December Fun

Wanted to update before Christmas. 😃 We've had a fun December with a perfect blend of busy time and down time. 

The month started off with Stella's 5th grade choir concert. She's shortie in the front row with the purplish dress and black boots next to the girl in a white dress. 

She had a small speaking part. 

Trying to get a shot with her little group of buddies. 

They decorated gingerbread houses one Sunday afternoon. 

Team photo of Stella's bball team. They are having a fun season! She's back row, 2nd from the right. 

Elfie selfie on the way to an ugly Christmas sweater party. One of my 1st selfies! 😆

The group at the party. It was actually a "Reindeer Games" party, but we were asked to wear ugly Christmas sweater. It was a lot of fun! 

The next day a big group of boys from P's class planned a get together at SkyZone. Lots of sweaty 8 & 9 year olds!

Lucy texted me this one day. Porter is hiding. LOL!

Our elf, Stanley, used P's iPad one night and played games on it and took an "elfie" and saved it as P's screensaver. He was dying laughing the next morning! Too cute!

P's class put on school mass last week (no photos allowed in church) I saw Stella and her 1st grade buddy, Alex, walking through the gathering space. The 5th graders are each paired with a 1st grader to sit with during mass to keep them in line since 5th graders are "king of elementary school". 8th graders are paired with kindergarteners and by 2nd grade they are expected to know how to behave during mass!!! ( looking at this, I see Alex is very tall for her age, her parents are very tall!). 

The kids got out of school about 35 min early last week due to a large funeral rosary going on at the time carline would be happening, so we took advantage to finish up our Christmas shopping. Of course a stop at Auntie Ann's was in store!

Porter picked out the turd emoji pillow as the grab bag gift he gave out for our Christmas party. He was so excited!

One day before our Christmas party Mike starts putting up our backsplash and then painted the kitchen. Just a couple hours before the party the next day our kitchen was in a huge state despair! But it looks great! We painted it a light grayish/beigish color. 

We drove around looking at Christmas lights last weekend! My pictures turned out horrible, but it was a fun outing. 

We hosted our annual play date Christmas party, this is a moms group I joined when Stella was a new 1 year old. 

The girls!

The boys! Only 5 families were able to attend, but a small group was fun, too. All night I kept meaning to get a mom and dad pic, but it didn't happen!

P had his last bball game of the season and their team won 1st place in their division! Proud of these boys, they didnt win a single game last year!

Part of the team. We were missing 4 boys that day so hardly any breaks for the boys! 

And lastly, last night we went to an Iowa Wild hockey game. The kids earned free tickets through a reading program!

Stella with Berkin and Ally. Didn't get a pic of the boys. 

November Happenings

I can't believe it will be December 1st in two days!! That's so crazy! We've had a fun November. Here's a little bit of what we've been up to. 

Carved pumpkins a couple of days before Halloween. Just now realized I didn't take a pic of how they turned out. Oops! 

Porter was a Bears football player and Stella was a Minion. I walked around with them with a blinking skull on my head. 

Most of Stella's GOTR team this fall. She wasn't really into it this time around. She will be able to 

participate in track this coming Spring and is looking forward to that. She's in the front row, 3rd from the left. 

Mike and I celebrated 15 years of marriage! We didn't do too much, just went out for dinner and drinks since we had our Vegas trip in August to celebrate the big event. 

Home Alone debuted 25 years ago and had a special showing in the movie theater one night. Fun to see it on the big screen again!

Porter is enjoying bball more this year than last year and has really improved and his confidence while playing has improved as well! Yay!

Do you spot who was helping me rake leaves?

Discovered that Owen and P have matching Okoboji shirts during a recent sleepover. Awesome!

A gloomy day called for a trip to SkyZone to use up my Groupon before it expired. 

Rex always sits on their homework when they are trying to get it completed. And boy he looks large here!

Got our house all ready for Christmas!

Stella is looooving bball again this year. Her fav sport of all. She's #27 this year and plays through the Y again. This year her team is on the 5th and 6th team league and their last game some of the kids on the other team were as tall, if not taller, than me! Will be fun to see how they do this year!!

It's hard to tell here, but her face was SO red at the end of this game. She played 3 full rotations without a break. 

Stella as Mother Mary at the 5th grade Wax Museum. She had to memorize an entire full notebook page speech for this and did a great job!

Porters bball team earned an ice cream reward for winning 3 games so far this season. (they won zero games last season so this is a big deal!) Great group of boys!

Loved having Britt and her boys stop by for a visit a few days ago!

Stella helping me prep for Thanksgiving. She made the brownies for my Torte and the green bean casserole. It was really fun having her in the kitchen with me. :-)

Scott, Nora and the kids spent Thanksgiving weekend with us and we had so much fun! We probably won't see them again until the 4th of July so it was a treat having them here. 

I was in charge of the neighbors dog, Buster a few days and the kids came over a few times to play with him. 

Thanksgiving day morning watching movies. 

We had a small group this year for Thanksgiving. Our good friends, the Schachtners,came over at the last minute. They always go to CO to see Lucy's family but Jeff's dad was very ill they weren't able to travel this year. His dad ended up passing away yesterday. Many prayers for this wonderful family. 

Jeff helped make the mashed potatoes and I was laughing bc he had shoulder surgery a few weeks ago and has to wear a sling for 6 weeks. The injured guy was mashing my potatoes....many reason to feel Thankful this year and this was one of them. :-)

The kids: front row Eric, Grant, Porter. Back row: Berlin, Grace, EJ, Stella, Guy. 

The adult table (Grace sat with us): Scott, me, Mike, Nora, Lucy, Jeff 

Friday morning Stella, Grace and I went out for some Black Friday shopping! We gotto the mall around 7:30 AM, not crowded at all! We had a lot of fun!

Being silly in the Nike store! 

Got home and these 3 boys were still in their Jammie's at 1:30 and having pizza for lunch. 

Sorting gifts into piles a day before they even opened them. Too cute!

Mike and Scott took the kids to Climb Iowa to burn off some energy. 

I wanted to strata new Thanksgiving tradition this year and do our own 5k Turkey trot walk around our neighborhood. Unfortunately it rained all day Thursday, so yesterday we bundled up and took a walk and stopped by some parks, but the equipment was all covered in ice so it still didn't work out the wY I hoped, but it was nice to get outside for awhile. 

Got home and got out Mexican train to play and warmed up with hot cocoa. They left this morning, we were all sad to see them go, but we had a wonderful time with them and made many fun memories.