Before I move on to the list of posts I haven’t done yet, I thought I would back back back-track because I realized, while going through my camera, that I missed a couple of things:

Logan’s Fall Lacrosse league! Sadly, there is no 2nd grade lax group, but the youth directory of the organization we’ve been playing with said he could play up with the 3rd and 4th graders. Lacrosse is such a new sport to the area that almost all the players are very new to the game…and Logan holds his own height-wise so it actually worked out really well.

Chasing down an opponent for a check

Fuzzy shot of Logan shooting  

goal!!

Logan even got player of the week at one point (both he and daddy were surprised, but he does try really hard!). Of course I had to take a screen shot

And now – random shots of the boys playing with Kona

Each of the boys has been a “star of the week” in their respective classes already this year. They each chose a picture of themselves and Kona. This is Logan and Kona with frosting faces

And Brady with Kona on Halloween (candy on Brady’s face)

Aiden and Kona coloring (kudos to Aiden on having a clean face I guess!!!)

Daddy and Aiden were playing with legos one day: Instead of having this lovely creation sitting around the house for years to come, I am immortalizing it on the blog so it can be re-sorted into the lego bin at some point :)

Some wine tags I made for a girl’s weekend with friends.

Random Bears art project in the kitchen

Logan “hearts” Brandon Marshall. He’s very fond of googling images, pasting them into Word, printing them out, cutting them and making stuff…we are using a lot of computer paper lately! :)

The tree took 2 days to complete this year – one day to pick it out and put it in the house with lights and one day to decorate it. I guess we were being a bit lazy the Saturday we went to get it (around 3pm) and then it had to sit outside and “open” per daddy. By the the time it was ready for ornaments, the boys were ready for bed :) And as always, these pictures are like 15 days old! We bought the tree on the 8th and finished decorating on the 9th. I think one of my New Year’s resolutions is going to be to get these posts done in a more timely manner ;)

Of course Kona had to come Christmas tree shopping with us. Thankfully, the owners of the garden store where we purchased our tree were super pet-friendly. Our downtown area was having a cookie walk so we hit a few more places after we got the tree.

Logan being goofy 

That’s the one!

The boys were doing some crazy dancing as Daddy pulled the tree into the house.

Hot cocoa – obviously.

This is reindeer Kona…never to be seen again as she would only let me keep these on her head for like 2 seconds.

Messy-hair me, Logan and Kona

Brady really really wanted to put the star on top this year, but he sort of chickened out once Brian climbed the ladder.

Aiden ended up putting it on instead

The boys have been playing ridiculous amounts of Minecraft, a very pixilated-looking game.  They called this ornament “the minecraft angel”

The finished tree! We ended up replacing the star on top (which we always use and always leans to one side) with this paper one I was goofy around with one day. It’s made of 6 sheets of computer paper :)

 

Aiden put himself in charge of upper-tree / ladder-hogging duty. :)

As I was writing this post, I took a break to clean the kitchen and do some other things around the house. It occurred to me that the tree could probably use some water. At this point, the bottom of the tree is surrounded by all the gifts (thank you…I wrapped them BEFORE Christmas eve this year). I moved a branch in the back of the tree to get at the stand and the ENTIRE THING TOPPLED FORWARD! I screamed, Brian ran, some presents in the front got soaked (salvageable …no re-wrapping required thank goodness) and we managed to get the whole thing back up with minimal damage. Granted, it’s now MUCH closer to the side table and sort of facing in a new direction, but I guess it’s pretty funny in hindsight. Brian was dying laughing at the whole thing!

Holy cow – it’s been almost a month since I posted! Tis the Season to ignore the blog I guess! 

First things first – I had a sad little mommy moment a couple of weeks ago. I realized that an entire shelf of our “glasses” cabinet was being taken up by sippy cups that no one uses anymore. Ok…so this wasn’t actually the first time I had noticed, but I chose to ignore the fact that the boys are getting to be “big” – whaaaa! We bought some new glassware and it had no acceptable home…so I was finally forced to clean out the cups. Sad sad sap that I am, I took pictures of the cups before I threw them away. It’s honest been at least 2 years since we used these with any regularity (except for having water in bed) so it was most certainly way over due.

 

One Saturday, Brian decided we were going to have “family fun day”. The “day” started around 3pm and included most of the stuff that we all voted on together and put on a white board. The first rule was that we wear PJs. The rest of the list included: Watch Arthur Christmas (check), go on a drive to look at the lights (we didn’t get to that one…this family night happened during the last week of November and we decided it might be too early for all the good lights to be up), fire in the fireplace (check), play monopoly (check), play with Kona (check), make candy (check), make and eat turkey soup (check).

These PJs were purchased by me because I thought the boys would like the bottoms…maybe not the tops (they ended up loving them). Brady saw them one day at Children’s place and was BEYOND excited that they came in “all our favorite colors”. As you’ll see from later pictures, these are our current “go to” pajamas. If they are clean, the boys are wearing them!

Here are the boys with daddy making gummy candy!

We played Apples to Apples after Monopoly

Giant gummy candies that we made using a mold that was actually meant for chocolate candies on sticks.

Fire in the fireplace watching Arthur Xmas

Kona snuggle time

Next update: I had a birthday. I tried to take a pass this year, but was told that I had to turn another year older. The blow of being 38 was softened by some roses and a new Nook touch with the glow light that I’ve had my eye on for over a year. Now I can read in bed without having the light on! 

Random update: these are called Mouse Books. Logan and his friends write them in class and then put them in a basket. Other kids in the class can read their books and write comments on the back like “I love your drawings” or “this book is awesome”. This is a book that Logan wrote called “Yes Day”. In “Yes Day”, Logan is allowed to do whatever he wants because mommy always says yes. Logan climbs a mountain, gets a new soccer ball and eats a giant ice cream sundae among other things. As you can see (barely), this book won a Kendall County Award and was selected as a Monarch book (the yellow post-it note additions are Logan’s self-awarded accolades….I think it’s hilarious!)

 

Brady’s birthday! I set up the kitchen eating area the night before

Brady’s “party” was on the 6th, the day after his birthday and he picked out three blue hats for himself and his buddies Matt and Jackson. I figured he would like to wear his “little champs” hat on the actual bday as well.

He had seen this “happy napper” and literally threw a fit over it one day. He was happy to see that he got it for his birthday along with a big knee-hockey set with 2 goals and a bunch of sticks.

We made small goody bags for his preschool friends.

On Thursday morning, the 6th, Matt and Jackson came over right after all the big kids went to school. They opened gifts (2 Dick’s sporting goods cards) and played at the house.

Per Brady’s request, they painted robot piggy banks before we headed out to Chuck E Cheese.

Thursday mornings are DEAD at Chuck E Cheese which was AWESOME!

 

 

 

I bought these guys so many coins that they didn’t even notice when I would take small handfuls and go find the games that give you a lot of tickets! We got some great loot with all the tickets “they” won!

chompy machine!

 

 

 

Aren’t they sweet?!

After the adventure out, the boys didn’t want the fun to end so we went back home and watched Rudolph. Well, I put on Rudolph, they watched for 10 minutes and then went to play (which was fine because both Matt and Jackson are terrified of dogs so when they were upstairs, I had poor little Kona out of her crate where she’d been all day)