My kids crack me up-sometimes

Out of the blue the other day Sadie informed me that a girl in her class has hair on her bottom.
"How do you know?"
"I see it when we sit on the carpet at story time."
"Hmm."
"She also stinks."
Don't worry, I made sure that she hasn't pointed either of these things out to the poor girl, (and that she doesn't plan to in the future.)

The kids had a babysitter the other day.  We've used the same girl every time (all 3 of them).  On the way home she gave me this report:
Sadie:  In a valiant bid for soda, evidently Sadie tried to convince her that soda was good for her aching back.
Samuel: He asked how old she is and when she replied that she was 17 he asked her if she had a boyfriend.  She told him no, but asked him if he wanted to be her boyfriend.  He declined.
Henry:  After farting (evidently it was a big one), told her that he farts at school to keep away the girls.  Geez!

December 11th

So on Henry's real birthday we had a soccer game, snow at the outdoor mall, and the church Christmas party.  We managed to find the time to open a few presents.  He got guitar Hero for DS, and money.  He has already spent some money on a Beyblade stadium.  (Think plastic stadium for fancy tops).  The ward party was fun.  It was around a bonfire with smores, a hay ride and a visit from Santa.  The kids made me plenty of smores and brought me lots of cocoa and food.  Thanks!  Sadie wouldn't visit Santa, but she was first in line for the hay ride.  She was so excited, and loved it!

Snow in Florida?

Yep, these pictures were taken in Florida.  Of course the dead giveaway is the fact that the kids are wearing shorts.  I think this was a perfect way to experience snow.

Note Sadie's conspicuous absence from any snow activity.  I guess she doesn't care if it's Florida or Pennsylvania - SHE DOES NOT LIKE SNOW!

Spice Rack

After 5 months of living here I got one room done (if the pantry counts as a room :)).  It's all organized with extra shelves I built (nothing fancy), labeled and organized tupperware, and my new spice rack.  Spices have been a bane of my existence.  They are all different sizes, thrown into 3 shoeboxes.  I finally took the time to make a spice rack for my 42 spices, 9 flavorings, and 3 bullion flavors.

So, if you can't tell, it's four different spice racks that you pull out of a box.  It's not perfect, but it's way better than the shoeboxes.

Surrey with the fringe on top (or Henry's 10th Birthday)

A couple of months ago when we were at Downtown Disney we ran across RideMakerz.  This is like Build-a-bear, but for remote control cars.  Henry really, really wanted one, however, like good parents, we made him wait for his birthday, or pay for it himself.  Yesterday we celebrated his birthday by heading to RideMakerz.  Henry also wanted to ride one of the Surrey bicycles that you can rent at various spots around Disney.  We headed to the Boardwalk first to ride the bicycles.  I thought it would be fun.  While it was fun, it was also a lot of work, or I am sorely out of shape.  Ok, it's probably that I am really out of shape.  

After the bike ride, the kids found some grass and ran around a bit and we took a picture of one of the trees.

Then it was off to make the much anticipated car.

The finished product (you will kindly ignore the mess that Sadie is cleaning as we speak):

So kissable

William loves kisses, and look at him.  Who wouldn't want to kiss him?

Operation Santa

Apparently our town has a Christmas tradition that to my knowledge has not happened in any of the other places that we have lived.  The fire and police department drive a float around to all of the different subdivisions (or communities as we call them in FL) and collect toys for those in need.  This takes about 6 different evenings.  The pictures are horrible.  The weather was about 45 degrees (it was a little warmer in our unheated home.)  We stayed outside for about 20 minutes waiting for this event.  Samuel ran back to the house to get something and missed the whole thing.  We walked back to the house, looked at the map and realized that the float would be exiting our neighborhood right where we saw it come in.  We raced back out to the street and waited another 20 minutes (Ben came driving home and watched with us) so that Samuel could witness the excitement.

Samuel in soccer

Hopefully I will take more pictures of Samuel actually playing soccer.  However, just in case I don't here is one during warm-ups.

Henry in Cubscouts

On November 30th Henry got his Bear in cubscouts.  Here are a couple of photos.

 Henry attempting to pin the mother's pin on me.

Eating "Bear Grub" (oreos and gummy worms)

Today

Today we celebrate Henry's "pretend" birthday.  Tomorrow is jam packed with other stuff, so today is the special day.  Ben is home from work, so hopefully he will get homework done and he will be able to celebrate with us.  For the first time since 1st grade Henry asked me to bring a cake to school.  Life would be so much cheaper if I could take something homemade.  Life was so much easier (sometimes) back in the day.

William's first visit to the Beach

The kids had the whole week off of school for Thanksgiving.  On Monday we were lucky enough to hook up with some friends from PA at the worlds largest McDonald's.  I figured that since we were in "tourist Orlando" anyway, that we should do some other things in the area.  I discovered that there is a path between Fort Wilderness Lodge on Disney property, to the campground on Disney property.  The internet said that it was about a mile and then you could take the boat back.  Sounded like a good way to kill a little time.  We drove up to the lodge and the kids really wanted to go in the lodge and look around.  After looking around a bit, we walked around outside and found a beach on the lake.  You can't go in the lake, but the kids loved playing in the sand.

We also saw a geyser go off on the property.  That was pretty cool.

After the beach, playing ping pong, and getting caught in a rainstorm, we decided to go find the big gingerbread house.  I had heard that the Grand Floridian hotel on property had a huge gingerbread house.  So, we hopped on a bus, which took us around the entire campground (yes, it was the wrong bus), then took a boat to the Magic Kingdom.  Once there, we took the monorail to the hotel.  The kids couldn't get over how fancy the hotel was.

After checking out the gingerbread house and trying gingerbread (only Henry and William liked it), we headed back to the Magic Kingdom via monorail.  If it wasn't so late we could have walked, but we were tired and hungry.  Then it was back to the Lodge and home.  It was a great day.

Sponge-a-rama

Tacky, old and weird.  Yep, that's the way I like my tourist attractions.  Thankfully there are a lot of those here in FL.  One of our favorites is Tarpon Springs.  This is a town on the Gulf of Mexico that has a large Greek population.  There are many sponge divers there.  There is a street that has the sponge docks, and a lot of little shops, restaurants, and boat rides.

My family actually went to this town back in the day.  I'm pretty sure if I compared photos from that trip to pictures from last week that everything would look the same.  I love that.

This picture describes the shops perfectly.

Some more pictures of Tuesday.

Beautiful Florida

Last Friday after school the kids and I went to the community playground so they could try out their "new" tennis rackets that I got at the thrift store (3 for $4).  Here is the lovely sunset.

I missed the sun while we were in PA.  I didn't realize how much I missed the sunset's though.  Every time I see one here I just marvel.

School Thanksgiving

The Thursday before Thanksgiving I was lucky enough to go to Sadie's school Thanksgiving Feast.  William and I went and ate lunch with her and then watched a little program that all of the Kindergarten participated in.  It was so cute and I'm so glad I went.

The Friday before Thanksgiving the 2nd graders had Native American rotations.  They spent all day going to different classrooms and learning about different tribes.  I'm not sure I have ever seen Samuel so excited when he got home.  Here he is with some of his crafts that he made.  If he was awake I'd have him tell me again what they represented.  The pouch around his neck has a bear animal cracker in it because it has a bear spirit in it.

Festival of the Masters

 Once a year Downtown Disney hosts an event: "Festival of the Masters." It's an outdoor art show.  It has lots of artist booths selling things.  There was also a lot of family interactive activities.  We went after school on Friday and only had time to do a few, so we did the 2 Lego activities.  The first was helping a "Master Lego Builder" make an 8 foot tall dragon.  There was a model of the dragon and it was made out of 2x4 lego bricks.

If you look closely at the above picture of the model you will see the right foot.  In the bottom picture you will see the foot of the big dragon made out of "bricks" that volunteers made.

The kids got to make "bricks" that were then used in the big model.  The bricks they made had 10 2x4 bricks in an open rectangle.  There were 3 layers of those and then a layer of 5 2x8 and 2 1x8.

After they got done making their bricks they were inspected and then given to the Master Builder to make the dragon.

 Here is Samuel with his "Certificate of Achievement" for participating in an Official Lego Building event.

The other activity we did was to help make a Lego mosaic that is going to go on one of the Disney Cruise Ships.  Everybody got a 2"x2" tile that had colors on it.  Then you had to use 1x1 Lego's to match the colors and fill in your tile. 

 After you filled in your tile you took it to a huge Lego board and it was put in by number.

Here's how William spent the whole time.

This was a great day.  Too bad Ben was out of town and missed it.  We'll take him next time.