Pot o' Gold

It's hard to believe, but we are in the midst of Amelia's last cycle break--ever!  Her pre-school has been functioning on a year round schedule, with 9 weeks in school, followed by a 3 week break.  When Amelia returns to school after break, she will begin her final quarter of pre-school.  Wow!

As I mentioned, she usually has 3 weeks off for cycle break, but due to a very snowy winter, she has 3 snow days to make up this cycle.  So, it ended up being more like 2 weeks.  Before break even started, we swung by Michael's to pick up a few craft supplies to keep us busy during break.  (Turns out all three crafts I had in mind were pretty much completed by day 3 of break, but that's another story...).

I found this idea awhile back and thought it was right up Amelia's alley.  I also thought it would be fun for her to pass these out to friends and family.  We ended up making 5 "pots of gold", although we strayed considerably from our original recipient list.

I failed to take a final picture after it was all together, (check out the link above for a visual) but it couldn't have been more simple.  Amelia painted a clay pot with black paint.  Then, when it was dry, she filled it with Easter grass.  Third, she placed pipecleaners of the colors of the rainbow arched in the pot.  Finally, she filled the "pots" with gold (chocolate) coins we picked up at Walgreens.

I think she enjoyed making these, but the real fun came when she got to pass them out!

Christmas Eve 2010

As usual, the craziness of Christmas started with a busy Christmas Eve schedule.  We laid low most of the day and both kids took great naps.  We opened up our traditional one-present-on-Christmas-Eve-that-is-always-new-PJ's-for-everyone gift.  Then, we loaded in the car and headed to Christmas Eve mass with Jason's family. 

Jason dropped Amelia and I off at church and then took Henry to hang out with some relatives since we weren't sure he could handle the nearly 2 hour wait time/service.

Henry hanging out with Mike and Ike

After church, we all met up at Jason's aunt Carol's house for a little fried chicken dinner.  It was around this time that I first noticed that Henry felt a bit warm.

But he has been doing the whole drooling, chewing, crabbing routine for a couple days, so I thought it may be a teething related fever.  So the fun continued....

Amelia LOVES hanging out with these ladies--Candace and Sienna.  Not only do they (still) have a huge Barbie stockpile at their house, they have a PINK room.  With BUNK beds.  It's pretty much all Amelia talks about when she is there.  It is rare for her to be out of the pink room at Carol's house like in the picture below.

And speaking of pink, poor Henry totally got the Christmas Eve pacifier shaft.  We were running late getting ready for church and the pink pacifier is all I could find.  Poor, poor Henry.  (As a side note, this particular binky is not leftover from Amelia's stash.  One night I went to Walgreens to replenish our binky stash and the pink/purple combo pack was all they had!  What was a mom to do?!?).

As you can see, as the night went on, Henry seemed to be feeling worse.  He was acting okay, just tired and a little clingy.  You know he must be feeling bad when he lefts Uncle Dave hold him!  Around 7 pm, we headed to my parent's house for Christmas with my dad's side of the family. Poor Henry basically came in, said, "Hello", played a tiny bit, and then went down to sleep.  The other two babies both younger than him are total night owls and outlasted him by HOURS!

Upon returning home, we set out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.  And then, we headed to bed--all in our new jams!

Seeing the Big Man in Red

 We decided to head out to see Santa once Amelia firmed up her desired wish list.  We talked about taking the kids to the mall, but upon looking into it, the photo packages were obscene in price!  So, to Bass Pro we went. 

Apparently everyone else in St. Charles decided to venture out the same night as us and we had a 30 minute wait.  Luckily, they have plenty set up for the kids to do.  Amelia took a turn with the pink rifle and as you can see below, she was all business about knocking off the bunnies.

 I had to get a sweet and innocent picture of her shortly after she dropped the rifle.  I gotta say, she scared me a bit.

Henry wasn't so impressed with the shooting range, but he did like all of the little lights around--right as his height no less!  Luckily they were not hot.

We decided to put Amelia on Santa's lap first so she could have a nice conversation without a wriggling Mr. Henry distracting them.  I will say that Bass Pro has the friendliest, most patient Santa I have ever encountered.  You would never know there was 100 people in line behind us based on their pleasant, un-rushed conversation. Just as she told us she would she asked Santa for a rocking horse and a Rapunzel doll.

Then we threw crank-pants-Henry on Santa's lap as well for a picture.  It didn't go too great.  The photographer actually gave us two different ones (the 5x7 is free and then you can order additional pictures if desired) and neither was good.  Amelia looked perfect in both, but Henry wasn't real happy with the set-up.  Good thing Santa had a death grip on Henry because he was doing everything he could to get away from him.

Our Santa visit was followed up with some Wendy Frosties.  Nothing like cold ice cream on a freezing cold night!

Thanksgiving 2010

I'm pretty disgusted with myself--I got not a single picture of either of my children in their Thanksgiving outfits.  Sigh. 

I did, however, get a picture of the first outfits they had on in the morning.  While watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on TV, Amelia decided that she and Henry needed to look way fancier than they did.

Skip ahead about 8 hours and here we are at our final house of the evening--my parents.  Amelia decided she was going to sit in the high chair for her pumpkin pie.  She was already changed in to her pajamas.  Boo.

Seriously, this is all I have of Thanksgiving pictures.  I will have to do better at Christmas.  Here is Henry enjoying some pumpkin pie as well.  What you can't see from the picture is that he is getting forkfuls of pumpkin pie from both my mom and Jason and they can't shovel it in quite fast enough for his liking.  (Did I mention that I didn't give Amelia ANY sweets at all until her first birthday?  Maybe second children don't have it so bad after all).  This picture was taken after Henry had already shed his super handsome sweater he was sporting.

The day after Thanksgiving, Amelia found this handkerchief, put it on her head, and proclaimed herself a pilgrim.

What a wonderful year we have had with so much to be thankful for!

Halloween Event #3

Event #3 was Amelia's pre-school party.  Henry and I didn't get to stick around very long because he had slept in that morning and I didn't even have time to feed him breakfast before we had to drop Amelia off at school.  Since he was a ticking time bomb, we just joined the trick-or-treat train around the school, grabbed a few pictures, and then left.  Unfortunately, Amelia wasn't REAL happy with my decision to stick around for such a short time, but she eventually recovered.  I think it had something to do with the cookies, candy, and cupcakes.....

 Trick or treating around the school.

Halloween Event #2

 Just like last year, my dad got special tickets to a private Halloween party at Grant's Farm.  And, just like last year, we had a great time!

 We started off by taking a "spooky" tram ride through the park grounds.  As soon as we exited, Amelia and Henry were given glow sticks and immediately directed to the goat feeding area.  The kids had unlimited access to the bottles of milk for the baby goats, but one was enough for Amelia.  I think she was afraid the goat was going to chew up her dress.  She abandoned ship about halfway through the bottle.

Henry, on the other hand, thought it was the best thing ever!  He giggled the ENTIRE time and probably could have handled watching another bottle.

 Next up was the carousel.

After dinner and a little dancing, Amelia enjoyed some Dippin' Dots.  There has been some talk that this may be the last year given all of the turmoil with Anheuser-Busch InBev, so Amelia decided to given all the treats a try--Dippin' Dots, kettle corn, and hot chocolate.  This, of course, is in addition to the super pretzel with cheese and hot dog she had with dinner. Jason and I choose to partake in other "treats", like beer.

And hanging out with the Clydesdales!

This was a really great time!  Here's hoping that the tradition (and free beer) will continue for years to come!

Halloween Event #1

 As usual, I am extremely behind in my documentation.  I will try to keep the Halloween festivity posts short and sweet.

We had a trial run or sorts with a Halloween-themed library story time on the Tuesday before Halloween.  There was stories, games, songs, and even some dancing.  I was only able to snap a few pictures because Mr. Henry was all. over. the. place.

 Amelia suggested we make an oil can for Amelia as well as an axe.  The oil can was made from a hospital grade mucous sucker and some tin foil.  The axe was cardboard, a ruler, and foil.  Both only lasted about a day.

My first and only attempt at a picture of Amelia and Henry together in their costumes.

Pumpkins Galore

 I will spare you a lot of commentary and just say that this was our first trip of the season to the pumpkin patch.  If you don't include Eckerts (and I don't, since we went there for apples, really), this was Henry's first pumpkin patch experience.  I'm not sure that he knew what to make of it, but I am sure it will only be a matter of time before he loves pumpkin patch visits as much as his sister does.

Father's Day gift

Well, this post is WAY late, but I did not have a picture up until now. I was lacking some serious creativity this Father's Day, but luckily I was able to pick up an item or two at Michael's to have Amelia make. I originally went in to purchase a certain type of coffee mug that Jason and I both prefer (meaning there is never enough for both of us to both enjoy coffee in said cups), but as I was reading the instructions about how to decorate the mugs, I noticed it said you can't put hot liquids in the mug. Huh?

So, back to the drawing board we went and we settled on making Jason a coolie cup to keep his (root) beer cold. I cut out the letters, but the decorating was ALL Amelia. I love what she did!

You gotta love a useful gift, right? Not that Jason is an alcoholic or anything, but he uses it quite often!

The second gift was this homemade shirt. I took a picture of the kids and ironed it on a $2 T-shirt for Jason. Then, I had Amelia decorate around it using special fabric markers.

He loved it, until I washed it. Or, more specifically, dried it. Ooops! Maybe we'll try again next year!

Jason also got breakfast in bed--a Mother's and Father's Day tradition around here! Afterwards, Amelia and I went out for a couple of hours and did some sprucing up to Jason's car. We took it through the car wash, vacuumed the inside, filled it with gas, and got the oil changed. A good lesson in car care (and patience!).