Christmas 2018

As always Christmas comes and goes so fast! That said I feel like Christmas Eve was the longest day of my life. I was so excited this year we didn’t have any large gifts with a million pieces to assemble or requiring heavy duty manual labor. So I thought we would for sure be in bed by 1am... nope. Ron and I were up until 3:30am wrapping presents and Christmasing. 

Christmas morning came and went; I feel like the kids were happy I hope it was memorable. Ron and I actually had 2 different gifts for each other that were identical. LOL Too funny we both got each other a video monitoring doorbell and a hygiene tool in our stockings. I guess great minds think alike!

Mason

Scout stuff

Hiking Backpack

Sleeping bag/hat

7” tablet and case

Large nerf gun

Noah

Pokémon stuffed animal squirtle

Dogman Book’s 5 & 6

Ninjago shark lego set

Minecraft video game

Disney infinity video games/characters

Large nerf gun

Callie

Tablet 

Art supplies 

Stroller

Hatchimal

April for weeks now has been saying that she wanted a pink Unicorn. She never said anything else. I love that little sweet girl. My Dad gives the kids these stuffed horses from Wells Fargo and we have collected about half a dozen over the years. April collects all of them, lines them up to brush them and talk to them. She will do this for up to an hour at a time. It’s adorable. She even gets my water spray bottle to spray their mane and brush it. I think she does that because that’s how I do her hair. 

Pink Unicorn amazon

You Spirit Horse /lucky doll 

2 Unicorns one of course pink

Babydoll

Hatchimal

Family gifts:

3-day Disneyland passes 

Hover-board

Christmas Pictures

I have a problem, it's an addiction really. I LOVE taking pictures. 

I guess I should say I love getting that ONE magical picture where everything falls into place. Where all of the kids portray their adorable personalities and perfect smiles. AND I'm willing to take a MILLION pictures to get that one. That being said I am not a photographer I could probably save myself a lot of grief by taking some photography classes but I don't. 

Family pictures are usually so stressful and time consuming so we only do them every other year.  I found this private company that charges a small fee for staging winter scenes, you to take your own pictures in an assigned 30 min window. So we threw on some Christmas Jammies and went to town. Sadly, the only available time they had was 4pm on a Friday which is why Ron didn't make the photo shoot. I thought he would be happy about that but secretly I think he was a little bummed we didn't get a family pic of us all. 

Four years ago I did something similar with Mason, Noah and Callie. I was hoping to recreate this picture: (and I think I came pretty close to it) I love that April is wearing the same pj's as Callie in these pictures. ;)

Christmas Piano Recital

Every few years my mom does a sing-a-long Christmas piano recital. It's surprisingly really fun to sit in a room full of strangers and sing Christmas Carols. It's also a very good experience for the children to learn to accompany music and follow a conductor.

Mason played the Hymn The First Noel, 

Noah O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, 

and Callie played Away in a Manger. 

I really love and appreciate that my mom lets them be part of her recital even though they aren't her piano students.

Noah's First Band Concert

I was shocked when Noah came home from school one day and asked if he could join the band. He does not enjoy playing the piano in fact he fights me on it a lot. Even though he complains about it he is pretty good at the piano and has always been very responsible about his practicing and progress. Lately he also has not really been into sports (which I am totally ok with as long as he is getting exercise and being active). He isn't the most adventurous kid, as in he doesn't like to do something unless he knows he will be good at it or knows exactly how to do it. I guess to word it better he doesn't like to try new things (except food, he is my BEST eater!) So when he came home with a desire to play in the band I was super excited and nervous all in one. I have never been a "band mom" so this was new to me and of course I texted a couple good friends with boys in band for advice and input. Noah told me he wanted to play percussion, more specifically the snare drum. I am still laughing to myself at his reason for choosing this instrument and I quote "I want to play the drums because they aren't mouth instruments" Noah is incredibly germ phobic. He could be dehydrated with cracked bleeding lips in a million degree weather but he STILL wouldn't accept water from you if he know you had taken a drink already.

His first band concert was a success! I am so proud of him and really enjoyed listening to them play. It's really fun to see your kid excel and be excited about a new skill and talent. 

Halloween 2018

Boo - Unicorn - Zombie - Pikachoo

This is my favorite Holiday. I just love dressing up and planning the kids outfits. Mason wanted to be a zombie. Which was totally fun to create and cheap! Noah was undecided for a while. But got excited when I suggested Pikachoo. Callie wanted to be a princess again but I had a hard time finding a fancy poofy dress under $20. So I suggested a unicorn she fell in love with it.  Thankfully for April I still get to pick her costume. Ron came up with the idea of being characters from the movie Monsters Inc. (one of my personal favorites and a movie April has recently enjoyed watching) so of course I bought Ron a Sully aka “Kitty” onesie, April was “Boo”, and I made myself a Mike Wiesbowski shirt. I seriously love this movie and it’s soooooo April. She LOVES jumping up on people and yelling “Boo!” When this movie first came out it made me cry in the theater. (Yes as an adult I got teary eyed over a cute little girl never seeing her big Kitty friend again.) It's just so adorable and April was perfect for the part.

Masons costume was really fun to create. lots of ripping, cutting and "painting blood"

Ron and I went to an adult Halloween party this past weekend and I was pretty impressed with myself and my Pinterest find. Isn’t Ron a hot hunter?!? ;)

April's Hair

While I was on my girls trip this past weekend I FaceTime called my kids and immediately noticed Aprils hair was noticeably shorter. I guess when she was playing at her friend Charlotte’s house their 5 year old cousin played “hairdresser“ with April and Charlotte. This little girls mother can cut hair so she fixed Aprils hair as best she could. I was a little upset. Partly because no one told me about it and partly because I had missed Aprils first real haircut. Poor Charlotte got a little more extreme/modern cut. Oh well. Hair grows. I’ve been meaning to go get Aprils hair cut anyways. This just saved me a trip and some money. 

Noah is 10

For weeks Noah has been requesting a Krazy Air birthday party. His friends all met at the house we did cake and presents first and then we headed off to Krazy Air. Sadly Noahs birthday seems to always fall during October Break which usually means about half his friends can’t make it to his party.
Noah is such a good, obedient, thoughtful, smart, kind, a tad obnoxious at times, and the peacemaker in our home. He has started Band this year at school and is playing the drums. He still loves math and does extremely well at it. His AZ merit test score was perfect in the math portion, no surprise there. He is getting more into reading too, in fact right now he and Mason are actually reading the same book right racing each other a spin off series of Percy Jackson. Mason and Noah get along really well, late at night when I’m not too annoyed with the noise level I like to sit and listen to their bubbly conversation. Brother Love is an awesome thing. I sure am thankful for this sweet boy and the calmness he brings to our crazy household.

 His birthday lunch request was the usual meatball sub from Subway.

Mason's 12

Mason is 12!!!! I can’t believe it. I was surprised that Mason didn’t really have any requests or ideas about what he wanted to do for his birthday. We don’t do sleep overs so he wanted a late night birthday party. We decided to take his friends to the MHS football game. I bought the boys all MHS shirts we met at the house and headed off to the game. 12 year old boys can make a lot of noise! I’m glad Mason had a good time. He sure has some good friends.
Mason is such a crazy, fun, energetic, optimistic, fun loving, confident, mischievous and hilarious kid. He is a night owl and an early riser. Still loves reading and is currently tied for first place in Battle of the Books at his school. I’m not an expert but I think he is pretty good at sports. This year in after-school sports he was so thrilled when the coach picked him as one of the team captains. This meant he got to hand pick his teammates and lead his team in the competitions to follow. He chose his team name Cardinals and for days after school he came home planning and drawing out plays. He talked NONSTOP about his teammates and their strengths and his plans to win the championship. He even used Madden football as an excuse to “study up” on plays. During one of our many conversations about his team I learned he chose Elijah as his first pick. I was surprised because I knew Mason wasn’t particularly fond of this kid Elijah and I specifically asked him “why did you choose him?” He said “because he’s super fast.” I was impressed at his maturity and strategy.
The Cardinals won the championship game! I think the score was 27 to 21 While I’m happy for Mason to get the win. I’m more impressed with his leadership skills and I enjoyed watching him grow. On the day of the championship game I was happy to get a phone call from Mason right after school with him asking me if I was still planning on coming. Which I of course was. It makes me smile to know that he still wants me around. I hope he never out grows that.

 

At the MHS football game Mason was so excited they had some Cardinals professional football players at the game. Mason even got his football autographed from Cory Peters.