December Part 2

Benton's school had a really fun Winter Festival that I took the older 2 boys to.  

A local realtor brought this bus and the boys that it was awesome.

 Building ginger bread houses.  I took Ethan to Benton's classroom while I was volunteering earlier that day because Ethan was out of school and Benton wasn't.  Ethan got to help assemble the kits for these houses with the help of a few junior high kids.  He also got to play a fun game of soccer at recess.  I'm hoping to make him a little more comfortable with Paseo Pointe because we want to move him there next year.

 Benton's school starts early, so in December it was dark on our way to school

 Lauren told us about free Minecraft books on Amazon.  We put a bunch on Amazon and Ethan stayed in this position for hours.

 We took our friend Alec to the LegoLand Discovery Center.

 We had to get our big shade tree chopped down because the roots were lifting pavers and our back wall.  It was also close to our pool. Mike had trenched and cut the roots going to the pool a few times, but it was just too destructive.

 We hosted our annual cookie making party.  This is the older group.  The younger group would play in the basement while the older made cookies and then we would switch.

 Everybody eating lunch at the same time.

 Popping all the shipping air bags.

 One of Mike's coworkers sent little gifts home for the boys.  This paper crown was in one of them.  I like this picture of Mike because it looks a lot like the picture I took of Mike in the car when he was driving me to the airport on my way to New Zealand.  I kept that picture on my camera to look at the whole time I was there.

 Christmas Eve hike.

 Grandpa Joe and Grandma Dianne got the boys a trampoline!  We set it up on Christmas Eve.  It took us about 4.5 hours to assemble.  The temperature with windchill was in the 30s, so we did a lot in the garage.  When it was getting too heavy to carry, we took it to the side yard to finish.  I mentioned that "at least it isn't raining" and within a few minutes it started sprinkling (my fault of course).  One of the light bulbs burst because it was an indoor bulb, but it kept working.  I tied a thread to the back of the Christmas tree for the boys to follow around the house and through the yard to the trampoline the next morning.  They were so excited!  Asher, especially, is on it any chance he gets.

 Christmas morning!

We bought Rock Band Wii accessories from a friend.

 And, apparently, we enjoyed the morning too much to take any other pictures.

Nana and Papa got the boys POGO Passes again.  We got an email saying that on January 1st the amusement park would no longer be on the pass, so Mike took the boys on New Year's Eve while I got the house all cleaned up and decorations down.

 Our Christmas card.

 I ran another race with my ComTrans Team.

Three of us got 3rd place in our age groups.

 Ugly sweater party with friends at the Tueller's.

 I planned a Noon Year's Eve party and we had about 7 families come.  We played PE games I got from my friend Steffani.

 We ate pizza and had a bubble machine.

 Then, at (about) noon, we did a count down and balloon drop and drank sparkling cider.

 As the wind picked up, the balloons started blowing across the field.  We had to run fast and far to gather them up.  There were about 140 balloons!

The kids were excited to bring some home.  We jumped on the trampoline with our balloons.  And on New Year's Day we did sparklers and poppers that have been sitting in our kitchen drawer forever.