Decorating Our Tree

It is our tradition to put up and decorate our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. These last couple of years, it has also been our tradition to be a day late on our tradition! Here are a few photos of the kids getting the tree ready.




On our very first Christmas together, DH and I realized we did not have a star for the top of our tree. We glanced around our apartment and settled on the cake topper from our wedding cake. Every year since, we have put something unique on the top of the tree, something that represents an event or something special that happened that year. This year, the kids suggested something from our trip west to Wyoming last May. So this year, our tree topper is.....(drumroll, please........) a postcard of Mt. Rushmore and a jackalope!

Charlie Wickens

Last weekend, Monkey was watching the movie "The Incredibles" (for about the 38th time). Towards the end of the movie, Mr. Incredible does something rather....well, incredible, and the little neighbor boy on his tricycle yells "That was totally wicked!" Just as he reached that part of the movie, Monkey jumps to his feet and yells loudly "That was Charlie Wickens!" After we got done giggling, we all decided that we sort of liked that saying, and have now added it to our "list"!

Rescuing Dora

Monkey has once again been living up to his name. Over the past day or so, we have been finding all sorts of things missing and later showing up at the bottom of the laundry chute. Today topped them all! Seely went into the bathroom to discover a rather large puddle of lotion on the floor and splattered on the wall in front of the laundry chute. Being the wise big brother that he is, he stuck his head into the laundry chute to discover many, many squirts of lotion running down the walls inside, and a Dora doll stuck by the head about half way down. We immediately set out on a rescue and clean up mission, but found we had to be a bit creative about how we went about it, as much of it was past the point of our reach.

Finally, we were able to rescue Dora from her precarious position, though it was too late to spare her from being covered in lavender lotion.

Through many clever acts of engineering, we were even able to get most of the lotion off of the inside of the laundry chute! But alas, discipline must still be meted out to the one who endangered poor Dora and created such a huge mess (no matter how entertaining it was to his siblings!).

Harvest Dancing

On Friday, the 31st, we all headed off to church for the annual Harvest Fest. The kids have carnival games, and there is a Bible Walk where they go to different stations to gather candy creatively related to a Bible story. For instance, they were given Milky Ways after hearing the story of Creation, and how God created the stars. They were given Snickers after hearing how Sarah laughed at being told she would have a baby at 90 years old, and lifesavers after hearing the story of Jesus dying on the cross to save them. A good time was had by all. Seely dressed as himself and helped run the carnival games. Random dressed as a nerd by taping nerd candies to himself and using his father's nerd pajama pants as a candy bag. Lily was a doctor. Mango a princess, and Monkey was his hero, Spiderman.

The next morning, Lily and Mango had to be back at church early because the worship dance team was performing for a conference held at our church. It made for a rather busy, but fun weekend!