Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Two of my good friends (Bridgette & Kelli) and I organized a Christmas party for our kids and invited 6 other families to join us. The children enjoyed games, crafts, activities, and food; but of course what they will remember the most was the visit from Santa & Mrs. Claus.

I made snowmen on a stick. (Thanks Amber, for the tip about "Fruit Fresh")

Chocolate dip with marshmallow snowballs.

A snowball cheese ball.

Mikie makes gingerbread men for his placemat.

Mikie was excited to learn that his friends, Lenny & Jacob would be at the party. And also his friend Colin who I didn't get a picture of.
Mikie was also happy that Kaitlyn was invited and Zachary was thrilled when he saw Lily.

Kelli and the twins decorate a plate for Santa's cookies.

Mikie tries to throw the gingerbread man on the tray without getting too close to the sneaky fox lurking behind the tree.

Michael helps Zachary make a hand/footprint reindeer to attach to the bag of reindeer food.

Mikie & Kaitlyn play a game of Christmas Twister. I didn't get a picture of Mikie playing his favorite game, snowman beanbag toss, which of course had numbers on it so he could add up his score.

Jacqueline & Mikie make a pattern beaded candycane.

Jolly Ole' Saint Nicholas arrives

Zachary sat on Santa's lap this year without crying, but he wouldn't look at him. He just sat there hoping it would all be over soon. Here's a little video of Santa asking him questions:

Mikie wasn't a bit shy and became quite the little chatterbox when it was his turn to talk with Santa. This video captures his excitement:


Mikie also had a conversation with Santa right before he left asking Santa which reindeer was on his sweater. With the help of Mrs. Claus I think they decided it was Comet because of the spots. Mystery solved!

Santa gave each of the kids a new book. Zachary shows us his scratch n' sniff story.

And Mikie got a new Magic Tree House Book "Christmas In Camelot."

The entire party was a huge success and we're planning on doing it again next year! From the looks of the line at the mall to see Santa, this was the best idea of the year!

Early Christmas Gifts

A friend told me her family tradition was to get everyone in their PJ's and drive around to look at the Christmas lights. I loved that idea; so, one night when Michael came home a little early, the boys each got new warm jammies and we piled in the car to go see the lights. We found the house that has lights that dance to the music on the radio again this year and the boys watched the entire 20 minute presentation and still asked to go back again. A few nights ago, we let the boys each open a gift from Boagie and Grandpa knowing that they would have too many presents to open on Christmas day. Mikie reacted exactly like I thought he would. I'm pretty sure this will be his favorite Christmas gift this year. Here's the video:



Yes, you heard him right. It's a new calculator. Only my number loving child would get this excited over a small adding machine! I've posted before about how much Mikie loves math of any kind and that if I ever need to distract him for a good 20 minutes I just give him a calculator. But what I haven't posted, is that he now takes a calculator in the car and just keeps adding +1 over and over again until we get to our destination. Then he asks us to remember the number until we get back in the car so he can keep adding. This has continued for many months and he has now reached the number 147,589. He even remarked the other day: "Now I can reach a 12 digit number. The other one only went to ten digits." While this new machine will provide hours of entertainment for our son, I am mostly looking forward to never having to remember another random number again. When we reach our destination, all he has to do is push PRINT and his number will be waiting for him when we return! THANKS, BOAGIE & GRANDPA!!!!

The second video of him enjoying his new calculator:


Zachary's present was the It's A Match from Discovery Toys. He played with it for over 20 minutes and kept asking Daddy to do another one.

Here's a video of Mikie adding without the calculator: He amazes me everytime I hear him do this!

Another night, we let the boys open their gift from my grandparents (Great Grandpa & Grandma Cassens). You can see in this video these toys were also a very big hit in our house:


All these early presents help spread out the fun of Christmas. I wonder if the boys will take their time and play with each toy as they open it this year and make it last several days (like last year) or if they'll rip them all open in a matter of minutes.

Does anyone else let their kids open their presents early?

Picking our tree

One of our family traditions is cutting down our own Christmas tree. When we lived on Whidbey Island, the tree farm was just a few miles down the road from our house. Around here, you have to drive a while before finding one, 45 minutes of driving to be exact. It was a sunny morning, but still really chilly. Mikie really wanted to get a blue ice tree, but the branches were very weak so we ended up finding a scotch pine instead.

Ready to hunt for the perfect tree. I thought Zach would enjoy running through the field of trees, but he wouldn't let Michael put him down. Mikie and I had fun playing hide n seek behind the evergreens.

We found our tree!

Time to cut it down.

Mikie wanted to help, but the bottom of the tree was too full and he couldn't reach the saw.

Zachary was either sad about not being able to help cut down the tree or just upset that Daddy had to put him down for a while.

Down it falls! Here's the video:

Now that it's down we've got to get it to our car. The boys try to help in this video:

Time to decorate

Mikie was so cute this year pulling out each ornament and getting so excited about how pretty they were. He even did a better job and didn't place them all on one branch either.

Another family tradition is to read the Legend of the Christmas tree. When the story is done, we open the shiny silver box under the tree to reveal the star tree topper.

Both boys wanted a turn to put it at the top so Zach went first.

Then it was Mikie's turn.

He was really uncomfortable with Daddy holding him up that high.

Zachary hangs his stocking.

Mikie decorated his own Christmas tree in his room. (Michael tries not to look at it every time he enters the room)

Zachary got to hang his ornaments as well.

Some of my favorite Christmas decorations are the Snowbabies farm figurines that I found in Iowa. They look perfect in Mikie's room on his dresser. The first year I put them up, Mikie called the textured sheep a "sticky baa." I think of that every time I open the box. What a fond memory.

Ghost Town in Iowa Field Trip # 10

After Zachary's loud screaming on the flight out to WA, I was dreading the flight from WA to IA with a layover in St. Louis. Turns out they were both extremely good and even took naps on the flight. It was actually enjoyable! And of course, it helped to know that I was on my way HOME where Super Boagie and Grandpa would "take over" and I could enjoy my 5 days of "vacation!" As it turned out, rain kept my dad out of the field and in the house so he could really spend some time with his grandsons. Zachary loved these piggy slippers at Grandpa's house.

While Holley taught us all about horses on our field trip in WA, we still needed to find a "Ghost Town" to show Mikie what one would look like. Part 2 of our field trip turned out to be one of THE BEST field trip experiences we've had yet! And it was all on accident. Here's the story: For weeks, my mom & grandma had been looking at maps of Iowa and trying to discover a ghost town where we could visit. My mom even called one of the local residents (a perfect stranger) to ask about what was left in their "ghost town." We finally decided that we would just take Mikie to a town close to Sigourney where they had an abandoned bank and gas station, but first we headed to the Pizza Ranch to eat our lunch. What a great way to start our field trip about the wild west.

The boys outside of the newly built pizza ranch.

One of the things that made this field trip so special was that we got to do it with our BOAGIE!

The inside decor was filled with examples of things we had read about in our book, like these horseshoes.

And this rope and cowboy hat.

We even found the "cup of joe" that Jack drank in our book.

Mikie has the page opened to that part of the story.

The waitress started talking to my mom and asking about the book. My mom told her all about our plan to visit the neighboring town and the waitress suggested we take a look at an abandoned catering company and the buildings surrounding it that were once used as a retreat (I think?). As my mom started telling me about it, I was getting so excited. It sounded like the perfect experience for this field trip and when we arrived you can tell that I wasn't disappointed. Look at how amazing this is:

The buildings were mostly attached just like the wild west and all abandoned! It was incredible! We saw a bank, a saloon, a hotel, a jail, and a church.

Mikie poses with the old town. The bank is the one in the middle.

In front of the saloon.

Old rickety water tower.

I think this may have been the post office. We're guessing this was a hotel.

Why is this building detached from the rest?
Because it's a jail:

The boys in front of the cell.

The church was probably the neatest building and I'm disappointed that I didn't get a picture of the outside of it.

There was a hymnal left in one of the pews.

And an old Bible and candles were left on the pulpit.

There was even an old wooden cross hanging above the wood stove.

I think my favorite discovery was the old wooden barrel because that is where Jack and Annie hid to escape the rustlers in the story. If you enlarge the picture you can see the page in the book looks just like this barrel. Of course, Mikie wouldn't climb inside of it, but Zachary did!

I changed a couple of settings on this picture and love how it turned out.

After our ghost town experience, we went to the country mill and watched Boagie work. The boys got to see a semi of corn being unloaded and enjoyed testing the moisture of the corn.

Mikie helps weigh the semi-truck.

But I think his favorite part was watching Boagie add on the adding machine.

Here's a video of one of my favorite "toys" to play with at the mill when I was younger:

One more big event while we were in Iowa was a small reunion of all but one of my high school friends. Between us, we had 10 children at my parents' house that night. Gabriele was the only one missing from this picture: