The cold weather finally came. This year has been awesome – November was great. But then all of a sudden it got cold late last week (in to the teens) and my pond froze overnight (the fish have been hiding for at least a month already – the next time we’ll see them will be April at the earliest). Things have been crazy insane busy. Beth’s parents came up for Thanksgiving and we had a great week. I kept busy that week getting the yard and house ready for winter – our latest landscaping changes left me with quite a few to-do’s – so it was great to have someone distract the kids for several days! And of course they got to do lots of fun things, including baking cookies with papa – they dipped the cookies in chocolate and then got to decorate them with icing – yummy!!!
Sometimes the kids get quiet for a while…and you start to wonder if they are up to something good or bad…and then decide you really don’t care as long as they stay quiet…
Christopher had his space derby race with his cub scout pack this past week. This was clearly communicated as a non-competitive event (not to be confused with the pinewood derby event in a few months which is competitive and a chance for dad’s to show off their toy building abilities). We only saw Christopher’s space derby race once and it went the furthest in his heat (but not near as far as a few of the rockets in other heats that looked like they were jet propelled). I wonder how big of a rubber band I would need to power my Mazda 3 to work…
And here Christopher is with some friends from his den…pay attention…these are our future senators, doctors, CEOs, etc…
Every year there is a turkey coloring contest in the newspaper and every year Colleen says she’s going to do it but her enthusiasm quickly fades. This year she colored the whole turkey and we sent it in…keep your fingers crossed for her (and unlucky for her she is now in the 9 – 12 year old category).
Not to be outdone, Megan colored this one (about as fast as her arm could move) that was also a contest in the paper. It keeps cracking me up because of the standard legal wording that says this is now the property of some automotive dealership and may be used for promotial purposes – ha! Yah, you are stuck with this now – it’s your property. And I’d love to see them use this one in their ads!
Awwww…some lucky kid will get a Megan doll under the tree this year…how lucky! It poops, spits, talks back, annoys its siblings, and is oh so cute 🙂
This past Friday I went to Colleen’s school to talk about fire fighting. I had never done anything like this before – but it turned out great – a lot of fun. I even got to eat lunch with the class and then play tetherball. I haven’t played tetherball probably since Horace Mann in Ohio when I was in 3rd grade – but it was always my favorite game then – and I think it still is! It was me against 10 girls and a boy or two towards the end. We had some close matches – and not that I’m bragging – but I managed to pull out 3 victories. I’ve still got the tetherball touch I guess – I’m blessed, what can I say. English isn’t allowed in their classroom so I had to do my presentation in the hallway. Colleen got to dress up with me.
Yesterday (Saturday) was insane. Orca to the groomers at 8:30 a.m.; all three kids to swimming at 9:00 a.m.; I played racquetball at 9:00 a.m.; pick up Orca; kung fu at 11:30 a.m.; Colleen danced at the gophers men’s basketball game at 2:30 a.m. (so we left at 1:15 p.m. for that and got home at 5:30 p.m.); and then it was our neighborhood’s progressive dinner and we had one of the soup and salad courses at our house (so in between all of the other activities, every chance we got we were cooking or cleaning) – and had a babysitter at our house from 1:00 p.m. to midnight! It was a fun night as always…the whole neighborhood gets into it. We even met a boilermaker couple that moved to the neighborhood last year.
The men’s basketball game was 100% different from the women’s game we went to a few weeks ago (e.g., people actually came to the men’s game). Here’s Colleen (always on the far left) – she lead’s the line in it’s various “waves”.
Jumbotron!!!
Here’s a preview of our Christmas card this year – that’s what happens when the dog is cuter than your kids 😉
Makes me tired just reading about all your activities. I hope Sunday was a more relaxing day.
Nice that Beth’s parents were able to make it up and enjoy Thanksgiving with all of you. We had a nice day at Daniel and Jackie’s. Jackie did a great job with the turkey and all. We even got to bring home some leftovers.
Good luck to Colleen in the turkey coloring contest. If they could judge the artist on the prettiest smile I know she would win. Megan would also win in that category. Nice job by Crhistopher in winning his heat in the space derby contest. Looks like fun. Wish we could have been there to root him on.
Wow, Colleen was on the big scoreboard. Next, we’ll be watching for her on the TV.
If you go by cutest, we’ll be looking to see Colleen, Christopher and Megan on your Christmas card again this year.
We haven’t had temps in the teens yet, but we did finally get some snow last night. About an inch – just enough to let us know more is on the way and make everything pretty. We went to a Christmas concert at church this afternoon. It was nice and with the snow it helped us get more into the Christmas spirit.
Glad the turkey turned out good – hopefully you weren’t too worried! Maybe you can send me my old pinewood derby car!!! We’re supposed to get 5 inches of snow tomorrow (the last snow we got was when we were in NH so we missed it) – all of the morons will be on the road for sure tomorrow. We survived the weekend. I forgot to mention that at the basketball game we were in the “T for 3” section – so every time a 3 point basket was scored they threw several t-shirts to the crowd. The gophers started draining 3 pointers so it seemed like 1/2 of us got t-shirts. We got one of the first ones they threw out – but 20 t-shirts later it started to get old!!!
How busy your family is – that’s great!! Did Colleen win the coloring contest? Her turkey looked soooooo good! Did Megan win????? Colleen is getting so grown up especially in that red Christmas outfit for the dancing at the basketball game. Christopher looks like he has fun with his friends at scouts. I’m assuming that some of those delicious chocolate covered cookies are in the mail to us and should arrive soon??!!! We’ll talk to all of you soon.