A very Pokemon Christmas

1. You might not know this about me but I have a mean streak. ;) Truly. As a wee example of this, I wrapped all the boys' gifts in plain kraft paper this year. And I didn't label a single one. Bwahhaaaahhaaa. It was *hilarious* to see how disconcerted this made Noah, in particular. Hilarious, I tell ya! I highly recommend it. ;)

2. Despite my shenanigans, Noah did a lovely job this year at getting into the Christmas spirit. We ask the boys to make or do something for Nathan and I rather than shopping. This year Noah made us both a tin of handmade caramel with sea salt. Oh my yum.

(He also even made gifts for his brothers without prompting and spent a decent amount of time working on them.)

3. I don't pretend to understand the world of Pokemon, but my boys are quite taken with it. Quite. :) And so, we had a rather Pokemon heavy Christmas. I'm not exaggerating when I hang my head and say that more than 1000 new Pokemon cards found their way into our home.

(On the flip side...not one single new Lego. Not one. Is it wrong that that makes me a little sad?)

4. Asher didn't go as Pokemon crazy and, instead, got a new Wii game...the classic Super Mario Bros. Wow. That's entertaining. ;) (May I also just say that their personalities totally come through in their playing styles? So funny!)

5. And, the younger two welcomed a number of new stuffies this Christmas...a giant chimp (Bob), a baby hippo (Adam), a zebra (Jigaziga), and a Pokemon character (Piplup) for Asher...and a not so giant chimp (Jackie), a pig (Bacon), a penguin chick (Jingle), and a Pokemon character (Pikachu) for Micah. Micah also adopted the little stuffed cow (named Dinner) I got for Noah, lol.

And that, in a nutshell, was our Christmas. :) Hope yours was as merry!

Round 3

FYI. Yes, indeed. The incubation period for walking pneumonia is about 2-3 weeks. Micah can attest to this.

Fun times. 

Fortunately, knowing the symptoms so well, we think/hope we caught this one early and have already taken him to see the doctor and get a prescription for antibiotics. Considering that he's doing much better today, I think we called it right. (As in, the meds are working so we seemingly got the right thing diagnosed even though when I took him in the doctor said his chest was still clear. She agreed, though, that all the symptoms sounded like walking pneumonia, and ruled out most everything else, and was happy to call in the prescription for us the next day after the fever had come back and the coughing had worsened.)

Bleh. 

Do you suppose there's any chance we won't see a round four in a couple weeks?

Like a toddler with a box...

A package arrived this morning from my mom...with Omaha steaks to feed our starving teen and chocolate cakes to make the younger two squeal. :) In putting everything away into the freezer, though, the jewel of the gift was discovered...dry ice:

Yup. Nathan was as happy as those boys...dropping the dry ice pieces into a pan of water and commencing to play for the next half hour or so...blowing it, freaking Micah out, ladling it onto Asher's head... (I'm counting it as an impromptu science lesson, lol.)

Nothing like the packaging to make one's day. :) Thanks, mom!

Short version

Oy. Busy. Here's a quick run-down of what we've been up to:

- A couple weeks ago, Nathan took me to The Melting Pot (yum! omg...we'd not been there before and it was awesome!) and then to see an improv show at The Lincoln Center. It was two guys who used to be on that tv show "Whose Line is it Anyway?" and it was fabulously hilarious! 

- We finally decorated the tree. :)

- We (well, Asher and I, since Micah was still recovering from croup and Noah volunteered to watch him rather than go talk to (mostly younger) kids) had a great time at a cookie exchange with friends. Yummy! Honestly, though, for all that we love the cookies, we were mostly thrilled with the time with friends...so blessed!

- I started back to boot camp after two weeks off thanks to walking pneumonia. Ouch. It's rather unfair how quickly one loses any gains in fitness! ;)

- I managed to get a picture of the boys with Santa up in Old Town Fort Collins:

Hee hee. Noah forgot that I told him last year that last year was the last time I'd make him be in the picture. Don't tell. :) Just saying...I'm not one to squander an opportunity, lol. I fed him well just beforehand, so he wasn't actually as grumpy as he looks. (Mostly, he was just worried that people were staring at him, lol.)

- Asher earned his high red belt in karate!

So proud of the boy! Only two more belts before he'll test for his black belt!

- The next day (12/14/13), Asher also had a winter clarinet recital. He performed about half a dozen songs and sounded wonderful. (His instructor noted that at least one or two of the songs were ones that he normally doesn't assign until students have been taking lessons for a couple years...Asher's only been taking lessons since September and was included.)

- The day after that, Noah and Micah had another JOAD tournament. :) This one was down in Denver and they both did a dandy job and are happy to now have a wee break for Christmas. 

- And, as of yesterday, all of our Christmas packages and cards are now officially in the mail!! (The ones we plan to hand deliver don't count, lol.) Whew!

So, that's what we've been up to. We'll wrap up our homeschooling on Friday and then have a lovely (and much needed) little break...

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

...but inside it's so delightful. ;)

Yup, despite the single digit temperatures of late and my and Nathan's bouts with walking pneumonia, we've managed to get into the holiday spirit around here... 

We hung the outside lights just after Thanksgiving (before the snow, fortunately)...well, Nathan and the boys hung them. I tried to help but was coughing too much and got sent back indoors after I snapped a few pictures. ;)

A few days later, though, I made snowflakes with the boys for the first time in years. It was our art lesson for the week, lol:

The top two pictures are mine, then Micah, Asher and Noah. (Micah had a LOT more but I didn't get pictures of *all* of them, lol.) Btw, coffee filters make excellent paper snowflakes! They're already circular and are much easier to cut than paper, making for considerably less frustration. (Noah, though, did make one using actual paper so that he could attend to more detail, lol. It's that bottom left one.)

I'm still trying to figure out a good way to display these. Let me know if you have any ideas! (They're more fragile than paper so I'm not sure that taping them to walls will work or whether I could glue them to paper...)

We also braved the cold (with a stop to buy warmer winter socks for all three boys and gloves for Noah since apparently we've outgrown those as well, lol) to pick out our tree:

(The boys also took that as an opportunity to have a bit of a snowball fight throughout the lot.)

Beyond that, our elf is back, the boys decided they didn't want a lego advent calendar this year, and I'm hoping to get cards & packages in the mail this week. We'll actually put up indoor decorations and trim the tree later tonight...

(We'd been planning on attending the Options winter program tonight, where Micah was slated to perform with his piano class. But. Micah woke up with croup this morning, so we'll just have more time to trim the tree, right? Sigh. No worries. He's gotten croup every year or so since he was a baby (which is why he's more susceptible) so we know the drill. He's already been to the doctor for meds and is feeling better. He mostly just gets mad at the inability to talk for awhile, lol. Fortunately, none of the rest of us seem to ever get it from him (as it mostly affects small kids anyhow). Also, very thankful that Nathan was able to adjust his work schedule this morning so he could get Micah into the open appointment slot, pick up the prescription, and dose Micah (while I took Asher to Options and ran the backlog of errands I'd been needing to run).) 

Okay. Off to finish up a few more things before picking up Asher and then getting out the boxes of ornaments and decorations... :)