Hairdo Trend: The Ocean Wave

Lily started laughing at Daddy's hair the other day...said it looked like an ocean wave...I sort of have to agree. :)

Preschool Days with Ella

Preschool Days with Ella.

They rock.

Hattie looks forward to them every day.

She loves school and Ella makes it a lot of fun. I had a mom-friend tell me that I should put Ella in charge of Hattie's school this year. So I did what any good homeschooling teacher would do and adopted the idea.

I know, I know...at first glance you may thing I'm being completely lazy and shoving my teaching duties onto my 12 year old...at least that's what I thought I would be doing. Until I thought about all the benefits Ella would get out of putting lessons plans together, being creative, honing in on her teaching skills, learning patience, and above all fostering her relationship with her littlest sister.

Although we don't do preschool everyday, they both look forward to it every chance they get.

Today, in celebration of surviving frigid temps over the weekend (we were colder than the north pole, I kid you not...-40+ wind chills and -22 plain ol' temperature), the girls made snowmen...

...and maybe sampling some too....

Throwback: Halloween 2016

Halloween was sort of a bust this year. Cold, wet, damp, drizzly...you get the picture. Not exactly prime, walking-around-the-neighborhood, stuffing your bag with candy kind of weather.

We typically order a jack-o-lantern pizza from Papa Murphy's and I bring it home and bake it up. But, alas, I have lost the love for a mediocre pizza that costs me an arm and a leg. We got wind that Chipotle was the primo spot to be on Halloween instead, so we all dressed up and headed out.

It took a bit (or rather, a LOT) of work to face-paint 5 children, myself, and my husband. But when a "boo-rito" is up for grabs at a mere $3 each, you do what you gotta do.

 Hattie was a butterfly princess for Downtown Elk River Trick or Treating, Lily was a princess.

 

 Ella was a deer for both Downtown Trick of Treating and Halloween night.

Ben was a lizard (and yes, it took forever to get all that green cleaned off his face) for both events. 

Cora was my little owl. That costume took over 100 "feathers" glued to a t-shirt.

Candy Math the day after Halloween...enjoying the "spoils".

We ended up donating 7 pounds of candy to Operation Smile. The local dentist office pays $1 per pound of candy, so each kiddo got a buck that they put in the offering plate at Awana. The candy gets shipped overseas to our troops.

**We went Downtown Elk River Trick or Treating the Friday before Halloween. It was amazing. The sun was shining, the weather topped out around 70 degrees. It was heavenly. If Halloween was like that every year, I might get a bit more excited for this holiday.

Student of the Month Goes To....

I'm so proud of my boy. He was voted as Student of the Month by his classmates for the month of November.

At the start of every month, Pact Charter puts on an awards ceremony to recognize the kids who either won the Character Award that they have been working on (gratitude for November) or the Student of the Month Award. We were notified Ben won the latter.

Daddy, Grammie, and myself all got up bright and early so we could be sitting in the gym at 8:10am. He's been doing really well at Pact and it made me feel so happy to see his peers recognize what a great kid he is too.

Way to go Ben! Mom and Dad are super proud of you!!!

Selfies

Tis' the age of "selfies" and it's amazing how many of them I find on my phone. I love a great looking posed pic, but selfies, by little people...they make my heart smile. It seems that the little one is the most guilty. Here's just a sampling...

Kansas City -Day 4

We woke up a little slower this morning...and for good reason: we had been going, going, going for 3 days and it was taking it's toll. Everyone was just a wee bit tired. I was expecting there to be lots of nappers on the way back home.

We ate breakfast and packed up our things. The van was loaded and we said good-bye to the creepy little neighborhood and made our way to Chez Elle. It was Ella's birthday and she got to pick where we would eat breakfast before we hit the road. She had been asking to go to the Creperia since we arrived, so it was no surprise that we found ourselves navigating towards this restaurant.

It was such a cute place and the ambiance was so tre chic. The menu was amazing and every plate that went by us caused us to sign with delight. We got 3 savory crepes and 3 dessert crepes. They were all quite good although we pretty much all agreed that Ella's was the best. Salmon, capers, and a dill sauce. Yum.

It was such a quaint little place. No one wanted to leave...especially to get into the van for a 7 hour drive home!

The ride seemed much, much longer that it did on the way there. Not a single person slept (except me...which was only for about 20 minutes) and I was shocked that they were all wide awake. Wide awake and bored and cranky and not interested in sitting in a confined space. I was really unsure if we were going to make it back home without kicking someone out of the vehicle. I was almost ready to walk home just so I could get out of there and away from all the complaints and bickering.

Hattie kept complaining about here tummy which she often does in the car (whether that is because it really starts to hurt from the position she is in for so long or the motion of the car...or if she is just that bored and that she has no distraction and it seems like something to pass the time) but she told me her tummy hurt well over 200 times. I kid you not. I started timing it and she would mention it at least every 1-2 minutes and this went on for over 2 hours. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

We were about half way through Iowa when the van started to shake and the check engine light came on. Luckily we were right at an exit and we got off right away. I had this sinking feeling that we were going to be staying at a hotel in Iowa that night. We crossed our fingers as we went into the gas station and gave the van a 15 minute rest. Jason had looked it up online and saw that a number of people had had this problem when they were using cruise control and once they gave their van a rest, it started right up like nothing had ever happened. We waited our obligatory 15 minutes, prayed and held our breath as Jason turned the ignition. "VANessa" (nicknamed by Ella) started right up and was willing to get back on the road. Woot! Prayers of thanksgiving were offered up and we continued on up I35.

We finally reached home around 8:45pm...about 8 hours from when we first set out. Everyone was so glad to be home and get out of the vehicle.

We had an amazing time and loved every minute of the trip (return trip excluded)...hehe. I learned something...based off of that return trip...we are going to need to fly when we go to Florida. I'm pretty sure a 24 hour drive might just kill me.

Kansas City-Day 3

We got a good start to our day. Everyone slept in a little bit later (and by later, I mean about 30 minutes...but I'll take what I can get.) and we were all nice and warm. We got everyone loaded in the van and headed back downtown Kansas City, Mo. Today we were on our way to Kaleidoscope. It is a free family-friendly art experience. All of the extra/left-over things from Hallmark that they don't need for cards gets sent to Kaleidoscope. It's here that kids are encouraged to be creative with all sorts of different supplies at their fingertips. You get your tickets and once you are allowed in during your time slot, you get 40 minutes to let your imagination run wild. The kids had such a good time here and the 40 minutes went by so fast. We were told that since it was a Saturday which is typically slower, we could just get back in line and if they had tickets available for the next time slot, we could just come back in. We immediately got back in line!  The next 40 minutes went just as fast and if it wasn't for the fact that it was past lunch and everyone was getting hungry, we would have gotten back in line and stayed for another time slot after that. I couldn't believe that this place was free. We walked out of there with all sorts of things.

We grabbed some lunch and headed straight to Science City. It was located in the old depot and it was kind of fun to see what that looked like. Once in Science City, we got to get our hands on all sorts of fun things. We got to build with blocks...

Play and learn about the power of water...

And excavate for dinosaurs...

It was a fun place, however I think the weekend was starting to catch up with all of us as we started dragging as the afternoon came and went. It was so quiet in here too, so we had a lot of the place to ourselves. The kids learned a ton and overall it was really successful.

We headed back to the house for some much needed showers and r&r. We sat around that evening reading books and just chillin'.