Family Fun

As I've mentioned, we aren't a big vacation family due to many who have a tendency to get motion sick and the general stress of a big vacation.  So this week we enjoyed three family days nearby instead.

We started of with a funeral.  Not what we had planned and our sympathy and prayers go out to Jeremy's good friend Doug, his family and for the repose of his dad's soul.  But it was really good to see them, even if the circumstances were less than desirable.  

After the funeral we biked the new trail from the lake, under the bypass and into one of the parks in town.  Nicholas diligently pedaled almost the whole 1.9 miles.  However, as we rode I noticed we were going mostly down hill and the way back was not going to be fun.  Then a gear popped off Samuel's bike.  In the end while Jeremy pushed the broken bike and Samuel rode his, I biked back to the van, drove to the park, picked up the littles and the broken bike and Jeremy and the big boys rode back to the truck, Samuel on my bike.

The next day we visited the art museum.  Or more accurately we visited the children's area of the art museum, walked through a few halls of art constantly reminding the kids not to be too loud, run or touch the art and then called it a morning.  :)  The kids weren't bad, it's just the actual art part of the museum is not that interesting to them.  The kid area was awesome though!

That afternoon we visited the big zoo.  We sprung for a pass since it's only $20 more than our family going once and we haven't had one for a few years.  Each kid chose one place to go and everyone was happy with their pick.

Wednesday the kids and I did lots of errands including the dreaded shoe shopping and we did pretty well over all.  Thursday we stuck around home, did a Julia/Abi, Philip/Thomas swap, labeled school supplies and stocked the freezer with good school breakfasts.

Friday we went to see Pete's Dragon which was pretty good although drastically different from what I remember of the old one.  (Well, I really only remember the song Candle on the Water and something about drunk guys in a bar from the old one now that I think about it!)

We checked out a new-to-us water park for the afternoon.  Grandma Raleen and Aliza joined us for the fun.  The three bigs were tall enough for the yellow slide, Samuel and Thomas were big enough for the blue one too.  Philip and Nicholas enjoyed the little train slides.  We had lots of fun and wore out Nicholas so well he fell asleep at 6 on the way home after dinner out with Grandma and Aliza and slept until morning!

Saturday we continued the fun with my side of the family for Augustine's birthday party.  My cousin Rachel and her boys were visiting from Milwaukee so they were able to come.  It was great to see them!

Then Logan gave us a guided tour of the new Newman Center (he works there).  The old one was knocked down in 2013 to make way for a new, wonderfully beautiful church.  It's been open for a year but we hadn't made it there to see it yet.  It's gorgeous and I am so happy that they have built such a wonderful place for students to love and grow in their Catholic faith but I will always miss the old, simple, blue church where we were married.  I felt at home every time I walked through the orange back door of the old church, even 13 years after graduation.

It was a great stay-cation!

Happy Easter!

We made bread on Holy Thursday and discussed the Last Supper at dinner.

We prayed Stations together on Good Friday.  We don't have a set of Stations books so everyone just found some Stations in whatever prayer book they have and then we went around and each kid could either tell what they knew about the station or read what was in their book for that one.  It kept the kids' attention well.
Holy Saturday we went to a Seder dinner at the home of some fellow parishioners.  I think they invited us for entertainment value.  :)  Our kids were the only littles there and the family enjoys kids.
We went to the Vigil Saturday night.  It started at 8:30.  Nicholas was laying on the pew almost asleep by 9, Philip by 9:15 and Julia by 9:30.  They were all fast asleep at the end.  (Not the big boys of course, they are big enough to be good.)  Julia and Philip woke up before we left but Nicholas slept until we picked him up and went right back to sleep at home.  The Vigil sure goes faster when you have no kids to wrangle!!

Pre-Vigil picture (we need to buy more ties!)

Sunday we hunted eggs at home

 and at Grandma Raleen and Grandpa Steve's.

We had lots of fun with family too.  It's worth noting that this is the first time Nicholas has held Dylan, or really even acknowledged his existence!

We celebrated at Grandma Susan and Grandpa Mike's too but I have no pictures from there- too busy enjoying family I guess!

He is Risen!
He is Risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Santa

We went to see Santa as usual this year.  Philip got picked to be Frosty.  He was trying to be serious (why?) but couldn't hold the smile back.

Reindeer singing Rudolf.

This is how Nicholas felt about the festivities.

This is as close as she got to Santa.  It's an improvement on the last two years when she didn't go near him at all.

Nicholas wanted nothing to do with Santa until he heard Santa had little bags with tractors and candy canes in them.  When Santa asked what he wanted for Christmas he said a bag.  So he got one.  ;)

Philip jumped up onto Santa's lap while Mom wasn't looking so we don't have a picture.  I'll just sub in this one when Santa was helping him put on the Frosty things...

Traditional cousins visit Santa picture. 

Oh, one cousin is missing?  (Wait, two, Dylan is missing too.  He must have been busy being cute somewhere.)  Samuel no longer visits Santa (for the record, Thomas only goes for the cookies).  Samuel stayed home and made pancakes.  Twelve year olds are awesome (mostly).

Halloween 2015

Halloween has a lot of childhood traditions that I really do not think I am going to miss when my kids grow out of them.  In fact, I don't think I'll miss any of Halloween (only maybe 10 more years to go....).

Seriously, gross pumpkin guts, children with knives and tough pumpkin skin.  Why is this fun?

I thought Nicholas would like to go as James.  He's a train and he's red.  Two of Nicholas' major criteria.  Nope.  Did not like the costume.  So I racked my brains about what we had (on October 30th of course) that he might like and remembered that back when I only had two children and thought I should do things like make costumes I made Samuel a Bob the Builder costume.  Big hit.  He sang Bob the Builder on the way up to quite a few houses.  And wore it the next day after Mass too.
My mom made Julia's costume (thank you Mom!!!).  I think Julia remembered my version of Elsa last year (sparkly blue dress and silver scarf for the cape, I thought it was great for being made out of things we already had) so she completely bypassed me (thank goodness!) and asked my mom to make her an Anna costume.  It's beautiful.
We got Thomas's Darth Vader costume from a coworker of Jeremy's for $10 and found $3 light sabers at Target.
Philip wore the saint tunic and carried a light saber and was Luke Skywalker.  Not that he's seen StarWars.  But the big boys think Luke is cool so he must be.  For school Philip wore his firefighter outfit.  No weapons are allowed at school and as the light saber is what makes his costume recognizable I lobbied for being the change.  Thankfully he went for it.

We went around Mike and Jen's neighborhood with Raleen, Aliza, Jen and Skeleton Dylan (who I didn't think to take a picture of).  Aliza was Anna in her coronation dress.

Samuel did not want to dress up.  He didn't even want to join us for dinner at Runza.  He enjoyed his 3 hours to himself by finishing his book report and watching football in peace.  Maybe some day I too, can enjoy a peaceful Halloween.  :)

End of Summer Fun

We had a waterfight/hangout day with Jeremy's family on Sunday.  The bottom right picture of Philip may be the best picture of the summer.

 

On Tuesday we had Family Fun Day and went to the little zoo in the morning

and the pool in the afternoon.  It was the last day of the pool.  It's already drained today, we saw it empty this morning.  :(

Meant to get Julia jumping in.  Instead got her splash and Aliza jumping!

Here she is.

Philip has mastered flipping.  I have a video but whether or not our internet will stay on without dropping long enough to upload the video is the question.  I'll try, but I'm not hopeful.  Even after three repair visits and some phone calls, out internet drops every 5 minutes sometimes.  It's frustrating.  (I know, 1st world problem.)

Ooh, it worked!

Halloween Fun

We carved pumpkins after school on Halloween.  Nicholas helped everyone scoop theirs out but we didn't carve his.  Samuel decided he didn't want carve this year.  HOORAY! HOORAY!  Oh, did I type that loudly?  Carving pumpkins is not a childhood tradition I will miss.  But I guess it's not so bad when you only have to do three.

We enjoyed trick or treating too.  After some debate Samuel decided he would go.  He wasn't feeling into dressing up this year.  He ended up just wearing his flag football jersey and saying he was a Steelers player.  Good enough.

Philip went as a Police officer again.

Here's Tigger still with the closed eyes whenever I take his picture.

He had an extended conversation with Leeska in his crib after trick or treating.  This is how I imagine it went:

N:  Grown ups are weird.  First my mom bundled me up in this weird outfit and tried to make me wear the hood inside.  I didn't like it but she didn't care; she just kept putting it up and I kept pulling it down.  Finally I had to throw a little fit to get her to stop.  Then we went out to eat with Grandma.  That was good.  Then we went to Aliza's and then, this is the great part, we walked to people's houses and they gave us candy!  But my mom made me put it in my bag instead of eating it.  I thought that was crazy but she insisted so I went with it.  After awhile my legs got tired so Mom and Dad carried me.  We walked and got lots of candy.  It was cold so I let Mom put my hood up.  Then when we finally got home I got to eat one piece of candy.  One piece!  Why bother getting so much if we can't eat it?  Maybe I'll get another piece tomorrow.

L:  You're right, grown ups are weird.

Julia was Elsa.  Thankfully she was happy with her costume we pieced together from the dress up box.

 Elsa and Elsa.

 Luke Skywalker.  I know, he has an amazing resemblance to St. Thomas Aquinas.  Interesting!

Happy Halloween!

Easter Joy

We had lots of fun with family on Easter but we only have pictures at Jeremy's parents because after being outside there for a couple hours my pink eye got really bad and I was preoccupied with itchy, inflamed eyes at my parents.  The good news was I was the last of the family to get it!

A couple of my favorites:

We braided Julia's hair for the Vigil.

Thomas seems to have found all the high eggs this year.

Check out how cute Nicholas and Grandpa Steve are!

Love the picture of Nicholas finding an egg with his cheeks full of jelly beans he snitched before Mommy caught him.

Also love the intensity with which Aliza is inspecting the egg she found.

 Samuel made the sprinkle bars by himself, Thomas the fruit salad by himself, Julia and Nicholas helped with our traditional lamb rolls.  Philip did whatever it is he does.  Actually I think he helped with the rolls but didn't get it documented.  :)

Only Jeremy likes hard boiled eggs so I took the time to blow out the insides of the eggs we colored and made Easter morning casserole instead!

We didn't take Nicholas to the Vigil this year (best.decision.ever.) so that's why he's in pjs and everyone else is dressed up.  I put him to bed before the sitter got here and he slept until about 5 minutes before we got home.  (He still not quite sleeping through the night but that's a different story...) We always talk up the Easter Vigil and explain the Easter fire and candles and bells and readings and all that special stuff that goes on so the kids are excited to go.  Samuel actually told me this year that he loves the Vigil- yay!  Guess we talked about the church being dark before our candles are lit a little too much though because Philip had the foresight to pack a green finger flashlight in his pocket.  Jeremy wondered who was shining the little green light up at the ceiling and looked over to discover it was our son.  Guess we'll do a pocket check next year.

He is truly Risen!  Alleluia!

Still Celebrating

We had to postpone our celebration with Jeremy's parents and his sister's family because of our stomach bug but we managed to get it in and have a great time!

 Wow, three good family pictures in a row!

This is possibly the ONLY picture Nicholas willingly held still for out of all of the Christmas pictures.  Not sure what inspired him- maybe because all the other kids were doing it?

 Best picture I've ever taken of these two together.

Tuckered out after so much fun.