I've always had great aspirations to create a December Daily album, but can never get my act together. I thought this year I'd try it in a much less intimidating format, and then transfer it over to an album (but probably not). I hope to use this to capture in words and pictures what is special about Christmas for our family.
Today, being the first day of December, was also the first day for our advent calendars. We have three this year, one that involves moving Mary and Joseph one step closer to the stable each day, one where we add a new item to a nativity scene each day and a Lego advent calendar. The Lego one is new this year, and the kids have been looking forward to it since it came in the mail over a month ago. Skyler has a complete understanding of how advent calendars work (just one thing a day!), but I'm not so sure that Jonah does, and I know that Oliver doesn't! That has made me nervous the past few days. I'm afraid that the little boys will just want to play with the calendars and that will make Skyler mad! So far so good, though. They moved Mary and Joseph to the 1, pulled an angel out of a pocket for the nativity scene and opened up a Lego figure on the calendar. Jordan did the calendar with them (because I had a work meeting) and the word is that they were disappointed that there was no building involved today.
The picture of the day is the kids watching Christmas videos.
I must be checking my credentials or something, but Oliver's smile is too good to pass this one up.
I asked him if he wanted to wear Clark Kent glasses, so naturally he grabbed his Mickey Mouse sunglasses
Oh yeah, the other kids dressed up too --
Jonah as Blue from Blue's Clues for the church party. What, you say you've seen this costumebefore? It's very versatile, size-wise. Perhaps I can convince Jordan to wear it next year. Jordan is behind him dressed (and posed) as Tarzan.
Halloween night. Jonah is now wearing his beloved "Spiderman without a mask costume" (because he already had a mask, he would not let me buy a costume that came with one. We bought him some pajamas, but then I found this mask-less costume at goodwill). Oliver wanted to be Thomas tonight and I had already had my fun two nights ago, so I allowed it. Skyler is apparently boring and chose the same costume. This year, he really didn't care what he was as long as he could get candy.
Jonah ready for his preschool party on the day after Halloween. This time he's sporting the pajamas.
We converted Oliver's bed to a toddler bed, and, things really aren't going so well.
For starters, he will not stay in his room at naptime. Because, you know then he might accidentally fall asleep. I spend an hour each day returning him to his bedroom until one of us gives up and either falls asleep (him) or declares naptime over (me). I feel it important that I clarify roles because today those roles were almost reversed. He went from taking a nap every single day to taking one only randomly because the freedom is more than he can handle.
And then, when he does stay in his room, we get this:
I have good reason to believe that he wore every single item of clothing that is on his floor during the course of his "nap". See that ensemble he's sporting in the picture? Not what he was wearing when I peeked in on him earlier. And when I put him down he was wearing something else entirely.
But if he were to get booted back to the crib, I'd miss out on fantastic stuff like this. One night after he went to the bathroom, I took his flip-flops off. He cried that he wanted them on, but I told him it's silly to sleep with shoes on. When I checked on him before I went to bed, he was wearing the flip-flops. He had gone out of his room and into mine to put them on before going back to bed. And the next morning, instead of hearing the pitter-patter of his little feet in my room, I heard the flip-flop of his shoes.
At the end of the summer, I picked up a slip n slide on clearance. We didn't get a whole lot of use out of it before it got too cold, but there's always next year. The boys aren't the most skilled in this area, but they still had fun. They would slide about a quarter of the way and then sort of paddle to the end.
Skyler, giving directions to the other two, no doubt.
You can see Skyler paddling to get to the end of it.
The weather was not on our side during this year's Balloon Fiesta, which was so sad because my mom came to town for it! We went on Thursday morning, and luckily all the balloons inflated even if they did not go up. My mom didn't know the difference, so it was all good. :)
I've said this before, but pictures just don't do this event justice (especially the pictures that I take). Here's my attempt, however.
Spider pig is on the far right. That was Jonah's favorite.
This is what your watch feels like before Jordan fixes it.
Jonah really didn't care for the loud noises
Skyler was a little bit worried about potentially missing his spelling test (and thus having to make it up during recess) but he eventually calmed down (and made it to school before the spelling test!).
Taken while we were wandering around looking for our car in the parking lot. It's hard to take note of where you park when it's still dark outside.
Skyler decided that he wanted a pet, and Jordan decided that he should get some fish. So, on a day that I was gone, Jordan took the kids to pick up all the necessary aquarium supplies. Two days later, I had no choice but to take the boys to pick out their own fish. Sadly, a few weeks later, Jonah's fish suffered an untimely demise at the hand of the filter. So, today he got to pick out a new one. And Jordan chose two more to add in too (one of which died already - at least Jonah's replacement is doing well). Today the boys also spent some of their allowance money to spruce up the tank with the some plastic plants and whatnot.
The boys with their new fish. Oliver's is in the bag with Jonah's. Oliver was not happy that he didn't have a bag to hold!
Hot-air balloons are a common site in the skies near our home. But when Balloon Fiesta rolls around there are many, many more, thus increasing the chances that one will land near our house. Pilots are always very willing to have extra help packing up their balloons and they are also usually really good about kids helping, too.
Here are some pictures from yesterday's balloon chase adventure.
Several months ago, Jonah started begging to go to preschool. He had the concept of a "real" preschool (and not simply a co-op at a friend's house) stuck in his head and he was not letting go of it! Luckily, I found something for him that looks like it's going to be pretty great.
The boys like to pick flowers from the backyard and bring them inside to me. Mostly Oliver does this. They get such a kick out of bringing me a flower and watching me put it into my hair. I just love it. Even if it means that the flower beds in the backyard are slowly becoming flower-less and that there are piles of flower petals all over the house.
We spent Labor Day weekend with Jordan's parents and his sister's family. We had a wonderful time catching up and playing.
Before we were able to have too much fun, Jordan's parents put us to work. Hooray for child labor! Mainly because it leaves me free to take pictures. Most of the kids climbed up on the roof to sweep up pine needles. Jordan and his dad and brother-in-law cut down some trees.
We went swimming. Only Oliver called in 'wimmin', which was all kinds of cute. The older boys certainly hadn't forgotten their swimming skills. Jonah even seemed to be doing better since swim lessons ended (perhaps he's been doing a lot dreaming about swimming?). Oliver, though, wasn't as excited about the pool as he was during swimming lessons. He like the water guns, though!
Getting the water gun ready.
Playing tag. The blue blog near Jonah's hand is Skyler. I'm pretty sure he's it now.
My niece turned eleven over the weekend and my mother-in-law put together the cutest luau party. I looked up a "how to hula" video on You Tube, so following a yummy dinner, that was the entertainment. Mostly, we just enjoyed hanging out and enjoying each others' company. Especially these two.
They slept in the same room and were up until past 10:00 one night talking and telling jokes (much like these, I imagine)! We also played Wii. I was king of the ski jump, and try as they might, no one could beat me!
Okay, so Jonah's not actually ski jumping in this picture, but he couldn't beat me when he was!
Last week, Skyler's school held a walk-a-thon and the little boys and I stopped by for a bit.
Running to Skyler, who is wearing the blue/white striped shirt.
The happy walker.
At first, he wouldn't let his brothers walk with him, because "Jamie already has 11 laps, so I have to walk fast!", but he eventually changed his mind.
He ended the day with 15 laps, double what he did last year. Alas, he did not beat Jamie, but Jamie is a first-grader and Skyler said that the first-graders were out before the second-graders, so Skyler wasn't too upset that his brothers slowed him down.
Clearly, "where where you on September 11th?" will be THE question of my generation. And, I realized this weekend, that the only place those memories currently reside are in my head. But once I hit publish for this post, that will change.
On September 11, 2001 I was a junior in college. I had been married for exactly three weeks. I left for class that morning without turning on the TV, without realizing what was happening. In my first class, I remember two women discussing whether or not they should pick their school-aged children up from school. I assumed something local was happening and though I was curious, I didn't really care. I believe my next class was Institute (a church sponsored religion class). The teacher said something to the effect of "our prayers are with those affected by today's events" and then went on with the lesson. I was now more curious as to what was going on, but did not ask. The next class I remember was a music class. This was where I learned that what was happening was not local and I started worrying about my own family's safety. But I still did not know. Throughout that whole day, I never came across anyone that I felt comfortable asking, mainly because I was so embarrassed that I didn't know already, but also because that's just not my style. I think it was at work later in the afternoon where I finally figured out that whatever happened happened in NYC and involved airplanes. Sometime that evening, I made it home and turned on the TV. My fear and confusion during the hours leading up to finally knowing was so, so small compared to those directly affected.
This is a video that a local radio station did with the students at Skyler's school.
Skyler knew nothing about the events of that day. I'm certainly not opposed to him knowing, or that learned about it at school, but he's never asked and I've never had a reason to tell him. I'm sure we would have discussed it over the weekend, because it was hard to avoid all the news about it. This video was done on Thursday, and so that afternoon he told me what he had learned. He told me that he learned about the Twin Towers. He told me about an airplane hitting one, and then another airplane hitting another, and then an airplane hitting the Pentagon (though he called it the Octagon). He told me that they were bad guy planes. He assumed that the people flying the planes - the bad guys - were still alive because his mind couldn't grasp the fact that someone would give up their life for such a horrible purpose. And my heart sank, because now I feel that a bit of his childhood innocence is gone. Now he knows that there are people in this world who will gladly die if it means that thousands of innocent people will loose their lives as well.
Bring on Santa Claus, because I think that after Thursday I can handle that bit of growing up as well.
We have four new members of the family, three of which are pictured here.
Ellie (short for Elephant baby, because on the off chance that this stuffed toy is dressed, it wears an elephant costume), Li (short for lion), Lightning (because it's Lightning McQueen), and Cow (because it's a cow) are Jonah's babies. Though, I've been recently informed that Ellie now belongs to Skyler and Cow is the replacement. Though Cow is not in this picture because Cow was not "born" until the following Saturday.
Jonah carries these guys around everywhere. He takes them to the grocery store, to bed, and sits them up at the table when it's time to feed them.
It's cute, even when he makes me give them real food (which nine times out of ten, Jonah will eat) and when he starts calling me grandma (because if they are his babies, that certainly makes me their grandma, right?).
