Jingle's Been Hittin' the Bottle!

Crazy Jingle! But, can you blame him? An Elf's four food groups are candy, candy canes, candy corn, and SYRUP!

Regan got mad because I *touched* him to clean up his marshmallow bath. She was afraid I had depleted his magic with my filthy human hands (the book says you aren't supposed to touch him, genius author!) I told her it's okay for parent humans, but she wasn't buying it. She made me promise that if he didn't get into mischief last night, I had to go today and buy a new one! Thank goodness he was thirsty for syrup!

Wonder what he will get into tonight?

Jingle - Day 2

That naughty Mr. Jingle took a marshmallow bubble bath in the kids bathroom sink! Whatever will he do tomorrow?

Church KiDS Christmas Party

Last Wednesday night KiDS service for the year so of course we had to have a big Christmas party! We had cookies and lemonade (hot cocoa for the volunteers) and 137 kids! It was crazy! The kids had a great time though, we watched part of Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch, and played Minute to Win It games. The kids had a great time, and so did I. Love those kids!

Regan got picked to play "Reindeer Nosedive", which is a game where you have a cotton ball tied to a string, and you put one end in your mouth and swing your head around trying to get the cotton ball to stick to the end of your nose, where you have a giant blob of Vaseline! Regan looked so cute trying it, so of course, I video taped. Click here for the video!

Riley had Pfamily Pfun night at his school, so David went with him to that. They had the high school counselors there and they could start picking which classes they want to take next year. David talked to one of Riley's teachers and she told him he is in the top 10% of kids in the whole school in that class. That he's 85% done with what they are doing for the year, and is on track to be the first kid to ever finish that program! We are so proud of him this year. He's really realizing he needs good grades to do what he wants to do in life, and he's being more responsible about getting and keeping those grades up. We do have a few issues in a couple of classes, like Algebra, and of course, I'm no help to him there! But he's wanting it, and that's a step in the right direction for sure!

Elf on the Shelf

 

Meet Jingle, our Elf on the Shelf. I admit, this is probably more for me than the kids, but I couldn't resist. I wanted him last year, but thought the kids might be too old for it. Then this year I realized, that's crazy talk, you are never too old for Elfish hijinks, NEVER!

So the story on it is this, the Elf comes to your house, you name him, and he's a magical elf. Every day, he watches you and every night, he reports back to Santa whether you've been good or bad. Then, every morning, he comes back to your home and gets into some type of mischief.

Regan named him Jingle, and the first night wasn't too bad, he toilet papered our Christmas tree. Regan enjoyed hopping out of bed this morning to try to find out what he had done. It will be fun to see what kind of crazy things he will do before Christmas! Stay tuned!

Christmas Choir Concert

Regan has enjoyed choir so much this year. I think it helps that 2 of her friends from the neighborhood are in it with her, but she really loves to sing. They have been practicing a lot for the Christmas concert and they did a great job! (Click here to see the video). They sang several songs, and ended with a sing-a-long of Christmas Carols. It was fun, and they looked so cute up there!

Gingerbread House

It has become our yearly family tradition! The kids gripe about it until we get there and then they have a great time decorating their own Gingerbread House. We go to a church of one of our Girl Scouts, and most of our troop is there, so it's a fun time with friends also. They provide the house, the icing, and dinner and our troop pays for it! But this time, we skipped the dinner and just decorated our house and then went to dinner with Mimi and Papa instead (and I didn't mind, it's usually hot dogs and chili, and we went to one of my favorites, Magnolia!) So we split the house down the middle, Riley gets one side and the front, Regan gets one side and the back, and they go to town. They weren't as enthusiastic this year about covering every square inch of Gingerbread like they have in some years. But, it turned out cute and they had fun.

Girl Day!

Riley had to go to Camp Mabry to take his PT test for boot camp (that's coming up quick!) so Regan and I spent the day together. She loves girl days. We ate lunch at one of her favorites, Zorba's (Greek food) and got our toes done for Christmas! She LOVES getting a pedi.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a nice, fun Thanksgiving this year. It was not too crazy and pretty relaxing, so I'm happy. We spent most of Wednesday getting ready, getting some pre-cooking and shopping done. Thursday morning we finished up our cooking and headed over to Pam and Dave's. David smoked 3 chickens, they were so good, and very moist. I made Brazilian Pao de Quiejo (cheese bread) and sweet potato casserole, deviled eggs, cheese and sausage dip, and sausage stuffed stuffing balls (Regan's favorite) with gravy. Pam had a ham, deer roast, fruit salad, and some pies. Matt and Kelly brought yummy greens and curried cauliflower and a chocolate pecan pie. Kris and Makayla came too, the rest were at Jen's family for lunch.

After lunch, Riley and Dave took off on their bikes to the park, they found this really cool bike trail and Dave got some good pics and video of Riley on his new bike.

Then we all played Cranium, guys v. girls, and guys won, but barely. It was fun, the kids played too and they enjoyed being included, and they did a great job! Riley did a great impersonation of Michael Jackson, and Regan had to draw "kiss" with her eyes closed!  So here's our day in pictures:

Thanksgiving 2012

Hanging Out

It was our Sunday to serve, Regan serves in the 2 year olds, she loves playing with the little kids! I serve with 2nd-5th graders and Riley does the Tech Booth in the class where I am, and David does Campus Support now (finally delivered from Parking Team, yay!) So after church, Riley went home with a friend, Regan and I went to lunch, and then home to wait on David. After our ritual Sunday afternoon nap, we thought we would take Regan to the bookstore to hang out for a bit before we went to get Riley. We thought we would stop at Garden Ridge first and check out the Christmas stuff.

They have SO much Christmas there, it's everywhere! We saw the biggest inflatable Snowman and Santa Claus ever! They were huge. We checked it all out, got a great present for a white elephant party we have coming up, and then went to the bookstore to hang out some. Regan is wanting this huge book called "Wonderstruck" and I don't know much about it except for it's HUGE and this is my dyslexic, non-reading kid. But, it might end up being a Christmas present. I want to encourage her to read as much as possible. She's been getting a lot better with her reading also.

 

Anyway, it was fun just hanging out. Brought back memories of sitting at the bookstore when the kids were younger and would play with the trains. Then we had a quick dinner at Chili's and headed home to get ready for the short week of school.

Veteran's Day Program

Regan auditioned for the school choir a while back, and made it (yay Regan!) and today the choir sang at her school's Veteran's Day Program.

They had the program outside of the gym, and the high school ROTC came and presented colors, and the choir sang, the 5th grade dance team had a dance, they had some kids read essays that they had written about Veteran's, it was a nice program. And the Girl Scouts of the school presented a wreath and flowers at the end, so Regan got to do that also.

She had to wear her Girl Scout uniform and vest, and she wasn't real thrilled with that, she's like me and wants to be all colorful, not in boring khaki and white! But we found a gold hair cone that is exactly like one I used to have in high school, so she was happy to wear that today, and one blue star earring and one red star earring.

Here's the video of them singing (I didn't get the whole song, but you get the idea) and some pictures. They did a great job!

Happy 14th Birthday Riley!

I can't believe he's 14 already! My baby bird has grown up. He wants a bike for his birthday so we are still looking for the one he wants, and we may have to order it, so for now, he hasn't really gotten any presents. The guys had a camp out on the hill at church over the weekend, so most of their weekend was spent doing that, or recovering from doing that! Then on Sunday, it was our day to serve at church, and that always makes for a long day.

Monday, on his actual birthday, Riley special requested Chicken and Arugula Pita Pockets for dinner. Regan and I had a Girl Scout meeting, so I made that for him before I left, and Regan made him some bacon-cheese fries for a snack, she's so nice to her brother sometimes! (Although, I think she wanted them more than anything!) so we didn't really get to celebrate much until Tuesday night, we went to dinner with Mimi and Papa at Chuy's, everyone's favorite place to eat. He really wanted them to come sing Happy Birthday to him, so they did, he loves being the center of attention sometimes!

And this came today, he doesn't know it yet, but we did get him a little something...

He is currently running for Student Council Vice-President, so he's been working on posters and his speech, and he seems to be doing really well in school so far. He made all A's and B's and is really liking 8th grade. I just still can't believe next year he will be driving!

Halloween

Halloween

We had quite an eventful Halloween this year! It started off with a return to the infamous Haunted House that we visited (very quickly) a few years back. The kids had wanted to go so bad, but then got scared out of their minds last time, so this time, they wanted to try again. They were convinced that they could handle it, on their own no less. So, we brought them with their canned goods, and got there just in time for opening, learned our lesson last time, and no 3 hour wait for us! A cold front had come in so I had tortilla soup ready to go at home, we waited with the kids in line and then as soon as they went in, we waited in the car to warm up.

The loved it, I guess they are old enough now to appreciate the cheesy-ness of it. Went home to a nice hot bowl of soup, and spent the evening warming up and hanging out.

Then, the next morning Regan and I headed to a Girl Scout event (more on that later) and that evening we had our neighbor's Halloween party. They do this every year and it's so much fun! They have a big shin-dig in their backyard and the whole neighborhood comes out to help do games and they had a s'more pit, a bouncey house, cake walk, the kids have a blast. Riley helped us do some games and Regan got to see a bunch of her new school friends, and we just had a good time, stayed and talked and played till almost midnight!

Then on Halloween night, Regan had made plans to go Trick or Treating with her friends from school, WITHOUT mom and dad! I was a little sad about that, but one of the dad's was walking a big group of them around and she wanted to be a big girl and go with her friends. Riley decided he was too old for Trick or Treating, until one of his friends knocked on the door, so out he ran in an old Jason mask. He didn't stay out long, just enough to get some candy to munch on. Regan was out late and came home with a HUGE bag full of candy! Thankfully it's mostly forgotten now and I can pick out what I want for mom tax and toss the rest!

I dressed as a "Real Housewives of Travis County" with my robe, slippers, hair in rollers, I scared a bunch of little kids, that was fun! Overall, Halloween was a little anti-climactic this year. The kids are getting too old, and that makes me sad.

Regan really wanted to be a Zombie Bride, but couldn't find a costume she liked for it, and when she saw the "Athena-Greek Goddess" costume, she was sold! Glad for at least one more year before she goes scary!

UMHB School of Nursing

The Girl Scouts earned their nursing badge with a trip to the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. They learned about first aid, what do for certain illnesses, and had a good question-answer session with some of the nursing students. We got up early and drove up to Temple, the campus is very small and pretty. We got totally lost anyway, since they moved the venue and didn't let us know! But the girls enjoyed it, they each got their own first aid kit, and we had a picnic lunch before we headed home.

Ugly Sweater Contest

Our youth group had an "Ugly Sweater" contest, so I took Riley before church up to the Salvation Army thrift store, and ran into a few people from church looking for the same things, and a lot of items to choose from! He picked this Cosby-esque gem, but sadly, didn't even come in the finals! There are some pretty tacky sweaters out there people!

Sea Cadet Weekend

It was drill weekend for Sea Cadets, and Riley got his blue camos, most of his dress blues, and 3 awards! He was very excited to get the awards, and he got to call cadence or something like that. He looks so cute in his uniforms, of course I made him model them and let me take pictures. He wasn't too thrilled with the idea, but he knows he looks good! My little soldier boy!