Happy Holidays! This past month has been a blur between traveling, sports, careers, school, etc... We had a wonderful Thanksgiving x 2 because we celebrated with Ben and Erin (Kyra and Bennett), Lois/Grammy, Matt and Jill (Emmett and Whitney). We attempted a cousins photo, that went over 'well' as you can see....
We had leftovers at my Mom's and Jamie's, and also had lots of cousins to play with. The little one by Ava is Samantha's daughter (Jamie's daughter)... The kids are growing up so fast! My Mom and Jamie continue to live in Africa for his job at Marathon Oil. His project is complete in the next few months, so they will decide if they stay longer or return to MN. We are hoping they return back home!
Caden is a very creative writer. He had to write a story about a turkey who is disguised. He did this in class. I just LOVE how he used all caps in his letter, "I CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN!" Haha, so funny!
The day after Thanksgiving, the girls went Black Friday shopping at MOA and the boys/kids hung out and played. We returned home with a busy schedule planned.
Our tradition continues... the weekend of Thanksgiving, we always go to Pleasant Valley to see Mr. and Mrs. Claus and cut down our tree. The boys were so funny this year. They just marched right up there, sat on their laps and gave them an earful of what they were hoping for this Christmas.
Caden asked for a snowboard, snow skis, Netflix, and a basketball hoop.
Cooper asked for pretty much the same things!
Oh we so wish we could freeze time right now when everything is still so magical and pure!
We all looked for that perfect tree....
At last we found it! It was a nice, round, Balsam tree.
Grammy came along so that she could get her tree too!
After our hayride back and some cocoa, we went home, decorated the house inside and out, and were ready for the Christmas season!
Our Christmas wouldn't be complete without our elf, David. He arrived on December 1st to make us all laugh and cause some holiday mischief. He arrived stuck inside of the balloon with the words, "PLEH" written on the inside. We quickly popped the balloon and welcomed the little rascal back "home."
David wrote us a friendly reminder that he is ALWAYS watching (this would be our favorite part).
The adventures began.... jam session with Pete the Cat, Cooper's classroom book/journal activity (perfect timing!)
Cooper has had only one yellow light at school (verbal warning) but he came home with a pink light (warning) because he was loud in the bathrooms and during choice time. David wrote him a note and was inside of his backpack pocket the next morning. Cooper was totally freaked out. He has been on green light or above since then.
Inside the popcorn popper.
Hunting in the basement and fishing in the toilet~ can you guess whose idea this was?!?!
David loves to make messes when he bakes at night!
He made a batch of mini- chocolate chip cookies. We ate those for breakfast :)
David got into a snowmobile accident. Thankfully, he had his own stash of Elf on the Shelf band-aids and the ambulance came to fix him up :)
We went to the Chippewa Christmas parade. It was a perfect/mild night to stand outside! The boys saw Santa for the second time in a week!
I don't love to do holiday baking, but since it is a tradition, I just deal with the horrible mess and then the temptation to eat all the goodies. We had Caden's friend, Trevor over to make cookies with us.
They mostly ate the dough. Thankfully, no one came down with food poisoning.
When all was said and done, we had a HUGE batch of cut-outs, peanut butter balls, fudge, and pretzel wreaths. Plenty to carry us through the season!
Caden had his second swim meet last weekend. Because we had a family Christmas in the Dells, he only swam two events in the morning. He swam the IM relay (free style was Caden's leg) and then he did the freestyle individual race.
His IM relay team took 2nd place. They worked so hard!
It's hard to see him in these pictures, but he decided for his freestyle start that he was going to dive off the blocks. He is getting much better with this, so we just said "OK!" He did it and took 3rd place out of 5 kids in his heat. He shaved off a few seconds from his time too!
He was happy to be done with his events as he didn't want to miss seeing his cousins and Santa (for the 3rd time)... he now realizes that Santa has brothers who help him visit children too (eek!)
After the family meal, gift opening and Santa, it was time for the kids to swim their little hearts out!
Hockey is well underway. The boys are enjoying playing so far. Caden's team has had two games so far, they lost the first game and won the second. They also had to take turns playing goalie, which Caden was indifferent about. He won't typically play goalie, they just wanted to be sure all had a chance to try it....whew! I hated watching my brother play goalie... too stressful!
He looks so little!
I had a good laugh the other day when Cooper told me he was paying solitaire on Chris' phone. I didn't believe him until he showed me the screen and sure enough, he actually was playing it correctly. Holy cow!
And then this happened... Caden apparently found an old stacker from my classroom. He took it upon himself to Fiskars cut (fancy scissors) labels, labeled the drawers, and then organized supplies inside. He then gave it to Cooper so that he had his own table supplies in his bedroom. I thought that was so cute. Of course, he is a teacher's son :)
We had brunch with Santa at the golf course and Caden decided that this Santa was St. Nick, Santa's brother. This is getting tricky!
They still humored this "other" Santa and told him all that they hoped for (which amazingly, was still the same list they gave the first Santa).
Caden's Boy Scout Troop had their raingutter regata last night. Caden won two rounds, but then lost to an older kid. He GREATLY improved on his blowing skills since last year, ha!
Soooo close!
Our little WOLF!
All kids received a ribbon, he was happy about that!
Me too wanted to try it out.
Way to go Buddy!
And finally, one of the major events these past few weeks happened three days ago. I went back into surgery to have the screw removed from my tibia. After my ACL surgery, I had two screws inserted because my bone was so soft from the injury. One screw will dissolve into the bone, but the surgeon advised that I get the other one out as it may cause problems down the road. I had a nice nap and the screw was out. I needed to take the week off of work (forced relaxation), which has been good. I finished wrapping presents and have been able to catch up on emails and such. Besides not working out for another month, this long nightmare is now officially over!
Pre-surgery, they opened up the long scar that you see and removed the screw which was located underneath.
And here is a $30,000++ procedure/screw just as proof that I had a screw in my leg. Caden and Cooper just love this little show and tell memento.
