I’ve neglected this blog so long apparently Alan decided to pick up the slack! :) I was away so long that my browser required me to re-login and then WordPress wanted me to upgrade. After the upgrade I saw the title of Alan’s post in my dashboard and thought it was some weird advertising thing. Then I realized it was just a post by him. A (loving) knock on my holiday baking frenzy. :) Sadly I’m all out of wine, so cookies will have to do.

Anyway, I was taking school pictures off the camera the other day and realized I have a ton of non-school pictures as well. Lots going on these days! The time is just flying by. I have just one more week in 5th grade, then vacation, then kindergarten! I have mixed emotions about that! I feel ready to try a different grade and a different school, but I’m really going to miss the comfort of my well-known school and all the kids and teachers there. I know where everything is and I know everyone’s name and I like all the 5th graders and they like me… it will be a bit switch to an entirely new school! However, I’ve been in a funk lately, slow and dragging, and maybe a new scene will reinvigorate me. Or maybe vacation. Or maybe sleep. Someday.

So what else has been going on? Let’s take a look at the camera and see…

We got our Christmas tree last weekend. I got an email from Greg in CA saying they were trudging through snow to get theirs… not a flake on the ground when we got ours. (Things look a bit different outside now!)

Searching for the perfect tree…

Eve likes this one.

We settled on this one. It looks so tiny here, but it fits our (tiny) space.

There was a bit of a hole in the tree so Alan tried filing it with children.

The decorating went well. Lex was there too, I guess I just don’t have any good pictures of him.

Eve insisted on a decorated Eve picture.

I just realized I didn’t get a family picture in front of the tree. Oops. Maybe we’ll try for a Christmas morning picture instead.

What else? We are now on bread machine number three in our quest to replace the old one. The first two didn’t work. Luckily Amazon has an easy return policy! This one came last week and I was so darn busy I didn’t have a moment to deal with it. A few days ago the kids got tired of waiting for me so they got the bread machine out of the box and made the first loaf all on their own. Well… I was in the kitchen as well and offered some guidance, but they did all the work! The machine isn’t perfect, but it’s better than the first two. I’m going to have to decide soon if we keep it or send it back.

They were so eager for fresh bread they made the first loaf all by themselves.

A few nights ago I tried to open the kids’ door to check on them at bedtime (my bedtime, not theirs) and found the door blocked. I was worried for a minute, then realized Lex had shoved his mattress off the bed and it was blocking the door. When we got past that, this is what I found.

Look at that empty bed.

He made himself a crib!

Silly boy made himself a crib! Julie, I was thinking of you that night and our conversation about waking the kids. I dragged him back onto his bed, he fell on me in the process, I rearranged him and Alan pushed his mattress back on the bed. We laughed and took pictures. Both kids slept through the entire thing! Lex didn’t even remember it in the morning. He remembered moving his mattress, but had no memory of us fixing it during the night. My kids sleep like rocks! :)

Saturday morning we went to the annual Gingerbread House Festival, a fundraiser for a local charity. Everybody who’s anybody was there! Lex and Alan opted out. Poor Lex was actually really torn between going (he remembered it was fun last year) and staying (his new EV3 was calling his name). The final deciding factor came when he realized he had no clean socks. Somehow he only owns three pairs of socks! Eve and I took care of that problem with a trip to KMart after the Gingerbread House Festival. Actually, the KMart trip was for socks and because Eve had left her snowpants at school and swears she can’t find them anywhere. KMart was packed, what with it being so close to Christmas and a big snowstorm predicted for the afternoon. In the checkout line we ran into my mentor teacher. When I mentioned Eve’s lost snowpants he asked why I didn’t go back to school to look for them. D’uh!!! I have keys. Why didn’t I think of that! I think that’s one step back from being a teacher. Silly me. Anyway, we bought the snowpants and here are pictures of the gingerbread houses.

A candy castle

A Lego house

A pirate ship

The white one on the right was done by my friend Jen, and she won the prize in the professional baker category.

Snoopy

Our school subdivision

My friend Jen (whom we’ve made gingerbread houses with in the past) organized a school-wide holiday reward. She and a few other people baked gingerbread houses for each class and the students got to decorate them. Then she brought them all to be donated to this event. They gave us our own sub-division. :)

More school houses

A tree house with a Swedish Fish roof.

A cuckoo clock

Eve had her face painted like a snowflake and she made herself a Jan Brett Gingerbread Baby (like the book).

We bid on a few houses and I got a call Saturday night saying we won one! Unfortunately I was at a staff Christmas party when the call came in and they left only the generalist of messages. I have to pick up the house tomorrow, but I have no idea which one we won. I’ll post pictures of it tomorrow. :)

The staff party was fun. I didn’t take any pictures. I work with a crazy bunch of people… for one more week. Weird. We did a fun, and long, Yankee Swap and I came home with a fat coffee table art book. I’m going to re-gift it to my friend who is an artist. Re-gift with a full explanation of where it came from! :)

Saturday night the storm came and the snow started. We woke today (Sunday) to a winter wonderland!

Snow! Time for sledding.

They spent quite a long time hanging out in the neighbor’s back yard, sheltering themselves from the falling snow from his snowblower. He was clearing his back deck. They loved it.

Look at this big kid! He helped shovel the driveway.

For some reason I took pictures of my big kids but no winter scenery pictures. Maybe the snow will stick around for a few days and I’ll get another chance. There’s rain in the forecast for Friday, but I hope it doesn’t come. It would be nice to have a white Christmas.

My kids are so big in the snow. I just got lost in the blog looking for other snow pictures, from times gone by. Check out this funny one of them with Bone, and this one of them playing on the old swing set. They do grow up fast!

PS. I need a new blog header. I’ll add it to my list of things to do. The current one is so last season!