Weekly Happenings: We have had a wonderful week off. We celebrated Thanksgiving, decorated for Christmas, and have had a lot of family time. It’s going to be hard to go back to normal tomorrow, but at least we only have three weeks until Christmas hits.
The Weekly Weather: It’s been a real mixed-bag. Not too many cold days, but a mix of cool to warm, to dry, to muggy. 😀
What Paul’s Been Up To: He enjoyed his time off and used it especially wisely towards the end. He was able to be a huge help putting up our house decorations as well as the decorations for the neighborhood.
What Sarah’s Been Up To: It’s been nice sleeping in every day (tomorrow is gonna be rough, haha). I didn’t do too much out of the ordinary, really.
What Joseph’s Been Up To: He’s been enjoying his time off and is already counting down to Christmas. 🙂
What Abigail’s Been Up To: It’s really fun to see the holidays come alive for her this year. It’s been fun seeing her excitement as decorations come out.
This Week in Pictures:
She begged for some pickle, so I gave her a taste.She “said” it was yummy, but I’m not sure if she convinced herself.We’re working on the “small bites” concept. Sometimes it works great…other times, she shoves half a tortilla in her mouth. Oh well…She told me she was getting ready to go to the jungle. 🙂I once again decided to make pecan pie from scratch (including the crust) for Thanksgiving dinner. It turned out so yummy!We took the kids to get haircuts the day before Thanksgiving. Abigail got a bang trim.Joseph got a high-and-tight which he loves since it means he doesn’t have to comb his hair, haha.She sure loves her daddy!Joseph was teaching her how to put stuff in her pockets.I pulled three play necklaces out of her pocket along with two play bracelets. When I went to change her diaper later I found two more bracelets that hadn’t quite made it into the pocket…luckily they were in the front of her diaper which was just wet, so I was able to easily disinfect them.Homemade pie requires homemade whipped cream.We got her her own tree in the hopes that she would leave the big tree alone. It’s only kind of working, so I still made sure to only put non-breakable ornaments on the bottom of it.I had to put this guy up high so that little hands wouldn’t be too rough.My palm frond reindeer and our Christmas countdown.The Santa I made as a teenager, my “retro”-looking candy-cane sign, and one of my favorite Christmas signs.Lights everywhere!My “kitchen” angel that’s made of dishcloths and a pot-holder.Constantly redecorating.Our tree! Our old one had about half the lights not working, so we opted to get a new one this year since we found one for a good deal. Paul gave our old one to a guy in the neighborhood who mentioned needing to get another one. He’ll probably just do what we did last year which was to just put another strand of lights on the tree to fill in the burned out strand.My piano set up!We just added this sign this year. It’s my favorite holiday quote.She found her light-up necklace!Little elf.We went out to eat last night and I couldn’t help but snap this shot. The fog, the old buildings, the light poles decorated for Christmas…it was kind of magical.Santa hat is on even before regular clothes, haha.I love when Paul “wraps” our garage door.We added these two light-up soldiers this year.Gas prices keep dropping…I love when they dip below $2/gallon!The front with the lights on.The front entrance with the lights on.Happy sigh… A new quote for a new month (tomorrow). 😊
So, we decided to head out to the zoo tonight to check out the zoo lights. I was a bit worried that it would be crazy-crowded, but surprisingly, it wasn’t. It was actually the smallest turnout that we’ve ever seen, I think. We were ecstatic about that, haha. We much prefer it that way. We were able to wander around and check out all the fun stuff that the zoo had to offer without having that crowded feeling. I guess checking it out before December actually has its perks. 😉
This truck was just parked in the parking lot. The entire side of it (including the design) was actually covered in lights.Da boys!Abigail REALLY wanted to crawl under the ropes to get to these hippos. There were several light animals (a rhino, a giraffe, a lion, and these hippos), but I was too busy keeping her where she was supposed to be to get pictures of the other ones.Abigail loved this fishing game.Joseph liked it, too. There were a bunch of different fish and sea creatures. Each one had information on the specific animal (if it was an animal that needed to be protected from over-fishing or if it was an okay fish to not “throw back”.We happened to be first in line for the carousel, and Abigail made a beeline for this gorilla. When it came time to get down after the ride was over, she made sure to hug its leg, pat its face, and tell it goodbye.Words fail me, haha. This dragon is Joseph’s favorite and he was also excited to get a light-up dinosaur wand (Abigail got a light-up snowflake wand, but I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of her with it).Checking out the *ahem* “snow”.Trying to get two active kids to both look at the camera at the same time can be challenging at times.Family selfie with the zoo lights sign in the background.
Weekly Happenings: This past week didn’t really hold anything that was too out of the ordinary. This morning, though, we decided to kick off the beginning of Thanksgiving Break by visiting Bass Pro Shop. They already have all the fun games and activity areas set up for the kids for Christmas. We went ahead and got a picture with Santa (since it wasn’t too busy yet…once December hits, it gets crazier and crazier). Last year, Abigail didn’t want anything to do with Santa…that was a stranger-danger person she didn’t know. She didn’t cry, but there was no way she was going to sit on his lap unless I was right next to her…and even then, the picture captures her trying to slither out of his grasp, haha. This year was completely different. She ran up to Santa and gave him a huge hug and willingly climbed onto his lap. It was awesome. She also waved goodbye to him, saying, “Bye, Santa!” 😊
The Weekly Weather: It’s been mild, which has been nice.
What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been busy at work. He’s taking this next week off (well, he did tell them to call him if something broke and needed fixing), which will be nice.
What Sarah’s Been Up To: Not too much out of the ordinary for me…
What Joseph’s Been Up To: He has been learning a lot about the Iroquois Confederacy in GT. He liked that they worked together to try to create peace. He even got to use beads to come up with a design for a wampum belt which he thought was pretty cool. He’s continuing to work hard in his regular class and even got to move his behavior clip up to blue. They have everyone start on green for great behavior, but clips can either be moved up to blue when they are doing an exceptional job or down to various other colors if they’re having challenges. They always get to move clips back to green at the end of each day, unless they are on blue…they do get to stay on blue. He was also excited to tell me that the second grade classes won the turkey bowl. 🙂
What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s been her typical happy-go-lucky self. Yesterday, I was coming down the stairs when the light all of a sudden went off. I finished coming down the stairs to find her by the light switch with a big grin on her face. Then she yelled, “Surprise, Mom! Happy Birthday!” After she said this, she held up her hand as if she were holding something in it and said, “Here! Blow out the candle!” I’m telling you…it’s a daily adventure raising her.
This Week in Pictures:
Paul snapped this one of me and Abigail before we headed into Bass Pro Shop.Giving Joseph some pointers.Playing with Lincoln Logs.She also liked to try to stack these things up on top of an abandoned tower.Bow and arrow fun. He was excited when he actually got a duck this year.What Joseph does, she wants to do…so Paul helped a bit. She was quite ecstatic when that arrow let loose.This is one of those then-and-now pictures that Google Pictures puts together. It’s crazy how much she’s grown in a year!I think this is one of the best pictures with Santa, yet.
