Christmas program

Colin and Mags had their Christmas program at school tonight.

We didn't know what to expect, other than to show up right when the doors opened because the gym fills up fast.  We did, and sat about 5 rows back.  I sat on the floor in the middle of the rows so I could see the kids better.  

Just as expected, Maggie did great and Colin was pretty shy up there.  He was hesitant to even walk up on stage, and didn't move much while up there.

Maggie did some dance moves, jingled her bell, and was smiling and having a great time.

 Before we left, such a cute pic of the 2 of them all dressed up

 Silly smiley faces

 Grandad and Grammie came to watch, too!

Good thing they got there on time, cause the whole production lasted 10 minutes...

 Maggie looks so little up there, but she held her own!

 Poor Colin will never be my performer...but he looked really cute up on stage!

 Baby Jesus sleeping in the manger

 Swinging her dress around (I love the kid next to her, he was doing that the whole time, and the cute girl on the end never uncrossed her arms!)

A cute family pic before we left the gym

We are so pleased with how the kids are doing at Christ Lutheran.

It's such a wonderful Pre-K program.

Gingerbread House

We had a blast decorating our gingerbread house this year.

I learned from last year and got a few more "decorations" for the house, because it seems like the candy the gingerbread house kit includes just really isn't the best for decorating.

The kids did great taking turns putting on the candies and, just like last year, ate way too many of them in the process.  We made sure to brush their teeth extra well that night! :)

Sweet Maggie

Daddy was the frosting-expert and helped guide the candy placement.  We thought it looked great!

An action shot, Maggie on the left and Colin on the right, pushing on some candies

The finished product (with the beginnings of a "snowman" in the back of the house)

They were so proud of their house

The frosting-expert caved on the requests for a squeeze of frosting in the mouth

2013 Visit with Santa

We went to Crown Center again this year to visit Santa.  The kids love playing on the Crayola playground and this year there were NO TEARS while sitting on his lap!

For the past week or so I have been talking to Maggie about the plan for visiting Santa.  They would sit on his lap, tell him what they wanted for Christmas, smile for a picture, then hop off and go play.

Both of them followed through, asking for Ninja Turtles and Hello Kitty dream lites.

Santa made sure to remind them to pick up their toys and go to bed when Mommy and Daddy say so.

 Successful Santa picture!

 Discussing their wish lists for Christmas

 Doing the "santa fist bump" with flying reindeer action afterward

 The kids played a while after the Santa picture, and Colin was taking such great care of Maggie.

He really can be a sweet big brother when he wants to!

 Silly faces in the distortion mirrors

 Colin heading down the slide backwards

Afterwards we hit up Fritz's for some mediocre hamburgers and awesome atmosphere.

 Love these 2 cuties!

 My little sweetie

When we got home, Colin decided to label the hats so we knew which one was Colin and which one was Maggie's...

He has really come a long way in Pre-K this year.  

We are pretty impressed considering we couldn't even get him to sit down to color before school started, and now he is writing names all by himself.

The past couple of weeks...

We have been super busy the last few weeks, but it's definitely starting to look a lot like Christmas around our house.

We always put our tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving.  The kids really are great helpers when we do it, if you don't mind getting ornaments everywhere and have lots of glitter all over your clothes!

Just getting started!

About halfway through...

Maggie's handprint from last year

Oh, and our Elf on the Shelf (Buzz) showed back up again that same weekend.

The kids have a blast finding him in the mornings.

That same weekend, the south KC crew showed up at our house for some turkey dinner.
Brian and I cooked the turkey for the first time by ourselves, and it turned out wonderful!

Too much food, but lots of good conversation...

Silly Tiffey, probably shouldn't be doing that 7 months preggo!!

Shhhhh, I won't tell anybody!

My wonderful family!

St. Nick came to our house on Friday.

He brought us lots of yummy muffins, and some clementines, plus Colin got a ninja turtle figurine and Maggie got the movie Tangled!

In other news...Maggie had a whole week of getting green cards at school (it's a good thing).

She was so proud of herself, she wanted me to take a picture of her with her last green card of the week.

Please excuse the "I've been at school all day" hair.

Speaking of crazy hair, this is what I was dealing with one morning last week.

Her hair is a ratty mess in the mornings.  Any advice on how to control it, I am all ears!

Then, last weekend, we had Tiffey's baby shower at her church in Grandview.

It was a lot of fun and everyone had a great time.

Tiff got lots of thoughtful gifts and Baby Parks is getting spoiled already.

Phoenix (5) and Maggie were the kids at the party.  

They were big helpers when it came to decorating for the shower.

A couple of the glowing preggo ladies at the shower

Our main activity at the shower was for the guests to help create an ABC book for the baby.

Each guest got a page with a letter on it.  They drew something on the page that started with their letter and then wrote out the name of the object.  

They had lots of fun with it and some were very creative with their pages!

Hard at work

Even the kids got involved

A group shot of everyone at the shower

The ladies in the family

We have plans to go visit Santa later on this week, plus we are getting together with our neighbors this weekend for some Christmas fun.

But, on a much bigger note, as of tomorrow, I am officially done with all of my coursework for my PhD degree.  This means, I have my comp exams and my dissertation left to finish, which I hope to be done with by this time next year.

It's been a long road, but totally worth it for my family's future!

Thanks for everyone's love and support! I couldn't have done it without you.

Turkey day 2013

Our family had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

We spent actual Thanksgiving morning around the house, lounging and playing games.  Then we hit up Grammie and Grandad's house for some yummy brunch, followed by a quick trip to the Teson side's get together to see a bunch of family that we don't see all that often.

After that...a quick nap at home followed by more family time at Grammie and Grandads house.

I took Friday off work and got to spend time with the kiddos just the 3 of us while Brian was working.  We got together with my side of the family on Saturday, they all came up for some fabulous turkey dinner with too much food!!

 The best family picture we could get...

not bad for being scrunched into one chair!

I thought the kids looked cute so I tried to get some pics of them sitting on the couch...

Lighting was terrible and I was using my camera on my phone...

thought I got some cute pics though!

Our little Maggie, cheesing it up!

Andrew was sneaking up behind me while I was taking pictures of Maggie, he wanted to join in!

GGRita and the kiddos

Oh, and Colin is just finishing up his antibiotic for a random, weird fluky thing that happened last week.

Colin woke up in the middle of the night saying he had a bug bite that was hurting him.  Being the loving mother that I am, I slapped on a bandaid and told him to head back to bed.

In the morning, he said he had a headache, so I checked his temperature (it was fine) and gave him some medicine and sent him to school.  By the end of the day, he came home from school, with a fever, pale, puny looking, and complaining of a headache.  

We laid low the rest of the night and when we changed him into pajamas, only then did we notice he had a HUGE red, swollen and hot area where the bug bit him, all the way down to his groin.

We did an immediate trip to urgent care and they gave him some antibiotics for the infection.

They are not sure if something dangerous bit him or if he just scratched at it and infected it, but either way, we are on the mend...it looked terrible the next day, he spiked a fever and was vomiting.  The red area spread down his leg and across his belly.  Crazy how the body reacts to things...

Anyway, life's always full of surprises when you've got young kids!

 Nothing that a nice orange popsicle won't fix!