The Third Day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas, we did a little shopping. 

Eva had taken the initiative to buy presents for everyone during the Santa's Workshop at school.  She took her own money, picked out her own gifts and really showcased her giving nature. 

Last night, while Eva was a basketball practice, I took Alex and Layla to a few stores to pick out gifts for each other.  While we were hugely unsuccessful at the first two stores, Alex did manage to get his gifts and I only have two gifts left to purchase...even if we had to make a third attempt. 

Layla behaved as if she had never been in a store in her life!  The idea of picking out things for others was lost on her.  She did thoroughly enjoy running through the stores shouting how much she wanted EVERYTHING.  She proceeded to point out everything in the stores that she didn't have exclaiming she "needed" it.  If it wasn't so annoying it would have been cute.

Finally, I gave up and took Eva and Layla home.  Alex and I then actually shopped. 

Oh, Alex!  That kid melts my heart.  While I was busy adding items to my cart and checking things off my list, Alex picked out a present for me, went and purchased it by himself and took it out to the car to keep it hidden from me.  He is such a sweetheart.

So, we are down to the final, final list.  I still need to pick up some gifts from Layla as well as Goddaughter's and Godfather's.  Then I am FINISHED (and CANNOT shop NO MORE)!

Grace still needs to get presents.  Hopefully she has saved enough of her own money.  Although that is highly doubtful considering how much money she spends on fast food.

I'm hopeful that the fourth and fifth days of Christmas will be quiet and uneventful. Especially considering the kids (except Grace who is "studying" for finals) are with their dad.  I'm making another attempt this evening to get my last two gifts, picking up Jaxson from the groomers and going home to climb in bed.  Ha ha ha ha!  Who am I kidding?!?  I'll be lucky to be in bed by midnight. 

Tis the season!

Second Day of Christmas

Outdoor decorations and Cookies!

I have put up our outdoor decorations three times this Christmas season.  The first go around, the used LED lights on the porch.  But I realized that they give off a white, almost blueish, glow.  My candles, however, put out a soft yellow light.  The combo of the two was hideous.  So, I unplugged them and tried again.

I purchased new lights and the next weekend I finally got around to stringing them up.  As I was wrapping the lights around the railings, I realized that they were multi-colored lights.  I meant to buy clear lights, but somehow purchased several boxes of colored lights.  I went ahead and put them up thinking whatever, I tried.  I then noticed that none of my candles were working.  When I purchased new candles for all of my windows, I thought I had bought the ones with automatic timers.  That was not the case, though.  All of the batteries had died since originally install them since they never turned off.

I was very disappointed with the way the outside looked.  But the inside looked amazing, so I thought again, whatever.  I couldn't spend the time and money one more time to try to get it right.

But, me being me, I also couldn't just let it look ugly.

So, yesterday, I purchased five more boxes of clear lights.  I had Alex and Eva with me so I had each of them double check I was buying the right ones.  Then I bought more candles and again had the kids double check that they were the automatic timer ones.  

In the drizzle yesterday after school, I hung our outdoor decorations for the last time. 

The third time really is a charm!

For our second day of Christmas activity, we baked some cookies!  I totally cheated and bought cookie mixes instead of going from scratch.  But I do not care. It was much quicker and less messy this way.  And the kids really did do the majority of the work!  We have several more batches to make, but several more days worth of activities.

First Day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, we celebrated with a family dinner and some Christmas lights. 

There are so many Christmas activities to indulge and participate, but only one day for Christmas.  In the past, I’ve tried to cram all the festivities into just a day or two.  But as the kids get older and my time with them becomes limited due to the parenting schedule, I decided to spread the Christmas activities over the 12 days prior to Christmas.

Sunday at mass, we celebrated the third Sunday in Advent.  This “Pink” Sunday represents the Joy of the Savior’s birth.  It was also the perfect day for our family to begin our celebration with our Holiday dinner.

May the Joy of the season be upon us.

Jingle Fest 2015

This year, I was fortunate enough to get 6 tickets for Jingle Fest.  So, we decided to invite Aunt Laura and my Goddaughter, Monica.  Plus it was Eva's first concert.

We all had so much fun!  It was a late night and a rough next morning, but it was worth it.  Especially the smiles on these faces.

That's a Wrap - Soccer 2015

It's hard to believe we've reached the end of the soccer season.  I don't always remember just how busy we really were during the season until we have the first evening of no soccer practices.  Hmmm...this downtime to hang out and watch TV....I'm not sure how to handle that!  But nonetheless, it was another fantastic season and I'm so proud of how each of the kids have grown and matured over the past few months.

And they make really cute soccer players.

Parent Teacher Conferences - AWESOME!

Well another year of Parent Teacher Conferences have come and gone.  I secretly LOVE conferences.  It’s the time of year when someone else gets to tell me how fantastic my children are!  This year was no different than years past.  And after the conferences, I got to spend my evening relishing in my great parenting skills.  I know this probably sounds conceited, and that’s not my intention.  It just feels really good to get some props in the parenting department.  Similar to receiving recognition or rewards from a job well done, parent teacher conferences solidifies all of the hard work that I put in as a parent, but commends my kids on a job well done too!

So here’s the summary:

Alex is a natural born leader.  He’s very popular but doesn’t let that go to his head.  He doesn’t really even realize he is “popular” by “popular standards.”  It’s just his natural demeanor that pulls people towards him.  He is the leader of his class and his teacher couldn’t be happier with this year’s class.  Alex is always above the line and really leads by example.  He is naturally charismatic.  He’s intelligent and dots all the I’s and crosses all of the T’s, so to speak.  However, he doesn’t really go beyond the basic requirements.  Some of this is typical boy behavior, but we are encouraging to take his work to the next level.  He’s comfortably on Silver Honors but I know he is capable of Gold Honors.  He is still exceptionally protective of Monica, but not in a stifling way, just to clarify.  His teacher is intrigued by their relationship referring to them as more like twins than cousins.

Eva is the peacemaker.  She comfortably floats from core group to core group and smoothes any rough edges and mends any hurt feelings.  She befriended the two new girls in her class immediately so that they would feel comfortable in their new school.  Her teacher is over the moon about her.  She scored the highest out of everyone in her class on standardized testing…which she took standing up the entire time.  She’s incredibly intelligent but wickedly creative and really pushes the limits on the knowledge she can gain.  She asks thoughtful questions.  She has an incredible vision on how projects should be completed and an uncanny grace to delegate without being bossy.  She is always looking out for Ethan and often times reigns him back in.

Layla is the social butterfly.  She loves attention and will forfeit independence if it means she gets more of the teacher’s time.  We are working on developing her independence more and more each day, which isn’t always easy because she is the BABY!  And we will love her and baby her FOREVER!  He teacher adores her because, come one, she really is the cutest preschooler ever!  She likes to talk.  A LOT.  But listens well when told to be quiet.  She has her favorite toys that she doesn’t really like to share, but has become more tolerant of others playing with her.  She engages in imaginative play more than any other kid in her class.  She, too, at a young age is a natural leader.  Layla has started a “Pink Club” in which they wear pink on Wednesday and sit together at lunch.  I feel like we may have watched Mean Girls too many times when she was little.  I might be raising a Regina George!  But her teacher made sure to explain that she has not been mean or exclusive at all with her club.  It just so happened that she noticed that several girls were wearing pink and it happened to be a Wednesday and VOILA….”Pink Club” was born.  She will probably be the one that gives me the most run for my money, but when it comes down to it, she really is such a sweet child with a huge heart.

Thank you, Lord, for these blessings.  They truly are my greatest work.

Hero's in a Half Shell

TURTLE POWER!

Happy Halloween!

Fall Family Photos

I spent the last few days of of vacation putting the house back together from my cleaning excursion and then doing as little as possible.  I worked on editing our photo shoot pictures.  Here are the final results! 

What a beautiful family I have!

Vacation Day 4 : The Beach

Today was a ME day for vacation.  I didn’t have to take the kids to school or pick them up from school.  There were no soccer practices or games.  The day was 100% all mine.  So, I slept in as long as I could…which wasn’t much past 8 am.  Then I poured some coffee, made some lunch, packed the cooler and headed off for a day at the beach.  Well…Cuivre River.  But the closest thing we have to a beach in Missouri.  The sun was shining and the temperatures were supposed to be in the low 80’s.  I rolled the windows down, cranked the music up and got lost in thought on the back roads. 

The beach was empty when I got there, as I expected.  I exchanged my flip flops for my tennis shoes and decided to hike.  There is a nice trail that loops around the basin of the river.  The views were amazing and the terrain was a little rough in spots which made it an even better work out.  I spent about 2 hours hiking through the woods with the view of the water never far.  The smell of the trees, the crunch of the leaves, the beauty that surrounded me really made me feel like I was in an exotic place.

  

After the hike, I grabbed the cooler, blanket and chair from the car.  I kicked off my shoes, opened a book and enjoyed the afternoon in the sun.  For a while, I just sat there quietly lost in thought and meditation.

By 3pm, I packed it up to head back to the real world because I had actually scheduled a dentist appointment for myself that afternoon.  I am a crazy person.

That evening was spent quietly at home.  I poured myself into my creative pursuits and painted the turtle shells for the kids Halloween costumes.  I turned down a few offers to go out for drinks, mainly because I wanted to spend the night alone.

The shells turned out better than expected. And for the first time in a really long time, I feel completely relaxed.

Oh vacation how I love thee!

Vacation Day 3 : Cleaning

Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I was going to clean my house today!  It’s not that it was filthy per se.  I just had this intense desire to scrub everything down.  I wanted to dust all the baseboards and wood trim.  I wanted to polish the floors.  I wanted to clean out all of the dressers and closets of summer clothes and restock with fall clothes.  I wanted everything to be extremely clean and organized.

I probably have an illness.  But this was the one thing on my "must do" list while on vacation.

The weather could not have been better for some house cleaning.  It was raining this morning and overcast all day, but the temperatures were still warm.  I was able to open up some windows, blast some music and work, work, work. 

I’m happy with the way my body feels after a good scrubbing!  I’m happy with the way my house looks and smells!  I’m happy with being able to open up dresser drawers and closets again without them overflowing!  I’m happy with the selection of clothes the kids have for the fall!  Cleaning makes me happy!

And what makes me even happier is that I got all of this accomplished before 2pm.  I inadvertently scheduled my vacation during the same week I had scheduled the kids dentist appointments, which I guess worked out pretty well for my employer.  I also assume that it takes a special kind of stupid to not only be excited about spending a day of vacation cleaning but to also take four kids to the dentist during vacation. 

Their appointments went well.  Grace and Eva have good teeth but Alex and Layla are much more susceptible to cavities.  Although neither one of them require fillings, they do need to take extra special care of their teeth.  The parenting schedule had them with their dad tonight, so after their appointments, I dropped them off there.

Randomly this afternoon, I got message from a friend that lives in North Carolina.  They happened to be working in St. Louis this week.  So, since this opportunity doesn’t come along that often, I met up with them tonight for a few drinks.  It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed catching up with them!

Another great vacation day in the books!