Ho! Ho! Ho!

I think if you do something the same way two years in a row, you can start to call it a tradition. With that said, we have a new tradition! When I work the day before Thanksgiving (as I've done the last several years now), Todd takes the kids to go see Santa. The lines aren't crazy long yet and the kids are in a relatively good mood, mostly because they're out running errands with Todd and not with me :) Daddy is almost always more fun than Mommy - it's just a fact of life. As you can see, there were no tears (aside from the ones in the car when Kate was determined that she was NOT going to tell Santa what she wanted). Everyone got to tell Santa what they wanted and they even got the obligatory picture or two in the process! Santa even told Brett that he wanted "too much things" as Brett put it.

Waiting patiently to go see Santa

Sibling love - I think they were showing off to get on Santa's "good list"

Smiling for the camera - I'm glad we had a good Santa... some of our friends' Santas are a little questionable!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was almost 2 weeks ago, but here I am, just getting around to posting the very few pictures that I actually took that day. Anyway, we went over to my Aunt Mary & Uncle Linwood's house... Mary is #4 of the 9 Harrisons (for those that care and keep track of who's who in that big crazy family). We only had 27 people this year. Yep, you read that right - only 27. It seemed sort of low key compared to normal, but it was nice that it was low key. It was also nice that our kids (and the other kids that were there) behaved beautifully, despite no nap that day! It's always fun catching up with family that we don't see that often despite living in the same city. And it was nice of my aunt and uncle to offer up their gorgeous house to all of us and the kids. I'm always worried that our kids are going to wreck something in their house, but Brett knew exactly where my aunt keeps the toys and exactly what he was allowed to play with, so that helped tremendously!

Uncle Linwood, my cousin's wife Dana, and my aunt's mom "Yaya"

Uncle Steve, carving the bird

Brett loves sitting by the pool - even if it was sort of cold and drizzly

Kate liked doing it just because it was now raining harder and I told her no, repeatedly

Spoofing - no way did that child sleep in the middle of the Thanksgiving comotion!

Superhero birthday

The kids were both invited to a "superhero" birthday party - the birthday boy is in Kate's class and he was on Brett's soccer team this year. I really think they got invited because Mac LOVES Coach Todd, but, unfortunately for him, I was on birthday party duty on Saturday :) Either way, I think the kids all had fun learning tricks from the real-life Spiderman!

Leaves

I just love the beautiful colors of our yard in the fall, and the massive amount of leaf-handling that is on the hubby's to-do list in the next few days :)

 

Harvest Moon Festival

In order to make the Harvest Moon Festival a "fundraiser" it takes a LOT of volunteers and a LOT of donations. There are always a few classes that are asked to bring in a couple cakes per student to be used in the cake walk. They'll pick the top 5 cakes and then auction those cakes off separate from the cake walk. I decided to make this jeep cake that I'd seen in one of the kids' cake books that I have, as well as the Christmas ornament cupcakes. Do you know that somebody bid $20 on my jeep cake and someone paid $15 per 4 cupcakes?!?! It made me laugh, especially the cupcakes because I was sooooo over it by that point. Not to mention that I was running late for set-up Friday night because I was finishing my cupcakes. Oops. :)

Our kids LOVE the festival - there are tons of games, all of them age-appropriate. This is the 3rd year that we've gone to the festival and each year the kids are able to do more and more by themselves. Brett was running around like a crazy person this year, and each of them were so excited to see their school friends "away" from school.

Quick sibling hugs

Concentrating very hard, waiting for the music to start

He LOVES the cake walk! I love that he won a UNC cake for me :)

They even came by to visit me at the Volunteer Booth!

Harvest Moon Baskets

I love the Harvest Moon Festival at the preschool. It is such a fun-filled day and the money made from the festival goes directly to help families in need afford preschool tuition. This year, I actually helped out on the committee for Harvest Moon, mainly with organizing volunteers (all 201 of them, to be exact). I made some great new friends along the way!

One of the best parts of Harvest Moon is seeing all of the baskets done by the classes. The class with the "best basket" and the class with the "most tickets sold" each earn a pizza party. Guess what?! Brett's class won both - woohoo!! I can't take much credit though... the parent in charge of ALL of the basktes has a son in Brett's class and she did probably 90% of the work for that basket. It was freakin' AWESOME! It sold 600+ tickets itself!! Crazy! Also, another cool little tidbit - the family that won our awesome basket also won another awesome basket and chose to donate the Science & Nature basket to a family in our class that just suffered a terrible miscarriage. Families like that make our preschool such a fantastic place to be a part of! I get chills just thinking about how sweet and thoughtful that was.

ALL of the Harvest Moon baskets

Brett's class - "Science & Nature"

Kate's class - "Triangle Sports"

Neighborhood Halloween

Our neighbors across the street host a Halloween party every year. The idea is to let the kids run around and play, the adults enjoy some adult beverages, and everyone gets to eat dinner before the trick-or-treating begins. It's always a good time. This year they added a donut eating contest... I think the dads should all participate next year!

The kids all lined up, ready to eat their donuts with no hands!

This little one thought she should have a turn too!

On your mark, get set...

GO!

It's apparently much harder than it looks... they eventually got to use their hands!

They went hunting for bones too. Then they had to assemble the skeleton.

Evan, showing off his guns

Ready to get some CANDY!

Pumpkin carving

We carved the pumpkins the day before Halloween this year. The boys wanted to do it outside like we did last year, but I held strong... it was too cold and I was NOT going to attempt "Ariel" with freezing cold fingers and a 3 year old close by. I think the kids had some fun helping out, although they got tired of it pretty fast. Brett was all gung-ho that he wanted something specific, until I made jack-o-lanters with his class the day before (with sticky foam pieces, pre-cut). So, he decided that he wanted his big pumpkin to look exactly like his little pumpkin. Todd was more than ok that that decision. No matter how hard I tried to guide Kate's decision, she was determined that she wanted Ariel, so that's what she got. I did my pumpkin after the kids went to bed :)

Mac's Halloween party

Just a few quick pictures from the kids' friend, Mac's, Halloween party...

Brett LOVED jumping on the trampoline... it was a race to see if the kids could throw the balls out faster than the adults could throw them back in!

Kate and Brett's "girlfriend", Gia... Gia's little brother, Sonny, is in Kate's class this year

Gia & Brett

Kate & Sonny

Going through the treasure they won during the pumpkin hunt

Sneak peek!

I'm so far behind on the blog, but I just wanted to share a couple of my favorites from our fun play day today... I just love these two kids! They cracked me up all day long!