Three Week Recap

A busy and fun summer... as usual.

The weekend of June 26th, 27th 28th...
Friday was the last day of the kids’ FUN summer school. I think they (and we) were all bummed when it came to an end. It was a 3 week mini-morning session and they got to do a lot of fun things! They are already talking about going again next year.

Friday night we got our babysitter and her best friend to come over and hang out with our kids and our friend’s kids. Our master plan was to take our friends out for an adult evening in appreciation for all that they have done for us. They truly made a difference while we were in the hospital. After a superb evening we returned to pick up the kids and headed up to our Church lawn to watch some incredible fireworks that were being set off at a nearby park. We arrived just in time, the weather was incredible, and the kids had a blast. We enjoyed the fireworks and continued to enjoy watching the kids run around and have fun. It was another late night!

Saturday we went to Spencer's t-ball game and then we spent the afternoon swimming at the Y. Sunday after Church and lunch the girls had a friend come over to hang out. That evening we had our neighbor friends over for dinner to thank them for all they've done over the past several weeks. More great company and another late night.

Independence Day Weekend...
We took a "mini vacation". We decided that instead of spending money on blowing up fireworks and hosting a BBQ as we have in the past, we would do something that we KNEW that Abby could fully participate in and enjoy. We haven't setup our swimming pool yet... and probably won't because we are concerned about sun exposure and burning.

So we went downtown (which feels like out of town to us) and stayed at a brand new hotel with a really cool indoor mini-water park. The rooms were really inexpensive, spacious (2 king beds with a lot of room!), clean, comfy, and a great location to all that we wanted to do. The water park was just the right size to enjoy swimming, hot tubing, and sliding on the huge body slide. We also got to spend some fun time at the Farmers Market, Heartland of America Park, Lewis and Clark Landing, the Pedestrian Bridge. We attempted to watch a huge firework show on Friday night but rain changed those plans. We did meet up with some friends on Saturday evening and enjoyed an awesome firework show. It was so much fun watching the fireworks and watching our kids enjoy it all.

After hearing how things went in our neighborhood this weekend, I think we'll be considering going this route in future years!

Last weekend... July 10th, 11th & 12th
All the kids finished up with swimming lessons on Friday. Spencer is now officially in Level 2. Long (but good) story there. The girls passed Level 4 and get to move onto Level 5. YAY! I decided to take Friday off due to a funeral that morning but at the last minute we all decided to go to memorial the night before. So I got to watch their last lesson and got to see first hand the huge progress they all had made from the week before. It is amazing seeing the girls stacked up against all these BIG kids. They were easily the youngest in their class... by a solid 2 years.

After a late lunch with some friends we decided on the spur of the moment that we would go to Lincoln to visit Great Grandma. While Spencer has been to her new place, the girls haven't. So we went home, got cleaned up, packed up, and headed to Lincoln. We managed to get in town in time for a quick trip (our first of the season) to the Children's Zoo! Then we visited with Great Grandma for a good couple of hours. Our visit was a total surprise to her and we had a good time visiting with her. We then headed back home. Another late night!

Saturday was another full day with yard work, birthday party, t-ball game, grocery shopping, carpet re-cleaning, a swim party, a play date. Then ultimately Carie and I ended up having the house to ourselves for nearly 3 hours in the evening, quite an unusual occurrence. Once the kids all returned home at about 8:30, we started a bon fire.

Sunday was our planned trip to CoCo Key Water Resort to make up for the trip we couldn't take on their birthday. As expected, we closed the place down.

More adventures this weekend... stay tuned.

Weekend in Pics

Christmas Meme

Shannon over at Other-Motherhood (a private blog) tagged me for a Christmas meme. Yes, folks, it's that time already! I don't normally do these, but I'm ready for the Christmas season and thought it sounded fun.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Primarily wrapping paper.

2. Real tree or Artificial? I grew up with artificial. Carie grew up not having a tree as their tradition. We opted to do a real tree and thought we’d continue that tradition. We did that for a long long time then one recent year we took the easy route and got a pre-lit artificial. I’m seriously hooked, for now.

3. When do you put up the tree? Anytime after Thanksgiving Day… quite possibly that weekend. We are thinking that outdoor lights might go up this weekend, depending on the weather... and the sickness factor. Carie is currently down for the count.

4. When do you take the tree down? After New Year's.

5. Do you like eggnog? Nope. But I’m not sure I’ve even tried it.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Hmmm… I don’t know.

7. Hardest person to buy for? The parents… on both sides.

8. Easiest person to buy for? Spencer, he wants one of everything!

9. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes. I know we have some kid sets but I don’t recall if we have a nicer (adult) one or not. This is Carie’s mom’s thing and we’ve always enjoyed her many many many nativity scenes.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? I’ve done both. I like to mail them, but I’m also not good about getting them in the mail.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Not going to go there.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Movie? Who has time to watch movies?

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? This is kind of a new thing (in the past couple of years) for us, but we start collecting items as we come across them. I remember coming across a bunch of Christmas stuff in July this year. We’ve got a lot of our shopping done, most of which is for our kids (including Santa gifts!) and I’m pretty much done shopping for Carie... including the kids shopping for her. We’ve got shopping left to do for our extended families and my extended extended family where we exchange names and haven’t done so yet. Some of them are even wrapped!

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Yes

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Hmm… this is a tough one. We are settling into some new traditions and the food isn’t a focus like they used to be. Though last year Carie discovered a recipe for cinnamon rolls / monkey bread that was easy, delicious, and perfect for Christmas morning. I suspect that will become a tradition.

16. Lights on the tree? Yes! Absolutely!

17. Favorite Christmas song? I love singing all the traditional songs at Church on Christmas Eve. Especially Silent Night. It will be nice when the kids are older and we can resume going to the midnight service on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately the family service isn’t an option for us given that we celebrate with my family that evening.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? We stay fairly close to home. No overnights anywhere.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's? Yes

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Angel

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Both… and then some. We celebrate with my family on Christmas Eve. We don’t open any of our family gifts on Christmas Eve; those are saved for Christmas morning. We then celebrate with my Dad’s extended family the Saturday after Christmas. And we often don’t celebrate with Carie’s family until New Year’s Day.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? The family drama. It always starts the first week of November.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? Growing up my Grandmother had a tradition of gifting us an ornament every year. She would give it to us at Thanksgiving so we could put it on the tree that year. So, I’ve got a lot of Hallmark ornaments. And while my series has retired, she is now gifting ornaments to our kids. We’ve got some other favorite ornaments, but no theme or color.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Grandma’s cranberry jell-o and her stuffing. I know her stuffing recipe is a long time family recipe but I don’t know that the cranberry jell-o recipe is.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? Peace

I tag whoever would like to have fun with it!

(Backing Up To) Halloween 2008

Deciding on costumes... Very early on Ellie had decided that she would be a ghost. She made her decision and she stuck with it. I found her a ghost costume on Craigslist and we were all happy.

Abby thought about being a ghost, a Dracula (I think), and something else. I don't really recall all the options we bounced around, but once we thought she was settled on something she changed her mind in the final days. We had everything to assemble any of her costume choices, except the ghost. She now wanted to be a ghost. We discussed making her a costume but Carie ended up finding this one pretty reasonable. We really loved Ellie's version of the ghost costume and I wish we would have had enough time to get a second one. And then she ended up losing the hood part of her costume and we went with plan B. The face paint.

Spencer was pretty easy. Last year after Halloween I found this rocket costume on clearance through Disney. It was such a huge steal (with free shipping no less) that I couldn't pass it up. I didn't even care if he actually wore it "for" Halloween; we thought he would at least have fun with it.



















The celebrations all began Thursday morning when Spencer had his Halloween party at preschool. We had an eye appointment for Ellie that morning and then arrived at preschool just after the festivities had gotten started. All the kids had a great time. I did get to snap a few photos that morning.















Then Thursday evening was Spooktacular at Abby & Ellie's school. Carie and I helped get the event kicked off a few weeks ago and then we helped out a little that evening. It turned out pretty well, though I do have some ideas floating around in my head that I might share to switch things up a bit in the future. I need to get them written down! Bottom line, the kids had a great time! Abby managed to lose a portion of her ghost costume, somewhere around the time we were doing spin art cookie decorating. It has yet to show up and I imagine it won't. I didn't get a single photo taken that evening!

Friday afternoon I went looking for white face paint (due to the above incident) and was lucky to find some. Though, after looking at some of the pictures it looks more like a face mask than anything else. Oh well, it seemed to look okay that evening!

We tried to get dinner in before trick-or-treating. Abby & Ellie did great with the "you must eat your dinner before you go" ultimatum. Spencer though could have cared less! We finally were on our way at about 6:30 with the kids trick-or-treating with some friends. Spencer took a while to warm up. He didn't want anyone to look at him. Kind of hard to pull off on Halloween night! Then he insisted that I go up to the door with him and he wanted me to do all the talking. I was (mostly) happy to go to the door with him... we could have done without the whining... but it was helpful for me to navigate him around things since his rocket costume was a little bulky.















From left to right... Spencer (hiding), Malien, Alexis, Lexi, Abby, Ellie, Jenna.

The kids kept going, and going, and going. Finally someone decided they were thirsty and it dawned on us that it would have been brilliant to have been prepared with a water bottle. At this point we are a fair distance from home and I just know that the walk home would not be ideal. So I opt to go get the van and some beverages. When I started walking towards home I realized just how far we had gone. I finally make it home, get beverages, get in the van and head towards them. I met up with them and they were ready to go home. But once home they hit up a few of our close neighbors that they didn't get to earlier. Then we decide to go trick-or-treat at Katie & Steve's house. We arrived at about 8:30 and stayed far too late, especially since Spencer's basketball game the next morning was at 8:30 am.

When it was all said and done, the kids collected 12 pounds of candy. Yes, TWELVE pounds of candy between the 3 of them. It was so much that I just had to weigh it with our kitchen scale. Ellie collected the most with 5 1/2 pounds. Abby collected 3 1/2 pounds and Spencer collected 3 pounds. The thing is, Abby & Ellie hung together the whole night. Hmmmmm....

It was so late when we got home Friday night that they didn't go through their bags to really check out their loot. But Saturday afternoon they dumped them out to take a good look. They selected their favorite pieces to keep in their own little Ziploc bags and then offered up the remaining loot to the Candy Fairy. That night at bedtime they set out their bags for the Candy Fairy and by morning she had delivered them some cool prizes. Abby & Ellie got the new Tinkerbell movie to share and a couple Fairy books that they didn't already have. Spencer got an airplane rocket blaster thing that I got stuck in the tree on the first attempt. Nothing like standing outside, on a Sunday morning after the time change, in your backyard, in your "robot" (i.e. robe), fishing an airplane out of your tree with a 14' tree trimmer pole. Thankfully we did get it down!

Father's Day

Even though we are a 2-mom family, we still recognize and celebrate this holiday. Carie called her dad to wish him a great Father's Day, we sent many cards to him though they will arrive quite late (because we suck), we sent cards to my Grandpa (again, late), and we had dinner with my family... my parents, my brothers & their families. It was another great opportunity to witness our unbelievable family dynamics and dysfunctions. We continue to be amazed and we wish it could be so very different.

Since we were headed to Lincoln for the majority of the day anyways (thanks to the nap schedule), I suggested leaving a bit earlier to get some fun family time in. The plan (made at 10pm Saturday night) was to head to the Children's Zoo. A place we really enjoy going and it opens in the morning unlike our other favorite spots that don't open until noon or 1.

That morning we woke to a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, pounding rain, and a bit of hail. Clearly we should have checked the weather before coming up with our plan. Hmm... now what? After wasting too much time checking the weather report, we decide to get ready to go and leave town as planned. After all, everything was packed and ready to go. Any responsible parent packing for a day trip with young kids knows the effort going into packing and preparing.

The kids woke up in incredible moods! Hooray! It was so nice to have happy children in the morning. That didn't last long before the complaining ensued. I remember one point in our drive where I was all like... "Seriously, is this attitude really necessary or at all beneficial to anyone?" Stellar parenting on my part, I know. But seriously! Weather wise, once we get going it appeared that the sky was clearing off and it turned out to be an incredible morning and the most perfect day to go to the zoo. We arrived to our destination and everyone was ready to have fun.

They were very excited that the butterfly garden was open!












Ticklish spot...













Don't squash that butterfly...

















After our morning adventures, we headed to my parents house to get the stinky children cleaned up and get Spencer his much needed nap. The kids had some good downtime and enjoyed playing with their cousin while Carie and I got some food ready to take to dinner (to my brother's house) and were able to relax a bit ourselves.

After Spencer's nap we headed over to my brother's house for dinner. We ate, chatted for a bit, cleaned up, got the kids into their jammies, and hit the road for home. They were all tired. It was early, but still approaching bedtime. We opted to not use any video entertainment which sent one sassy girl into quite the fit while the other girl fell asleep. This does happen to be the same sassy girl previously mentioned. This has been going on for a bit now and we are ready to move out of this phase. The boy was lobbying for us to comply with his sister's demands. Suffice it to say, no one was really happy.