Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve is finally here! Santa has been to Guam and the cookies have been eaten and there are presents under the tree...

The kids woke up at a normal hour (hooray!) and Colin did very well waiting patiently in his room while I fed Caleb so he would be happy opening presents too. Once they were finally released they were excited to get to the living room...

On his way to discover his loot!

Colin checking out his stash.

Caleb did very well for it being his first experience with wrapping paper. He picked up pretty quickly that there were goodies inside and to tear it off. Of course he wanted to eat the paper, but the toys helped distract him from that. Colin was fun to watch opening and getting so excited about things. 

Here are the pictures of the kids...

Christmas 2014

 

Gingerbread House Construction

In the past I have always bought the gingerbread houses that were already put together. Well K-Mart didn't have that kind and I had to construct the house before Colin could decorate it. We get home from the store, I get Caleb down for a nap and Colin and I get to work. First of all, whoever invented gingerbread houses probably didn't have children. I'm not sure why this person thought icing, of all things, was the preferred method of keeping the house together. Sides were falling and the house closely resembled the Tower of Pisa when I read the part of the instructions that said once constructed it was best to let it set and harden 3-4 hours before decorating. Yea right. You tell that to my impatient six year old who is already about over this whole building the gingerbread house thing anyway. All he wanted to do was eat the candy and decorate it in the first place, I don't think he knew he was signing up to actually BUILD a house. It took all of 10 minutes for me to decide that the hot glue gun was a much better weapon of choice. Colin was fully on board with that idea because he didn't want to wait for it to set up. Who actually eats a gingerbread house after it's been sitting out on display for a week or two anyway? What's so wrong with throwing a little super glue in that kit and making everyone's life easier? It took longer for the glue gun to warm up than it did for the whole house to be built! Then Colin got to decorating. He did all the design and anything that icing was not intended to hold up, well the glue gun was ready!

First Grade Holiday Celebration

At Colin's school all the first grade classes came together for a little performance for the parents and then had a potluck style feast for everyone. They were hilariously awful! This group was singing at this pace, and that group was singing at a different one, it was certainly entertaining.
Here is the video of the kids singing:


Here is Colin and Isabella, who he claims is his girlfriend. They were plenty cute together at the event!

 Colin and a classmate friend.

Wordless Wednesady

Here Comes Santa Claus!

We headed down to the beach on the Navy base and stopped in the BX first. While we were in there we found Santa! Colin wasn't interested in sitting on his lap until he realized they were giving goodie bags to the kids who sat with him. Caleb wasn't interested in sitting with that man at all, period. He did pretty good though and held on long enough for me to snap a picture. I think if he'd have sat there another second he'd have busted out screaming though.

Thursday Theater

I missed Wordless Wednesday, so here are some videos of Caleb instead.
He loves playing on the couch. He would sit up, flop backward or to the side and then giggle about it and get up and do it again. Towards the middle/end you can see him do it because of course when I started recording he stopped doing it for a bit.

Here he is playing in the tub. He was pretty pleased with the bubbles and doing a lot of talking with me.

Welcome back Tinsel!

Our elf, Tinsel, returned the day after Thanksgiving for his annual stay with us. He always brings books when he returns from the North Pole and Colin was so excited to have him back with us. Here are some of the things he's been up to this year...

Welcome back! Thanks for the books!

Doing a little chillin in the fridge with candy.

Building a TP snowman.

Fun with fruit!

A little Star Wars action!

Colin woke up to find Tinsel like this...

...then when he opens his lunch at school, he'll find this!

It's the Harlem Globetrotters!

I was so excited when I heard the Harlem Globetrotters were coming to our base on their tour, I knew Colin would go nuts! Then I realized that the show fell on a Monday, which is Cub Scout night. I decided that Colin would just have to miss scouts because he would so love this show. Then I remembered that one of the achievements the boys are supposed to do is attend a sporting event, and they have actually had a hard time scheduling something to accomplish this badge since we have no pro or semi pro leagues for any kind of sport here. As Gru would say...."light bulb!" I called Shelby who happened to be at a cub scout meeting and told him he should talk to the scoutmaster about the boys attending this function together as a group. Then they decided they should just talk to the commander in charge of the squadron that handles these events and see if we could get reserved seating for the scouts and their families. BAM! Done! Mwuahahahaha! My plan was a success! We did not have to wait in any line to see the Globetrotters, the boys had front row seats to the show and had a meet and greet with the players after the game. I was hoping Flight Time and Big Easy (from Amazing Race) would be here, but they were not on this stop. :(  Unfortunately I never got to meet the players after the show. About 45 minutes before the end of the show Caleb threw up all over Shelby. He's not a puker, but I kind of chuckled that he did it right after I gave him to Shelby when I had been holding him the whole time. Shel had another shirt on the car so I cleaned up Caleb and wondered what the heck made him throw up while Shelby ran out to change. I soon realized laughing at Shelby was not the smartest thing to do, karma put my butt right back in its place when he threw up all over me about 20 minutes later! I was not so fortunate as to have another shirt in the car and I had to drive home covered in puke and stinking up the van. No player meet and greet for me! LOL Here are the pictures we got of the kiddos.

Caleb before he puked everywhere.

 Doing the YMCA with players.

Shelby working clean up!

The scouts and players.

It's beginning to look...

...A lot like Christmas! Those that know me know how much I love my Christmas tree! I bought it many years ago on a day after Christmas sale and got a beauty of a tree for a sweet price. It's been a wonderful tree, but she's showing her age and each year I plug her in and hold my breath to see if she will light completely. The last year or two the lights in one little section have not lit, but I just shove that part to the back in the corner and no one is the wiser. I've known it's only a matter of time before Old Faithful refuses to light, and so this year I decided to retire her in her prime and let her go out with dignity. On Black Friday we hit Home Depot and got a deal on a new tree that isn't quite as magnificent as Old Faithful, but it's pretty and I hope it will last as many years as my other tree. We decorated the inside first, Colin helping decorate with me to take his mind of the stomach bug he had, and while Shelby was at work.

Colin was terribly bothered by the fact that our tree has no star on the top. So finding a star is on the top of my to do list right now. I was worried about how Caleb would do with the tree and you'll notice there are no ornaments close to the bottom. So far he's done very well and mainly just wants to scoot underneath it to chew on presents. The present he is particularly drawn to and goes for every time is actually one of his and I could care less if he chews it. I've been shooing him away when he gets under there, but it has not been a battle as of yet and I am grateful for that!

Next up were the outside lights. We have had many of our C9 strands since we married ages ago, and prior to that they were actually hanging on my house when I was a kid! Hard to imagine anything electrical lasting that long these days. Like my Christmas tree we never quite know what is going to light and what is going to die on us each year when we plug it in. This year we decided to just start fresh with all new LED energy efficient lights in hopes of not having to pay any more than we already have to for power. Here is what we came up with...not too shabby! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

As usual today we hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our house. We had several families Shelby works with join us and ate entirely too much food. Caleb celebrated his first Thanksgiving and he really enjoyed the food. He loved the stuffing, cranberries, mac and cheese and sweet potatoes.

Wordless Wednesday

Native American Celebration

Colin's class, along with the other first grade classes have been studying Native American culture at school. To end the unit they had a bit celebration where they participated in all kinds of activities that taught them about Native American culture. They made dream catchers, got their face painted, wrote in symbols on their (paper) animal hides, tasted foods like beef jerky, cornbread, dried cranberries and popcorn, practiced weaving, and more. I volunteered and helped with the snack station. I was able to snap some pictures of Colin visiting different stations. At the end the classes competed with one another in a traditional game of tug o war. Those kids were serious! LOL

Colin impressed the volunteer at this station with his arm. He was the only kid to throw through all three hoops in the designated order on the first try. Colin was quite pleased with himself of course!

Colin's teacher (right) and another first grade teacher competing in a silly race.

Wordless Wednesday