Get Air & Christmas Preparations 2015- Part 2

This week we attended a homeschool group trip to Get Air in Portland, a trampoline park.  Although we would probably never go when there are lots of other kids, this day seemed pretty safe.  Since most other kids were in school, the total of 40 people in the whole arena certainly felt like we had the place to ourselves.  Audrey had a great time, but really wished she were tall enough to join her brothers for the "fun" section of the arena.

On Tuesday, the kids and I were on our way home and saw a rainbow over Wilson Lake.  It has been very foggy around here for a few weeks, so the rainbow was not surprising, but I realized that I had never seen the actual end of a rainbow before.  This picture doesn't do it justice, but it was pretty amazing to see the end of the rainbow go right into the lake.  I instantly regretted pointing it out to the kids when more than one of them started screaming and throwing a fit that we weren't going to get in a boat to go and get the gold...

For the first time in a few years we are putting ornaments on our tree.  The lack of ornaments, since we moved into this house, was mostly laziness on my part, coupled with the fact that the kids weren't able to help AND highly likely to destroy something. This year though, the kids were beyond thrilled and actually really helpful.  It turns out that they were excited to do the mundane job of putting the hangers on all of the ornaments... I despise that job... I guess we will have ornaments from now on.  I wonder how many years until I can let them decorate it completely independently while I sit back and watch...;)

Christmas Preparation 2015- Part 1

Thanksgiving felt late, so we are trying to get a jump on things by decorating cookies AND getting our tree in the same weekend.  We chose to get the tree on Sunday mostly because it was sunny and 50 degrees out... I don't ever recall getting our Christmas tree and being hot on the same day.  Sunday was an eventful day... I was making frosting for our advent party after church (yes, for those keeping track, that is cookie decorating 2 consecutive days), the kids were playing, then Audrey fell. Well, she was standing on James' "computer" (aka pizza box)... he didn't want her to do that... so instead of getting angry and pushing her off (personal growth right here) he gently tried to lift the box with her on it to move her to another location.  Well, she fell, hit her chin on the floor and for the second time in a few months she split her chin. Mercifully, Gabe was home to help because this one needed more than a butterfly.  So, like any good parents who work in pediatrics, we finished our frosting, got everyone dressed for church and drove to Gabe's office.  This was a nice lesson for us in keeping our supplies up to date at home.  We were having a conflict of whether she needed stitching or just glue... and then how much we would traumatize her by us being the ones to stitch her us vs. glue.  Ultimately, we didn't have the right supplies for sutures, so we glued... this was the less traumatic approach for all of us until Gabe glued my fingers to Audrey's face and I had to pull them off (we agreed that I would get to do the glueing next time...).  So, some butterflies and a band aid later we were off and 45 minutes late for church...

The kids enjoyed the advent crafting/lunch, so we decided to power through to get the tree.. our poor luck must be over for the day... (lesson learned here: with 4 kids injuries are ALWAYS imminent... the odds must overwhelmingly support this). We were on the search for a Christmas tree, it was warm and muddy. Ben tripped and started crying, when I came back to his row, Gabe was holding him with blood dripping out of his mouth. He had tripped over a tree stump and a branch caught his lip/gums.  We evaluated that it was messy and painful, but not life threatening, so we all walked *carefully* back down the hillside and to our car.  When the kind lady who worked there spotted us and said, "No luck finding a tree? Oh no, what happened?!" she was not comforted by our calm demeanor. We took him to the truck, cleaned things up with gauze and he was just fine. She brought some ice for him, took one look at Ben's face and then Audrey and made a kind/humorous comment, but she was probably debating about calling DHS... Especially when we went back out to continue our search.  Everyone was fine at the end of the day and after we washed an entire load of soiled clothes, we got to sit back and admire our tree:)

The last picture here, I just couldn't resist.  The kids take turns going out to open the chicken coop when they wake up.  On this morning it was particularly cold out, so I told James to make sure he put on plenty of warm clothes.  When I looked out my bedroom window this is how I saw him... Winter boots, winter coat, gloves and even a balaclava, but no pants... it is a good thing we live in the country where our neighbors can't see these things;)

Thanksgiving 2015

Nannie, Grandpa, Aunt Amy, Trey and Lily all joined us for Thanksgiving this year. As the top picture demonstrates nicely, Gabe feels he has become a turkey master and is proud of his work;)  James has been fixated, for months, about getting to eat an entire turkey leg.  I have no idea where it came from, but when the day came he happily ate that whole leg.  We made a Thanksgiving tree again this year, we didn't put as much time into it as we should have, but better than no tree.  My favorite highlights this year were: Ben- "a machine that can turn the weather to sunny" and James- "Migashun" (read: migration)... way to prioritize kids!

The day after Thanksgiving the kids and I stayed home for a resting day. That evening Grampy and Grammy came to visit for a few days. We spent Saturday morning helping to decorate our church for Christmas and doing a little local shopping. That afternoon Aunt Andrea was able to join us for a Thanksgiving leftovers dinner;)

The other excitement over the weekend was the discovery of the chicken's outdoor "nesting box".  Thoughtfully, they chose a spot off of our deck, close to the door so we wouldn't have to walk as far to collect them. James continues to be a bit of a chicken whisperer and will just go out, reach underneath the hen and pull out a hot egg... the hens throw a fit if anyone else even gets near them when laying eggs.  As it turns out they are laying lots of eggs...  

Field Trip Day to Portland- Body Worlds

Wednesday was a field trip day to Portland!  James and Noah went with Gabe and Nannie to the BodyWorlds exhibit at the Portland Science Center. Gabe and I had seen this exhibit when we were in college at the Museum of Science in Boston and we both remembered it as an amazing "must see" exhibit. The kids have all been learning anatomy for the past several weeks, in preparation. We spent the few days before they visited discussing at length that they are actual human bodies, why they were there, how/why they looked like they did, how this kind of thing is important to learning about the body, etc. I think that the leg work paid off because they both really loved it and couldn't wait to tell me about all of the "cool" things they had seen and "Did you know...?".  I truly was afraid that one of them would have terrible nightmare, but so far we are in the clear. Maybe we have brainwashed them to love science, maybe it's genetic, maybe we have marked them for life by never sparing the "real details" when it come to science, but anyway it is, we were proud parents;)  Here is the website, just in case anyone would like more info (we would obviously encourage a visit:)): http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html

While the older boys were learning some anatomy, Grandpa and I took Ben and Audrey to the Portland Children's Museum.  We do love science, but even we knew it wasn't appropriate for the 2 & 4 year olds;) They spent lots of their time playing on the indoor playset, driving the fire engine and "camping" upstairs.  It was great to see the new exhibits they have placed within the last 12 months.  Both kids loved the new hospital set up complete with the Angel 1 ambulance.  The X-ray of the bear who swallowed a truck was a particular hit! Another successful outing to the "big city" in the books:)

Snow... Sort of...

It snowed 2 days ago... sort of.  This is all we got, but it froze just enough for the kids to spend the first 2 hours of the morning sledding, in their jammies, before breakfast.  It was gone by the end of the day... oh well, better than nothing! Hopefully our pond will freeze soon so we can get out and start enjoying winter.

Vermont Birthday Visit

Sunday we took a day trip to visit the Yukica family in Vermont for the twin's 9th birthday.  We have only missed 2 birthdays since we have known them and one was because they were in Washington, so it is a highly anticipated day in our household.  We had a great visit, despite the short duration!  I took Ben and Audrey to the Montshire Science Museum and to King Arthur for some Christmas shopping during the party.  They loved the museum and it was pretty neat to play at the same exhibits Noah used to play at when we lived there:)  Noah and James became Jedi masters at the birthday party and made some lightsabers to bring home.  Audrey enjoyed playing with baby Eli and it made us realize that Audrey is not a baby anymore!  Thanks for the fun visit Yukicas!!