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.

A very late November wrap-up

I have no idea where November went. It flew by so very quickly and I didn't write a single post about it. And now its taken mWe were VERY busy at work, as my boss was preparing to go to Australia for 6 weeks, finishing up classes and had several reports due. Garrett was busy at school. Summer was. . . Summer.

So here's a rundown of what we were up to in November.

We went to the zoo with Summer's friends Ava and Alora (Thanks Leanne for the pic!)
Summer is obsessed with the pythons there. She tells me she wants to touch them. I tell her they will swallow her. It doesn't deter her though.

We routed for Oklahoma State A LOT. :-)

We did our Christmas card pictures. As always, this was a production in and of itself. In some ways, the out-takes are better than the final product. And certainly more entertaining!

We also attempted a family photo shoot over Thanksgiving. Neither the wind nor the lighting cooperated, but we got some decent ones. Although we didn't get a single one where everyone had a nice smile on their face. One of these days we'll take my friend Leanne up on of her offer of doing ours. But it wasn't in the cards this year.

Kids grins are super cheezy here but Brad and I look nice sooo, this is the one you get to see :-)
We camped in the back yard. The kids got sleeping bag/backpacks from Grandma Becky that they loved. The kids did great. The dogs, on the other hand, were totally upset that we left them alone in the house. They started howling so I used it as an excuse to go sleep in our bed with the pooches instead of on the hard ground :-)
For Thanksgiving we had our traditional "Florida Family" dinner at the Shumans house. It was lovely, as always, and as always, I completely failed to take pictures. Once Thanksgiving was over, the Christmas festivities began, including the arrival of our elf for the very first time. But that will come in the next post :-)

Monday Mayhem - What a weekend!

We had an INTERESTING weekend, to say the least. Nothing really went as planned. We started out with an impromptu date night on Friday - rock climbing again, which was AWESOME. Big thanks to Leanne for watching the kids so we could get away. Saturday morning I had a long run, which was miserable and shorter than I would have liked. Then we went boating/camping with our neighbors. This is where it got interesting of course.

Summer doesn't like boat rides. No idea how this happened, I swear she can't be our kid. We talked about it towards the end of the week (That we were going on a boat, that she liked boats, and that she WOULD NOT CRY). She still cried of course. Something about a little 2.5 year old saying "No thank you! I want out" as we're motoring away from the dock is hilarious. Once we got out of the marina, she was happy enough looking at birds and such. But the minute we started speeding up, she hid her little face and cried. Between this and the whole diva thing, I swear she can't be mine. Except that I was there when she was born!
Garrett, on the other hand, was on cloud nine the whole time. Boating, camping and Xander = Garrett's most favorite things. I find it endlessly awesome that these boys are best friends.


We arrived and everyone set up camp . . .
While they worked, I took the kids to play in the water. Really, really tough job let me tell you.

During the day, it was FABULOUS. Everyone was so happy playing together.

And when we were done playing the water we came to camp for some leisure time.
Summer played in X and Logan's doggie tent.
And did girlie things with Miss Jess.
Meanwhile, the boys alternated between eating and playing (as demonstrated by G and Logan)

When the sun went down, the bugs started coming out and that's when things got a little less fun. We got eaten alive, but I don't think we realized the EXTENT until today.

The boys getting ready for an evening boat ride (Summer and I stayed at camp in hopes of getting her to fall asleep. What a joke on me that turned out to be).


Afterward, it was smores by the fire. My family is so crazy. This picture sums them up perfectly - Brad is humoring me, Summer is being a goof ball, and Garrett is acting like a mini-teenager. Gotta love them!


Up to this point, things were fun. Bed time is where it started to get out of control. Garrett went to sleep, but Summer refused to. At 11pm, after various attempts and efforts to get her to sleep, we finally gave in and just took her back home. I remember going though this with Garrett and knowing he would fall asleep . . . with Summer, I really don't know that she would have. She was totally exhausted and on her way to staying up all night long. In the end, we didn't miss out on that much-Brad went back to stay with Garrett and the Shumans, and as soon as everyone was awake they came home due to the bugs.

Sunday was AWESOME. Brad took a nap after they got back. I put away the gear in less than 20 minutes--I love this new organized thing, it was so easy to clean up and put things away. I took the kids and our new little neighbor to fly kites, and then we headed to the playground in our community for a little while.



Then, as if that wasn't enough fun for one weekend, we had an impromptu movie date with our little neighbors Brady and Gracie. They were all engrossed by The Ant Bully--it was actually pretty cute!

After an evening picnic outside, the kids went to bed and I went next door to squish on my neighbor's new baby girl. She is quite possibly the cutest little baby girl I have seen in ohhh, 2.5 years, I could just eat her up. So that was fun. Unfortunately Summer then had to go and be up half the night again. Lets hope this isn't a habit.

Happy Monday--I'm quite glad its almost over!