Delivery!

A snow day that's not all that snowy combined with an early morning doctor's appointment in town seemed like a good enough excuse to pick up doughnuts for a rise-and-shine visit to Ben and Bella!

Sledding

So far, it's been a disappointing winter as far as snow.  We've had ten days of school closures, but less than 2 inches of snow accumulation.  We had some closures due to the "polar vortex" and the accompanying sub-zero temperatures, some closures due to refreezing wet roads, and some closures due to heavy snow on the other side of our county.  

It's hard to swallow a snow day, and the accompanying makeup time, when there's nothing fun to play in outside!  At least our friends in town had a decent amount in their yard!  We spent a happy afternoon with Bella and Ben sledding in their yard and down their driveway.  

Surgery

It all started with a referral a year ago from the dentist.  He thought Brady might have a bit of a crossbite and thought we might end up with a palate expander.  Well, that certainly would have been too easy!

The first orthodontist recommended multiple procedures, including two oral surgeries requiring general anesthesia.  The second orthodontist recommended doing nothing, with a wait-and-see approach.  As tempting as that was, it still didn't sound right.  The third guy finally addressed some of the overarching history and, in partnership with an oral surgeon, recommended immediate removal of EIGHT teeth and then seeing where we are in a few months.

That was just before Christmas, and no one was very excited about Brady being on a soft foods diet during the holidays.  At his request, we waited until after his birthday and finally scheduled the procedure for mid-January.  Brady was a great patient.  I think he secretly enjoyed a chance to be home from school for three days with nothing to do but work on Rainbow Loom bracelets and watch Harry Potter.  I think the EIGHT gold dollars and a $5 spot from the Tooth Fairy helped ease the pain too.

He did have a bit of a setback 5 days after the surgery, when we let the pain get ahead of us.  We made a Sunday night run to the doctors office for two Novocain injections and stronger meds.  Thankfully, Monday was already a school holiday and Tuesday and Wednesday wound up being snow days.  He was fully recovered and ready to get back to school a week and a day after the surgery. 

"Snow" day

This was one of the failed snow days for our end of the county.  No school, but also not enough snow to play in.  We tried sledding, but the light dusting of snow only made the hill super bumpy as we flew over the mounds of dead sea grass.

Rudy ice skating

Rudy was invited to Mary Emma's birthday party at the local skating rink.  I think this was only his third time on skates:  once after Brady's "hockey" camp in 2009, once in Phoenix, and for his own hockey camp in 2011. 

I had mentally prepared myself for a lot of frustration and meltdowns from Rudy, but was pleasantly surprised.  When we first got on the ice, he whined and complained about how he didn't know how to skate.  I finally turned him around and showed him that we were already a quarter of the way around the rink, so he WAS skating.  After that...he was off. 

He liked it so much that now he even thinks he might want to have his party at the ice rink.

Pearl Harbor and About Owls

The kids' TAG projects were due this week.  This was a six-month project with lots of milestones along the way.  I'm sure the kids learned some new content from the project, but I think the biggest lessons were in time management and long term planning.  I worked closely with Rudy throughout his project, reading the books with him and helping him take notes.  We even sat down together to work on his rough draft.  In the end, his project went pretty smoothly (except for the as-expected full scale Rudy-meltdowns when he didn't want to work on something).  

On the other hand, I let Brady work more independently on his project at the beginning.  He didn't seem to want help and worked independently on his note-taking.  He finished and turned in his rough draft and didn't want me to look at it.  It all came crashing down, though, when he had to revise his rough draft.  Thankfully, he's a competent enough writer that he avoided some common problems (e.g., in this paper, I am going to write about...).  However, he was significantly lacking in content for each of his body paragraphs.  We spent a long afternoon together finding more research to fill in the holes.  It was a valuable lesson (one of many for him this year) in doing things well the first time around.  

Side note...James and I have had this talk with Brady multiple times this year.  One night at dinner, I told Brady that my parents used to tell me, "Do it right the first time so you don't have to do it again."  James spoke up and said that his parents used to say, "If you don't have time to do it right now, when will you have time to do it again?"  Funny how we become our parents...

For his final presentation, Brady put together a diorama of the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  He used some old coffee table books to create the backdrop, painted foam board to build the harbor, and constructed the mountain out of clay.  He even used cotton balls and pipe cleaners to create the explosions on the boats.

Rudy started the year wanting to research animals.  All of them.  From there, he narrowed it down to nocturnal animals and then, thankfully, down to owls.  Rudy chose to do a tri-fold poster.  He wanted to "glue some sticks on with some owls sitting on them."  We asked Bella if we could borrow some of her owls and got a bonus when she let Rudy borrow her dissected owl pellet to display too!  

10!

Brady couldn't quite believe it when I told him that he's now a decade old!  We celebrated his birthday with chocolate pancakes in the morning.  In the afternoon, he had a few friends over for a game of Settlers of Catan; they ended up staying for dinner which was his one of his favorites: stroganoff.

We're celebrating in more formal style later in the week with a special dinner at one of the Colonial Williamsburg taverns. 

Ten was big for Brady - he was finally allowed to read Harry Potter, a privilege he was granted a little early when he had a rough bout with strep, and he received his first pocket knife. 

Perfect jail

On the way to Rudy's first reconciliation...
James:  Rudy, do you have some idea of what you're going to say to the priest?

Rudy:  no.

Kelly:  It might be easier if you have some ideas.

[Quiet...]

Rudy:  What if somebody was really perfect, and never did anything wrong, and the police stopped them, and took them to perfect jail, which is just a big mansion?

Nana & Popsie

We wanted to get a family picture before Kathy and Tony went home.  Most turned out OK...

Of course, we had to have a few classic Rudy pictures...

Happy

Organization and order make me happy.  A clean house and finished homework make me happy.  Therefore, the new chore charts make me happier than they probably should!

 

Sleepover

 They started off reading together in the top bunk...


But, this was something I hadn't seen before...both boys asleep in the top bunk!  

New Year's Eve Christmas

Kathy and Tony were in town for a few days around New Year's Eve.  We celebrated our family Christmas with them as part of our celebration to ring in 2014!

Quirkle-d Out

 

And, he still won!

Air Hockey

James and I broke tradition a little this year and surprised the boys with an actual material gift from us.  We figured an air hockey table would provide lots of family fun!

Slack Lining

Santa Claus brought the boys a slack line for Christmas.  It's been quite a challenge for all of us to find any success on it.   The first time we set it up, the boys complained that it was too short and too low...they soon realized that it was still nearly impossible!

We've read that the trick is to balance on one leg at a time and not really try to walk quickly.  That advice doesn't help much!   It's quite a full body workout just to get up and try to balance on one leg.

Some fun with photo editing:



And a more realistic movie:

)

Cousin Time

It was fun to have some time at Oma and Papa's house for these guys just to hang out and have fun together with no particular set agenda.  Lots of giggles (and lots of wrestling!).

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Santa came!

  We had to wake up the kids again this year....I think they're broken!

It was pretty clear that Santa must have found some bargains over the course of the whole year, because these kids sure ended up with a lot of goodies from the big guy! 

Who let the guy in the bright yellow shirt into this picture??

And - WOW - who dressed these two kids?  Mismatched socks on one.  Matching stripey socks pulled up to the knees with stripey pajamas and a down vest on the other...

Both kids had wanted a ski mask but were even more happy with the "baclava" they received instead.  What are the odds that they manage to keep track of these for a whole winter?

Happy Christmas!

Christmas 2013

We headed to Oma and Papa's house for Christmas Eve and Christmas day this year.  It was great fun having all the cousins together for the whole day, with no particular agenda except hanging out and spending time together!  We took our time opening presents, spreading it out almost throughout the whole day, so the kids could have time to play with their new treasures and with each other.

 

Teddy was thrilled with his heroes house.  He also liked the little ride on rocket ship we got him; we all got a kick out of pushing him back and forth with him demanding that we send him "fupa-fast" (super fast).  Fupa-fast has already been added to our family lexicon! 

I was happy that Lila wanted to build her new princess castle with me...it's not often that she's willing to leave her daddy when he's around! 

No one had any energy or desire for more dessert, so we put together plate of cookies with candles as Jesus' birthday cake.  I'm sure he didn't mind.

These two monkeys got something like a combined total of 27 books for Christmas!  AND, as Brian was quite surprised to learn, they weren't even a little bit disappointed!  Harry Potter accessory books, Big Nate, animal saver books, and so much more!