Puzzles, Decoys, and Mountains of Soda!

Christmas always feels like such a whirlwind.

Always fun, but definitely a whirlwind.

Elmer Sam Works His Magic

The boys have been desperate to open up a just one present....just one!

They have been asking Santa, by way of our beloved elf, Elmer Sam, if he could send them one to hold them over until the big day.

Finally, today, Elmer Sam surprised them with a scavenger hunt through the house that led them to their long awaited gifts.

Oh the excitement!

Sadly, they weren't specific enough about what type of early present they wanted to open!

Blessings

Father Boor blessed a few of Luke's First Communion presents at the Pracht Christmas party.

He brought a crucifix from Gran, and a St. Luke medal that he picked out from Aunt Mag and Great Grandpa.

I love that he really appreciates those gifts.  

I love even more that he wanted them blessed.

Grrrrrrr

I left a small Dillons bag of trash on the counter when we left today.

Sadly, it contained some apparently delicious smelling fast food containers and a not-quite-empty-enough bag of flour.

Graduation

On Sunday, Ben graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Criminal Justice.

If you ask him, it's not really a big deal, but he's worked really hard to get to this point.

He did less than awesome at his first attempt at college--really he just never went!  He decided to give it another try about the time that Luke was born.

The number of credits he needed was overwhelming at first.  He worked nights most of those years, so he had to figure out how to work sleep and classes into his days, and he studied through three babies.  

It took a lot of dedication, but he trudged through and 16 1/2 years after he graduated high school, he finally has his college degree--and a high GPA to boot! 

We are all really proud of him!

He absolutely did not want to walk--I can't really blame him--but his mom and I talked him in to it.  We both thought it was important for the boys to see the end product of all of his hard work!

The Gun Club

Grandpa John is a sucker for buying hunting guns.

I could count on one hand the number of times that he has gone hunting in the last 25 years, but it doesn't stop him from adding to his collection!

He's welcomed Luke into the club!

On the way home from Amy's at Thanksgiving, we stopped at Bass Pro and bought him a Red Rider bee bee gun.  

Luke's pretty excited about it!

I don't think he's actually gotten to try it out, but I'm betting that the next time Ben goes hunting, Luke will be tagging along with his new gun!

Union Station

Last weekend we kicked off the Christmas season in Kansas City.

We took the kids to Union Station.

It was like a trip to the North Pole!

They got to color pictures and write letters to Santa.  There was also a train to ride in, and a huge model train village set up.  Plus there was a ton of other things to look at and do!

It was a really magical place!  

We'll have to make it a regular event!

We're Ready for December!

This year we got smart about decorating for Christmas.

First, we got an artificial Christmas tree.

I feel like I should be sad that we didn't get a real one, but I'm not in the least. 

Generally we put our tree up two weeks before Christmas and it's always super dry by Christmas Day--it doesn't help that we always forget to water it.  I spend the first two weeks of December dreading having to decorate it and the next two weeks dreading the mess of taking it all down.

This year it was up and decorated while we were all still excited about it.  Plus, I won't have to continually battle with Ben about keeping the lights on.  To him, real trees are just piles of kindling waiting to go up in flames.

Second, we got all the ornaments laid out before we turned the kids loose.

It takes much longer to get an ornament out of it's box, than it does to hang it on the tree.  With three eager kids, that leads to a grabby, arguing, stressful tree-trimming night.  

Not fun!

It went much better when the kids were greeted with a sea of ornaments just waiting to be hung up. 

On top of that we managed to use every single one of our ornaments.

I don't think that has ever happened.  The boys' bedroom trees in their bedrooms are completely full of ornaments, but they are on display none-the-less!

The boys are still working on adding houses and trees to their Christmas Village--it's expanded enough to be moved to the hallway--but otherwise our Christmas decorating was done by the end of the Thanksgiving weekend.

If I could just get my presents wrapped by the end of the weekend, which, by some miracle I have almost all of my list already bought and checked off, I think I may just have a low stress December!

2011 Family Pictures

War

Josh Oliver's room has turned into a battlefield.

Truly, our entire house is a war zone. 

These battle scenes pop up all over the place.

Thanksgiving Football

The weather was gorgeous on Thanksgiving.

We took advantage of it and spent a lot of our time outside.

It was great!

Everything that Thanksgiving should be!

Fill Up a Bag

The highlight of Great Grandpa's house will always the candy.....and the ducks and geese!

A Girl Day

The girls didn't have school the other day, so they came over to hang out with Ollie and me.

They colored Thanksgiving pictures while I decorated the house.

It was fun.....and calm.

It's amazing what a difference it makes when the girls outnumber the boys around here.

It was nice!

Worn Out Jeans

When I switched out the boys' clothes over for the winter I was a bit depressed to see what was waiting for me.

Nearly every pair of jeans had gigantic holes in the knees.

A little hole in the knee can pass as rugged/cool, but when it's a seam-to-seam hole it just looks homely.

I don't know why I even bothered storing those jeans. 

On top of that, the few jeans that were in decent shape, no longer fit the boys.

Luke apparently went through quite the growth spurt and half of his size 8s are too short for him.  Josh Oliver has to really suck it in to get into the 5T slims, which is pretty much all of them. 

The only one who was doing alright was Henry--the boy who wears uniforms everyday.

After about a week, I got so fed up that I got rid of almost all their jeans and replaced them with nice, new, dark ones.

While I was at it, I also had to buy them all new tennis shoes and church shoes.  

Apparently, they've all had quite the growth spurts over the last few months.  (Josh jumped 3 full sizes, so I'm not exactly sure how he was even getting his old shoes on!)

It's nice to think that the boys are now set until spring, but in reality, I give them about a month or so before I start to see holes appearing again. 

Plus, Luke's shoes only made it one week before the ends of the shoelaces completely disintegrated from being walked on.

Seriously!

Seven days!

Missing Gran

Linda left for England a couple of weeks ago.

She's still got a few more before she comes back.

In the mean time, the boys have been video chatting with her to try to fill in the gap she's left behind.

We miss her!

We're counting down the days until she come back!

The Caped Crusader

Josh has been wearing his Batman costume a lot.

He's been jumping off of everything.

It makes me a little crazy, but he's pretty funny with it!

The Hotdog, the Mailbox, and the Ninja Turtle

Luke and Henry had to make their own costumes for Cub Scouts this year.

Ben was immediately excited at the thought of introducing a new generation to his favorite Halloween costume--The Halloweenie!

Luke passed on the idea of being a giant hotdog. 

Instead he wanted to make a mailbox.

He did a really awesome job on it.  He did almost all the work himself with just a little help with each step.  That, in itself, makes it great, but it really couldn't have turned out better.

We found out when it was time to trick-or-treat, though, that his design wasn't the best. 

Between the size of the box and the poster board going over his head, he couldn't actually see his hands when he had it on.  Not necessarily a problem unless you are trying to pick a piece of candy out of a candy bowl. 

After enough times of struggling to even hit the bowl with his hand, he went to having people drop candy through his mail slot, and finally he just completely ditched it altogether! 

Henry, on the other hand, went along with the whole Halloweenie idea. 

There were some concerns among us about how it would turn out.  (I didn't even consider that possibility of it looking like another type of weenie of questionable nature!)  In the end, though, Ben really pulled through! 

I'm not sure that I have ever seen a cuter hotdog! 

For his real costume, Henry was an army man.  He wears it pretty much everyday, so we convinced him to wear the Halloweenie costume over his army one for at least some of the trick-or-treating.

He had trouble running in it because it went down to about his knees. 

At one point he tripped in a driveway and couldn't get up.  None of the other kids helped him up so he had to just lay flailing and rolling on the ground until I could run up and set him upright again.

After that, he also ditched his homemade costume.

Next year, we are going to have to focus on cute AND user friendly costumes!

This year Josh Oliver decided to be a Ninja Turtle.

His costume, in no way, should be confused with his costume from last year which was a regular turtle--a.k.a. a Koopa.

Sadly, his costume from last year barely fit him so Gigi had to make a whole new costume.  On the plus side, though, I never got a good picture of him last year, so this year was sort of a two-for-one in the picture department!

Let's Build a Cabin!

This past weekend, we went to KC for our Halloween weekend.

It's always a fun weekend!

The pumpkin patch seems to add new stuff each year.

This years new section may have been my favorite--over-sized classic board games!  It was super fun. 

We built a log cabin out of the lincoln logs.  

It was a lot of work and took forever, but it was awesome!  Then, a kid came by and destroyed it.  

It was a lot harder to watch then it is when they are palm size.  That's the way it goes, though!

This was the first year that we didn't actually go out to the field and get a pumpkin.  It's just entirely too much of a hassle.  

I thought that they might be sad.  

They weren't.  

Yay for me!

We also went to Night of the Living Farm.

That's always fun!

Halloween weekends are always my favorites!!

Uncle Greg

Josh Oliver got to hang out at Uncle Greg's house while I went on Henry's school field trip.

His house is always a treat!

When I went to pick him up, the kids--Sarah and Riley were there too--were playing in the dirt.

I try to be good about letting the boys play like that, but really when it comes down to it, anything dirty, messy, or sticky makes me antsy.  

I'm no fun like that.

Luckily, they have an Uncle Greg, who has no problems letting them explore and have fun.  
He's also incredibly fun to go to the park with and super patient.

He's always a favorite!

Darts

The boys have discovered the joy of darts.

Back when we were dating, garage darts were frequently filled our weekends.


It's strange watching our kids hang out the way the same way that we use to hang out.

Thankfully, they aren't old enough to drink beer as they play.

When that happens I will officially feel replaced by the next generation.

Are we really getting that old?

To Do List

A couple of weeks ago, I came across my big To Do List that I made at the beginning of the summer.

It was full of a variety of things--both big and little.

Sadly, there wasn't that much that I could actually check off--including stupid stuff like mailing packages and sewing pillows.  What I had accomplished, where already back on my list again--like switching out the boys clothes.

We've been doing projects like crazy, though.  They just aren't the ones that are on my list, so I don't get the satisfaction of crossing them off.

I did finally get my table and chairs refinished, which has been one of the most annoying ones to have on my list, but now I feel like I really want to do something about our stools. 

And so grows our list....

I need to make a new To Do list, but I think I'm going to try really hard to get my original one finished up. 

It will make me a bit less panicked when I give Ben the go ahead to start ripping up flooring and knocking down walls for the next big project I've dreamed up!

Thanks for Joining the World, Ollie

Most days Josh Oliver would rather be a bump on a log than do any sort of errands with me--even fun ones. 

I generally can't even talk him in to going out to eat lunch because he just wants to eat a boring lunch at home.

I'm pretty sure he would turn into a hermit, only coming out to go to school or to his gran's, if I let him.

Today, though, was a good day for the two of us!

I convinced him to be happy, or at least act like he was, about going on a morning walk/bike ride with me.  Usually he pouts and starts riding his bike at a turtles pace half-way through, but today he rode speedy quick and didn't complain once!

In return I let him wear a batman mask while he rode and treated him to a cookie at Panera afterwards. 

After he ate his cookie and we were leaving Panera, the girl who checked us out gave him an extra cookie--just because! 

Oh, how lucky!

Next we went to Penney's where we found a pair of new shoes for him. 

That just put him over the edge with happiness!

I took total advantage of his good day and got a ton of my errands done--which meant I got to spend his school time taking a nap!!

It was lovely!

I may just be able to pull him out of that hermit shell of his!

Get Us Out of Here!

A couple of weeks ago, Linda and I took the kids to a corn maze.

We needed something to get them out of the house and burn off some energy.

It was a good idea in theory.

Instead we spent our morning nagging. 

I don't know how many times we said, "please don't walk so fast," "you have to stay together," or "if you can't see us, you are too far ahead." 

I'm not sure if we were more concerned about losing the kids or the kids losing us.  Either way we were not risking getting separated!

Olivia and Josh Oliver also spent the majority of the time complaining that it was too hot and they were tired of walking.

Frankly, we all were!

By the end of it all, the kids were telling us to have someone come rescue us, but neither one of us wanted to make that embarrassing phone call! 

Finally, after an hour, we made it out. 

We definitely underestimated how complicated it would be!

Once we were out, we let the kids roam around among the hay bales while Linda and I parked it at a table and chatted.  That was more along the lines of what we were hoping for!

In the end, we also discovered that they had a much more manageable kids maze that we turned them lose in.  It totally made up for the stress of the big maze!

Even with all the nagging, whining, eye-rolling...it really was a fun outing.  We at least ended it on a good note.

I'm glad we took them, although we decided that if we went again we would either have to ditch the two youngest or skip the big corn maze altogether.

The older three would probably just rather ditch us and have a go at it alone!

Bugs

We apparently have skitterbugs in our water-filled sand box.

I never actually heard of skitterbugs, but Henry assures me that is what they are.

Whatever they are, the boys love collecting them up!