Superstar

One exciting thing that happened in November before Thanksgiving, but I failed to mention it at the time, was Eli got chosen at school to be Superstar. It was a very exciting week as he got to pack a bag of all his favorite things, such as books and toys, took some pictures in of him as a baby and with family and friends, got interviewed, and got to sit at a special table with a friend of his choice. He was very excited when he brought the bag home, and Evan spent the weekend attempting to pack it for him putting various items in it.

Some random pictures:

Eli getting his hair shaved in the garage

Before we got our tree, the boys were pretending the basket ball hoop was a tree and the Star Wars guys were ornaments, or ort-a-mints as they keep saying
One of my favorite childhood snacks was Babybel cheese, so it is excited that they too have taken to it!

Our Christmas Tree

Once again we made the trip to Alber's Tree Farm in search of our tree, and once again we found a great tree. We did search a little longer this year, but most of that was due to the fact that we decided to walk to the furthest section of the farm, but it was a beautiful sunny day, a first in our Christmas tree retrievals. The boys did great walking out and even helped carry the tree back, sort of. Eli held the tippy top and Evan held my hand while I carried the tree and John pretty much carried the full weight. It was a bit of a trek uphill, but we got the biggest tree we have every had. I ended up putting about nine strands of 100 white lights. It is a beautiful tree and we love to turn all the lights off and just look at how pretty it is. The boys did great helping hang ornaments and several have been rehung as they fall off the tree. They got some good practice helping McKenzie decorate the Evans' gimungous tree at their house!

Alber's Tree Farm- the bunch of trees in about the middle right in front of the tall trees is where we walked to.

Decorating the tree

Thanksgiving in Sunriver

I am a little late in getting this posted, but better late than never! For Thanksgiving we went to stay with Nana and Baba in Sunriver. As compared to the last several years, the weather was amazingly warm. We even went without coats a couple times! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, as usual, and the boys had lots of fun playing games with everyone. On Friday, me and John and Jessica did the Black Friday shopping, but went with the goal of not going overboard this year. We were successful and I feel like we have done pretty well at following the Advent Conspiracy theme of spending less on gifts and spending more time creating memories and helping out others. I am also making some gifts, so hopefully that will get done in time!! Friday night we went to the Sunriver Grand Illumination and saw Santa arrive in a blaze of fireworks, which was really effective. They had arranged for a helicopter to fly over the lodge and then lit some sort of firework something that was shooting out the back, and it looked like a comet fly through the sky. Santa then came riding down the street in his sleigh pulled by a tractor. The boys thought it was pretty neat and we then had a very pleasant walk through the forest back to the car. On Saturday we went to the Lodge again and visited Gingerbread Junction and went to a really neat craft bazaar. We then ended the day going to a Civil War party in Caldera Springs at the Lakehouse. It was unfortunate that the Beavers did not win, or even got close, but it was fun and the food was great. We were commenting that Eli and Evan were the happiest Beaver fans in the state as they were still running around cheering go Beavers with two minutes left and the score was not even close. We also got to see the lights go on at Caldera which was very pretty. It was a great weekend in that we got to do some fun things, but we didn't feel like we were constantly doing an activity and we got to spend lots of time playing games and just being together.

Mt Hood as we were driving over to Sunriver

A friendly game of Go Fish

Thanksgiving feast

The Sunriver Lodge Grand Illumination

Arrival of Santa and the Mrs.

Gingerbread Junction- there were amazing things that people had made with gingerbread, frosting, candy and fondt

Evan liked this house because the roof looked like peppermint bark

Game time!

GO BEAVERS!!

A Post Finally...

Sorry about the month that has passed since I last posted anything. Time it seems has been going faster than I am. There have been many events that have made the last month or so zip by. I guess to begin with, the most time intensive event is packing up our house. John received word at the end of October that he got accepted into an accelerated nursing program in Springfield, Missouri, and classes start in January, so we have begun the task of packing up and moving 2000 miles. It is both an exciting time and a sad time for us. We are very much looking forward to a new adventure and John getting to pursue a career path that he has always been very interested in, and for the opportunity to be around his family as he will be going to school at the hospital where Grandma (Jan) works. The boys are excited that we will be staying with Grandma when we get there for awhile and to see Aunty Holly and all of the other people that we have been telling them about. It is also sad that we are having to say goodbye to family and freinds that we have become so close to. We will miss everyone here very much.

Happy Halloween!

The day finally arrived after much anticipation and drooling over how much candy we were going to be getting. It was kind of a wild day at school, because of course all anyone really cared about was what was happening after school. The wildness seemed to continue on into the day as questions kept coming up of why can't we go now? No one is ready for us yet I would reply, but that did not seem to be a good answer and the natives were restless a lot today. Finally the time came and I forced the issue of eating some dinner before we could go. We got suited up in their matching Darth Vader costumes (I almost had Evan convinced he wanted to be a Storm Trooper, but when he saw Eli dressed up that was it. I figured since Eli did not mind them dressing up the same, it was not a big deal for now) and I quickly took pictures, because I knew that the masks would not last long on their faces, and off we went. We began next door and Pete and Gail's. We then went to a neighborhood close by and walked around a few of the blocks where houses that seemed to be participating in trick-or treating were grouped together. The kids had a lot of fun ringing doorbells and receiving their treats, except for one house Evan got scared by a boy in a mask, but was fine when the mask was removed. He spent the next five minutes convincing us, in other words himself, that it isn't scary, it's just a boy. We then went to the Awesome October Festival at church. It was so much fun for the kids to play games and run around together in a safe place. We now have more candy than we can eat and the boys had a great time. They were wound up for bedtime and Evan did not want to take his costume off, but eventually they got to bed and went to sleep immediately probably dreaming of how much candy they are going to eat, and hopefully not about the boy in the mask!

Trick-or-treat! Once again frustrations rose with our camera, so there are not many pictures as it was too dark outside and in the church building

The costume show

The song in the next three videos is "5 Little Pumpkins," which was our favorite Halloween song

and book. The first video is of them doing it together, and the following two are solo performances.

Little Swimmer

This week Eli finished up session 1 in the fall session of swimming at Mount Hood Community College. He absolutely loves being in the pool and I am so amazed and proud of how well he does. Over the past two months he has improved so much and is doing really well swimming on his own. Eli is also very proud of his swimming, but mostly about the fact that he gets to swim in the big pool like Michael Phelps does. I am happy to say that he was able to graduate to the next level, so we will be beginning those classes next week, which he is very excited about!

Doing the front crawl, or scooping ice-cream as they call it!

Having a bit of goggle malfunction, but not really caring

Evan being helpful by putting himself in a locker