Christmas, already!?!

I am sooo not ready.  Elfie still hasn't been located.  The advent tree is empty.  There has been no North Pole Breakfast.  Not a single book is wrapped.  And not a single Christmas decoration is out.  And I found out today I have one week to make a moon costume for the school's Christmas play. 

As a complete fluke however we did run into Santa at the mall, got to sit in his lap and tell him EXACTLY what we wanted for Christmas and even got some pictures taken with him.

Wasn’t crowded at all – they let the boys sit and talk to Santa for probably almost 5 minutes. Took multiple pictures until I approved a good one and had a great Santa with a real beard. Gotta love small towns!

Had to bribe the boys to sit and smile, though… I am pretty sure it wasn’t a fluke that they picked the corner right next to the cookie co for pictures.

They also had an amazing ginger bread area that was all decked out with a GIANT gingerbread house (20 ft tall maybe?). Wish the boys as been more cooperative there – it would have been a great place for pictures. If I had thought to actually BRING my camera! Luckily Kevin & my mom had their cameras.

They also had a train the kids could ride. Connor rang the bell for the entire 5 minute ride. He LOVED it.

And some day when they are older we will have to let them skate at the ice rink. 

In the meantime, guess I had better get cracking on that Christmas to do list...

The MONSTER Bug

I fully appreciate that NORMAL people would run for the hills screaming bloody murder when faced with something like this. 

 

 It's 4 INCHES LONG. Let me say that again - FOUR INCHES LONG.

And had it been alive I would have been plowing over innocent children to get as far as humanly possible from it.  But it was just grossly fascinating - in the it gives me the heebie jeebies, but I just can't stop gawking at it kind of way.  In the we HAVE to take this to show and tell kind of way.

Oh, yes, we did.  Not only that - we packed it up in a piece of tupperware, dropped it in the top of an open carry on bag, carted it through the airport, and on the plane to bring it HOME with us and then had a fight over WHO could take it to show and tell first.

And oh, yeah, totally forgot to warn the teacher about it.  I can only imagine her surprise as she opened the lid completely unsuspecting.  I hear there was a bit of screaming.  And tossing.  And running.  There might have even been some standing on chairs.

Did I mention they LOVE us?  We always bring the best show and tells.   And life is never, ever, dull with us in your class.  :) 

Some of the boys in the class even pronounced it the COOLEST.SHOW.AND.TELL.EVER. 

The boys' school celebrated Thanksgiving with a Feast at school last Friday night.  The kids helped prepare the veggies - snapping beans, husking corn, and peeling carrots and potatoes.  Ryan did a whole bowl of beans and then he helped with the corn.  Connor was apparently a master carrot peeler.  They were both so excited to have been able to help.  Ryan told me afterwards any time I wanted to cook green beans that he could do the whole bowl of beans all by himself.  :)

While we were eating Kevin glanced over and happened to notice that the kids had make turkeys and written on each feather something they were thankful for.  This was Ryan's:

It reads:

My Halloween bag

The candy I got at Halloween

The cars my daddy gets

The planes my daddy buys

My house.

Needless to say I had a good chuckle.  Clearly Daddy has been feeding them too much candy, and sneaking cars and planes behind my back (we had an agreement - NO MORE CARS) as our house was being overrun by every hotwheel and Cars car known to mankind.

Connor's made me smile as well. 

Though I suspect he might just have been coached to add one or two of them to the list.  :)  Ryan's no doubt were all his own.  :)



Salt Water Fishing

Kevin has been chomping at the bit to do some salt water fishing since he got a salt water stamp on his fishing license this year.  He and one of the guys in his group have been talking about where to fish, and talking about making a trip for a while now.  They still haven't found a date where they can both go, but this past weekend Kevin drove down to Galveston and did a little wade fishing and caught a couple of Flounder. 

Today he took advantage of the relative quiet at work and took a half day to do some more fishing.  He brought back the limit of two Flounder to show the kids.  They were particularly fascinated that it had two eyes on one side, and no eyes on the other.

And that it was different colors on each side to help it blend in and hide. 

The boys have already started asking when they can fish in the ocean and when they can catch their own Flounder now, too.  Because fish with two eyes on one side are apparently WAY cooler than the catfish, bass, sunfish, and crappie that they have been catching.  And they want to take one to show and tell!  :)



GOAL!!

Ryan was a rock star!  He definately brought his A game to our next to last game of the season.

He scored 3 goals all by himself on fast breaks.  He had another goal called back due to an out of bounds after the play was over (Boo!!).  And another ball that both he and another player on his team kicked into the goal but that we weren't entirely certain who kicked.  And he was headed for one final goal until his little legs just couldn't keep up with him anymore and despite the fact he was 20 feet out ahead of everyone else with the goal in sight he tripped and went down leaving the ball just feet in front of an undefended goal.  Poor kiddo.  He played the entire game refusing to ever take a rest and ran like a madman.  We were especially proud of him.  :)

Wink'n & Blink'n

I am not sure who taught my children to smile, but apparently we need to look in the mirror before we try again, because obviously something is getting lost in translation. :)

"Say cheese!!"

Is it any wonder why I get so estatically excited to get a few hidden gems like these along the way?  :)



Soccer Party

The boys' soccer party was a smashing success.  Not that I bothered to take any pictures... Thanks to Kevin for ast least remembering to take a few!  :)

And for the record I showed great restraint.  Really I did!  I completely fought off the temptation to buy balloons, or make another balloon banner.  Though the thought did cross my mind... :)

As the kids started their second game I took a few minutes and set up the table for the after game celebration.  Each child had their own place setting - marked by their picture frame and customized CDs.

My children were most enthusiastic about the popcorn.  Ryan loudly proclaimed as all the kids arrived and were excitedly looking for their stuff that "We brought the popcorn!!"  :)  Which totally made me laugh.  What surprised me most was how excited several of the kids were about their "own CDs!!"

The kids were also pretty excited about their big shiny trophies.  :)

And "Look!  It turns!"

And given that we had just eaten lunch before the game not too terribly many folks ate the pizza, but the vast majority of them polished off their popcorn, ate cookies, and devoured their cupcakes.

Talk about sugar buzz!!  Afterwards we let the kids run around for about an hour to run some of it off while we visited.  Before the coach left we asked him if he would be coaching again next year. He said he thought he would and a number of us agreed that we would request to be on the same team again.  So while we said goodbye to our soccer friends, hopefully it will just be until next season.

P.S. And while hopefully next season we will get a better color uniforms, I will also remember that while those table cloths matched really well in the package they were a totally different color when I pulled them out - so should have gone with the green underlay!  Next time, next time...



Soccer Treats

 Oh, yes, I did.  :)

Because normal is apparently just not in my vocabulary.

Even if the team is full of fuddy dud parents who don't want to do anything fun for an end of season party.

I have been taking pictures all season and sharing them on our team's website.  I did mention that I created a website for our team, right?  Yes.  For 5 year old soccer.  I refer you to the normal statement above. ;)  And I have to admit at the end of the season I still think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. 

But...  to save time uploading I have been resizing the images - so I knew at the end of the season that I wanted to give the other parents a CD of the full resolution pictures I have taken. Only wouldn't it be nice to have all the pictures organized by player similar to the tags and slideshow on the website. And speaking of slideshow... you know... Picasa lets you make Gift CDs with a slideshow... and it was all downhill from there.  :)

The DVD (because CD's weren't big enough... :)) autoruns and comes up to a slidshow viewer.  When you select a child the slideshow starts and shows you all the pictures that were tagged for that person.  Can you say AWESOME??  :)

And speaking of all those pictures... wouldn't it be nice to frame one or two for the parents??? And when I stumbled on the frames I knew it was just perfect - room for a "glory shot" and an action shot.  Luckily I found great pictures of every player.  And was once again off to the races.

And while that was all well and good they were both more for the parents than the kids.  So I started thinking treat ideas again.  And decided the candy popcorn would be quick and easy.  And delicious.  :) 

I also picked up the last thing for the party today - the kids' trophies.  They are going to be so thrilled.  :)

Exploring Inks Lake

After our canoeing adventure we ventured over to Devils Waterhole to check out the trail and creek bed.

The trail was thankfully really well marked as there were several areas through the rocks where without the markers we probably would have wandered off in the complete wrong direction.

Not that we didn't take any detours anyway, though.  :)

I remembered from our first trip here a year or two ago that there was a neat area in the dry creek bed just off the trail.  So when we saw the rock outcropping we picked our way down the rocks and into the creek bed.

The rocks were beautiful.  And we could see quite a few fish in the shallow but crystal clear ponds.

While we were checking out what must be a beautiful waterfall when the creek is running Kevin clambored up to the top and was telling us what was on the other side.  Of course I wanted to see, too, but knew from watching him that getting up the last part was deceptively difficult.  So he came back and kept an eye on the kids while Sharon and I made our way up to the top, too.  I found a slightly easier way up and was patting myself on the back for the ease of which I scaled the last 10 ft section.  Hard?  Hummph!  Hardly!  :)  We looked around and as the kids were getting wrestless and wanted to either climb up to where we were or throw rocks neither of which was a good idea we started to head back.  :)  At which time I was reminded that sometimes things are far easier to get into than they are to get out of... Turns out getting up wasn't the problem.  Getting down was more challenging.  The footholds were there, but you coudln't see them, or quite reach them without just turning around and dropping in blind faith that they were there, and that your feet would find them, and find purchase.  And you know, not twist an ankle, or break your neck.  :)  Quite uncharacteristically I just sat down, turned around, and just dropped without giving it too much thought.  And luckily the footholds were just where I expected the last several feet were easy to reverse back down.  Good thing, too as Kevin told me before going up that if I broke my leg he was NOT carrying me back out. :)

We eventually made our way back to the trail and continued on around seeing all kinds of neat rock formations we hadn't seen before.

Some that little monkeys, and big monkeys alike decided were just asking to be scaled.

We truly couldn't have picked a better weekend - the weather was just gorgeous.  Or a better place.  The trails were lovely and the rock climbing reminiscent of younger days at camp.  :)  We all thoroughly enjoyed our little trek.  We will definitely have to do it again next time we make it out to Inks Lake.