more preschool holiday decor

All through December, the goodies kept coming home in Amelia's backpack...here is a wreath containing the letters she knew on sight when quizzed:

 This was made during M week:

The precious nativity diorama she made.  She made the clay figures, painted them, and added faces herself.  I hope we can figure out how to preserve it from year to year:

 Her letter to Santa:

 A Christmas tree with thumbprint ornaments:

the sweetest trees

After a couple years of failed gingerbread kit attempts, I was inspired by pinterest to make a "gingerbread" forest out of waffle cones and icing:

Carley is 5!

After Seth's first basketball game, we drove to Clemmons for Carley's birthday party.  First we went to play with Nickolas, and Seth actually stayed there for a while and the boys came to skate mid-party.  Here are the BFFs skating together:

 And Seth doing his thing:

Unfortunately, Amelia was very overwhelmed seeing so many of her old classmates, and really needed a lot of TLC to make it through the afternoon.  I was so glad to see so many of my preschool mommy friends, though!

my other tree

I will have to get a picture of our outside decor at night...we are the only people on the street with a big inflatable, but so far the HOA hasn't come out to get us.  The president lives right next door, and he likes it...anyways, I bought some round ornaments from the dollar bins at Target, and I have decorated the two little trees in the front yard:

I have always love seeing ornaments outside in other people's yards; I'm tickled I can do it now myself.  It makes me smile every time I drive down the driveway!

mindful gray

I forgot to mention...Veteran's Day, Nathan and I painted the bonus room SW Mindful Gray.  We LOVE it. I need to find the perfect curtains, and then I'll be able to post official before/after pictures of this room.  For now:

And here is one of the quirks of our new home...the bonus room was originally unfinished.  The previous owners finished it, and then placed this tiny door that connects the bonus room to our bedroom:

It's actually really nice, because we can sneak up/downstairs while the kids are asleep, and the back stairs are an easy way to/from the laundry closet.  The only downside is you can unintentionally end up chasing each other around in circles because there are two sets of stairs!

SouthPark Santa

hoopster

As soon as tennis finished, Seth asked if he could play basketball this fall.  We haven't tried any team sports since soccer was such a fiasco when he was 4.  Then he went to that first Bobcats game, and he REALLY wanted to play.  So I signed him up at the Y.  He has practice Friday nights and games Saturday mornings, so he's pretty content to laze the rest of Saturday away.  On the flip side, it's not affecting school at all.  Last Saturday he had his first game.  They had ten kids there, so each kid got to play two quarters.  Sitting the bench during the first quarter:

  

He's #7.  Seth was passed the ball right after I took this picture, and he scored his team's only 2 points for the game.  They lost 16-2.  He also had three rebounds and two steals (or vice versa).  He played the second and third quarters and was pretty darn tired by the end of the third.  You don't run back and forth that much in practice!  There are several little sisters in the league, so for the most part Amelia is entertained and we can watch the game.  

bright blessings

I've noticed that after I've had a bad day (or three), an opportunity will fall in my lap where I know I've been able to be a blessing in someone else's life, and it causes me to refocus on what's important.  With the excitement of decorating, the kids were quickly spiraling into a bad case of the "I wants".  There is a local company that provides birthday parties to homeless children, and they advertised a stocking stuffing event.  You brought the contents, they provided the stockings.  I went through my stash of stuff, and we went and made two stockings, one for a girl Amelia's age, and one for a boy Seth's age.  I tried to really emphasize that this was all those children were going to get for Christmas.  

The group also provided a lot of fun games and some yummy hot chocolate, so I think it ended up being more fun and less a service project for the kids, but I tried.  At least I know we've helped two little kids out. The week after that, Seth's school did a glove and hat drive, and Amelia's school collected gifts for baby Jesus, which are really going to be given away to children in need.  Our neighborhood did a food drive last weekend, and I've heard that we donated 565 pounds of food!  The food pantries are always in need!  Donate if you can!

5 minute projects

We still have curtains and pictures to hang in Amelia's room, but it's a little closer to done.  I made a magnet board for Amelia's closet:

I also finally got around to putting up the wall decals I bought for her room at Target.

 She loves them!

stick 'em up

Taking a break from the holidays for some more house updates...

My mom gave Seth these Angry Birds wall decals...he decided to decorate his closet doors with them:

Only a couple days later, I found the Disney princess set Lisa and Michael had given her for her birthday.  The house went on the market the week after her birthday, so we never put them up.  She chose to put them on the inside of her closet door, which is great, because her door is rarely closed during the daytime, anyways.

new version of an old favorite

There is an updated version of an old carol being sung at our house:

"Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree,

You're really made of plastic.

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree,

Now the boys will breathe fantastic"

After the holidays last year, I bought an artificial tree.  It moved with us, and on December 1st we pulled it out of our storage closet and it was up in under 10 minutes.  I got a great deal on the tree, but by adding the storage bag, I guess it cost about what a tree would from the lot.  So next year we'll start reaping the rewards of no longer having that expense.  This year we are reaping the rewards of Nathan being able to breathe well!  It's a pretty tree, with lots of room underneath for presents.  All our other holiday decor found homes around the house, and so far we have refrained from purchasing anything new.  I wrapped the paintings in the "fancy room" with holiday paper.  We're eating off the holiday dishes I found last year at the consignment shop (that matched the starter set Lisa gave us the year we were married).  It's been unseasonably warm lately, but the inside of our house is festive!

walking and strolling

Last Saturday afternoon we were busy.  The church that holds Amelia's preschool was hosting a Walk Through Bethlehem.  It used to be an annual event, but they'd taken the past three years off.  It exceeded our expectations:

 This is the same room the consignment sale was held in.  It was completely transformed into a marketplace:

There were two areas with live animals, but none of my pictures turned out.  We enjoyed watching a scrappy chicken that kept trying to make a run for it!  Then we walked downtown to watch the lighting of the tree.

 Let it snow!

preschool is getting ready for Christmas!

Preschool has taken it up a notch in regards to projects in preparation for the holidays.  Amelia has brought home a countdown to Christmas:

A stocking saying she wants a DreamLight for Christmas:

One day they had a school-wide Santa's workshop, and I picked up two elves at 1pm:

 And the nativity story per Amelia:

More soon...she's bringing stuff home faster than I can upload them all!

Christmas came early...

A neighbor asked if Amelia would like some dress up clothes...something along the lines of "I have a trash bag full...I don't really care what you do with it, I just want it out of my house."  Amelia spent an entire afternoon trying on all her new clothes.  I have donated the duplicates of the ones we already had, and threw away a few that were in bad shape, but Amelia has more than doubled her dress up clothes, and she's thrilled!  Thanks, Liz!

afternoon out

Our area does a great job announcing community events...they string a banner advertising across the main road, and we have to drive past it every time we go to school.  The local theater advertised the Nutcracker, and since tickets were only $5 for adults and $3 for children, I figured it was worth a try when Amelia said she wanted to see it.  Here we are on our afternoon out:

It was the perfect length, 90 minutes with an intermission, but it was mostly children in the performance, and it captured Amelia's attention the whole time.  While we were gone, Seth introduced Nathan to the new park we had found, and they took a 4+ mile hike.  Hurray for fun Sundays!

Black Friday 2012

Oh, we had big plans for Black Friday.  The moms decided to go shopping...meeting at 6:30am, where we knocked out Target and Kohls in time for the guys to make their 10am tee time.  At our house, there was  our playground adventure, and then basketball in the driveway, and then more basketball once the dads got back...

...and if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, we all headed into Charlotte for the evening.  Nathan, Marie, Eric, and the four big boys went to watch the Bobcats game:

Elise, Chad, and Brian had gone to the late matinee of Polar Express at IMAX, so Amelia and I hung out at the condo and helped baby-sit James.  When they got back, we set up a tent for Amelia and Brian so they could watch a movie while we watched the game on TV:

It was pretty late when we got home.  Needless to say, we were worthless on Saturday.  In fact, I think I was pretty worthless the whole following week, but I'm going to say I was just taking advantage of the extra few days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year!

outside time

We were blessed with fantastic weather Thanksgiving weekend.  The boys played a LOT of basketball:

Post-meal, the moms (and Grandma Sarah) took the kids to check out the park:

On Friday, Marie and I took our kids to another park very close to our house that I had never been to before.  It was a winner, besides having a great playground, it had lots of trails to explore!

mustaches

Evan has dressed up for school a couple times with a mustache, and we always say he looks like Granddad when he does.  I found a pack of six mustaches at the Dollar Tree, and the boys had a mustache parade:

James was not impressed.  (I wasn't mean enough to put it on, I just held him while Elise did:)

After the boys were done with the mustaches, Amelia tried Seth's on:

DS

"Hmm...I saw this big boys playing with this...I like my way better..."

Enter the biggest of the big boys...

"Eeeewww!!!"

Thanksgiving 2012

We hosted the Mayse Thanksgiving this year, and Nathan's mom was nice enough to cook so I could run the Turkey Trot with Nathan and Chad.  (3 1/2 minutes off my time from last year!)  Our day started at 4:15, when Seth realized Brian was no longer sleeping in his room.  I sent him to the bathroom, and he came in to tell us the toilet wouldn't flush.  (As much as I refuse to start Black Friday shopping on Thanksgiving day, we were thankful that Walmart was open so we could buy the necessary parts to fix the toilet after the race.)  Nathan's parents arrived right before we left for the race, and by the time we got back we had a houseful of company.  We had our first-ever kids' table.  James actually sat with us, but he joined his cousins for the second-ever seven cousin picture:

More soon...most of our Thanksgiving antics deserve their own posts!

color run

Way back in April or May, I signed up to do the Color Run 5k at Charlotte Motor Speedway with some former coworkers.  Our group shrunk dramatically due to pregnancies and other commitments, but I met Cathy and one of her friends for a very fun morning.  Here I am pre-race:

I have been running consistently this fall, so I ran like it was any other day, which was very hard to do, because most people were walking the course.  I look this picture as soon as the first color station came into sight.  This picture is deceiving...this was the most uphill 5k I think I have ever done!

You really don't get a lot of color on you during the race.  You get it at the post-race color festival:

It's just colored corn starch, and allegedly harmless.  Here are Cathy and I on our way back to the car:

Yes, my teeth were blue.  It doesn't look too bad, but when I got home and removed the headband and saw what my skin normally looked like, you could tell a huge difference.  I didn't get all the color off in the first shower, and I kind of had goth girl eyes all day.  It was so much fun!

turkey talk

More preschool projects: