Some favorites...

These are some of my favorite things that are around our house right now. 

A favorite decoration that reminds me what this season is really about...

And a favorite non-religious decoration that the kids love...

Apparently Ezra needs a little more exposure to the real Christmas story, as his manger scene (below) is a little inappropriate...  (that's Mary in the stable alone with a wise man)

One of my favorite Christmas books that my mom bought for us a few years ago...

One of our family traditions that we had when I was growing up was to do one big puzzle over the Christmas vacation so I am trying to do that this year.  I am the only one working on it so far so it could be a whole winter project...

We are going to be celebrating Christmas with Tim's family on Christmas night.  We also get to go see his brother and sister-in-law and our niece and nephew today for some relaxed fun.  Our church is having a candlelight service tonight and no church tomorrow.  I am looking forward to all of that.    I am feeling much more in the Christmas mood after being able to stay home yesterday and let the kids play and do a little Christmas baking.  We made gingerbread men from scratch yesterday and I was able to make somy yummy snacks for our small group Bible study Christmas party that we had last night.  We are very blessed to have a wonderful group of 4 other couples that we have Bible study with once a week.  We had an awesome time with them last night at the party.  Without kids!!  I'm glad the shopping is done and now its time to relax and enjoy time with family and contemplate the birth of Christ, the real reason for the season...

Happy Birthday Grammy!

We celebrated Grammy Brinkley's birthday last weekend.  I attempted to make my first rolled up cake recipe, and it was a success!  Chocolate filling with almond cake and whipped cream frosting!

 We drove downtown Seattle to see a display of gingerbread houses that are in a hotel lobby.  They were definately made by professionals and were definately amazing!

Cute smile!

Before...

After....

He even talks a little funny now!

Decorating the Christmas tree!

November

Thanksgiving was a little sad for me this year.  With all of my family in Michigan and Florida, and Tim's parents in Texas, it was pretty quiet.  We did get invited to have Thanksgiving with some friends, which we did.  We had fun and it was so nice of them to have us over, but it was still a bit of a struggle for me not to have any of my extended family around.  It was a good chance to think about what we are thankful for, though.  Its hard for me to really appreciate and be properly thankful for a healthy family, a warm house, the jobs we have.  So easy to take those big things for granted. 

 I was also thankful that I got almost 2 weeks away from subbing since Tim's mom went out of town.  It was very relaxing to only have to worry about taking care of the kids and the house and not rushing out to schools in the mornings.   

 I did take some of that time to do some Christmas shopping and to do some mystery shopping.  It was a nice opportunity to earn some extra cash.  We are going to use it to replace our portable dvd player which broke a few weeks ago.  It is almost a necessity in our house on long car trips, airplane rides, or for poor Ezra who has to sit for very long periods in gyms for wrestling right now.  I even went to Walmart for black Thursday sales to get a new player, and was there for 3 hours in the craziness (never done that before, probably will never do it again) only to get it home and realize it doesn't have a battery you can charge.  That is one of the functions we needed.  I didn't do enough research.  Thankfully Walmart took it back 2 days later.  We are going with a different model from Best Buy.

I did find these nifty photo holders at Kohls.  We are using them to put spelling lists/memory verses/etc at a place on the table where the kids can see them while they are eating.  This bit of organization is really helping me not lose those important papers and is helping the learning happen more easily.  Ezra is learning our address and cell phone numbers!

We also are still surprised to find how long the leaves stay on the trees out here.  Our fall leaves were finally all down and we did the final cleanup this weekend.  I still can't believe we were raking leaves in December!  So nice to have it done though.  My arms are still sore today from the weekend's work.  We also have been surprised to find several of the mornings this last week to see a hummingbird at our feeder in our window!  We looked online and discovered that there is one kind, Anna's hummingbird, that stays here all year.  I will be filling my feeder today so she will keep coming back!

Getting our craft on

Anyone I have talked to about crafts with my kids will know that my kids are not big crafters.  Much to my lament.  I don't think of myself as a very creative person but with so many good ideas online, who needs creativity?  I can follow step by step directions with the best of them.  However, my children are pretty resistant to anything that has to do with crafts.  They would much rather be shooting or destroying things rather than creating anything.  That is why I was pleasantly surprised that lately a few little crafty projects have gone well. 

This first picture is the result of a contest I announced with Austin and Christian - who could build the coolest lego ship with only one color of legos.  One of these is mine, one is Austin's.  I'll let you guess which is which.  Christian and Ezra made some too but their ships got destroyed before I could  take a picture.  I wouldn't classify this as a craft, but it was a fun little project.  Anyone who is a mom reading this I'm sure can understand the love/hate relationship I have with legos.

This was a marble painting project Christian and Ezra did but they didn't last very long at it.  I sort of had to make them finish.  Oh well.

Christian has been surprising me in that he has enjoyed sitting down to color.  I have never had a child that likes to color.  He actually finished a whole page or two and let me color with him.  He even stuck with it for 10-15 min.  I really enjoy those moments when my children are occupied with quiet activities.

This is one of Chrisitan's pages from school.  He has been really excited about learning to write letters, numbers, and simple words.

 ...but what I really loved was the doodling I found on the back.  He even wrote about me!

These are our "in-process" Christmas ornaments for this year.  I picked something very simple which would hopefully mean less headaches!  Ezra's penguins are what we are calling "penguins in the dark".

Wrestling

We signed Austin and Christian up for wrestling this fall/winter.  Its a bit of an experiment/adventure for us since we have no experience with this sport.  We got into this mostly to give the boys some outlet for their energy with the cold weather and dark nights preventing us from playing outside.  We have been going to practices for a month now and had our first tournament this last Saturday.  It was a little crazy.  The boys are still learning what you have to do to win a match.  I had to take the boys to the tournament by myself.  With Ezra.  It was about 45 min away and it lasts all day.  Each of the boys had 3 matches at the tournament.  Christian came close to winning his second match.  The others weren't even close.  Some of the kids my boys were wrestling against had 4-6 years experience.  It was kind of hard to see them lose.  Austin did win his last match so that helped all of us feel a little better.  At this point we are not sure if this is a chance for them to grow and learn some life lessons about not always winning, or if it is just too hard to come into a sport like this.  It became obvious to me at the tournament that my kids are a little behind even at the ages of 6 and 9 because they are so new to this sport.  Its pretty personal to lose when it is one on one like these matches are and you put every ounce of your strength and energy into the wrestling and still could end up pinned on the mat.  When we left the tournament I was about 50/50 feeling like we needed to just quit.  Today I feel  a little more positive about it because it is nice to have the practice time where the boys can exercise and make friends and learn a new skill.  There is a tournament this next Saturday for just first and second year wrestlers so we are going to give that a try.  Tim will be able to come too so it should be a more positive experience for all of us.  I hope!

Wearing these singlets is a new experience for my kids!

Austin is pinning Christian during warm up time.

Christian is still such a happy kid - no matter what happens. 

Austin is fierce and always ready to try to get the first take-down.

I do have to say this tournament was the first place in my life I have ever seen a shorter line in the women's restroom than the men's.  I was also thinking how this truly is a men's sport.  Can you imagine women participating in a sport where they write your weight on your arm in black marker for everyone to see?  and your age?

Fun in the leaves

We feel so blessed to have a house that gets leaves to rake in the fall.  We were living in houses that didn't get leaves for several years in MI and when we live with Tim's parents.  We even find (well, maybe I shouldn't speak for Tim) that we don't mind the work of fall cleanup when we can have fun jumping in the piles first.  Tim's dad also made us a swing seat that we could hang from the tree.  We had a baby swing there for a while until the boys just couldn't squeeze in to in anymore!  This swing should be fun even when there are no leaves.

Tim was doing all of this with the boys when I was at work one day.  Its never as much fun if you don't have something to jump from...

Some other fun things that happened during early November...

It was driving Austin crazy that Christian had learned to cross his eyes and Austin couldn't.  It was driving Christian crazy that he couldn't whistle but Austin could.  They both took great delight in being able to do something their brother couldn't.  To their credit though, they both tried to teach the other how to do thing they wanted to do.  Austin can now cross his eyes too.  We're still working on Christian whistling...

Should I really post this???

The other night when we were washing hands for dinner Ezra was downstairs because he always realized when he comes to the kitchen sink to wash hands that he has to go potty.  Then Christian realized about 30 seconds later that he had to go too.  Let me just say that when Ezra goes potty he still uses a step to be high enough (even though he is really tall enough to not need the step and I am trying to break him of the habit).  He also takes FOREVER to pull his pants back up after and he bends way over to pull them up because he always pulls everything WAY down to his ankles before he goes.  AND he always stays on the step, right in the way, when he is pulling up his pants.  Some of you probably already know what happened.  Christian came to the kitchen where I was despairing of ever actually sitting down to dinner and said "Mom, I'm really sorry but I really had to go bad and

Ezra was in the way pulling up his pants and I went on his head".  oh. my goodness.

Halloween Fun

A little belated, but I wanted to put some Halloween and pumpkin carving pictures out there. The kids are just at that right age where trick or treating is super exciting which makes it fun for the adults too. Last year Ezra was a little unsure of walking up to strangers' houses, and some of the decorations were pretty scary for him. This year he was all about the candy though and ran to catch up if he was getting behind. He was scared (but not a bad scared) by some of the decorations this time. It wasn't raining, but pretty cold for Seattle. It was a good time all around though. We made the rule that if they asked for candy before mom and dad said they could have a piece, then mom and dad got to pick something out of their bag to keep for themselves. It only took one or two lost pieces of candy for the begging to stop... :)

Disney!

We went to Disney October 1.  It has taken me a long time to get it together to do a posting.  We went with Tim's parents and flew into Orange County.  It felt like a short flight since we are used to flying to Michigan.  It also felt pretty easy since the adults outnumbered the kids!  We spent 2 and a half days in Disney and California Adventure.  We stayed in a hotel that was within walking distance of the park.  It was hot and sunny the whole time we were there.  Felt like a little extension of summer.  The park was quite crowded but we were surprised at how fast most of the lines moved.  We were able to ride all the rides we had hoped to ride at least once while we were there.  Needless to say, the boys were thrilled with everything they saw.  It was definately a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of us.  Jim and Kaye even watched the boys for us one night so Tim and I could go back and ride some of the rides that were too scary for the boys.  Our feet were so tired by the end of each day - but it was well worth it!  We didn't even lose any kids in the crowd. 

We rode the Buzz Lightyear ride several times.  It was Ezra's favorite.

 It was really great that Ezra could ride so many rides.  There weren't many things he would have wanted to ride that he was not tall enough for.

 It was really hard to get the kids to cooperate for a family picture.  Can anyone relate??!!

 This was the only character we saw that we could get a picture with.  I think his name is James Sullivan. 

 This was a painted wall at California Adventure.  Stuff like this just amazed me - and it was everywhere!  Right next to this we took Christian and Austin on the Hollywood Tower of Terror.  That was one of the few rides that we probably shouldn't have taken them on.  It was a little too scary but they recovered quickly!

Climbing Tarzan's tree house...

 We often had to split up and have someone stay back with Ezra and ride calmer rides while the rest of the group did things that were a little more adventurous, so he had his picture taken a lot...

 Thank you, Grammy and Pa, for such a wonderful trip!!