And the band plays on....

My grandma, affectionately known as "Gigi" (or Great Grandma!) to the boys moved into an assisted living place in October. Ever since she left her oh too big three story home, she has a new lease on life. She even joined the apartment's Rhythm Band and their first concert was on Christmas Eve at 2:30 so we all dressed up and headed over there for the matinee! It was great! My parents, Dan, the boys and I all enjoyed it immensely and my dad looked SO proud of his mom! Gigi played her drum beautifully!

Here she is during one of their 7 songs...she is the fab lady in the middle!
Nana was snapping a picture, while the boys and I all sat and enjoyed the fantastic music!
No concert would be complete without a snack and the folks running this show had a cart full of homeade delish Christmas cookies. Here Nick is trying to pick one out....luckily all the little old women loved the boys, so they ate TONS!
Dan and Luke pose....Luke was LOVING the cookies!
Here Gigi was opening one of her presents from us....what do you get an 80 something lady??? You get "artsy" and make something. I got the idea from a co-worker to copy regular pictures and mod podge them onto a regular ole white canvas! It was a HIT! Gigi's friend Jimmy was watching her open her presents. Gigi has now taken on the job of Jimmy caretaker, as he is an elderly man with the mental capacity of a 6 year old. Gigi loves her time with Jimmy and revels in the fact that she is teaching him how to ride the elevator independently and such!
After the show and present opening, we headed to an early dinner at Applebee's. The boys were SO good!!! After dinner we headed back to our house, hung out for a bit and then went to church.
After church we headed home and put out our reindeer food for Santa's reindeer and then headed inside!
And to our surprise what did we find??? We found a note from Santa...he had stopped by already to give us some Christmas books!

Here Nick is showing Luke the letter we got from Santa!
All the boys were so excited to find the great Christmas books under the tree...
What else could we do but read them...
We then got our pajamas on and spent the rest of the night watching Santa's travels on the computer! Then it was off to bed to patiently wait for Santa and his reindeer!

Popcorn and a movie

We decided to have our first "official" movie night with the boys. We rented Fred Claus and popped real popcorn. I always have popcorn parties with my kids at school, but never do bring the air popper home, until now! The boys were so PSYCHED!!! Here they are just staring at the popcorn seeds in the popper...still not exactly sure of what is going to happen, but understanding that they have to WAIT...
And WAIT...
And wait....until the seeds start to "dance" and they POP!!! All three boys were jumping up and down. This was such an awesome talking time for Luke....too!!! He was going around saying "seed pop, seed pop!"
Until finally it was ready to eat!
I hope to have some Christmas pictures posted on here later tonight! Right now I have a houseful here, but I'm hanging downstairs with Dan as he feverishly has put together TONS of toys as Santa was oh to generous this year!!! And, I'm hoping that he puts my RockBand together next!!! Here's hoping that everyone had a wonderful Christmas!!!

O Christmas Tree...

We had a fun trip to the dentist on Saturday morning. It was Luke's first time, but luckily Jack and Nick LOVE going to the dentist, so Luke followed suite! Luke and Nick have 6 months free from the dentist, but Jack's 2 new molars already have cavities in them...Dr. Mello (our AWESOME dentist!) said it is likely due to antibiotic use as a baby....Jack certainly had his share!!! The rest of the day on Saturday we pretty much just HUNG out, a.k.a. running wild in the house. I knew it was time to come up with some sort of fun activity!

In my attempt to "create" wonderful Christmas memories for my three lovely boys, I came across these Christmas tree ornaments....thanks to Brooke Krauss, a teacher friend at work, who had some extras and passed them my way!

So, after dinner and baths, we lined the boys up at the counter and got ready!
Jack was a pro with following the directions...I LOVE the fact that he is such an amazing reader!
Nick was completely independent in his work too....
And of course, our little Luka Buka was following his big brothers' lead!
And voila, our finished products! They have now found a happy place on our tree!

Let's build a train!

Because of the lovely ice that fell all across the midwest on Sunday night into Monday morning last week, the boys and I had a "snow day" but without the pretty white stuff! I used the time to clean out the pantry, laundry room, and some extraneous closets while the boys played...quite well, I might add. Once Luke went down for his nap though, I pulled out this gingerbread train kit I had picked up at Target a few weeks ago.

Here are Jack and Nick posing in their Santa hats with the train after we had put it all together! They were so excited to add all the candy!!!
All of Jack's teachers have always told us of his amazing artistic ability (he must have gotten this from Dan!) and this train was no different! He chose the specific colors and shapes of the candy so meticulously.
Nick is so much more like me when it comes to anything "artsy," as he is excited to start an activity, but then after a few minutes is all done with it!
The boys pose with their finished product!
And here is a close up of our masterpiece! The boys can't wait to eat it....I told them we can on Christmas, but the thought of eating that....UGH! I'm not sure if we should eat this or not...
...maybe we'll leave it for Santa!.

Crazy dream...

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to go with this fairly random post, but since I know that Libby, our old ASL teacher, who moved to the big NYC, reads this blog, I thought she would appreciate this...so last night I had this amazing dream, the only thing was was that no one was speaking in it, rather everyone was using ASL!!!! The even crazier part is that I could actually communicate with everyone using sign. Hopefully that is a message to continue practicing...our new teacher, Mark, uses no voice at all, so needless to say, we are moving MUCH faster and really need to pay attention b/c if we look away for a minute we miss something! Wish us all luck in our continued effort to pick up this second language!

Happy Birthday to You...

After we finished our margaritas and appetizers, we headed back to our house to celebrate Aunt Jackie's birthday! She first opened her presents! What more could a pregnant PE teacher hope for than a great new maternity yoga suit! Even better when you get one in black and one in pink!
Then we sang "Happy Birthday" with this delish Peggy Brown 'present' cake. I LOVE this one! It is too cute! Luckily she had some helpers when it came to blowing out her candles!
After we were done eating we all played a new game we bought called Match Mate...think Newlywed game. Dan and I did pretty well, especially considering we were playing against 2 real newlywed couples and my parents who have been married for over 30 years!!!
One last picture of the night...here is my husband holding Baby Kate, he does look good holding a little one in pink, although I don't think she is liking it too much! :)

Dan got a call a few weeks ago telling him the good news...he had won a "cantina party" at Casa! Funny, because he didn't ever remember doing anything to win it, but who are we to turn away free margaritas and appetizers?

So last Saturday night we gathered at Casa! And of course, I had the camera!

Here is Luke resting his head on the table...thanks to Uncle Steve for snapping this one!!! I love this...especially his reflection on the table!
Dan and I enjoy our FREE margaritas! I must say, not as good as our Mexican place we go to every week after sign class, but good none the less!
Nana and Aunt Jackie enjoying the night!
Sharon was able to make it to the party...her wonderful husband, Terry was busy deer hunting, so she got to hang with Cam and Syd!
My dad ALWAYS messes with Angie...here she got him back...
Jennifer was busy with Kate, but luckily I got to walk around Casa with her as she was a bit fussy when her mom and dad were eating!
While the girls were feeding babies and chatting, the boys were well, being boys and watching the football game that was on! Uncle Steve, Bob, Papa, Dan, and Robb all hanging on the "TV watching side of the table!"
While the little boys were busy "hangin" in the corner!!! Jack, little Luke, big Luke and Nick all take a minute from their wrestling to pose for this one!
And, like anyone else would do after any fun night of drinking margaritas, two of our little ones fell asleep on the drive home...
What a fun night...too bad the little ones woke up when we got home....not yet a silent night at our house!!!

Hangin' with the girls...

Our good friends, Bob and Angie, have two beautiful twin girls, Camryn and Sydney, who are just 2 months older than Nicholas. We did a little Christmas party babysitting swap over the past two weeks. We got to watch the girls last weekend and they had the boys last night. Whenever we have the girls I always try to do something fun! This year we made reindeer food and then made and decorated cupcakes.

Here Cami and Nick are helping scoop out the oats for the reindeer food.
Jack and Syd dishing out their oats...
After we put some delicious oats in our baggies we then had to put the red and green sprinkles in there...so the reindeer can see the sprinkles from the sky of course! Here Luke is saying "cheese!" as he dumps in his sprinkles!
After we made our reindeer food, we ate our pizza!!! Then it was time for dessert! We made cupcakes and of course I had lots of little helpers! Thanks to Cam and Syd for cleaning the mixers!

Surprisingly Jack, Nick and Luke weren't interested in licking the batter...whew!!! I was seriously stressing for a quick minute when I realized I had 5 kids and only 2 mixers!

They all had fun decorating their cupcakes with sprinkles!!!

Doesn't Luke look intense???
And of course, the best part was eating their masterpieces! Here Nick is blowing a kiss to the camera! He is such a ham in front of the camera!!!
Jack can't wait to eat his...
Cami giving a beautiful smile...
And Syd...of course making sure she looked great for the pic! We even had to put her necklace back on for this one, since she had taken it off when she put on her pj's! What a cute girlie girl!!!
What a GREAT night! We are so lucky to have such good friends in our lives!!! Here's hoping the boys were as good for Bob and Angie last night! :)

Three little chefs...

So, far all who know me, know that I am by far no iron chef! It is so bad on some nights that I'm thankful that Dan has a special place in his heart for cereal, as do I! :) With that said, Christmas cookies are certainly different! I LOVE to make Christmas cookies. I start early (I made a few batches on Black Friday after an early morning of shopping!) and then put them in the freezer until I need them...works out great that way!

Well, this year was the first year that I had 3 little helpers. Jack, Nick and Luke all got into the mix...literally!!!! Here we are mixing the cookie dough...their favorite part by far. Luckily, I mixed in red and green m and m's which got their minds off of the hand mixer!

On a quick side note, today was our Sunday School's Christmas Program at church, so Nana, Papa, Uncle Steve, and Aunt Jackie all came out to watch Jack, Nick (well, he cried and then ended up sitting with us!) and Luke in their program. They then took the kids to McDonald's to eat lunch and play a bit while Dan and I feverishly wrapped presents. ANYHOW, because I had to buckle the three boys into their carseats, everyone else beat me home. And, can you guess what I see as I pull into the garage??? Papa and Uncle Steve raiding the Christmas cookies....good thing I made MORE than enough this year! I should have asked how they tasted???