Post-Thanksgiving Round-Up

Well, it's officially "the holiday season." We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend - appetizers with Tim's side of the family, dinner with mine, and then Friendsgiving on Friday afternoon with our friends with kids (our framily, as it were.)

The kids have had half days all this week, and we've spent a lot of time hanging out with friends at the park after school gets out, which is quite nice. There's a really great group of moms who have second graders and then a younger kid, and a lot of them actually live in our immediate neighborhood. Ellie's friend Anabelle hosted a Friendsgiving for the girls last Monday, which was darling.

Anabelle has a "club" and the girls go over every other week on Wednesdays. Anabelle's mom is a saint (those are her almost three year old twin boys.)

From our Friendsgiving. We're lucky to have all of these people, for sure.

We went and got our Christmas tree over the weekend and put it up. Thus far only one ornament lost, but Ellie's also crafted a half dozen more. The cats are being reasonably well behaved with the tree - we adopted them before Christmas last year, but by the time we brought them home the tree was already up, plus they spent a few days without having run of the house, so this feels the first real "tree" experience for the babies. They thankfully haven't shown any interest in climbing the tree. I asked Tim, now that Thor is gone, does he need ME to eat a bunch of the Christmas tree needles, then sit on the floor, yeowl in pain and immediately vomit said needles right back up? EVERY YEAR that poor dumb beast, and he'd do it through ALL of December.

Today I have the kids school conferences - Ellie's was this morning and she's a pleasure to have in class, smart as a whip, a good friend, all that good jazz. Adam's is this afternoon, and I am 100% going to ask his teacher which of my children is her favorite. Then we're off to Arizona at 4:30, headed to ride the Christmas Train with Judd and Lexi. Should be a blast! (a blast of cold air, it's going to be cold enough to snow in Flagstaff!)

Pre-Thankful

The kids don't have school this week, but we've been keeping busy (thus far. It's only Monday!)

Last Thursday night we went to a volunteer event at Share Our Selves, a local health care provider that services the homeless for their family night event. Everything was designed to help kids learn about the services they provide and the community they serve, in a kid-friendly way. They said they'll provide 1,600 meals this coming week to local families and individuals. Our group started off the evening packing produce bags to be handed out, with potatoes, onions, apples and carrots, and then the kids colored paper bags to hold the food bags and made cards to add to the pick up.

From there, we moved on to helping sort canned goods that had been donated over the past few weeks. We finished the evening cutting and tying the ends of fleece sheets to make blankets for those in need.

It felt good to be giving something back, and to be talking with the kids about how part of being thankful for what we have is doing good for others as well. Share Our Selves had really good materials available for parents on how to talk to kids about homelessness in a caring way (because it's also hard when kids are like "so we should just let them live with us!" to bring up the topics of mental illness or drug abuse, etc.) On the drive home we were talking about how the things we'd done, and the things we'd brought to donate would help people who were living on the street. Adam was quiet for a minute, thinking about the tooth brushes he'd helped me buy at the store the week before and asked "will the toothbrushes get squished, on the street?" Sorry buddy, I don't mean that the homeless live directly in the middle of the street, where cars are.

Friday morning was the kindergarten Thanksgiving play, and they were very cute. They ditched the out of date Pilgrims and Native American costumes, and all of the kids made "thankfulness vests" except for the five little girls were dressed up as turkeys (looked very cute, and also, very itchy.) Adam got reprimanded twice during the production, once for screwing around with a class mate, once for flapping his vest up and over his face a bunch. But, he delivered his line with confidence, and did some all star dancing and singing.

We spent Friday night and Saturday horsing around with friends, relaxing, and doing some planning for the upcoming holiday onslaught. The kids slept over at Mimi and Poppy's last night, and Tim and I were thankful for a night out!

This morning one of Ellie's girlfriends had a bunch of the gals over for a friendsgiving. I am truly thankful for Anabelle's mom, who took on a half dozen little girls along with her own twin toddlers and let them make slime and also apple sauce and pasta necklaces and have a feast.

Bruins Do Big Bear.

The kids had Monday off for Veteran's Day, which is the first part of our No School November (next week they have completely off in the lead up to Thanksgiving. The following week is school conferences so every day is a half day... and then we're going to Arizona for a few days so they'll miss school that way.) Basically, I hope they learn something between now and New Year!

Anyhow, it worked out well because Pari and James had rented a house in Lake Arrowhead and asked us if we wanted to join, and yes, yes we did! It ended up working out quite well - Saturday morning we had family pictures taken, Adam had his final soccer game of the season (that's enough youth sports for me for this calendar year, thank you) and then we loaded the car and headed up the mountain.

The cabin was great - three stories, plenty of bedrooms, and came fully stocked with everything we'd need to just relax and unwind together. It had a real chef's kitchen, and Pari is a great cook (I brought breakfast supplies, home made cookies, and my sparkling personality to make up for my cooking deficiencies.) Mila is five days older than Adam and Rahim is four, so the kids all had someone to play with (plus we could send them to a different story of the house!) Pari and James also invited two other couples (one stayed Saturday night, one Sunday) and so the kids spent the day hanging out, then we did a big dinner, put the kids to bed and stayed up late drinking and talking.

When we got up there on Saturday we went down to the actual Lake Arrowhead village, which was rebuild in the last twenty years, and reminds me of an outlet mall, with random high end stores, and then a little carnival area. Sunday we made the windy drive over to Big Bear. The lake is really pretty, but sadly very low with the drought. The kids were hungry and nuts, but we were able to find a place that would seat all eight of us quickly AND bring out the kid food almost immediately. We did some good poking around, and then on the way home I declared that we MUST go to the Alpine slide on the outskirts of town. And lo, it was awesome! We all got to ride the chair lift up (Ellie was the only kid who had ever been on one) and they you take a sled down a concrete luge. I was all prepared to ride with Ellie, and then they informed me that she was too tall and had to ride by herself. Farewell little friend, hope you figure out the braking before the end of the track!

Tim and Adam made it down safely as well!

They are such a funny little foursome, we were sad to pack up and leave yesterday morning. We made it home in good time and Tim went into the office. The kids and I stayed in our pajamas all day, went over to Gigi's house for a bit, and then when Adam started melting down out of exhaustion, came home for early baths and VERY early bed time. All that fresh air and friend time is exhausting!

I am still confused that it's only Tuesday. Adam has a feast at school on Thursday and then the Thanksgiving play on Friday. And then, no school? Ellie has already complained about having to go to the YMCA with me, I've already told her I don't care. Family fitness for all!

Halloweenie

Another great Trick or Treat in the books! We end up going over to our friend's neighborhood in Laguna Niguel to take advantage of the Candy Corn lane they have. Those people really go all out - there's donuts, there's popcorn, there's a woman manning an ice cream sundae table, there's water bottles, sometimes the houses will top off beer or wine for the adults. This year, there was also someone walking with a miniature pony. I mean... com'n.

The kids have been planning for months to be Harry Potter and Hermoine Granger from the Harry Potter series. Tim decided to be Professor Snape, and I decided to be Mrs. Norris, the grounds keeper's cat, in the interest of wearing my cat onesie for the third year in a row. I bought the kids cheap costumes at Target, and then this week Adam kept telling me he was going to be PacMan. The heck you are kid! He then clarified - he's going to be PacMan next year, so stay tuned. Tim got really into his costume, and found the perfect Michael Jackson wig to complete his look - he said the Amazon reviews were especially convincing when someone mentioned they bought it for their husband, who has a huge head.

BEHOLD:

Pumpkins - Adam's, Ellie's, Mine

Speaking of cats!

Lucky dressed as a Taco

Taco a a very ferocious shark