Discovery Gateway

For Christmas this year my mom got our kids a membership to Discovery Gateway. Its a children's museum with 4 floors of hands on fun for the kids. Last Saturday we headed up for a few hours of fun. It was fun watching all of them get their hula hoops going. It ended with Ben walking into Ronny's hoop and getting a nice welt on the side of his neck. Ouch!

This month the kids have also tested and passed to their green belts in karate. They now fight 2 on 1 in this belt. It gets quite intense. Sam also won his class spelling bee (he now moves onto the school wide bee next week). Joseph came in 4th just one place out of also going to the bee for his class. Charley is busy working on a history fair project on Nixon's trip to China. She is learning all about thesis statements, primary and secondary sources, and doing bibliography's right alongside learning about history. A few of you who remember this trip in the news may get a phone call from her this week. Its been a busy month.

Charley sporting her walking boot (She blessed us with a trip to the ER New Year's Eve night, (2010 had to go out with a bang apparently!). She's re-injured her foot a couple times so we are hoping it heals soon so she can get back to karate.

Creativity

While off track Joseph and Sam decided to have a sword fight. Mom had confiscated the swords for a while so instead of whining about getting them back, they made their own. The two of them spent the entire day making swords, sheaths, shields, helmets, and daggers. It was almost as much fun watching them as they did making them. The next several days were spent play fighting. I must say, there was far less arguing and crying with the new weaponry as there was with the plastic ones.

Their new adventure now revolves around the Tron movies. They have made discs they throw, (Mom has banned them from kitchen and living rooms!), and have put stripes down their shirts and pants with blue painters tape. When its over 20 degrees I make them take it outside. Joseph has made a target and taped it on the wall outside his bedroom. He takes aim from his bed at night. These boys are having quite the adventure lately. Its really fun to watch their imaginations go wild!

Christmas 2010

Christmas Eve we acted out the Nativity Story from Luke and opened our new jammies Nana made and left cookies and treats for Santa and his reindeer.

Earlier in the week we went caroling with some good friends around the neighborhood and came back to hot chocolate, cider, and lots of goodies. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of that night. We had so much fun, it will surely be a yearly tradition here.

Christmas Morning

Joseph showing off the Santa gifts: zhu zhu pets, electric toothbrushes, and head lamps.

With the kids allergies these are the only kind of pets (those that come with batteries) that can come in the house.

Out of all the gifts, the biggest hit were the toothbrushes, go figure!

Dad surprised with the tie Charley got him. He loves it!

After the great present unveiling we headed over to Grammy Terri's for breakfast and a phone call from Aunt Michelle in Spain. We came home and had a quiet Christmas day napping, and playing with the kids. It was a great day.

Ben's Christmas Performance

Ben was the only one to have a Christmas performance/party this year. All the big kids were off track so they didn't have one. We all went to see Ben at school sing songs and recite poems. His teacher had each of the kids say what they wanted for Christmas this year. Ben's request: a bench! What!?! He wanted a bench at home like the one at school. We were a bit surprised and at home we talked about sometimes not always getting what we asked for. To all of our great surprise my stepfather Dexter delivered one mighty cute bench the following week without even knowing Ben's request. I guess Santa sometimes gets help from others.

Tree Decorating

This year we found our tree at the local grocery store of all places. It was one of the most beautiful trees we have ever had and we were all excited to get it in the house and decorated.