Holiday Time!

We had Thanksgiving at our own house this year, a rare occasion. We had invited another family of 5, the Livingstones, and we split the cooking between the families. I cooked a turkey for the second time in my life. It was nice not to have to worry about cooking the entire dinner and we had a lot of fun playing games and the kids had a blast just playing. Ian and Henry (who is a little older than Kaelyn) spent a lot of time sword fighting. After a while I think they got tired of hitting each other and getting hurt and started using these ribbon wands as swords. I'm sure those blows were a lot less painful. To Ian it was like having a big brother for half a day, he was just glowing with delight. All the kids raided the dress up chest and they were amazingly creative, combining parts of costumes and making up silly names for their attire. It's really too bad I was too full and tired to take any pictures.

On Friday, right after Thanksgiving, our kids could hardly wait to put up the Christmas tree and decorations. They took out the playmobil nativity and Christmas story books and Kaelyn read Ian a story while Annika played. Then the tree was put together.

At first, it looked like all the ornaments were going to end up in the same general area (within arm's reach for the kids), but then we suggested they grab our little chairs to help them reach higher. Nate finished decorating what they couldn't reach. Our tree looks great!

Then yesterday, we went to Ikea and the kids were disappointed because we couldn't let them play at Småland (the play place). Kaelyn got a bad cold on Friday and we didn't want to spread the germs too much. I think they had fun at the store anyway. Annika slept most of the time, which was nice. On our way back through Austin, we stopped at the Austin Nature and Science Center. I wish we had one of these in San Antonio, because it is awesome and much bigger than I had expected. When we lived in Maryland, the kids and I spent a lot of time at the nature centers, because they had lots of fun educational programs for little kids.

Well, I'm definitely taking the kids back to Austin for this. They had a room full of hands on natural science stuff; rocks, seashells, animal skeletons, fossils, microscopes, animal fur, snake skin, etc. Outdoors, they have several trails, a water area with a trail around it, a pebble 'beach' and stepping stones and... a Dino pit! The Dino digging pit consists of four sandy areas and the kids can dig for dinosaur remains. Of course they're cemented to the ground and they're replicas, but what fun! They had sandbox digging tools and brushes allover the place! This is where we spent most of our time (we got there less than an hour before closing).

Lastly, a few funny things the kids have said within the last week or so. The Friday before Thanksgiving, Ian, Annika and I were at the home of Ian's pre-K buddy. His mom fed us lunch and when she asked what Ian wanted, he said: "An apple... without the crust!" So cute! We were laughing for quite a while after that one.

Then Annika, one evening when getting ready for bed, announced: "I don't have a bwain." I said: "Of course you have a brain!" But she insisted: "No, I don't have a bwain!"Nate couldn't even convince her and then it dawned on me; the Wizard of Oz! We had just watched the movie and she was probably thinking of the scarecrow. I asked her if she was talking about the scarecrow and she said yes. But it was so funny to hear a 2 1/2 year old announce that she didn't have a brain!