Preparing for Christmas!

Our November and December so far have been BUSY!  We have been busy with activities, work, fun preparations for Christmas, and, unfortunately, quite a bit of illness!

It has been a while since I have update some of our random happenings on the blog, so we'll start back in November...

In September, Sarah was the Spotlight Dancer of the Month for her dance class!  They still have her picture up in the studio and I finally remembered to take a picture of it while we were there for class. She is really enjoying dance class this year and is learning a tap dance and a ballet dance routine for her first year in the big recital at the end of the year.

Austin has had a blast playing basketball and has learned a lot in his winter training and Futsal games for soccer!  (More to come on the basketball season later in a separate post.)  In this photo, you can see him making a shot in his basketball game while wearing his soccer shin guards after coming straight from soccer practice.  Soccer training and basketball only overlapped a couple times.

Sarah did "Little Spikers" at school, a 4 week session learning volleyball.

Sarah is the 2nd from the right in the back row in this group photo.

Trevor had fun going Christmas shopping with Mommy!  He found this hat and insisted I take his picture in it.  What a handsome little dude!

We have also had some fun playing board games like Candy Land while the big kids are at school.  One day, we didn't have to leave the house all day, so we had jammie day and played games.

He had lots of fun playing Candy Land and then decided that the candy cane character should go on his pirate ships!

The weekend of Thanksgiving, we got the Christmas tree up and decorated together.

Our special block ornaments!

Trevor wanted to put the angel on the top this year...

 But then he decided he didn't like being up that high and reaching to put it on, so he let Sarah do it.

Sadly, as December arrived, so did illness!  On Saturday, December 5th, Austin and Sarah both were throwing up all day!  My poor babies were so miserable!

By the next day, though, they were as good as new!  On Sunday, Austin had soccer training and Sarah had volleyball, then we had lunch and went to the Christmas party at Great Grandma Dorothy's nursing home.

They went to school on Monday and were just fine.  Nanny was babysitting during the day because Steve had a conference he had to go to.  However, Steve came home from the conference sick with the bug from the big kids.  When I got home from work, I raced the kids Austin's basketball game and, as soon as we arrived, Sarah threw up all over the basketball court!  Ugh! Round 2!  She was totally fine after that.  Trevor and I got a little tummy upset later in the week, but no throwing up.  However, then Austin had a terrible time with croup on Wednesday night, all 3 kids and Mommy got a wicked cold and it has hung on the rest of the month.  In amongst all this, I had to have an ultrasound of my thyroid due to some enlargement and nodules and it was found that I had thyroiditis and 2 nodules that needed to be biopsied.  1 week later, I had 10 fine needle aspirations of each nodule and they were determined to be benign. Yay!  I still have thyroiditis and I'm sure I'll have to have more labs done after the holidays to figure it out. After all that, poor Sarah has had terrible congestion, cough, and a fever for the past 5 days and the boys have the cold, but not the fever.  Why can't we shake this crud we keep getting?

Despite the illnesses, we have had lots of fun this December!
Austin had his Christmas Program at school and did an excellent job playing his recorder and singing songs.  His class even sang Silent Night in English, German, and Sign Language.

Trevor decided that Austin's swim goggles made a perfect accessory to go with his Prep and Landing elf hat!

We tried out the light show put on by the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering.  It was fun, but not impressive. The music was more geared toward the college age crown (despite most of the crowd being young families and kids) and the lights weren't really coordinated with the music.  It was still fun, but probably not worth the drive downtown next year.

We had much more fun going to see Dr. Bob and Judy Snook's light display at their home.  Check them out at Snook Family Lights on Facebook.  They have ~15 songs set to music that you can watch from your car and tune your radio to the station they broadcast to.  They have only been doing it for 3 years, but have already accumulated quite an impressive array of lights.  After seeing the Children's Theatre Company Production of Jungle Book and then heading home for dinner, Sarah really wanted to go see the lights (despite being sick with a cough and fever).  She was very excited, but fell asleep for most of the show. The boys, on the other hand, had a blast sticking their heads out the open sunroof of the minivan to watch the lights.

Christmas cannot come until the Christmas cookies are made!  Sarah and Trevor and I made 4 batches of sugar cookie dough and wrapped them up and froze them for later in the month.

 Of course, the best part is licking the beater!

Trevor decided to go in for a bit bigger bite of dough!

Then Nanny sliced and baked the cookies and we went over to her house last Sunday to frost and decorate them!

As soon as Trevor got a frosted cooking in front of him, he chowed it down!

 The kids had lots of fun decorating the cookies with sprinkles!

The Chesters came by later before they head to New York in a few days for Christmas.  Theo had a blast climbing up a step stool with Austin's help and then jumping into Austin's arms.

The boys got their hair cuts today to get all handsome for Christmas and their stylists gave them matching spikey hair mohawks with gel at the end.

The kids are eagerly awaiting Christmas!  They got matching Christmas jammies again this year and have been excited to wear them together.

Unfortunately, the threat of Santa watching seems to have been utterly useless this year, as we have struggled with tired, sick, cranky children (and a tired, sick, cranky Mommy) this month.  We have definitely been dealing with some difficult behavior.  I'm sure they'll still make it onto the nice list anyway! Steve and I both have a week and half off of work, so we'll be able to enjoy some down time at home as a family.