Better late than never--last week of school through Christmas

I had intended to be caught up with the blog by now. . . alas, LIFE. So here's a recap of the last week of school and leading up to Christmas. Christmas deserves its own post. Maybe I'll have THAT one written before Valentines day.

The Elf continued to be fun for all. Garrett told me more than once that he didn't want Christmas to come because he didn't want Jet Pack to leave.

Garrett's school had a PJ day on the last day of school. The two Kinder classes did a combined craft day which was a LOT of fun but also a lot of work. I volunteered in his class and a friend and I helped plan all of the crafts for Garrett's class. By the time it was over I was pretty much holiday-ed out but the kids had a blast.
Sugar high, anyone??

Festivities included a book exchange. Garrett got a fun reader about Cats, and we gave a Clifford 2-in-1 book.


We made teacher gifts for both of the K teachers with their students hand prints.

We made reindeer candy canes for friends
Summer is such a cheese ball

We went on a date to Brad's Christmas party for work on his birthday, but took no pictures. I got to hang with some of my favorite people who shared my birth month
My buddy Shelah

And my buddy Susan (at the winery for our birthdays--free admission and free wine, weee!)
We went on our first real family camping trip, to Flamingo in Everglades National Park. We've been before but Summer was too small to really enjoy it. It was a blast. We ended up going with some long time friends, which is what REALLY made it fun. Thanks Monica for the pictures!
No idea what the girls were discussing but check out Summer's feet!

The boys having fun doing boy things.The bugs were bad, but other than that the trip was AWESOME!!

Last, but not least, we allowed Garrett to open his tools from Grandma Becky a day early so he would have his own Garrett-sized items to work on a craft from Lowes, since we missed it to go camping.

Early December Wrap-Up

Early December was a blur. Things were INSANE, and I'm still not sure why. I helped out a lot with things in Garrett's classroom. The last 2 weeks of school were JAM PACKED with craziness.

Highlights of the last 2 weeks of school/first couple of weeks of December

Garrett received a perfect attendance award for the first quarter:

They don't do honor role for kindergarteners, but he did well his first quarter and more importantly, he really has been enjoying school. He also received his 2nd quarter progress report and is doing wonderfully. Its been great to listen to the concept of sounding out words really click and watch him learn to read. He even read Green Eggs and Ham. Seriously, that is a LONG book!!

We did Christmas crafts and of course played with friends:

And Garrett just generally went nuts over the whole concept of Christmas
Of course we put up our tree. Both kids had a BLAST helping put on the decorations this year, and Garrett and Daddy put the star on together, which has become our tradition.
The highlight of the holiday season, at least in the kids' book, was the arrival of our Elf. Garrett named him Jet Pack. It was fun having the kids get up and look for him every day, express delight in his antics, and just generally see their excitement about the whole thing. The 5:30am wake-ups, however, I could have done without.

Our elf even made us breakfast one morning (Christmas tree danishes!)
We baked a lot too . . . Shelah and I worked a bake sale for This is the Dog, and I made cake pops. This is the Dog ended up shaping our holiday season a little more than we intended, but stay tuned for more on that, as well as the continued adventures of Jet Pack in a later post. For now, I leave you with the cake pops I made for the bake sale: