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.