Tis the Season!

A few quick pictures before the chaos and celebrating of Christmas begin:

How do we celebrate? Dessert Pizza!!!

Sooooooooo good.

 On Amelia's last day of school before the Christmas break, Amelia had a breakfast with her "team" classes (three teachers swap the students and cover all subjects), a little bit of school work, then headed to Fat Cats to watch a movie. In addition, she got to dress up all Christmasy!!

Isn't she just gorgeous?

Cooper had a short fluency Christmas program that I ran over to watch. There were about 5 songs, but these had the most, ahem, personality. This kid cracks me up.

 

                                                                                 

December Moves On.....

We've had a pretty fun December so far. Amelia had her Nutcracker, and she did fabulous! She was a mouse this year and LOVED the acting almost more than the dancing. She was cute to watch (when we could pick her out from all the other mice). This is why it was hard to spot her:

Cutest little mouse I've seen!

 Each mouse had a head with ears and a nose. When they all scurried around and fought the soldiers, it was impossible to keep track of Amelia! (I usually look for the shortest one, but she wasn't that one this year!) I splurged this year and bought the DVD, so we can watch it over and over and find her. This is her before she turned into a mouse:

 

She said people were asking her all night if her eyelashes were fake.

We also spent some time in Blackfoot helping Mom and visiting Dad. He is improving so much and working so hard! It's fun to see his face light up when we walk in, and Amelia and Cooper especially like to watch him in therapy. I don't mind myself--his therapist is very nice looking!

Amelia and Cooper like to dance to Indiana Jones theme.

Another fun activity was meeting Santa the day after Thanksgiving. They were interviewed on the air, and the television station played it. This isn't a great video, but you can at least see it. Cooper was thrilled, stating his "life-long dream had come true by being on TV!"

It's December?! Wait.....what......when.....?

That about sums up my last few weeks. I don't think I've sat for more than 2 minutes since my last post. Granted, my ceilings have all stayed where they should--but life has gotten so busy. Never again will I complain about being bored or having nothing to do!

Before Thanksgiving, Cooper had his program at school. I wish you could see him clearer, but here's one of the videos. If you want to see them all I can email them. He is such a performer!

Thanksgiving flew by and I don't have a single picture! We were lucky to be able to bring dad home for a few hours and that was fantastic. The kids and I stayed a few more days, but I was busy trying to finish two projects, three papers and one presentation. Saturday I was able to go visit dad for a couple hours. He is doing so well with his therapy--last time I saw him he couldn't move his right side, and on Saturday he was walking with a walker about 10 steps! I'm happy I could stay with him for so long--especially since the therapist wasn't too difficult to watch, either! It was a fun couple of days, and so much fun to see everyone.

We came back and hurled into December. We managed to squeak out time to put up the Christmas decorations and decorate the tree:

The most important ornament of all!

This week we have Amelia's first "Nutcracker" performance. She's a mouse this year, and has the honor of stealing the nutcracker and hiding it. She's thrilled! Let's hope that's the naughtiest thing she ever does. I'll post more pictures as I get them!

Plowin' Right Through November!!

Wow. Just wow. November has been insanely busy and just about everything that could've happened did! The garage ceiling caved in, the bedroom ceiling sagged dangerously, the Primary Program, first snow brought out all the idiots, and so much more! Here's a few pictures from our crazy month so far:

I came home, opened the garage, saw this:

Ceiling is down.

 Closed the garage door, called my landlord, went through the front door and cracked open a diet Pepsi. Or five.

Ceiling gone.

That very day men came over and cleaned up the mess. Not only were they incredibly thorough, (and nice to look at) but they vacuumed off the Christmas boxes and uncovered one of Cooper's toys, cleaned it and handed it to him. He said with awe, "You saved Christmas AND found my toy! You make miracles come true!" The nice restoration guy replied with a wink, "Yes, we do!"

Amidst the chaos, my sweet children did fabulous in the Primary Program. When they were singing the parts of the family and came to mother, Cooper looked at me, pointed and mouthed, "You."

Ah, sibling love.

Now onward to Christmas, which is approaching way to fast!

Boo at the Zoo and Jack o' Lanterns!

We finished up our Halloween celebration with Boo at the Zoo and carving pumpkins. The weather was really nice for Boo at the Zoo......nice enough for all southeastern Idaho to attend! It was packed! Amelia and Cooper had a great time though, and we saw more animals that night then we do when we usually go to the zoo. I think it had something to with the temperature being in the 60s rather than the 90s.......here are some pics. They are a little hazy because of the back lights and sun setting:

We also carved our pumpkins. It always makes me laugh how much Cooper does NOT want to pull out the innards of the pumpkin. If you look at the his picture, he's barely holding the top with all the guts hanging out. 

 Amelia, on the other hand, has no trouble diving right in!

Cooper wanted six eyes and two scary mouths.

Amelia opted for cute with eyelashes. They both did a great job!

We're sad to see Halloween go, but that means we have Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up! Can't wait!

Hocus Pocus 2014

This weekend we spent some time in Blackfoot with family. We visited, played in the leaves, and played football. Amelia and Cooper made an entire leaf house, complete with rooms, doors, and "secret escape routes". It was so much fun to see family and spend some time with them--even when it included a little (or a lot) of vomit. Luckily, none of my kids were the contributors!

Saturday afternoon we came back home to attend Hocus Pocus. It was fun, but next year we are going to be sure to be there as it starts---the lines are a lot shorter! We had fun on the hayride, all the games and treats, and seeing friends with all their fun costumes.

There was a nice breeze, which Amelia loved because it made her cape flow out behind her.

Cooper practicing his ninja skills in the graveyard.

Hanging out with the Headless Horseman. Soooooo creepy.

Another fun Halloween activity down!

This week we have a few more things to go to, then we can officially calm down a bit until Christmas----which is 7 weeks. That's right, just 7 weeks!!

Pumpkin Patch and Straw Maze!!

We picked our pumpkins last weekend in our pumpkin patch we usually go to. I don't know if it was the nice weather, or that it was a Saturday, but the place was PACKED! Nevertheless, we found our pumpkins quickly, played with some kittens, ran through the small straw maze, and discussed jack-o-latern options at length.

Ah, sibling love.

Cooper was pulling the wagon and it jerked forward, hitting him the the stomach. Although this picture makes it look like he was injured, he was fine. Just a lot of moaning and groaning.

Cooper photo-bombing

Cooper-less pic.

After we dropped off the pumpkins at home, we headed out to the straw maze! It was really nice, cool weather and I was looking forward to Amelia and Cooper running some energy off. This year they added a couple slides and an area to climb on straw bales and jump into lose straw. I think Amelia and Cooper liked those more than the maze!

This twine is meant to brush against people in the dark and scare them when they come to the haunted maze. The kids thought they made great swings!

This picture was at the "tunnels". The nice helper guy walking on top of the bales offered to stand where the tunnels exited and if Amelia or Cooper came out, he'd send them back through to find me. He threw me a bottle of water, so I sat down and had a nice rest!  Gotta love Rexburg!

In a little less than two hours, we made it!

It was a fun, exciting day! Next up: more Halloween celebrations and the ward harvest party. By the time Halloween comes around, I think we'll end up staying in, snuggled up with blankets, a movie, and popcorn!
                                                         I. LOVE. AUTUMN!!!!!