Weekend Top Five

A busy weekend. Next weekend will be the Big Kahuna of busy.

Pretty much the story of the weekend centers around the two early Christmas gifts the boys received.




5. Friday Night Christmas Shopping Complete

I do believe this Friday night trip with Deb will be the last. I am done and the boys are going to have a great Christmas. Everything is wrapped and ready for Christmas Eve delivery.

I don't think we'll stop the Friday Night trips though...they are the best outlet after each long week...especially since this week I discovered the joys of Wendy's chocolate cookie dough frosties. Oh Yeah, Baby!

4. Family Christmas

We had sledding, eating, family time, and presents. What else can you ask from a family Christmas?

The boys bot got several presents that they LOVE...


Daddy and Aaron with his guitar/microphone. Most parents would be annoyed by this present, but not us. As a matter of fact, we are adding a drum set to the mix come Christmas morning. And all of them will reside downstairs in the playroom where he can make noise to his heart's content.














Noah and Cousin Odin star gazing in the bathroom dark with Noah's new constellation globe. On the way home Saturday night, Noah's biggest concern was how many days he has to wait until he can take it to school for show and tell.








And the traditional pajamas from Grandma and Grandpa went over better than ever. All of the boys got superhero pj's that light up and the girls all dressed up in the fairy clothes that Cousin Piper got as a gift. It turned into a mass frenzy of fairies and superheroes that had us all rolling in laughter.

I love Noah's pose in this one...




3. Church

My cherubs, including Noah, sang a Happy birthday Jesus song for the service, complete with playing tone chimes. They did great.

I did get upset during bell practice though. As we are getting ready for the big concert next week, I found out that several members of the adult choir think that I shouldn't be directing the bells at the same time that the choir director is leading the choir. They don't realize how much the bells need me and I found myself steaming about it all day.

2. Rock Concert...Noah and Aaron Style

I am sure that the pictures of our rocking boys will only expand when one more microphone and a drum set are added to this mix on Christmas morning. But for now, they're rocking the house pretty well.

I will be subjecting you to video later this week. It is just too funny to skip.






1. Messiah Sing-A-Long

I saw it in the paper Saturday morning. It's been a couple of year's since I sang it so I invited my sister to come sing it with me. She's a soprano and I'm an alto, but it didn't matter. It was fun, although quite a bit different since it was a sing along instead of a performance.

Hope you all had a great weekend. Please come back and let me know if you post about the weekend.

Happy Monday

The Many Faces Of Noah The Performer

Noah had his Christmas Concert Thursday Night. It was a little better put together than last year's and Noah participated very well. He is an amazing singer, but doesn't always strut his stuff.

In a bunch of kids, how will you Noah?

Oh, I think you'll know...





Could it possible be the only kid with his hand up in the air waving like a king?







He was fun to watch because he seemed to be having a good time...


Speaking his line to a verse into the microphone













Nice wide mouth singing "Gloria" in Angels We Have Heard On High


















Playing Nutcracker on bells with this year's BFF















Proud thumbs up when the bells are done


















Singing on the side of the stage while the third graders performed a VERY AMUSING dance










This extremely biased Momma thinks her 6 year old may be the most handsome first grader on the planet.

For a kid who doesn't like singing because "it's not cool", I was very proud of him.

I hope your weekend is off to great start.

Photo Story Friday: Anyone Want A Kitten?

He's cute, really














Really...



















Really!



This USED to be shower curtain before my shower this morning













So, you still want a kitten?





Me either.



Why can't he behave like his big sister?


















Unfortunately, he's become a beloved member of the household.















But I still have to go buy a new shower curtain and living room blinds.


Have a great weekend and come back and share on Monday.

Thursday Thirteen: Major To Do List (Updated)

I started this as a Tackle It Tuesday, but then I realized that it seemed to be growing into quite a large number. December, which is supposedly the Month for Peace always turns into hectic craziness instead. Wonderful craziness, but craziness nevertheless. I like this T13 graphic, simply because I like to think that Santa is checking MY to do list.

So while trying to gather my thoughts about everything that needs to be done in the next two weeks, I think I'll order them to help myself get things straightened out. You're welcome to come along for the ride.

1. Aaron's Tubes (Again)
Found out on Tuesday that Aaron needs to get tubes again, in his right ear only this time. His evaluation by the speech therapist is supposed to happen any time now and now I need to postpone it until after the surgery. Waiting for the ENT to call me back for scheduling. This will be Aaron's 4th "surgery" with this ENT. No call from the ENT, but found out that he is NOT going to be recommended for speech therapy. I guess that is good.

2. Gingerbread House Construction at Aaron's Preschool
Today at 10:30. They actually "constructed" them yesterday but now will decorate them today. Pictures to follow I'm sure. It was very cute but Aaron ate more candy than made onto the house

3. Noah's Christmas "Concert" Tonight
I still don't understand why the music teacher has the kids SPEAK the words to Christmas songs when it is just as easy to teach them to SING

4. Friday Night Shopping
Stockpiling coupons that I have received for the last two weeks and Deb and I will be out on the town again tomorrow night. Hopefully getting the rest of the stocking stuff done.

5. Family Christmas Saturday
Presents wrapped and ready, thankfully. It looks like the weather will be perfct for sledding and safe driving for my brother's family.

6. Three Bell rehearsals next week
Sunday morning bell practice, Wednesday night bells with choir, Saturday morning bells with choir AND members from the Grand Rapids Symphony.

7. Cherub Choir (including Noah) performing this Sunday
Hopefully, they will remember words and play their bells at the right time, but will look cute no matter what happens

8. Aaron's School Christmas Party Next Thursday
I'm supposed to supply something, but I don't remember what

9. Noah's School Christmas party Next Friday
Need to make pretzel treats and buy present for little girl in his class as an exchange gift

10. Craft Day with Deb's Kids
Need to get the ingredients to make salt dough ornaments and the boys today told me that they want to make gingerbread houses too so gotta get stuff for that (can you get some candy, Deb?)

11. Big Bell, Choir, Symphony Extravaganza on Sunday the 21st
Pray for me...

12. 12th Wedding anniversary on the 21st also
We can actually celebrate it now since Steve's Family Christmas has been mysteriously CANCELLED

13. Christmas Eve Service
Our family is lighting the advent candles so we need to teach the boys their parts, Noah is going to be a shepherd in the pageant, but chimes are no longer playing, so that's one stress gone.

UGHHHH!!!!! I ran out of number and I haven't even made it to Christmas day! I guess it will have to continue next week. Happy Thursday, Everyone.

Seriously?

Not quite wordless today, but pictures are truly worth a thousand words.

My husband is normally quite a handsome man. Cute smile, great hair. I even love the mole on the end of his nose. And I love that his second born son is the spitting image of him.















He had quite a bit of hair when I met him 16 years ago.

Not to say anything about the quality of our marriage (LOL) but his hair has receded quite a bit in the 14 years we have been together.

But he has ALWAYS been very particular about his hair style. He likes it short, and gets quite grumpy if it gets long enough to touch his ears.

I like that he cares about his appearance. It was one of the numerous things that I liked about him before I really even got to know him.

But this week has a been a very strenuous week financially (as have they all) and I told him that he would have to wait until Friday to get a hair cut. Not because I'm the boss, just because I know exactly where every penny needs to go between now and Christmas in order to try to get December's mortage paid before January 1st.

He has a hair clipping kit that he has been nagging me for weeks to use on his head. He trusted me, but I didn't and I flat out REFUSED.

Then I got a call at work tonight.

"Uh, Kristi, I couldn't wait."

"What?"

"I tried to cut my hair but I couldn't reach some spots."

"NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

But sadly, it was true. I wish I had taken a picture of the head I found when I got home, but I didn't want to have it embedded in my memory forever, although it would have made the blogging story much more effective.

So NOW I had no choice but to try to see this through. Let me show you the back after my attempts at fixing:






I actually think it turned out okay.












Now brace yourself......

There was so salvaging the top and front...it was too far gone and my only choice was to keep on going and know that it will grow back.




Maybe we can transplant some from his chest
















Let's chant this together...

"IT WILL GROW BACK, IT WILL GROW BACK, IT WILL GROW BACK..."

Am I convinced yet?

We were going to go get family portraits for Christmas. I think we will now wait until Valentines Day.

Doesn't he have a cute smile, though?

Have you ever cut the hair in your family? Do you have any tips, since he is crazy enough to believe that I could do it again?

Santa Fun

Weekend Top Five

Our weekend started a little earlier since I brought Noah home after lunch on Friday, due to the winter storm we were enduring at the time. Actually, pretty much the whole weekend we stayed home because of said winter storm.




5. Saturday Outside

We had two plans for Saturday...take the kids sledding and the walking in the parade with Noah's school. It was SUPER COLD and the roads were still really bad so I was not interested in going anywhere. Instead, we made our own fun outside.

Steve made a makeshift snow slide from our top step out to the driveway.






































They even got mommy to go down, even though I veered off course and hit the bricks instead.













The parade got cancelled so we needed a back up plan for the rest of the afternoon

4. Saturday Inside

Later that day, Steve decided to take Noah to the big sledding hill, while Aaron and I opted to stay in where it was warm.

So we made No Bake Pumpkin Pie instead.


















3. Crafts
Another indoor activity of the weekend was to use glitter to create foam snowflakes for the window.

I discovered a few years ago when Noah was small that if you put glue on paper and give them a paintbrush, it works WAY better than giving young kids glue bottles (and glue sticks just DON'T work!)



I got a great picture of Aaron from this that I am saving for a Wordless Wednesday in the future.








Noah takes his crafts very seriously


















Here they are on the window

















2. Church Sans Steve

Steve had two concerts with the vocal group that he joined on Sunday so we were Daddy-less. It went fine though. I set up a movie for the kids while we had bell rehearsal and then I took them to a McD's play area for lunch until it was time to go to Hannah's party.

1. Hannah's Birthday Party

Deb's daughter Hannah finally had her birthday party on Sunday. Because our kids, plus our friend Mary's kids make quite a large group, it was still a pretty good crew, even though only one other of Hannah's little friends could come.

They played Disney Bingo, did a pull string pinata and ate yummy cake and ice cream

Although I think the biggest hit of the day was simply RUNNING. I am quite sure there was no system to this game other than 6 kids on sugar highs who had been cooped up way too long this weekend.



Aaron, Noah, Becca











Like I said before, some weekends are harder than others to think of five interesting things. But what fun to try...

Another Winter Storm Watch is posted for Monday Night into Tuesday, so maybe we'll finally get our snow day this week.

If you want to share your weekend with me and others, please feel free to join Mr. Linky below.