More Christmas Fun!

W is definitely wanting to always know what our upcoming schedule is.  And Christmas was no exception.  So we put together a quick daily activity checklist for the weekend holiday to reign in the "Mom, what are we doing next" questions every hour.    

The Christmas celebration at Grandma and Grandpa's house is always the biggest, loudest and craziest of them all, but always a ton of fun.  Legos were a great hit!    

K was SO excited about her electric scooter.   

And someone else was perfectly content with the pretty Xmas lights!  

WOW!!!!

And we never forget the annual picture on the stairs.  

Christmas 2017

Our family of 4 always celebrates Christmas Eve a day early each year.  Our church starts Xmas Eve services on the 23rd so it works out great for us.  We head to church and then out to dinner and home to get ready for the big holiday.  

The kids loved the new jammies Jack the Elf brought them and were hoping they could fall asleep the night before the big day.   

We crammed our celebration into the 1 room we have access to on the main floor. The kids loved their new lounge chairs for their bedrooms.  

Kate was pretty excited to get the pair of shoes she had been wishing for.  

After our little Christmas, we packed up the car and headed to Nana and Papa's house to begin cooking the traditional steak and crab legs dinner with Johnny and Josh.   

Christmas morning was filled with more gifts and fun.  

Papa loves the Family Handyman Magazine.  

Great Grandma had a very special gift for K.  Grandma use to travel with this case on the train when she grew up in England.  It is in great condition and such a lovely keepsake for K to have.  

And Grandma was so excited to open up her favorite dessert.....Tiramisu.  

Lots of fun surprises for everyone.........

Including the sign Papa used when he hitch hiked back and forth from Williamsburg to Iowa State in Ames back in his college days.  

We all got a little chuckle out of that one.  We couldn't believe my Grandma kept those signs after all those years :)

It's beginning to kinda look like Christmas :)

Jack the Elf arrived shortly after Thanksgiving and Will was Johnny on the Spot and left a note right away to let Santa know he REALLY wanted a XBox for Christmas this year :)

Since our main floor was complete under construction over the 2017 Christmas holiday the only spot we had for a tree this year was the stairway landing.  I was so happy we found a space to squeeze in a tree despite all the chaos in the house.  

Will dressed up for his holiday party at school and thankfully still thinks I'm pretty cool and let me wear an elf hat to match.  

Our new fireplace was only sitting in its new home on Xmas Eve. But that's all Santa needed to get into our house right?!? So we set the cookies, milk and carrots in front of it and went to bed rest assured that Santa would still arrive for Xmas morning :)  

6th Grade Volleyball Tournament and a Visit to the Burg.

I know we are traveling back in time as at the time of this blog post, Kate is actually in 8th Grade.  My blogging definitely got put on the back burner.  But now that we are under Quarantine due to our recent international travel, I have made it a quest to attempt to catch up to 2020!   Wish me luck!    So........ back up the clock to late 2017 when Kate got to participate in the West Des Moines Schools 6th Grade Volleyball tournament.  Our district has 8 elementary schools.  Each year all of the 6th graders from each school team up to compete against each other in a day of volleyball.  Kate was pretty pumped about the event.  

Each school got to design their own team shirt.  Our school went with teal this year.  Our team fought really hard but only won a few of the matches.  BUT......we walked away with the sportsmanship award.  Way to go Clive!

We snuck away one weekend to the Burg for fun visit.   As always,  Nana and Papa treated us to some yummy Pizza Haus Pizza!  We had to send a pic to Johnny and Josh in AZ to lovingly rub it in their faces a little bit :)

Will and Papa built a really tall Lego tower.  

And Great Grandma stopped by for awhile to visit.  It's always fun catching up with her.  

Feel Good Service Projects

We participated in a few service projects for our school and church.  My good friend organized a day to paint some fun games on the black top of our Elementary School playground.  We helped out with hop scotch,  chess and 4 square.  

They worked really hard to stay in the lines.  

Ta Da!!!

And finally our church participated in Operation Xmas Child.  We picked a boy and a girl to put a gift box together for.  Kate and Will loved shopping and filling their boxes to the top!  

Wellchecks and Halloween

The best part about your kiddo's bdays being 1 day apart is that you get 2 Wellcheck visits done on the same visit!  Kate had a rough visit this year as she got A LOT of shots!  Hence the tough photo above. Will was very supportive and SO thankful he was off the hook this year.  

Fall parties were a hit as usual.  It's so fun seeing the students get so excited for the game, craft and snack.  

I was in charge of the skeleton building game.  Each player got a bag of bones and competed to be the first person to put their skeleton together.  By the end of the party I lost a few knee caps :)

Will's bat painting turned out pretty cute too!

We went with a food theme for Halloween.  Unfortunately it was a super cold night and we had to squeeze the costumes over their winter coats and snow pants.   

The neighbors joined the food theme too! 

Gotta love a Hotdog, Fries, Mustard and a Banana.  

What a bunch of goobers!