Goals

I normally scrap about the kids, but this week I did a page about me. :)



I actually created this for a blog post I wrote for the digital scrapbooking community.  I have some graphic designers that I write blog posts for in exchange for them giving me some of their digital supplies to use for my pages.  If you'd like to read the actual post, you can see it here.

New Year's Eve

While the kids are still too young to stay up until midnight to celebrate the New Year, we did do something fun on the 31st.  We went to a New Year's Eve bowling party!  The bowling alley near us was hosting a special where you could rent a lane and they'd put on the neon lights and play fun family music.  Even though we were there at like 2 in the afternoon, they even had a count down.

Sorry for the horrible pictures, but the lighting wasn't good at all for pics, but you can still see the fun:

A few fun pictures

We had a never ending Christmas break.  With one snow day before and two after, it ended up being almost three weeks long.  Poor Becca just couldn't wait one day and started walking around the house with her backpack, making sure everything was ready for when she'd finally be able to go back.



For Christmas I got an amazing calendar from Michael.  Each month is a new picture he created at school.



Can you explain to me how one can even sit like this?  And he stayed that way for like 10+ minutes!



This past week was Tim's birthday.  The kids were so excited to make him cards and give him a cake.  When he sat down to this, the math teacher in him couldn't resist asking the kids, "If I'm turning 35, then how many years does each of these 5 candles have to stand for?"

Christmas Presents

Last week we spent a night working on teacher christmas presents.  I wanted something the kids could help with so we decided on chocolate covered pretzels.

We did white chocolate and semi-sweet.



I let the kids toss the pretzels into the chocolate and then I fished them out and set them to harden on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper.



On some of them we drizzled melted butterscotch.  I let them sit in the fridge to harden for a while and then we put them in cute bowls and wrapped them up.  Of course I forgot to take pictures of the final products.



The kids also worked hard to write their own Christmas cards.

Homework

Now that both Jon and Michael have weekly homework for school, one of Jon and Becca's favorite games to play has been "homework."

They get out a notebook and go to work.



When I asked them what they were working on Jon said he was writing notes and Becca said she had made a maze.  :)

Christmas Tree

The kids were so excited to put up ornaments on the tree this year.  Michael is old enough to remember a lot of them - especially those he made.  So he was going through the boxes to find his.  Becca followed suit, pulling out different ornaments including things like glass bells, and announcing, "I remember when I made this!"







The other cute thing that happened was that we had the ornaments out all day, but didn't have time to decorate until the evening.  So Becca had fun during the day decorating other things while she waited.

Pasta

Pasta with red sauce is one of my kids' favorite meals.  They eat it down and always ask for seconds.  Unfortunately their mama likes to change up the sauce every once and a while, and since she is the one doing to cooking, well everyone else just has to go along with it.  Last night it was Alfredo.

We started eating around 5:45.  At 6:15 the older three members of the family left the table and the kids were instructed that they needed to eat, do evening chores, get pjs on, and then if there was time they could watch TV.

At 6:45ish Michael was ready and turned on the TV, and here is what Jon and Becca were up to: (Please note that at this point I think they had each maybe eaten 1 bite.)


Boy was it hard to stay calm and not scream "It's still PASTA - just put a bite in your mouth."

After going to his room to scream and cry for about 10 minutes Jon finally finished around 7:20 and Becca by 7:45.

Funny thing is, I don't think they actually disliked it that much when they actually ate it - it was more a battle of wills.  :)