New Shirt

 I made Henry a new shirt!

 It's perfect for patroling the playground...

taking the stairs....

staring down fish....

and knocking down trees!

Class Clown

Henry was yelling for my attention from the backseat and this what I saw when I turned around. It is unclear where the spoon came from.

Reindeer Cookies

It's been a few years since we've "made" these cookies.  We decided to do it on kind of a whim so I didn't have all of the exact right ingredients, but I still think they turned out cute and delicious!

Sticker Surplus

Is it just me or do all of you other parents of young children have a ridiculous number of stickers for your kids?  I rarely buy them, but some how we are sticker magnets.  To be clear, I am not complaining.  I love stickers (it is different than hoarding them, I swear) and we are always putting them on letters and papers and our clothes.... 

So when I saw this idea on Pinterest, I knew it was meant just for us!  I cut out a gigantic tree from an old cardboard box we had laying around and had Amelia paint it one day after school.  Then, the next day, I gave Henry and Amelia some of our sticker collection and let them decorate the tree.  Turns out, old address labels make the perfect garland! Amelia made a star for the top and then I hung it on the inside of our front door.  I made need to recreate this activity for every holiday as we hardly made a dent in our sticker surplus...

Our visit to the Man in Red

Another year, another visit to Mr. Claus.  We were later this year than we've ever been, but that didn't dampen our spirits a bit!  Amelia was all about telling Santa what she wanted and Henry was following her lead.  Surprisingly, he didn't bat an eye climbing on to Santa's lap.  They both did great!

Despite the 45 minute line wait behind us, Amelia was determined to make sure Santa was very clear about her letter.

What letter you ask?  The one she painstakingly wrote to Santa several days before our visit.  She worked SO hard on it!  And she didn't hesitate to correct Santa when he mistakenly read the wrong thing.

Translation: "What I really want for Christmas is a princess Barbie, magnifying glass, Kit doll, and binoculars.  My brother wants a blue car for Christmas.  Your Friends, Amelia and Henry".

When she was satisfied that Santa understood her letter, we took a ride on the carousel.   As you can see, it was a hit!

Luckily a prompt and thoughtful elf made a quick copy of Amelia's letter to Santa so that we can keep the original for years to come. I have a feeling Amelia may enjoy looking back at it one day....

Back to Pre-School

Amelia had a Wednesday off of school in early December.  I thought it would be the perfect chance to visit her old pre-school teachers and share how well she is doing in kindergarten.  When I emailed her old teacher to inquire about a visit, I assumed we would be coming either during lunch time or after school so as not to disrupt her current class. 

Turns out, she wanted Amelia to come and talk about life as a kindergartener and field questions from the kids getting ready to go to kindergarten next year.  This, of course, is right up Amelia's alley.  She was so excited when I told her and had a running countdown in her head of how many days were left until she got to go answer questions for the pre-schoolers.

When the time came, she did great!  She told them ALL about her day, favorite subjects, recess, and other the other ins and outs of being a kindergartener.  She even insisted on bringing a sticker to pass out to each child post-talk.

 I really cannot not enough about Amelia's pre-school--and her teacher in particular.  She has taken so many opportunities to put Amelia in leadership roles and build her confidence and self-esteem--even when she is no longer a student there! 

It is so hard to believe that I will be registering Henry next month to attend the same pre-school (although it will only be one day a week).  It will be nice to have another little Duckling there for awhile!

Making Progress

Jason's family has a tradition every December of holding a progressive dinner.  We visit 3 houses during the day and stuff ourselves silly with delicious food.  It is a whole day event and always one we look forward to.  It is nice to hang out and chat with the family in such a relaxing environment.  Sure, we see the same people on Christmas, but we are always running a marathon from house to house that day and hardly get to talk much at all.

This year Baby Owen was a big hit with my two.  Henry even got a chance to hold his bottle and he was thrilled!  Amelia enjoyed dangling things in his face all day.

Despite the food being great and the company being great, the pictures on my camera were definitely not great.

I guess we will try again next year....

Christmas Traditions

 One fairly warm day in December, we took the kids down to Main Street in St. Charles for their Christmas Traditions Festival.  Amelia LOVED collecting the trading cards from all of the different characters this year!  I think she ended up with 17 of them!

Surprisingly (or maybe not), Amelia also enjoyed posing with the various Christmas statues in place around the area.

We had a couple run-ins with the carolers, too, during our visit.  Very festive!

All in all, it was a great visit and will likely become a Christmas Tradition of our own!

Trim-A-Tree

Despite the fact that our Christmas decor has been down for about 3 weeks now, I thought I would share a few pictures of us decorating our tree.

Don't mind this first picture too much.  I had just come across our dog, Truman's, ornament when Jason decided to snap a picture of us.  I didn't realize how emotional putting up the tree would become after coming across reminder after reminder of our little pup.

Henry really latched on to one of Jason's childhood ornaments--a wooden train.  No surprises there.

Despite being down a dog this year, we still lost ornaments in the double digits.  I will give you one guess to the ornament destroying culprit this year.

Seriously, kid.

Henry got himself a couple of new stockings socks in the deal, though.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

We surprised Amelia with "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" play tickets in early December.  I pulled out some fancy clothes for her to put on, never telling her where she was going.  She requested that Jason put on "fancy" clothes too since he was her escort.  (Jason calls these types of days "Mia-Dad days"). 

Since the two were looking so sharp, I wanted to get a little Christmas picture together.  Henry had other plans (I really love this series of pictures I was trying to snap quickly before Henry opened the door).

In the end, this one will do.  If only I hadn't left the tags on our light up garland. 

As they were pulling out of the driveway, I ran Amelia's stuffed Grinch out to her to take with her to the play.  That was all the hint she needed to know exactly where she and Jason were headed.  They enjoyed a dinner beforehand at Macaroni Grill and had a great night together!And I should probably mention that we spent the rest of the week (and weekend) acting out the Grinch play.  As you may expect, Amelia was Cindy Lou Who every time.

Christmas Card 2011

 

So here is our finished Christmas card for this year.  My apologies if your mailed version didn't look like this one.  After forcing Henry to stamp his fingerprint 60 times in a particular spot, gluing 480 googly eyes, and then adding 60 red noses I spotted the card I sent my aunt hanging up at her house on Christmas Eve.  NO eyes were still attached after traveling through the mail.  Not. A. One.  And no nose either.  

Sigh.

Next year may be the first year of purchased Christmas cards.

Thankful Turkey

Much of my fall was spent helping to organize a trivia night to benefit my friend her family.  And while I definitely feel the time was well spent (we raised just over $20,000!), we didn't get to a whole lot of Thanksgiving activities at my house. 

Luckily, though, in the final hours before Thanksgiving, Amelia spotted our post from a few years ago showing our Thankful Turkey.  She insisted on creating a 2011 version and really did much of the work on her own.  She cut out the turkey, made her face, cut out the feathers, came up with what she wanted on the feathers, and even wrote them all out herself.  I helped with the spelling, of course, but that is a lot of writing for a 5 year old! This picture is just okay, so I will list what we added to our turkey this year:

Our Warm Home (Jodi)
Grandparents (Amelia)
Mrs. Bell and the other students (Amelia)
Cute, furry animals (Amelia)
Dad (Amelia)
Crayons and Drawing pictures (Amelia)
Amelia (Amelia)
Mom (Amelia)
our health (Jodi)
Barack Obama (Amelia--she spotted this from our turkey two years again and felt the need to repeat)
Our Family's Health (Jason)
Uncle Dave (Amelia)
chocolate! (Jodi)
My cousins (Amelia)
Toys and Books (Amelia)
My soccer mates (Amelia)
Henry (Amelia)
Mom, Amelia, and Henry (Jason)

Not really the all-inclusive list I strive for, but it will do.  And I love that Amelia did so much work to make it happen.  I think this should really be a year-round project, not just something we talk about once a year.

PS. Not only did Amelia make most of the turkey, she also named it--Taylor Turkey.

Great Outdoors

An unseasonably warm weekend followed Thanksgiving this year, so we took advantage and did some outdoor (ahem) work.  We started by pulling the remaining carrots from our garden.  There were tons!  Then, we ate carrots with practically every meal for the next week or so!

While outside, the leaves were calling to Amelia!  We don't have too many mature trees in our yard, so our leaf piles are always pretty minimal.  But, Amelia has this ongoing fantasy of jumping in leaf piles, so I tried to scrape enough together for her, so she could jump in and not hurt herself.

Henry wasn't too sure at first about all the silly leaf jumping....

He did enjoy the leaf throwing, however.

And was eventually talked into joining the pile.

Then, I worked on cleaning up our nubby little carrots, while Amelia did some leaf rubbings!