Playing Santa

The boys have been playing Santa all week. They finally talked Nate and I into playing with them. I lucked out and was able to be the little girl who wanted a baby doll! I had to "sleep" on the couch!! Nate was not so lucky. He had to be a reindeer.
Lincoln wanted to be Santa so bad! But, I have to say, he was a bossy little Santa.They used Nate's sweatshirt as the "suit!"
My cushy job of being the little girl didn't last long. Ethan wanted to be the little boy. Nate had to continue to be the reindeer.
By the end of the night, the boys were super happy that we played and Nate's knees were sore!

Alone time

You might think from the title of this post that I want some alone time. Yes, this is true, but today this quote came from Ethan. On Saturdays, while Link is napping, Nate and I have been letting him stay downstairs to watch a movie. Nate and I are able to get in a nap as well. This Sunday, I told him Daddy was probably going to stay downstairs and watch football. Ethan looked at me and said, "Can't he watch it upstairs so I can have some alone time!" How can I argue with that???
When we came downstairs a few hours later, this is what we found!

The art of getting the perfect tree with two small kids!

We decided to get our tree Friday night and then spend Saturday morning decorating it. The temperature did a dive this week and it looks like it's not warming up anytime soon. The near freezing temperatures sped up our tree hunt significantly. We looked at approximately five trees and then just finally said, "This is FINE!"
Link stuck it out with us and watched the poor high school kid cut the excess branches on the bottom.
Big man watched from the truck.
The next morning, the boys were ready to decorate! Ethan helped Daddy put the star on the tree.
Luckily for Link, Nate had to trim a little off the top. He got to put the star back up on top!
Aren't those little legs adorable?? Unfortunately, those little legs are not helpful when putting ornaments up high.
Both boys were serious about their decorating this year. Nate and I really didn't have to do much except for the high ones.
This gave me plenty of time to make hot chocolate.
While he was drinking his hot chocolate, I moved a few up a little higher!

Overall, I think they did pretty darn good!!!

Mr. Kurland

Mr. Kurland's, Ethan's long-term sub, last day is tomorrow. It is going to be a sad day for Ethan. He loves him so!!! He spent tonight making him a book of all the things he is going to miss about him! I know it won't take long for him to fall in love with Ms. Phythyon, but he is going to miss Mr. Kurland!

Little Monsters!

We so much fun with these little monsters on our Thanksgiving break!!!! Christmas break needs to hurry!!!

ICE

Our friends, Rachel and Joe, told us about the Gaylord's ICE last year. We were super excited when we heard that they would be doing it again this year.
This year the theme was the Grinch. So, Friday night, we had the kiddos watch the original cartoon. They watched it about five times and were super excited to see the ICE show.
We all bundled up GOOD! Thank goodness we did. It was 9 degrees in there. They also gave us coats. Nate ended up carrying Link around because his was so big. He looked like a blue penguin.
The pictures do not do it justice. It was so amazing!
This was my favorite scene. It looked so real.
Ethan got in trouble by the guards here. He was sitting on the Grinch. I guess that is frowned upon here!
In this big room, they had four slides made out of ice. Two were for children under 40 inches and two were for everyone above 40 inches. Link was so offended that he could not ride on the bigger slide. He went down and it was much faster than he thought. It scared him and he wouldn't go down again. E loved it. There is a video at the end of this blog with a snipet of him going down.
The Grinch's heart grew!!!
At the very end, they had a room with the nativity! They had speakers that explained that this is what Christmas is really about. It was so much fun!

Thanksgiving 2010

The day did not start off as well as we expected. I burnt the garlic for the garlic mashed potatoes. Nate thought we had a roasting pan, when in fact it was a lasagna pan. We had to scramble to get to the grocery store to get the turkey in the oven on time.Lincoln must have been worried that we were going to make another mistake, so he came to help Nate out.....with his knife!
Here he is saying....Just give it here and I'll do it!
Notice Mr. Independent's smile when he gets to do it by himself.
Ethan helped out by making Thanksgiving cards for our guests.
Ethan and Link BOTH had to sit by Aja!!!
Jenn and Justin brought a green bean casserole that was amazing! We learned that three of our dishes had heavy whipping cream in them. We decided that butter AND heavy whipping cream make everything better! Justin made his awesome chocolate pecan pie. Aaron loved the Reddi whip!!
Andrea, Aja's mom, was happy because the boys had football on! The little boys couldn't wait for Aja to sit and play with them!!! What started off a little rough, ended perfectly!! Happy Thanksgiving!!