Merry Christmas!

This was the Christmas picture I took of the kids and sent out in the Christmas cards. I thought it came out pretty cute.

Christmas morning....

Indy...

Levi...

Savannah...

Ashton...

Nicky....

Everyone had a wonderful day opening and playing with all their new stuff. The boys got a little pup tent from Outdoor World which we immediately set up and they played with all day. Even the neighbor kids came over and played in it for awhile. It was a big hit!

Building a Fort

So we have this unfinished chicken coop just sitting there and three little boys with adventure on the brain.....what do you think happens? They decide to build a fort, of course! Indy and Levi, and their friend, Adam, all work on making the chicken coop into a fort. They get out Indy's tools, search the yard for potential supplies and make a plan.
Surprise, guys! Whatcha doin'??

Getting advice from our neighbor, Lindsay.

Adding the finishing touches....a shield and a bucket for supplies underneath.

Great job, guys! All in a hard day's work....and fun!

Last Environmental Class

Last Tuesday was our last environmental class until January when we move over to the zoo. We arrived a little early, incredibly (!), so we just walked around for awhile to take a nice last look. We walked out to the water to see if we could see any manatees. One of the workers told us he'd seen some that morning along with some stingrays. Unfortunately, we didn't see anything except some beautiful water in the morning light. Here the boys are goofing around while I'm taking pictures.

This is a gopher tortoise that was rescued from an abusive owner. His name is Scooter. We brought food during the term so we could feed Scooter. He's a nice tortoise and the kids love to go visit him.

This is the boys with our teacher, Mrs. Yoelly. She was very sweet and great with the kids. They all loved her! This was taken on our last day of class when she and the assistant teacher, Mr. Elias, had planned a surprise for us: They set up a fire in the fire pit for the kids to do smores! They had a blast!

We interrupt this tale of a fire to bring you a bird house we liked that hung waaay high up in a tree.

Now, back to the fire tale.... Here the boys are roasting their marshmallows for their smores.

Yummy smores....mmmm.

Maybe scraping the last of the marshmallow off the stick is better. Hmmm.....

We will miss this place and our teachers when we go over to the zoo.

It's OUTA Here!!!

Well, Indy finally, finally lost his first tooth! Whew! Our kids get their teeth late and so they lose them late, too, which is very frustrating when all your friends start losing teeth and you don't lose one til a year or more later! Ugh! But, it finally happened for Indy and we're so happy! So is he!!
Showing off the lost tooth!

Now, can you believe this one?!? He took the tooth into the bathroom so he could look at the "hole" in the mirror, but shockingly, the tooth slipped from his fingers right down the bathroom sink drain! Argh! He came screaming out of the bathroom that he'd dropped his tooth, but I told him not to worry and not not turn on the water. We guarded the bathroom sink til Daddy got home and the first thing he did was take the drain apart and get the tooth out. Poor Daddy was nearly attacked when he walked in the door! lol But, being the good Daddy he is, he went right to work before even sitting down to relax. And he saved the tooth so we could give it to the tooth fairy. Thanks, Daddy! :-)

Decorating the Tree

On Sunday, we decorated our tree and the boys had a blast! The girls were more blaize about it, but the boys had a lot of fun. Usually, everyone gets tired of decorating the tree and I end up finishing it, but not this time. I actually ran out of ornaments before Levi ran out of steam...am I surprised?!? lol

"Oh yeah. Oh yeah." Levi was excited to find his Mickey ornament.

I'm glad he had fun and kept going. After the boys went to bed, I finished it with my glass ornaments and some bows and tinsel. Now it looks beautiful. I'll post another picture soon.

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Trivia

Copying from A Piece of the Puzzle:


1. Best childhood gift from Santa: Hmm, frankly, I can't remember a specific gift from Santa, though I know I must have received hundreds over the years. But, my best Christmas gift ever is a tie between a playhouse my dad built, that had our names painted on it alongside Disney characters my uncle had painted and a pair of earrings when I was 11, meaning I could get my ears pierced (after my dad had protested adamantly for months). I think he finally gave in because he felt bad that I broke my arm in 2 places just 10 days before Christmas and was in a cast from wrist up past elbow for 9 weeks. Ugh.


2. Best childhood memories: We always went to my uncle and aunt's house on Christmas Eve and our dads would take us kids in the El Camino around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights. Then we'd tease our youngest cousin (Charley!) that we heard Santa and he better get to bed soon! Another fav was that my brother and I always got up in the middle of the night on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought. He always left us one thing unwrapped to play with (when we woke up in the middle of the night. How did he know we did that?!?) and we were allowed to open anything in our stockings. Then we ate lots of candy and went back to bed for a few hours.


3. Favorite Christmas cookies: I think I'd have to say homemade chocolate chip. Boring, I know, but dang they're good! :-)


4. Icky Christmas memory: Either the year I was sick when I was 5 or the year both my girls were sick.


5. It's not Christmas without: TV snack and candy canes, Christmas movies and music.


6. Our church service: Our church has a 7pm Christmas Eve service only. I never go because we're always at my inlaws that evening. But, I do watch the Pope's midnight mass while wrapping presents and getting ready for the morning. It's beautiful, even though I have no idea what he's saying! lol Gotta love those commentators!


7. Christmas pet peeve: Companies using "Holiday" or "Seasonal" instead of Christmas when they know darn well that it's Christmas! "....specials for the big holiday coming up" WHY can't they just say Christmas??? Argh!


8. Favorite Christmas cd: I have a lot of cds and I have some fav songs on each one, so maybe a compilation of them all.


9. Real or Fake: Had a mixture of real and fake growing up. We've had real ever since we were married, but now Nicky's ready to move on to a fake one. We may be going fake next year. We'll see.


10. I spend Christmas Eve: with my inlaws. Then, when we come home, we read the Christmas story from Luke 2 and put the kiddies to bed. Then, I spend the rest of the evening.....well, all you moms out there know how I spend the rest of the evening. lol


Merry Christmas! Anyone else want to play along??

Joy! Joy! Joy!

This past weekend, our church had it's annual Christmas program. The children's choir sang two songs with the adult choir. It was cute and Indy did a great job! Here he is just before he went in to perform.

Front row, center, with a red scarf...Indy.

Singing at the top of his lungs!

During rehearsal, without the scarf.

Christmas Crafts!

I always love doing crafts with the kids during the Christmas season, but this year, we decided to invite one friend per boy to do crafts with us. We had a craft day where we did several crafts all back to back. There was glue, glitter, paint, cutting, and lots of other fun, messy stuff!

Here is Indy with his friend, Chris working on their nativity project.This is Levi's friend, Caleb, working on decorating a construction paper Christmas tree.

Here is Indy working on the same Christmas tree project.

And Chris, too.

I'm not sure I got any pictures of Levi working on his projects at all, since he sorta just "flew" through them! He's not much of a sit-down-and-create kinda guy! lol But they all did have a lot of fun!

It's FINALLY Happened!!!

Whoo hoo!!!! What's happened you ask??? Well.......

......Indy finally has a loose tooth! He's soooo excited!

Can you tell??? lol

Ok, just so you don't freak out, the red spots on his face and body are not bad, they're just snowflake stamps he put all over himself.

Now back to the tooth. He has a big tooth growing in right behind it. He's been trying to loosen it up for weeks, but to no avail. Then, just the other day, on the 11th, he bit his sandwich and missed and hit the tooth and loosened it. Yippee! He was worried at first, thinking he'd loosened his big tooth, but when I told him it was the baby one he bit, he was so excited that he started hooting and hollaring and jumping all around. Even dancing! lol

Most kids loose their first tooth at 6 years old, but not my kids. I asked the dentist once and he said that if they get their teeth late then they lose them late, too. And, since none of my kids got any teeth before 8 months (and only 1 at that, the other 3 were at 9 mos.) they all, so far, have lost their first tooth at 7 1/2 years old. Indy seems to fall right into that. SO, soon you'll see a picture of a smile missing a tooth. :-)

Those Talented Girls!

I have such talented and artistic girls! Here's the proof!

This is the gingerbread house Ashton made at school in her culinary arts class. They made the dough, cut it out, baked it, built the house, and decorated it. It took them about 3 weeks to complete it and you know she had a blast doing all that! lol She brought it home yesterday. We're enjoying looking at it...and the boys are chomping at the bit to dig in! This is the back of the house.

This is the front.

Then there's Savannah. She's been drawing since she was very young....and always such interesting and unique things. I've saved bunches of them. Lately, she's gotten a little more serious with her drawing, even taking a graffiti art class online at home. This is a coi fish she drew just the other day. I don't know if she copied it from something or just drew it on her own, but on her own wouldn't surprise me a bit. I told her that once she added color it would be really pretty....and it is. See?

I don't know where they get such artistic abilities from, but I know it's not me!! lol

Happy Zoo Year!

Today we spent some time at the zoo. We like to go there, but today we went because we knew they had a special Christmas display going on. Since I decided to do some fun Christmas stuff this week, this was today's event. Here's the boys climbing on top of a fake crocodile.


This is an orangutan that was carrying a branch to his resting place. We thought it was pretty funny.

I took this really cool picture of a hummingbird. I couldn't believe I managed to get it in mid-flight, and so clear, too!

This is a cropped version of the picture above. Pretty cool, huh??

A little later we got a really close view of this real crocodile. We were just on the other side of the glass. A little too close for comfort as far as I'm concerned. Levi was nearly fact to face with him and after a few minutes the croc went down to the bottom and Levi said, "Yeah, I thought so." Like a challenge! It was so funny! Glass sure does make people brave, doesn't it?? lol

We were inside a building and Levi sat up in a window and these two little birds came right over and sat in the window on the other side. It was so cute!

Next, we happened to arrive at the stingray tank just before the keepers were going to feed them and for a dollar, I could get a cup of fish for the kids to feed them, too. So, being as "frugal" as I am, I decided one dollar and one cup was enough and they could share. But, since they were the only ones there, and the keepers were really enjoying telling them all about the rays and how to feed them, they just kept giving the boys fish to feed them. We must have spent 15 or 20 minutes there. But, the boys sure had fun. This is Indy.

Levi was a little more unsure about them, but he did stick the fish in...until they came close and then tossed it. lol

And, of course, being that it was about 85 degrees today, we had to play in the water play area. Here's Indy running through.

And, here's Levi playing with the water.

Then we moved into the bat area. Indy pretended to be a sleeping bat, hanging upside down.

Even Savannah enjoyed the water play area!

Savannah's friend, Alex, went with us.

Near the end of the zoo, they had this set up, with lights for nighttime viewing. See the "Zoo"?It actually said "Happy Zoo Year." Too funny.

As you leave the zoo, there's the typical display of tourist brochures and the boys always stop to choose some to take home. Indy picked three main Florida theme parks....

...and not surprisingly, Levi picked three, yes three, of the SAME exact golf ones. Why? I have no idea, but that's Levi.

We had a lot of fun at the zoo and enjoyed the Christmas display and the other areas we visited. I'm glad we went. The zoo is so nice when the weather's nice. :-)