A whale of a tale

That is all.

Another lonely pic

My little elves

Tonight, I needed to take the one last photo for the Christmas card.  Of course, the first pic I took was the best but I wasn’t thinking straight and forgot that I needed it to be landscape instead of portrait.  Then came round two.  Of course, by that time Kevin had already left for the hockey game…Luckily, I was able to get a good one.  I even dug out the tripod and took a pic of me and the kids (which in all honesty is what I should do anytime I want a pic as Kevin is not the best direction follower.)

Here you can see all 5 of the trees that I have put up this year.

A little Santa love

Today, we took the kids to visit Santa Claus at the mall.  Lauren and Santa talked for awhile while Kev tried to get Jack interested in seeing the bearded man.  Lauren surprised me by asking Santa for a pogo stick. EEK!  I had clue that was something she wanted.

2011                                                                                                                              2010

We tried to put the jack-a-lope into Santa’s lap, but Jack wasn’t having any of that.  Jack is a big strong boy and Santa was very gentle…needless to say, Jack escaped Santa’s clutches quite quickly.  Jack could only be coaxed over to stand near the bearded man with a yummy vanilla wafer treat.  This pic is as good as it gets folks.  Unfortunately, you can’t see his adorable moose hat any better this year than you could in last years pic.  Where has my baby gone?

Jack was all better once we took the pictures and moved on to the play area.  Poor kids, what they must go through for a picture with a strange jolly man.

Little Tree

Lauren decorated one of the little trees.  I decided to put them up all around the house to make it more festive.  She had a blast.

Happy Thanksgiving

Jack approves of Pumpkin pie with real whipped cream. 

I did a little shopping today.  We finally got a “real” Christmas tree.  I had been using the cute little ones for about a decade now and decided it was time to upgrade.  I may have gone a bit overboard though.  I picked out a 9 foot tree.  Luckily we live in a house that can support it.  I was a bit shocked when we got it set up and I realized just how tall 9 feet was.  Apparently, I was under the impression that our living room was bigger than it actually is.  I had intended to place it in front of the big window, but had to settle for the wall near the peak of our 12 foot vault.  Oops!  I also did a little crazy shopping this evening and went to wal mart for the 10pm festivities.  I’m so thankful my dad was there to help me get the giant item into my cart.  It was wall-to-wall people and took me 45 minutes to reach the front of the store and checkout (which honestly wasn’t horrible) so it was a good night.

SNOW!

Lauren was overcome with joy when it started to snow today.  She insisted that we go play in it and build a snow family.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough there to do anything but slip on it and be cold.

Oh yeah, and eat…

Poor Jack sprout

 

When I typed this blog entry title I had a song from the musical Oklahoma in my head.  Bonus points if you can actually figure out the song I’m thinking of.  Anywho….poor Jack was super sick this week.  He had Roseola and his fever was quite scary (and only being kept at a not-scary temperature with ibuprofen).   He spend the majority of the week in his jammies and took two naps/day on a few of the days (that’s when you know it’s serious!)

Brown Day

Today was brown day at pre-school. Don’t ask me why. Lauren was also unable to explain if there was a particular reason for brown day or if it was just for fun. Jack joined in the brown wearing today as well. Here he is with his favorite toy, the iPod touch. He has figured out how to unlock the darn thing and is quite good at deleting apps and generally disrupting the harmony of the ipod. I wish it weren’t against apple’s TOS to have ap’s that disable the buttons (like toddler lock for Android, love that!!!)

Feast day

                                             2010                                                                                                                   2011

Today was Lauren’s pre-school Thanksgiving feast.  She has been super excited for it all month long.  Yes, she is wearing the same outfit as last year (but this is a size bigger, she’s really growing a lot lately!!)  I’m also quite sad that her hair is pretty much straight now.  It’s probably time to get her first haircut (trim).

Waterpark weekend

We went to the Great Serengeti waterpark again this weekend.  I chose not to bring my good camera so I wasn’t able to get very good photos of Lauren on the waterslides.  She had a blast though.  I think between Kevin and I we must have gone down the tube slide at least 50 times. 

Jack also enjoyed the water a bit more than the last time he was swimming in a pool (over the 4th of July.) 

Unfortunately, we had the great pleasure of having a room beside some people that were in a wedding party and decided to have the after-party in their hotel room.  Needless to say some unpleasant words may have been exchanged and their disturbances caused many calls by many different rooms to the front desk.  We were comp’d the room in the end, but it was still a pain.  If the noise is at a level that will wake Lauren from her coma (I mean slumber) then you know it’s serious business.  In other better news, we shopped at the Outlet mall near the hotel and Kevin found some great clothes and the kids were also a little bit spoiled.  Where’s the love for this mama?

Fantastic Friday

The 2nd Friday of every month is Fantastic Friday at Lauren’s pre-school.  After dinner we packed up the family and headed over for some playtime in the gym.  Boy, were we surprised to see the giant bouncy house all set up.  Both of the kids loved it (and it really makes me want one for our spare bedroom!)

Another school day

I’m getting really bad lately.  I feel like the only time I’m using my camera is the daily pic before school. 

Gobble gobble

‘til you wobble wobble

My new toy!

 

I got a vitamix.  I’ve wanted one for quite a long time, and was surprised that I got one (it’s a Christmas gift, but I was able to get it early. Yaaaaay!)  Here are a few things I’ve made in it so far.

Strawberry yogurt freeze

Peanut butter (1 ingredient:peanuts) made in under 2 minutes

Hummus (in under a minute)

Chicken tortilla soup (made entirely* in the vitamix from ingredients to piping hot soup in 8 minutes)

*I had to cook the chicken breast prior to putting it in obvs!