Since Dec 8...

Catching up...

Swim meet. On Dec 8, Noah had his third swim meet of the school year season thus far. They're just internal meets (not competing against other teams) but still involve racing and all. Noah did the backstroke, breast stroke and long free style events this time. He's pretty happy and the coaches love having him (he's a very easy student, lol). 

Got a tree and had a snowball fight. On Dec 10, we finally got our tree (a 10 foot-ish subalpine fir). Upon bringing it home, of course, the boys (all four of them) had to have a snowball fight in the front yard:

I call the above picture "human shield." ;) Yes, Micah got a face full of snow about 5 seconds after this picture was taken. He was *not* happy, LOL! Nathan, who was the offender, paid for it, though: 

The Nutcracker. Also on Dec 10, we took the boys to see the local production of The Nutcracker. I wasn't sure how well it would be received (we've never seen it before and they tend to find the book/story boring), but they ended up liking it a good bit more than anticipated. I credit the fact that they actually knew two members of the cast...one of the "little mice" (a good friend, even though we couldn't distinguish which mouse she was, lol) and Asher's karate instructor (who was a "guest", the "Mouse King" and the "Russian Man"). Apparently, the karate instructor's more karate-ish dance moves offset the amount of ballet and made the show acceptable to the boys. ;) The boys were also impressed with the newly renovated Lincoln Center where it was held.

JOAD. We attended our first JOAD practice on Dec 11 (with borrowed equipment since ours hasn't arrived yet). The boys, I think, are going to LOVE it. :) They were already thrilled with the weekly classes and are even more excited to do this.

Readers Theater. On Dec 12, Micah's Great Pretenders class at Options put on a small Readers Theater for the "younger" kids (I put it in quotes like that because Micah's probably younger than half of them being as he should be in either the kinder or first grade classes but is in the 2-3rd grade ones instead, lol). Micah had a role as a narrator (they've been practicing for months) and was suitably impressed with himself. :)

Winter Program. Also on Dec 12 (but at night), all three boys had their Winter Program at Options. Micah helped with the bake sale (well, he'd helped in advance and did contribute a number of purchases, lol) and had some art work on display. Asher performed with the piano class. And Asher and Noah both performed with their recorder class...they had the only "solo" parts (but since there were two of them, does that make it a duet?) and did quite well. 

New belts. On Dec 13, Micah advanced to his yellow belt with brown stripe (just one step from orange). On Dec 16, Asher advanced to his green belt. Both are delighted and continue to love karate!

This is Asher during the demonstration-of-stuff-learned-so-far portion of things...before the new belts were awarded. Unfortunately, my pictures of Micah are dreadful. (Micah doesn't have an actual promotion night like Asher does, given his "peewee" status. New belts are awarded at the end of class and I didn't have my bigger camera with me that day.)

Leash law. I'm going to respectfully ask that folks keep their dogs on a leash when out walking them. I totally get that they like to run and that's great and all...when you're at a dog park or in your back yard or out in nature or something. But. When you're walking through my neighborhood and you're obviously not fit enough to run after your dog to corral him if need be, please keep the dog on the leash so that he doesn't run after a poor freezing runner out for a morning run, okay? (Plus. It's the law. I ended up having to circle back and run back to the owner to get the dog to him since the dog kept chasing me and was barking and jumping at me. Argh. What if I'd been out with my kids? This was not a playful puppy and his barking and jumping would have terrified Micah.)

Santa. Finally went to see Santa today. (We went to the one in Old Town and were shown right in. Great perk of homeschooling...we chose to go while the public schools were still in session and managed to avoid the line altogether.) Santa chuckled at the boys' rather expensive and very specific requests and won them over with the candy canes. 

(In case you're wondering, Asher's in Santa's lap because Micah suddenly went all shy when we got there and refused to sit any closer, LOL!)

And that pretty much brings us up to the present. Whew. Packages are in the mail, cards are addressed and should go out shortly and I'm heading to the kitchen to do the gift baking soon. :) Hope your December is going well!