A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS

We had a wonderful un-rushed Christmas this year.  This is the first year in forever (maybe at all) that Matt has had Christmas eve and ALL of Christmas day off!!  It was the best!  The kids were so excited (Chase especially) and tried to get us to wake up at 1:30 a.m.....that was NEVER going to happen.  We settled for a bit after 6.  Fortunately Santa did make a stop at our house.  Although Kelsey's looked a bit on the small side...

 This surprised face told me she was thrilled to find a laptop!

She really did not have any real "list" this year, but has wanted a laptop for awhile.  It has the new Windows 8 on it so she spent most of the day trying to figure it out.  She did receive a few other surprises.  She got her first real makeup kit, new pj's, slippers, a nice art kit, and some new scarfs.

Chase was super excited to find this new imaginext castle waiting for him.  Santa even made sure to get the big dragon, ogre, battering ram, and catapult that is recognized and communicates with the castle. 

The boys spent a great portion of their day putting together this Mario cart racing set that the mini Santa left the night before for Chase.  Something that only a Daddy would pick out and any mother would take one look at and pass by knowing it was not something that would last...just sayin.  I'm pretty sure Daddy learned his lesson (see all those parts behind Chase...those were extra according to Dad).

It did eventually get put together and was played with a bit before it began to well..fall apart.

Chase also received the new Diary of a Wimpy kid book he had been wanting, the Dr. Dreadful snot/ear wax eating kit (gag...yes he asked for this), a new slumber bag, cologne, and some more battling knights for his castle.  He was also thrilled like you would not believe to find a huge gobstopper in his stocking that he has been asking Mommy to buy him for some time but she just thought was too gross.  He licked that thing all day!

Sadi got just about everything she asked for, which surprisingly was not a lot.  She really wanted a new purse and a puppy along with some "hot" clothes.  She also asked for some Monster High dolls which are all the rage in Kindergarten this year.

Santa brought her a husky puppy along with some clothes for him, some scooby snack cookies, and a leash which she could walk him with.  Although her purse was filled with things to use every day she decided to fill it up with anything she could fit in...including bubble bath!

We spent alot of the day playing and building different Monster High dolls.  She also got some new earrings, Hedbanz game (which we all love playing), sketch pad, a new slumber bag, a dream light, new books, and some really cute "hot" clothes.

It's always fun to open those last minute presents you find under the tree from the kids.  Chase had a special present for Daddy...a rock!

Sadi's teacher must have spent so much time helping the kids make gifts this year.  We were spoiled!  She made me a candy cane bookmark.  Daddy received a magnet paper holder for his desk, and we got 3 handmade ornaments.  I love them all!

 We spent the day playing with the kids and just enjoying being together as a family.  It was the best!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve day started out with a surprise letter from our Elves Jack and Jingle.  They had written us a goodbye letter that was just the sweetest.  At the end of the letter it said that Santa was to lift their magic for just a few minutes so that we could hug them and kiss them goodbye!  As you know you are not allowed to touch the elves because they will loose their magic so the kids were thrilled!

Kelsey snatched up our newest Elf Jack and cuddled with him.

Chase couldn't give enough hugs and was really interested to hold them.  He was sure he could feel their little elf bones and thus decided they were for sure real!

Sadi was the sweetest giving them hugs and telling them goodbye...making sure to look them in the eyes.  So Sweet!

As we were taking pictures together with them Sadi told them she wished there was another one so that they all had one to hold...I really hope they don't go back to the North Pole and tell Santa this! 

The day seemed to drag on forever!  I don't know about you but for me Christmas Eve day seems like the longest day of the year.  We baked cookies for Santa and when Daddy got home from work that night it was finally time to party!  We ate until we were stuffed.  Our family tradition has always been playing Christmas games.  Each person has to come up with a Christmas game to play.  Sadi chose Christmas Charades (they play this in dance class).  It's pretty entertaining to watch the kids act out different things.  Here she is acting out Santa (she literally stood still like this until we guessed who she was).

Chase's game was "Don't eat Rudolph" (same as Don't eat Pete!) but he made a Christmas version. 

I'm not sure what Kelsey called this game but it was hard!  We each had a long string in our mouth with a pom pom on the end of it and Vaseline on our noses.  The idea was to swing the string until you got the pom pom to stick to your nose.  I think Sadi won.  While we were all swinging our heads around she ate her string in her mouth until it reached her nose.

I chose an easy game we had played before....I should remember this game usually makes someone cry.  Everyone gets to pick 3 favorite candies but you have to give them up as the dice tells you too (passing to the left/right).  When only one person remains, they win all the candy.  The happy winner....(losers not photographed due to tears...they all got a prize though).

I think Daddy picks the same game almost every year...Canes (a.k.a. spoons).  And just like every year he swooped in an won.

As we were ending our games all of the sudden we had an unannounced visitor!  It was Santa!!  He looked oddly familiar :)  I told him he looked shorter than I remembered him being to which he had one witty answer for.  He said the elves were playing around with the shrink ray and shrunk him!

 We all got a chance to sit on his lap and tell him what we wanted for Christmas.

 He even surprised us and had a sack full of surprise presents. 

 He brought Kelsey a nice new art kit.  She was very excited.

After Santa's visit we watched a movie, hung our stockings by the t.v. (Sadi was concerned when Daddy couldn't find our chimney), and got ready for bed. 

It was a long night full of anticipation of the big guy's arrival.

17

On Thursday Kyle turned 17...wow that is crazy to say.  He had a basketball game that night that we were all able to go to.  Matt's Grandma and Grandpa were even able to make it which made it an extra special night.  We all know Kyle is popular, however it always amazes me how his fan club seems to grow each year.  While sitting in the bleachers  I noticed on the other side of the gym a girl wearing his number on her shirt.  Well....she was not the only one.  After the game the girls rushed over to see Kyle and we were able to get some pictures with just a handful of his fans.

Besides them all wearing his number and his name on the back of their shirts, they had posters and even personalized a Happy Birthday sign and sang to him after the game. 

It was a fun night and nice to get to spend a little bit of time with him and watching him play (they won as well).  He has really grown up and matured and we are very proud of him and all his accomplishments.  Happy Birthday Kyle!

Elf Update

Our elves really seem to be making themselves at home.  This is just a brief glimpse of what Jack and Jingle have been up to. They made themselves a nice big bowl of popcorn and were watching what else but the movie ELF...

They helped themselves to a nice bowl of cereal, but must have decided it didn't have enough sugar in it because they added peppermints, and Christmas sprinkles!  The kids thought this was a great idea and of course needed to add this to their breakfast as well.

They used post-it notes to cover the entire big screen...

 A huge snowball fight occurred and there were snowballs everywhere!..

They were caught in the freezer eating some peppermint ice cream...

They were in Mommy and Daddy's bathroom eating toothpaste and shaving!! 

And most recently they went on a fishing expedition..in the kitchen. 

With all the fun they seem to be having at night I sure hope they are doing their JOB and making that trip to the North Pole to report to Santa every night!

Dear Santa

A few days ago our elves brought us a note from the north pole from Santa...he was wondering why the kids hadn't come to see him yet.  So the elves had brought some letters for them to write Santa. 

There was a place to mark on your letter how you had behaved all year...shockingly they all thought they were very good....

Here is what was on their lists: 

Kelsey-iPhone, earphones, art supplies, jacket, and shoes.

Chase-Imaginext castle play set, Lego mine, Mario racing set, and Doctor Dreadful zombies.

Sadi-Purse, puppy, hot clothes, princesses and Monster high dolls.

*Yes I know my 5 year old asked for "hot clothes"  apparently in 5 year old terms that means winter clothes...Matt just about died when he heard that she wanted "hot" clothes.

 They're all hoping Jack and Jingle put in a good word for them! 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Yesterday we finally put up our Christmas tree.  Matt wanted to put it up right after we got home from our Thanksgiving trip but I thought it would dry out to quick so we waited.  Then when I checked all the bigger trees were gone, and all that were left were tiny trees.  Our elves must have overheard us talking about it, because on Friday we woke up and they had dragged this in....

A huge tree! Most definitely the biggest tree we have ever had.  It is about 9 feet tall, and about 5 feet in diameter.   Chase is sure it either came from the north pole...or they cut it down in central park.  I'm pretty sure those naughty elves broke some kind of law bringing it here, but wherever it came from, it smells amazing! 

Usually the kids decorate their own little trees, but since this tree literally took over the entire family room I decided one tree was enough.  I think Sadi had the most fun decorating (even if she complained the whole time that everyone had more ornaments than her).  Now it feels (and smells) like Christmas.  Thanks Jack and Jingle!

Labeled

From the first day of school I prepared myself for this, however I was unprepared for how LAME it would be.  I am talking about the first phone call home from the elementary school about Sadi.  This is Sadi's first official Discipline notice....

Now mind you this happened a month ago, and I hadn't blogged about it because it was so ridiculous, but since then I have been annoyed again with another LAME phone call.  Here is the story...It was late Friday afternoon when the phone call came in from the new Dean of students Mrs. "B".  She told me there had been an incident with Sadi on Wed. (two days prior).  She told me Sadi and another girl were "whapping" another girl with a jump rope.  I repeated back to her what she was telling me (emphasizing that this happened 2 days ago?).    She told me Sadi had been talked to and was to write an apology letter/picture and bring it in the following week (this was a 3 day weekend). I told her I would talk to her when she got home.  When Sadi got off the bus she was happy as could be...puzzled me.  I asked her if she got in trouble.  She said no.  I then asked her if something happened with a jump rope on Wed.  and she told me a whole different story.  She told me "M" asked her and her friend "J" if she could play jump rope with them and they let her.  Long story short it sounded completely innocent and not at all like I had planned to hear.  Go ahead and ask a 5 year old to play jump rope with you....if you don't jump do you get "whapped"?...if you are too close together or too far apart do you get "whapped"?  I'm guessing you will.  She was honest that yes the girl did get hit, but it was an accident and they had apologized.  Although annoyed(with the Dean), I decided to let it go and helped her write her apology letter and put it in her backpack for the following week.  Each day I checked her backpack and the Dean had not picked up the picture all week.  Then we get a discipline letter in the mail for....

"WHAPPING"  Really?  Now I was beyond annoyed.  I had Matt call and talk to the Dean and address some issues:  Why was this not addressed until 2 days after the incident?  Did you even ask if it was an accident?  Why have you not picked up the apology letter?  What are you trying to teach?   For all of these questions she had all lame answers.  She was too busy to address it until 2 days later.  No, she didn't ask them if it was an accident..she asked if it happened and they said yes.  She forgot about the apology letter.  They're trying to prevent bullying.  WOW, I WAS LIT UP!!  If we are going to label Sadi a trouble maker let's make it legit..I know she is capable.  Again I let it go. 

 

Fast forward to yesterday's phone call:

Mrs. "B" (Dean of students) calls to tell me that Sadi is in her office and she isn't feeling well.  She says she took her temp. and it was 98.8.  I repeat this to her to make sure she said that..98.8?  She says yes, but she "feels warm".  OK, what is she complaining of I ask.  She had to put me on hold to ask Sadi.  Really?  You didn't even ask what was wrong before you call me to tell me she had a perfectly normal temperature?  Her nose she replies.  I give up.  I go pick her up...mind you there is only 20 minutes left of school!  Yup sure enough she had a runny nose.  Simple remedy I gave her a tissue.  She was fine all night long.  Am I loosing my mind or does this lady need a label of her own?

Elfin' Around

So our elves Jack and Jingle have only been here for a few days, but have been having a lot of fun at night while we are all sleeping.  Here is what they have been up to the past few days:  Day 2-I guess they decided we didn't have enough decorations so they strung up some more lights...on the fan!

Day 3- Decided to drink the syrup...making a very sticky mess!

Day 3- Wrote notes all over the kids bathroom mirror.  They said things like "Hey kids did you flush? Did you brush your teeth?, Did you wipe your boogies?"

And today Day 4- Playing an innocent card game....or maybe Jack was cheating, because he had all the Jack's in his hand. 

Chase has been extremely excited to get up even earlier than usual to see where the elves are...like 5:30ish!  These elves are killing my sleep hours!

He's Baaaaaaack!!

This past weekend we woke to quite the surprise, our elf Jingle was back....and not alone.  The kids were thrilled!!  Chase was squealing with delight and insisted on waking everyone...Immediately.

I could not believe there were 2!  There must be some mistake?  Santa had sent along a letter to explain, and this is what he wrote:

Dear Kelsey, Chase, and Sadi,

 

Jingle has been so excited all year to come back to spend the holiday season with you.  He made all the elves here at the North Pole a little bit jealous talking about all the fun things he did and saw at your house last year.  I have given Jingle some bells to match the name you gave him(he told me he loves his name).  He did get a little homesick last year, and so I have decided to let him bring a friend along this year.  Please give him a name and remember they will be watching you each and every day and report back to me each night.  Be careful not to touch them to much or their magic will not work.  I hope that they don't get into to much trouble....you know elves can be kind of mischievous, and remember they are watching.  Love,

Santa

 

P.S. Mrs. Claus sent along some tasty treats from her kitchen.

 

The kids were ecstatic!  Mrs. Clause sent some Peppermint hot cocoa, and some gingerbread cookies that I heard were delicious...no one wanted to share so I guess they were.  These are Jingle's new bells.....



They spent the morning trying to decide on a name and finally came up with one that they could agree on.  Introducing.....Jack!  Isn't he cute?

Although they have only been here for 3 days, I can tell you that they are ALWAYS up to something!