Christmas Countdown

Things keeping us busy as we count down the days until Christmas:

1)  Taking 89 pictures (I'm not exaggerating) in an attempt to capture a decent Christmas card photo:

(These did NOT make the cut)

2)  Making snickerdoodles for community group Christmas party.  Turns out Jeremiah is an excellent cinnamon/sugar roller:

3)  Joseph playing Christmas songs for a local assisted living facility:

4)  Joshua's first grade class presenting "Holidays around the World," including songs in English, German, Polish, and Russian, and holiday greetings in 17 languages:

Trimming the Tree

This morning we decorated the Christmas tree!

Jeremiah was actually my best helper.  He stuck with it the whole time.  I have found several branches where there were two ornaments hanging one in front of the other--he definitely had favorite sections!  Eventually he climbed the stairs behind the tree and had me hand him several ornaments to put up higher (reaching through the stair rails).

The finished product (though I have tweaked a few places since the picture):

While we were decorating the tree, Tony hung lights on the outside of the house (no pictures yet).

Thanksgiving Feast

Mr. Organizer

While the big boys and I were out Christmas shopping, Jeremiah and Daddy stayed home.  Tony said Jeremiah spent an entire hour entertaining himself.  He decided to line up all his Cars movie cars, race cars, and monster trucks around the rim of the coffee table.  Judging by his face, I'd say he was making sound effects when Tony took this picture.

Displaying his work before adding the monster trucks (excuse the underwear):

The finished product:



Warm Weekend

Not so long ago, we had a string of warm days and enjoyed playing outside.

I don't remember what the bigger boys were doing (no pictures of it), but Daddy and Jeremiah played some football.

From whom do you suppose Jeremiah got his eyes-closed catching technique?



I'm sure there was a story behind this, too, but I don't remember it.  After all, it was a whole 12 days ago!

Football

Joseph is playing YMCA flag football this fall for the first time.  He has spent every recess for the last year and a half playing football, so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to play "for real" (even though it would have been nice to have a sports break between soccer and basketball which leads into baseball and now we won't have a break till the end of May).

This is what the brothers do during Joseph's games.  The football field is in the outfield of a baseball field, and the baseball infield has plenty of dirt/sand to play in.

I'm having trouble getting used to the way the boys look with mouthpieces.

Here in the South, they still keep the "C" in YMCA.  The games are all opened in prayer.

Tony is coaching and has a series of plays drawn up and printed out.  The boys (8 and 9 year olds) look at the plays in each huddle.

Joseph is #6.  Here he is taking a handoff.  Tony was proud to see from the picture that #8 is pretending he has the ball and is running the other way, as instructed.



There's a ball up there somewhere.

Does anyone else doubt that Joseph is going to catch this ball, given that his eyes are closed?

Final score:  Chiefs 6, Other Guys 8

(Two-point conversions are required, and we missed ours.)



Lost Tooth #2

We tried to pull this tooth a week ago, but it wasn't ready enough for Joshua to tolerate me pulling it.  Last night he finally decided he was ready.  It was so loose all I had to do was pull it forward and it came right out!  He was relieved to get to enjoy his school lunch pizza today without the loose tooth getting in the way.

(In case you were keeping track, this totally blew my getting teeth/losing teeth timing theory.  This tooth came in within days of the first but came out months after the first.)

When Brothers Play

(Alternately titled:  No Children Were Harmed in the Taking of This Picture)



Charleston Field Trip

Yesterday Joseph's class took a field trip to Charleston.  They left school at 5:30 in the morning, and returned around 10:30 last night.  Each child was allowed to take a parent, so Tony got to go along.

First stop was the South Carolina Aquarium.

After a picnic lunch, they rode a ferry....

 to Fort Sumter (where the Civil War began).

Then they toured the Old Exchange, Provost Dungeon...

and the Great Hall where George Washington was entertained (I'm quoting Joseph).

They also toured the Old Market, where Joseph enjoyed watching sea grass baskets being made.  (No picture of that, though.)

After dinner at Ryan's, they headed home.  Needless to say, they were exhausted, but they had a great time.

Halloween

Our Jack O' Lantern--eyes and mouth designed by Joseph, nose designed by Joshua, carved by Mommy.  We carved it Wednesday and by Saturday the top teeth were already curling under.  It got rained on one night, which probably didn't help. 

Our yummy crew

Originally Joseph was going to be an m&m, too.  Somewhere along the line he changed his mind and decided to go with last year's hot dog costume.

I attempted this picture ten times and this was the best I got.  Sadly, Joseph was smiling in all the others, but his brothers were a mess.

This was Jeremiah's first year actually to trick-or-treat instead of staying in the stroller at the street.  He enjoyed the process, but got a little intimidated by the adults pretty quickly.  There was a long stretch in the middle where he would say neither "trick or treat" nor "thank you."  By the end he had to be carried between houses.  Thankfully, our neighborhood wasn't very crowded with kids this year, which made the whole experience more pleasant.

(Don't miss the half-marathon post below this one!)

Half Marathon

On Saturday Tony ran his first half marathon. It finished in the baseball stadium downtown, so the boys and I went to watch the finish. I didn't do a very good job of documenting the overall event, but I got what mattered!

Here we are waiting to see Tony enter the stadium.  We knew how long he expected it to take him, so we knew approximately when to get there.  He ended up running about 9 minutes faster than expected, so it's a good thing we weren't running late!  He entered the stadium all the way across the field in front of us, so we had to work hard to spot him.

Click on this picture to enlarge it, and you may be able to see his tongue sticking out.  This was one of the calmer facial expressions I captured.

Here he is passing right in front of us, probably 15-20 yards from the finish line.

 Cooling down and eating the snacks provided for the runners:

We decided we'd better move to a warmer place to cool down so he didn't get too cool.

We are very proud of Daddy.  (And yes, Granddad, tears did well up in my eyes a little bit just like when I watch the Ironman on TV!)

The stats on the race:

Finishing time 1 hour, 48 minutes

Placed 240th out of 1304 overall

Placed 23 out of 98 in 35-39 age group

Table Rock Hike

This is what Tony and Joseph were doing while the rest of us were hunting mice on Main Street.  I have basically no commentary since I wasn't there.  Apparently much of the upstate was, however--they said the trails were really crowded that day.

 (Does anyone else feel like they are about to fall backwards off the side of the mountain?)

Mice on Main

This morning Tony and Joseph went on a difficult hike at a nearby mountain (actually, Joseph would tell you it is technically a monadnock--he learned that this year at school), so Joshua, Jeremiah, and I went in search of fun in downtown Greenville.  In the year 2000, a local high-school senior named Jim Ryan created a mouse scavenger hunt on Main Street for his senior project.  There are nine bronze mouse sculptures scattered throughout Main Street, and online you can find a list of clues to help you find them all.  We have stumbled across many of them in the past, but never intentionally looked for all nine.  So this morning, armed with our clue list, we set out to find them all.

(Our photographic goal was to document each mouse, with a little context when possible.  In many cases we took only one picture per mouse.  If we had tried to get a perfect picture with each one, we'd still be there!)

 Joshua was in charge of reading the clues.

 Mouse #1, Marvin (reading Goodnight Moon)

 Mouse #2, Maggie

 Mouse #3, Marvin, Jr.

 Mouse #4, Marcley

 Mouse #5, Millie (can you see her?)

(Here's a closer peek at Millie)

 Mouse #6, Mitch

 Mouse #7, Melissa

 Mouse #8,  Aunt Millfin

Mouse #9, Uncle Miles