Four on Friday

1. On Monday, before the Options program I already discussed, Noah had his three finals for the semester. He's since heard back on all of his grades and earned straight A's for the fall. He's now on break and quite happy about it. (He'll have one high school requirement class at CEC that will start on January 6, and his three college classes at Front Range Community College will begin on January 18. So, yeah, he has a good bit of a break.) 

2. With Noah on break, he joined his brothers on Wednesday to swim laps at the pool. When we arrived, all of the lanes in the indoor pool were occupied. The boys begrudgingly hopped in the outdoor pool (the day's high temperature was in the 20s, though the pool is somewhat heated):

Fortunately, though, the indoor lanes opened up after about 15 minutes and we promptly switched to that. :) 

3. Though we're still homeschooling this week and next, we had a bit more time this week (thanks to not needing to drive Noah back and forth to FRCC, lol)...enough that the boys managed to binge watch all of The White Rabbit Project on Netflix. It stars the build team from Mythbusters, and we were happy to see them again.

4. In Christmas news, we're still making progress here. I'm hoping that come Christmas I'll be fully ready for it, lol. ;) 

In the meantime, I'll just keep plugging away here and trying to get things done. You're probably doing the same. :) Have fun!

My Prince

Monday night was the Options winter program. Along with some beautiful artwork by both Asher & Micah (which I haven't yet taken pictures of) and music class performances, the drama class performed "Once Upon a Dream." Yes, technically, it's the story of Cinderella. Micah was Prince Charming. :)

Here's the Prince and Cinderella (in blue) "dancing" at the ball...

(Yes, there's a bit of a height difference, lol. For what it's worth, Cinderella was taller than all of the boys in the class.)

Here's the Prince being all sad that Cinderella has left the ball...

...and later trying the "glass slipper" onto Cinderella...

...and singing a happy song...

And, here's the final bow.

For all that I'm biased, it was one of the best Options shows we've been to (and this is our eighth year attending Options, in some form or another). Even Noah said so. :) 

Congrats and great job to all the kids...and especially my sweet Prince!

Ta da!

Getting started (again)...

Okay. I recognize that it's now December 11th. We *may* be starting to get in the holiday spirit now. ;) As evidence...

Last weekend, we tried taking a picture for our holiday card. They didn't turn out great so I started messing around with it using the Prisma app on my phone.

Prisma is entertaining. ;) Spoiler, we ended up using a different photo anyhow.

Then, last week, Asher and Micah had their secret Santa exchange with their Science Olympiad team, after which they were introduced to the game Spoons...

They thought that was great. :) (And it brings back fond memories of brutal rounds of Spoons from my college days, lol.) 

And then yesterday we made our annual trip to get our tree...

As we arrived, we saw this couple taking their tree home on their bikes...which we thought was awesome! Then we poked around a bit (with boys throwing snowballs at each other through the rows of trees), got our tree, had some cocoa and headed to town for a late lunch (which was delicious!). On our walk back to the car, we did some browsing and I convinced the boys to let me take a picture of them with this inflatable Santa...since they wouldn't agree to going and taking a picture with the Old Town Santa. Sigh. I suppose I'll take what I can get. :) 

So. Amid our normal schoolwork and karate and gymnastics and archery and life (that all continues to continue)...I've now also got most of the Christmas shopping done...I've ordered the cards (they're Happy New Year cards, so they aren't going to be late!) and made the calendars...we have the outdoor lights up (and will put the inflatables out next weekend, I think)...I'm going to watch The Nutcracker ballet tonight with Deanna (her beautiful daughter is in it)...we'll decorate the tree and get out the indoor decorations within the next day or two...Noah has all of his finals tomorrow and will then be on break...and Asher & Micah have their winter program at Options tomorrow night...

Yes, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... ;)

Three Musketeers

Today is December 2. My dad would have been 67 today. This is the tenth time we've celebrated his birthday without him.

In years past, I've handed out Three Musketeer candy bars all through December, with notes about how they were dad's favorite and such. (click to make larger)

This year, I decided to do it only on his birthday and must say that I enjoyed it more. :) Yup, handed out 36 of these (or will have by the end of the night)...

In retrospect, I feel like I should have handed out 67 of them, though. :) Maybe next year we'll do 68...I think my dad would enjoy that. 

Getting started...

Even though we're actually lacking a good bit in holiday spirit right now (just not in a holiday mood quite yet), we did manage to get started by putting up our outdoor lights on Saturday. This is the most we've done to date...having stocked up on extra lights during last year's after-Christmas clearance sales:

We really like our candy cane striped trees and have plans to add more lights over the garage!

Plus, we also have Christmas inflatables to add to the yard! (Thanks, again, after-Christmas clearance sales!) We're going to hold off on putting them out for a couple weeks, though. I'm sure I'll add more pictures when we do. (I'm also hoping to add more inflatables after Christmas, lol...have my eye on a certain awesome dragon at Home Depot. Sadly it's out of stock online already but here's what it looks like.)

So, that's our start on the holiday season... ;)

(PS In case you were wondering, I finished my scarf challenge! Managed to wear all 24 scarves at least once...and, yes, some days I wore more than one, lol. Similar to the necklace challenge, I really enjoyed reminding myself of what I have. Try it yourself!)