fact that he seems to LOVE it. No tears, bribing, nothing. He will continue to go there three days  a week for 2-3 hours each day. 

New school

...with a new backpack!

Preston is still taking swimming lessons. He's so close to moving up another level. We took a break in December but hope to start back up in January. 

The other big thing that happened with Preston is...

...a new BIG bed!

Gone are the crib days. Preston never tried to climb out of his crib so we were not anxious to switch him out of it, but the boy was growing too long for it to comfortably sleep. We are SO thankful he continues to not get out of his bed! We were astonished that he did not try to get out. We expected, like our others, that we would have some time of playing the "put him back in bed over and over" game. We think waiting until he was 3 years old instead of 2 helped. Even now he will just call out when he wakes up. 

He is your typical, very active boy. He loves to ride his balance bike, he can balance and ride a Razr Scooter (he basically wants to keep up with his brothers). He remains a pretty good eater most of the time. His vocabulary is increasing, which is good for the most part ;) He has his moments of cuddle time. Growing to be such a sweet, smart boy!

School Year

We are now halfway done with the school year, already! Each of the boys have male teachers which has been a fun dynamic to watch. They each have good classes that they enjoy. It's crazy to think in another month we will be touring junior high for Nathan. Especially because it's the last year in which I will get to be involved with a class with Nathan (before he fully just starts growing up), I decided to be the art masterpiece guide for his class, coming in once a month to teach an art lesson. Josh went with his class in September on their Science Camp. In October, the boys' school had their yearly Fall Festival and in November their Fine Dining event. Each boy took a turn being sick for those special events (Aaron did not go to Fall Festival, Nate did not go to Fine Dining, or "friendsgiving" as I call it). It has been busy! Aaron continues to be in Boy Scouts this year. Starting in the Fall, Nathan decided he no longer wanted to be with Boy Scouts (when it was realized the added homework and responsibility it would become). He continues to do percussion with band this year, we will find out in the coming months if he decides to continue in the Fall next year in junior high. Aaron has also begun Running Club with some friends. Earlier in December, we had the school's Jingle Jog which is becoming a favorite tradition.

Jingle Jog

I was the first winner at the Cake Walk - Fall Festival. It was delicious! 

Packed and ready to go to Science Camp