Week 2: The monkey families

It's been very cold and somewhat snowy lately, so we've been enjoying staying in as much as possible. Mon-Tues-Wed are the busiest with my exercise classes, cub scout meetings (plus Zach attending some boy scout meetings in preparation for crossing over), and dance class. By the end of the week we are all ready for down time, and last Friday was another Parents Night Out where the kids were at school for a few hours and we went out to dinner.

The "after" of moving the boys' beds and desks.

They like playing chess.

Pokemon cards! Charlotte recently started her collection.

Week 1: New Year's with friends

We spent a few nights with friends, playing Just Dance and Minecraft, eating fondue for New Year's Eve and pork and dumplings for New Year's Day!

Weeks 51 & 52: Sickness and Christmas

The week before Christmas break was when the boys tested positive for flu. Zach was actually sick during his sleepover, but the symptoms were so slight that we didn't know what was going on. When they woke up Monday morning with sore throats we thought it was strep. They were home Mon-Tues-Wed from school per doctors orders, though after starting medicine they were better by the next morning. We found out later that by Wednesday over half of the fifth graders at the school (around 50) were out for flu.

That Friday the kids had holiday parties at school, and I helped with Gabe's classroom. Over the weekend we did both gingerbread houses (from kits) and gingerbread cookies (Zach made from scratch). Lots of messy decorating. On Christmas eve we decided to do our Barnes & Noble/Chili's outing, and very few people were out. We had the restaurant to ourselves for most of our lunch. The kids had fun in the evening playing Google Santa Tracker games and picking out their favorite cookies to leave for Santa.

The kids followed our instructions to be in rooms until 6 am and that they could get us up at 7. Then it was a jumble of books, board games, video games, stuffed animals and babies, Beyblades, Legos, and Harry Potter everything...all before 8 am. We decided to flip Charlotte's loft bed over in order to have more space for toys in her room. And in one last Christmas adventure we sought out a park full of lighted displayed that I'd heard about from some friends.

Here we are in 2019

We're back in the swing of things, and I'm still going through photos from the holidays. But we've taken family photos. This year there were no keepers from our first try, so we assembled a week later and I'm pretty satisfied. The kids gathered groups of stuffed animals for photos as well! More to share soon!

Google "bananya" to learn more about these Japanese banana-inhabiting kitties!