CiCi's Field Trip!

I cannot express how happy I am that we came back to the co-op this year!  The boys are both loving it, and it makes me happy they get to have these great experiences with their Friday School Friends.  Cici's does a little tour of the kitchen and the kids get to make their own pizzas, which they actually bake.  If you have experienced the Texas Roadhouse field trip then you know they just trick the kids into thinking they really bake the rolls they  make.  I was a BIT grossed out, but didn't eat it anyway cause of the whole Paleo thing. 

I helped Wyatt make his, but we didn't get any pics cause it was so crowded.  Wyatt did manage to lean forward onto his pizza and get tomato sauce all over his shirt.  :)  Ahhh, our little Pigpen!

The kids then went and played games while they waited for the pizza to bake.  I told the kids I wasn't giving them money for games, so Wyatt was super smart and brought his own wallet.  But the poor kid is so generous he was passing out money to anybody who held out their hand.  After about five bucks I took the wallet and put it away.  Little did I know that he went back and got it and evidently used up the rest of the money.  I have the feeling some older kids took advantage of his generosity.  When we got there he had 16 bucks, and when we left it was empty!  I wanted to feel bad for him, but he seemed super happy that he played games with his friends and didn't care about the money at all. 

Annie enjoyed herself quite a bit as well.  The girl loves her some pizza!  You can see how happy she is.... pizza all over her face and a brownie in her hand!  She is definitely momma's girl!!

Build a Boat!

I had no idea such a simple activity would thrill the kids so much!  The history for our first grade curriculum is all Bible history, and we are loving it!!  Noah is creating the most amazing Bible notebook - a page for each of the major stories.  He writes a title (we are working our way up to a summary sentence) and draws a picture.  He absolutely loves going back through it every day and discussing every single story.  He repeated tells me how much he LOVES "doing Bible."  He is basically talking about just My Father's World - he cheers when I pull the teachers guide out every day.  I can't say enough good things about it!

Anyways, during our lesson on Noah they suggest having the kids build boats out of foil and seeing how many coins they will hold.  This is such a great lesson cause the kids really learned about how hard it is to make a boat that actually floats.  It really made them think about all Noah went through building such a massive boat if it took them that much work to make a tiny one.  You can see even Annie got in on the action.

Noah made me laugh cause after a few minutes he ran off and got his box of small plastic animals.  They turned them into real arks with animals inside!  So much fun!

I also have to add that every time I think of this I think of the Noah Build A Boat song on The Singing Bible (Focus on the Family).  Do you own that CD?  The music can be a bit difficult for parents to listen to, but the kids LOVE it.  It has really helped them get the sequence of events down, and also cemented the main people into their brain.  Check it out!!

Little lady!

 Ack!!!  I can't believe it has been over a month since I have blogged anything!  I was waiting for Josh to edit the Christmas pics and that never happened, so I just got out of practice I guess.  Now I have to make up for it my blogging a ton this week.  Too many memories that are already slipping away!

Josh and the boys went to the car show a few weeks back so Annie and I had some nice girly time at home.  I was sure it was time for her first pedicure, and she agreed!  I was a bit nervous that she would run off and make a mess but I just put a blanket out in the chair and she sat there for 30 minutes.  Yup, 30 straight minutes.  She was tickled pink!!  Once they were dry and she got to walk around she would stop, pull up her dress,and lean over as far as she could without falling to peek at them.  And then of course she immediately showed them off to Daddy and brothers when they got home. 

It is hard for me to believe how different she is than her brothers.  She has opinions about things at this age that the boys could have cared less about.  She LOVES shoes and constantly brings me some for her to put on.  She has favorites that she requests more than others.  So funny!

The lights!

 The lights are pretty cute, huh?  I loved that we walked through it all so we could really enjoy it.  Now if it had been cold I'm sure I would have felt differently!  It was right along the water, so when you rounded the corner out into the open the wind was crazy strong.  I've never been near the beach at night really and it was super beautiful with the lights reflecting into the water.  I was super shocked that they actually told the story of Jesus!  I have NEVER seen that at anything Christmas related that wasn't at a church.  It was so nice!  That's the town of Bethlehem in the picture above - it was really beautiful!

We stopped a bit of the way in and had snacks - you can see Annie enjoyed the cookie!

And then there was a lot of sadness.  Do you see that little sad face?  They have this paddleboat that docks and leaves from the path we were walking along.  When that boat took off and we weren't on it Wyatt was heartbroken!  I mean, he was seriously down in the dumps.  I had to promise him that we would come back and ride the boat another day.  That was not good enough to cure his blues, so then I had to promise my parents would come with us.  That did the trick!  :)  Now I just have to convince my parents to join us!

And at the end they have an area where you can get snacks and roast marshmallows, and they had this amazing guy doing all sorts of tricks.  Needless to say the kids were way impressed!  We sat and watched till the end of the show and he was super nice and talked to the kids.  Noah asked him how he learned to do it all and he said when he was a teenager he just started teaching himself how to juggle.  Now Noah is telling us that when he is a teenager he is going to do the same thing.  :) 

Moody Gardens Festival of Lights

So we had never been to see the Moody Gardens lights before!  I don't know why, but they just seemed kind of lame to me.  But I saw that they had buy 1 get 1 free tickets if you brought food to donate on Friday nights, so I figured for $12.00 we should give it a try.  We drove through HORRIBLE traffic to get down there, but it was worth it.  Although an hour into the drive and all the "are we almost there?"  we might have said differently!  :)

They also have half off tickets to the exhibits after 5:00, and since they are crazy expensive to get into normally we decided to go to the aquarium pyramid too. 

We went here years ago when I was pregnant with Wyatt, so it was new to everyone.  Annie loved that she could get down and touch all the aquariums.  They also had this cute Shark Passport thing the boys did where you got this paper to stamp with all the different kinds of sharks we saw. 

Everyone's favorite part was the tunnel you can walk through and the shark cage!  Annie was super tickled by it.

Annie cried to get out of her stroller and sit on the floor in the tunnel.  But that wasn't enough... to get the full affect she had to lay down.  I think she had the right idea!

It was a little hard to get good pics of stuff cause they turned off a bunch of lights in the exhibits cause it aws night time.  And since this is long enough already I'll share the rest of the pics later!

St. Nicholas Day stockings!

Ack!  I am so behind posting all our Christmas stuff!  These are from way back on the sixth, but worthy of sharing anyways.  :)  Of course we celebrated St. Nicholas day again this year and the boys were once again surprised.  The sixth is so early in the month it comes out of nowhere!  Once again they were placed under the tree cause putting them on the foot of their beds was too risky! 

Besides candy, nuts and fruit, they also got a few toys to play with.  They have been wanting these camo covers for years now, so they were super excited they could play some backyard safari stuff.  Annie rose sleeps so much later than the rest of us she got to open hers all by herself later on in the morning.  She was adorable cause she was super excited about it, which surprised me.  She finally likes gifts! 

She got the cutest little bathtub teapot set that she loves!  She is just too cute pouring water into the tiny cups and offering all of us a drink.  She is so surprising me with her interest in doing stuff like that - the boys at her age would have just thrown it down and poured water everywhere. She really wants to do stuff the right way - it cracks me up!  You can see Wyatt was pretty into it as well!

Co-op Christmas Party!

I will be the first to admit I was not happy when I learned the Christmas Party for our co-op was going to be at the ice skating rink.  I just KNEW the kids wouldn't be able to do it and would whine and complain the entire time.  And my "the kids" I mean Noah!  :)  But once I realized it was on a Thursday and Joshua would be home to help I decided to give it a shot.  And really, the kids have been missing Friday School.  Which is super surprising to me, cause you know they don't really love going.  I think Noah has actually turned the corner as far as that is concerned and can't wait for the new semester to start.  Wy and Annie will still need a little convincing!  Anyways, the party was a smashing success!

Noah wanted skates right away, and was super excited to give it a shot.  He wanted me or Josh to go with him, so Josh got suckered into it.  Josh is HORRIBLE at any type of skating, so this was a big deal!  That's how you know he loves this boy, cause for nobody else in the world would he be willing to get onto the ice. 

Josh only made it about 20 feet or so, holding onto the wall.  He promptly hopped off the ice and removed those skates!  Luckily, that was all Noah needed to get his courage up to do it alone. Then we took a break and had pizza and cookies....

You can see Annie loves pizza! She was such a trooper and hardly cried or complained!  Which was a nice surprise cause at Santa's Wonderland earlier this week she was quite a handful. 

Wyatt was certain he did not want to skate until his friends started putting their skates on.  Then we convinced him just to get the skates and walk around on them without getting onto the ice.  Pretty sneaky of me, huh?  I just knew once he had them on he would want to give it a shot.  He only went a few feet and then was DONE!  A bit later on we realized they could rent these metal "walker" things to help them, which he loved.

He was really super brave - I know he had the walker but I was still quite impressed.  When he came off the ice he was quite adorable cause he sat on the walker bar to take a little break...

This was when he squealed with excitement cause he got to look at all of the ice shavings stuck to the front of the blade.  He screamed, "Wooooaaaah!  Look at all those icebergs on my skis!!"  Meanwhile Noah just took off and had tons of fun.  He was cracking us up cause he didn't skate properly - instead he skated just like he rides his skateboard.  Like kept one foot down the whole time and pushed repeatedly with the other foot.  It was too funny!  And of course he took the time to help Wyatt every time he fell over and needed help.  I love it!

We had so much fun!!  Noah was already talking about how he can't wait till next Christmas to have this party again.  And my heart was so happy cause he was thrilled to be around his friends.  We have a few friends we see consistently, but he really loves spending time with other children.  I was happy to see he actually had some friendships with kids that I didn't even know about!  First Class has really been such a blessing to us this semester.  I am so glad we came back!