Winter Break Starts Today!

What a busy day we've had. Ryan had his holiday dance at school this morning at 9:15am. They did dances to songs from around the world like Germany, Russia, and France along with the normal frosty the snow man and jingle bells. They used colorful streamers and parachutes for some of the dances. Then to my surprise they also danced with partners. It was very cute and entertaining.







Then at 1pm we had to be back at the school to help with the class party. They opted for a pizza party and also had cookies, cupcakes and lots of presents from friends and teachers. They also made gingerbread houses. It was a lot of fun but messy.

Drummer Girl

The movie of the week is Piglet's BIG Movie. Kaitlin has watched it many times. Which has been helping me get a lot of stuff done this week like wrap presents, bake cookies and the normal laundry and cleaning routine. During the movie Piglet gets lost and Christopher Robin and the animals set out on an expedition. He leads the line playing his drums and marches along. Kaitlin has become facinated by this and one day decided she wanted to be like Christopher Robin. She got out her drum and asked me to strap it on, she stood in front of the tv and marched and drummed along to the song. It was very cute. I'm just glad she was still doing it by the time I got my camera out.

Christmas is Coming....

We are counting down the days now!! I finally finished all of my shopping today. I do have to get a few gift cards on Saturday while we are out but that's easy and not at the mall!! I only had to go to the mall once and that was today. Kaitlin has been really good for the most part. She normally hates the shopping cart or her stroller but the past few outings we've had she's been a real trooper.



This week we had a quick visit from my sister Stacey and her daughter Meagan. They had been visiting Great Wolf Lodge again and since they were so close they decided to come and see us. She left yesterday morning and I went to a cookie exchange.



Saturday morning I was able to get Ryan and Kaitlin dressed up in Christmas/Holiday attire and take their picture in front of the tree. Kaitlin was of course bribed by chocolate but the end result was ok. Here are the pictures we sent out to family and friends.

Decorating for the Holidays

The tree is up!













This past weekend we decorated our house, inside and out. I did the tree and inside decorations while Chris took care of the outside lights and decorations. See, we have a neighbor across the street that has a house that lights up the street, we couldn't be underdone! Here is their house:










Chris went on Saturday to Lowes and got an 8 foot snowglobe for our front yard. Here's our yard:










Our neighbors to one side also got into the holiday spirit and decorated their roof with santa and his reindeer! Here's Jen and Jason's yard:










We'll see what's next!

A Happy Thanksgiving and Ryan Turns 7

We went on a trip up to my mom's to celebrate Thanksgiving and two days later to have Ryan's family birthday party. We had almost no traffic getting up to moms. We left Suffolk about 10:30am and got to Annandale about 1:15pm. WE had a great dinner with Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and all the other trimmings. After cleaning up it was followed by desert! Stacey, Bob, Meagan and Jack joined us at mom's so we had a full house!!

Saturday was Ryan's real birthday! He's now officially 7 yrs old. We went to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate with family and friends. After playing and having lunch we went to Aunt Stacey's house for cake and presents. Let's just say I think when ever Ryan has a playdate we are going to make it manditory for each kid to take home something! We don't know where to put all this new stuff! He got game boy games, movies, puzzles, toys -his favorite a Robo Reptile!! He also got some clothes which he needed regardless if he wanted or not. He even made himself a hat to wear for his special day.