Snow/Cold Days

After two weeks off for Christmas break, we were back in class for two days before two more days off for dangerously cold weather.  Last year was the exact same situation except I think it was the first two days after break instead of returning for two before two more off.  As a result, our last day of school has moved back at least two days (the winter is young; hard to say whether there will be any more emergency days burned).   And I had to reschedule our summer vacation!  Guess I'm a novice mom.  I forgot that the "last day of school" is just a tentative date.  There are five snow days built into the schedule after that.  For each day the kids miss school, there is a make-up day tacked on.   On the Friday of the cold week, school was back in session but parents could choose to keep their kids home as an "excused" absence.   From what I heard, about 20% of the school stayed home.   But, since school was in session, no more emergency days get burned up.   The annoying part of the snow/cold days is that the kids already had a scheduled four-day weekend over MLK Day for the Monday holiday and a Friday teacher work day to do 2nd quarter grades.   And then we have off President's Day and two more random days in February. . . .Sigh; feels like the kids never go to school!  We also threw in a sick day after a random bought of tummy troubles.  With all of that, William has not had a full five days of school in the past five weeks!   On scheduled school days off, William can attend a YMCA School's Out Camp, which he really loves.  For the two most recent days, they took field trips to Chicago to the Museum of Science and Industry and to a local bowling alley

Prior to the days off, I took this picture of William walking in the snow to school.   I need to find the picture from the first day of school to contrast.   He fought me about his snow pants this day, so he is wearing jeans tucked into his snow boots.  The kids have to take snow pants and snow boots to school if they want to be let off of the slab during recess.  We've lost (and refound) a single glove from two different sets of gloves this winter.  If this is what we have to go through here, I wonder how the kids in Minnesota and Wisconsin do it?!

Winter Soccer - Year Two

William started his fourth session of soccer - also known as winter soccer, year two.   We first started down this soccer path a year ago with this same indoor, winter soccer league.  It was a huge success.  He was pretty good, so he had fun and loved it because he was frequently the one with the most goals.  That launched us into summer soccer where he - as a newly turned 5 year old - played on the kindergarten league.  It was hot and the kids were bigger and better than he was, so he didn't love it.  For fall soccer, we made sure he was on the same team as his buddy, Blakey, and it was good on nice weather days and a bear on the heat wave or freezing cold days.  This was also when he told us his shin guards were "like needles in his legs."   Ugh.   Armed with a new pair of shin guard that fit inside his soccer socks, we decided to tackle winter soccer again.   He is playing with kindergarteners, but apparently all the big kids from summer are on a travel team or playing some other sport because these kids are all his size and speed!  He had fun for week one, and I'm looking forward to seeing him play on the Saturdays that I don't work.  He likes running around for an hour, and he loves Saturday brunch afterwards!  I think it may be the promise of brunch that really gets him going!    He told me that was where he and Daddy "always go after soccer," and they were kind enough to invite me along last weekend. 

 

 January 2015:  5 1/2 years old

January 2014:  4 1/2 years old

New Year's Eve

We hosted John's parents for New Year's Eve - also known in William's world as Second Christmas.  He was super excited to get to open one more gift, especially since it was a Star Wars LEGO AT-AT Walker!

John helped guide the grandparents to an advanced LEGO sets.  This kid is such a LEGO master, that at 5 1/2 he really needs the sets for 8-years +.   We both helped on parts of the walker -- mostly because he wanted help for repetitive pieces and because he wanted to build it faster so he could start playing with it. . .not because he couldn't do it himself.   And this was either a toy that John had as a child and loved - or wanted as a child.   Not sure which one, but you'd better believe it was his idea to suggest it to his parents!   I'm rather shocked by the sheer number of LEGOs (especially Star Wars kits) around my house, but we mostly manage to keep them off the floor where they could be dangerous to bare feet.      

 

Pictures

After Christmas I enjoy saving and displaying all the photo cards on this board.  It's so much fun to do it each year and see how much everyone's kids have grown!

 

I also realized that my desk is becoming quite the collage of Disney photos.  The black and white poster was a 2014 calendar made from our November 2013 trip.  Since I never got around to making a 2015 calendar, I just hung pictures of our 2014 trips on top of it!  

Christmas

While I certainly don't want to overplay the Santa concept, I did continue the tradition that I had as a child where Santa brings an unwrapped gift and leaves it on Christmas morning.  When I was a kid, we opened all our presents before Christmas day - usually on December 23rd, since Christmas Eve was my mom's family's celebration and Christmas Day was my dad's family's celebration.  So it was very easy to know what was from Santa - it was the only present on Christmas Day.  This year William didn't open up any presents until Christmas morning.  The point being, he wasn't entirely sure that the three new sleds under the tree were or were not for him, and were or were not from Santa.   We said they were all for him but that Santa brought him three so he could share with us.   The idea of threes turned into a theme for this Christmas.  Daddy bought William three Nerf blasters (one a Star Wars Stormtrooper themed one), so we could all play.   And between the grandparents and us, he got three small Star Wars Lego sets.   He also ended up with three board games (Monopoly Jr, Connect 4, and Battleship) - all of which have been tremendously fun to play!   On Christmas Eve we didn't get around to unwrapping any gifts because we were busy with crafts.  First up was Star Wars snowflakes.  They ended up being harder than I imagined, so after a few, we just made our own creations and hung them on the front door.

Christmas morning started around 7:30, which is earlier than any other day this week, but still not too bad.  Of course the best part of our holiday was having family visit us.   Grandpa Roger and Grandma Joni flew in on Christmas Day, and Uncle Ryan and Tarek were kind enough to do the airport pick-up and deliver everyone to our house for the evening.  We had a beautiful dinner of prime rib, roasted vegetables, baked macaroni and cheese, taboulleh, cranberry sauce and Hawaiian rolls.  There was also an overabundance of sweets for the holiday, including the Garrett's Chicago Mix and Caramel Crisp that I picked up on my last afternoon in the city - and then had to run to catch my train since the line had been so long.  

We spent Friday playing multiple rounds of board games - mostly Monopoly Jr. because it was fun for the entire family - but also a little Scrabble.  I'm so rusty at that game!  William and I also "painted" cookies I got from a neighbor.  They were super cute but didn't taste that great.   

After two days mostly inside, Saturday was Chicago day.   I had to work at the office, but the rest of the family toured the Willis Tower Skydeck and had lunch at Billy Goat Tavern.  They swung by to see me before they headed home and William helped me do a little work.

 

 

 

More Christmas Preparations

This weekend really put us in the Christmas mood!  Friday afternoon I helped with the Kindergarten Winter Party.  The station I worked was the kids working in pairs to wrap a friend as a snowman.  You can see several examples of the snowman sweatshirts being worn!  I felt a little bad that I didn't send William in his sweatshirt, but he was wearing his Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party t-shirt.  The room mom was very smart to make nametags for the kids in order to group them for the activities.  There were two nametags that said "Will" and none that said "William" so he graciously accepted one with his "short name."  

 After school, we walked home to pick up Daddy and extra layers of winter clothes to drive to Chicago to meet Uncle Ryan and Tarek at Christkindlmarket.  We enjoyed our favorites:  gluwein, hot chocolate, bratwurst, frankfurters, candied pecans, and chocolate covered bananas.  We also did ornaments shopping.  I picked out a tennis ball since this was the year the rest of my family started playing and a cruise ship buoy and anchor for our trip this year.   William picked out a train and a motorcycle, because. . . well, who doesn't love (another) train and a motorcycle!  He was excited to see Santa through the window but didn't want to go inside and talk to him.   He has been talking about Santa a lot this year, and told me we need to leave out cookies.  This is really the first year where he has talked to us about it, but we've been keeping most of the answers along the lines of "I'm not sure how. . . .but it sounds like there's some Christmas magic involved."

On Saturday we put up the stockings which we - not Santa - fill with odds and ends.  Before they made it on to the hooks, William put two on as socks and went running through the house.  Oh my goodness, we all got a good laugh at him jingling all around!

The mantle looking very festive with all of our stocking hung, the nativity scene, and photo cards from all of our friends!  Filling up the ribbon with cards is one of my very favorite traditions! 

Christmas Cookies

My favorite baking buddy and I made some holiday treats for gift boxes.  They weren't very pretty (nor very tasty thanks to using a boxed mix), but we sure had fun!

We packaged up a few along with candy and a gift card for William's teacher.   This is what he wrote to her.  He asked me how to spell a few words, but the choice of words was all him.  I love how he drew her at the end! 

Christmas Preparations

We're getting in the Christmas spirit around here - even if there is no snow on the ground.  

Last year after the holidays, I found these Disney-themed fillable ornaments to help us count down the days to Christmas for this year. It's our very own version of an Advent calendar.  William rushes downstairs every morning to take the next one from the tray and see what is inside.  The first five days were pieces of a Lego City helicopter.   That really set the tone right!  The coins, candy and balloons that came after have been received well, but he really loved the Legos!  Thanks to his You Tube video habit fueling his knowledge of Kinder Surprise Eggs, he thinks these ornaments came pre-filled from the store.  We haven't corrected him so far, and Daddy pulled through and stocked another Lego surprise for this week.  I look forward to the surprise as well.  This is a busy time at work for me, so I just put coins and candy in the rest of the "eggs," but John has done some selective swapping out for better stuff!  William does not have as much interest in putting the ornaments on our little (second) Christmas tree as he does discovering what is inside, so I often find the daily ornament piled among the Legos on our end table and get to put it on the tree myself.

If you ever wondered where to find a "plain" sweatshirt (sans zipper, hood, and decoration) in the year 2014 for a school craft project, the answer is NOT Target (where I looked) or Meier or Joann's or Michael's or the Dollar Store (where my neighbor friend looked).  I believe Wal-Mart had them, but I wasn't willing to run around town looking for a $10 sweatshirt.  So after our neighborhood Target turned up empty, we ordered ours from our favorite "store," Amazon dot com.   My little man and his snowman are both adorable!  I doubt he'll ever wear a sweatshirt, but it's cute for the closet!  Although, maybe I'm wrong on that.  He did voluntarily choose to wear the sweatpants I bought for soccer cover ups the other day.  Maybe he isn't exclusively a jeans and t-shirt kid.  :-)

Next week as work slows down, we have Christmas baking and the Christmas market to keep us busy!

Happy Birthday

William and I made a special cake for his daddy's birthday and surprised him with his own tennis racquet so we can all play together now!  The cutest part was definitely how we sneakily made the cake without John seeing us.