HAPPY NEW YEAR!! The boys toasted in the new year. Noah said his champagne was spicy and was making him kissy, kissy! Will said it made him silly. Ethan was so tired from spending the night at his friend's house that he looks like he has been drinking champagne the entire day!

The boys are ready to ring in the new year!!

Ethan had his first sleepover last night. He spent the night at Emily's house. He woke up this morning, had breakfast, and came home. I think Chris had a harder time with Ethan being away than Ethan did! Chris had told him to come home first thing so the first thing he did was apologize for having breakfast there!!!

A few more pictures from our super cool day with the manatees!

Today we went to Blue Spring State Park. It is the winter home to the manatees that live in the St. John's River. The water remains at 72 degrees year round. When there are no manatees you can swim and scuba dive there. Lucky for us, there was not of that today as there were well over 100 manatees in the spring. It was awesome!!

Today was Pop-Pop Wayne's birthday. The boys wanted to throw a little party for him tonight. He had a yummy chocolate cake. In other news, I took the Christmas tree down today. It just took up too much space and Noah was using it as a Nerf gun target!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! The boys slept until 6:30 so we count ourselves as lucky! So far the favorites are the Mega Blocks gigantic fort castle, Noah's Nerf gun, Will's skate ramp, Will's skeet ball/bounce ball game, and Ethan's Power Ranger fort. Noah is dying for Chris and Ethan to wake up from their nap to put together his Playmobil knight castle. We are having lasagna for dinner and pumpkin pie for dessert. It is still one of the boys favorites!

Ethan went camping last night for his birthday. No one had faith that the boys would make it through the night but I knew they would! They had a campfire and cooked some hotdogs and marshmallows. The girls joined in for the campfire fun. The boys came home with stories about killer squirrels and ghosts. I'm not sure where that came from!!

Ethan was a little sad that no one called him on his birthday besides Melissa and Aunt Kate. I'm hoping the camping trip made up for that! They came home around 8:45 this morning and were as dirty as kids get! They are in the bath now.

Brock, Anna, Dara, Isabel, Faith, and Sam stopped by for a couple hours on the drive to Brock's parents' house. We ate some pizza and the kids exchanged Christmas presents. Sam has gotten so big and is so cute! Somehow I didn't get a picture of him. We are getting packed for the big camping trip. We are leaving in just a little bit. I will update tomorrow!

Rudolph gone wild!

The boys are so excited for Christmas! We picked up Pop-Pop Wayne from the airport yesterday morning and he immediately took them shopping. We went to a cute little shopping center. They went in Bass Pro Shop, Ron Jon's Surf Shop, Sheplers Western Wear (more on that in a minute), and their favorite, the Vans skate park. They were mesmerized as they watched the kids there skate. They would have stayed all day if we would have let them. Ethan said, "How does that kid who is smaller than me already know how to skate so good?" I know the skateboard request is coming! Right now we are making them stick to their Razor scooters at the skate park!

The boys wanted to look at the cowboy boots at Sheplers. Of course the second they saw the cap guns they HAD to have one. I refused to buy them, but of course Pop-Pop got them each one! Now we just hear, bang, bang, bang all day. I think Wayne may regret that purchase since they were shooting them yesterday while we was trying to nap and that is the first thing they did this morning!

Chris had his work Christmas party on Tuesday night. It was at a restaurant called the Rain Supperclub. www.rainsupperclub.com Chris may only remember how good the red wine was!

The boys are at the skate park with my mom and Wayne so I need to get some cleaning done! We'll update after their camping trip. They are camping out for Ethan's birthday tomorrow at a local park. I happily backed out when I read "primitive campsites only."

We went to the Eagney's today for breakfast and to help the girls decorate their Christmas cookies. Noah asked Melissa to make him some Christmas shaped pancakes for breakfast and she couldn't say no to his sweet little voice. All the boys ate them up! After breakfast, they helped the girls decorate their sugar cookies. They were much neater this year! Last year was a disaster. Poor Sophia got fired early on. She was more into licking the cookies after they were decorated rather than actually decorating them!

Today the boys had their well visits. The timing was perfect as Will woke up at 10:00 last night crying that his ear hurt. After no sleep for either of us last night, we went to the doctor this morning and sure enough he had a nasty ear infection. He just has his first dose of Amoxicillin before nap. Noah has one as well, but not nearly as bad. He has never even complained about it. Ethan's ears were golden! She did put them all on inhalers and liquid Albuterol. She thinks that they have allergy/cold/exercise induced asthma. So they are now on an inhaler twice a day and as needed. They also got some cough syrup with codeine for bedtime. We came home with an awful lot of meds for a well visit! For the well part- Ethan was 75% for height and 75% for weight. Will was 90% for height and 75% for weight. Noah was 25% for height and 25% for weight. At least he is out of the 10% range now!

LAST NIGHT...

Last night was Katie's graduation party. She graduated from nursing school this week and was ready to party! We are very proud of her. She already snagged herself a job in the pediatric wing of a hospital! Woohoo!! Hopefully she'll get to work with a real life Dr. McDreamy!!

SATURDAY, the 17th...

Ethan had his birthday party today! Rather than trying to entertain lots of kids ranging in age from 1 to 7 we decided to reserve a pavilion at the park and do it there. It was the best thing we ever did! Chris fired up the grill when we got there and made hot dogs for everyone. The kids enjoyed playing on the playground while Chris cooked. After lunch, Chris played a bunch of games with the kids and handed out prizes. That was followed by a Power Rangers cake and presents! Ethan had a great time. Clean up was a breeze and we were off to our house for nap in no time! It started raining a bit towards the end but we were under a pavilion so it all worked out fine!

FRIDAY, the 16th...

Ethan was "King of the Day" in his classroom. It was the last day before winter break so it was the closest we could get to his real birthday. He wore a crown all day and got to choose the helpers in the class. He brought in chocolate donuts for morning snack and stood on a chair while the class sang happy birthday to him. His favorite part was when the class had to curtsy and bow to him! I didn't bring my camera that day, but I assure you, it was cute!

Still THURSDAY, the 15th...

Ethan had his Christmas party at school in the afternoon. Chris brought the boys to school so once again, we were all there! His teacher loaded each kids' desk with presents so they were very excited. They sang lots of cute holiday songs. Ethan introduced one with a girl from his class.

THURSDAY, the 15th...

Will and Noah had their Christmas show at the preschool. We were all able to be in the audience (minus Ethan since he was at school) so they had Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma to cheer them on. They sang a few songs and visited with Santa. Noah refused to let us leave without him so Chris took Will and Noah home while my mom and I returned to the elementary school.

Just a quick update... Will got his first note home from school. Apparently he had to go to time out for the first time today. He spent some time in time out at home as well for the incident. He is also going to apologize to his teacher in the morning. Apparently he was playing very aggressively at school and even after warnings continued to do so.

Ethan won at danger dodgeball at karate tonight so he was quite pleased with himself! Melissa let the boys borrow Sky High and now all the boys think they have superhero powers! After school today Ethan said, "Good thing I didn't use my super powers at school today. I would have been in big trouble!" Noah showed off his amazing powers all afternoon by running around the house like a mad man and jumping over everything in sight to show his super jumping powers. Of course before each move he had to say, "Watch this Mommy!" I must have heard that phrase a thousand times.

Melissa and I are braving the cold (it is dropping into the low-40s tonight) to go walking. I even got to use my heated seats this morning! :o)

It was parade day- again! This time the boys were fully prepared with their candy bags. Tonight we are heading off to a neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. They actually have police shut down the entire neighborhood so you can walk around in the street. It is quite amazing!

We love Fridays! The boys had fun tonight. We made Christmas trees (construction paper variety), bowled, built with blocks, had pizza, danced, etc. Noah's favorite dance song is still My Humps. He shakes his "trunk" and looks back to see what it's doing. The funniest part is that he has no tooshy to shake!

I got a call from the preschool today. I left my classroom for less than 2 minutes and when I got back my phone was beeping at me. There was a voice mail message that Will had an accident and had a bloody nose. They said the bleeding had stopped and that was about all. I emailed Chris and asked if he thought I should call the school back. His response, "Do you think he got in a fight with someone?" Geesh, he thinks he is getting in fist fights already! I called just to be sure that Will wasn't upset and it turns out that while they were lining up a boy hit his head into Will's nose on accident. Will was fine- until dinner when Chris was talking to him about it and said, "But what happened to your nose, it's gone." Will didn't think that joke was too funny!

It has been raining for a couple days now. Yuck! I suppose it beats the messy weather in Maryland! Tomorrow it is supposed to be nicer and warmer. We have another parade to go to in the morning and the boys really want to go back to the skate park. Hopefully we'll fit it in before the parade.

Did I mention- one week until Winter Break!!!

Tonight Ethan had his Christmas play. Here in the south, they still aren't afraid to call it a Christmas play and sing Christmas songs. All the kindergarteners were dressed in their pajamas and looked too cute! Will and Noah enjoyed singing along and saying, "Hey, I know that song!!" Their Christmas show is next Thursday.

The boys were so sad the find out that Aunt Kate wasn't coming next week. We explained why she needs to be home now, but they are still bummed. We will certainly miss her visit and are looking forward to when she does come.

Only one more week until break!!!

Oh my, this afternoon was quite a treat! Ethan was EXTREMELY tired and grumpy all afternoon. Chris got a big dose of his bad attitude when he tried to cut Ethan's hair. He finally calmed down after his bath and hot chocolate. He tired me out, that's for sure. Will and Noah were a bit on the tired side themselves. I think tomorrow it will only get worse since we have two hours of karate. Only 1 1/2 weeks until winter break. Ah...