Working the writing and drawing skillz

Since Alec was home for a few days with the eye crud, I decided to put him to work with a little (or big) tag making.

Alec is on the phone with either grandma or grump telling them about his picture.  The pink swirly thing is a hurricane and in top corner was the sun shining (I guess it wasn’t too bad of a hurricane)…all the dots are oil rigs in the ocean.  The black and brown is the oil spill from one of the oil rigs – it is spilling into the ocean  (green and blue colors).  It was a ‘disastrous’ picture. 

Lunch is better with friends

Breakfast with Santa

On Saturday morning we had the pleasure of dining with the Knox Family and Santa.

Us and 30 other people. :)

The boys were super psyched to be together (as usual) and pretty happy about the man in the red suit too. 

Although Alec did have to explain to us later that in fact ”it was not the real Santa – just someone pretending. Like the mall”.

After breakfast it was time to see Santa, get faces painted, decorate a cookie, visit with Frosty and in general run around creating ciaos. Typical for these two together.

I think it’s another tradition!

Mark the Elf

As you may recall Mark spent quite a bit of time in one of our cupboards last year because he just freaked Alec out so much.

What a difference a year makes.

Mark was the bane of my/our existence this year until we found a new game.

The ‘How can we annoy Alec game”.

Alec is insistent that Mark is not real. 

We moved him a few times when we first got him out and Alec just kept getting annoyed that we were moving around the decorations. He would insist that we put him back on a certain shelf ‘where he belongs’. 

He has explained to us that elves are not real- that he is a doll-and pretty much we are crazy for thinking otherwise.

I’ll be honest- we haven’t pushed the whole ‘magical’ thing as far as others. Why lie?  It’s fun if they believe on their own but if you have to convince your child of a lie then is it truly fun and magical?

If  we gently remind Alec that Mark will tell Santa if he is naughty- Alec quips back with ‘then Mark will tell Santa you are being mean to me and you won’t get any presents for Christmas’(insert exacerbated sigh and eye roll) with  ‘I’ve told you- he’s not real’.

This apparently was a bit of an act because one night we forgot to move Mark. We could hear Alec walking though the living room to our room and we hear ‘ha..he didn’t move. I knew he wasn’t real’.  Erik whispers ‘that little $hit – of course that would be the first thing he notices’.  I had to laugh. It is just so typical of what happens around here.

Alec questioned why he hadn’t moved and I said “ he was too tired”.  

I got the Alec look of disdain. If you know Alec, then you know the look I am referring to.  It’s the ‘don’t be stupid look’.

Of which Alec responded with “he doesn’t have a heart beat”.

Touché.

I dropped the subject.

We moved Mark to the tree the next night and in the morning I hear “I wish the grown-ups would stop moving him around. It’s annoying”.

Debbie put Mark on the fan:

Alec was concerned “ that he was in a dangerous spot and might break”.

I stuck him on top of the tv this morning and I heard Alec muttering “he’s going to get electrocuted up there …don’t they know that?”

I think the goal is now to move him around just to see how annoyed we can make Alec.

A new fun family tradition.

Mom & Dad 1/child 0

But like any other stuffed animal Alec has…he still feels the need to take care of him:

Cookies are important for everyone – even those without taste buds.  

Aren’t they?

A Gingerbread House

What makes something a tradition?

Just curious.

I am noticing that now that we are settled in our house some things are becoming a ‘tradition’ not because we have done it for so many years but because I can we are going to do it(whatever it is) for a few years to come. This event is one of those occasions.  I just can’t imagine doing a gingerbread house in our house now that we have done one at the rec department last and this year.

It is almost perfect. No candy to purchase- no frosting all over my house – no clean up.

Nana had the night off so we brought her with us. She had a great time helping us decorate and sneak eat the candy.

Erik was less of a project manager this year.

Alec and I gave him a few specific jobs and he was able to focus on those.

With that taken care of, we were able to be as creative as we wanted.

I think this will be a tradition.

Elmo & Bert & Ernie- Oh My!

Alec’s school took the ‘older’ (and I use that term very loosely when I’m talking daycare) to see Sesame Street Live in Portland on Friday. I was kind of psyched about it. You see, I don’t usually work on Fridays so Alec is home with me. An excuse to send him for a fun event and I could have the morning to myself to clean toilets, do dishes and fold laundry was a pretty exciting thought.  Yeah!

But alas, they needed 1 more adult volunteer to offset the 40 children. Alec really wanted me to go so I e-mail the director and got myself a ticket.

The whole way to the school I reminded myself that I’ve only have and will continue to only have 1 child so if I miss a field trip like this- I don’t get a redo with child #2 or #3 etc. And Alec was so excited to have me go with him that it melted this grinchy ‘ol heart into a pool of mush. My boy still wants me to go with him on field trips. That is so much better than cleaning. What was I thinking missing this?

I’ll be honest, the thought of 40 little kids on a bus made me want to stick a fork in my eye.

It was all very organized. They had shirts for the kids to wear all the same color that went on over their jackets so while in movement to and from the bus they all matched. Inside- once jackets were off they put color coded (by age group) name tags (without names) on the back of their shirts so if one ran off you would be able to see them from the back. They brought snacks for the kids for intermission. All very good.

The bus ride, well, that was painful.

Both ways. 

On the way there the kids were so hyped up. On the way back it was past noon so the littler kids where sobbing because their schedules were out of whack and it was past their lunch and they were ready for naps.

It must have been driving the bus driver crazy because all of a sudden the holiday tunes came on over the radio…very loud. All the PreK kids were very well behave in the back of the bus and so it gave Alec’s teachers a moment to have a little fun singing.

It was hilarious.

They are a little crazy.

And that makes them so much fun for the kids!

Thankful that the bus ride was over, I let Alec pick his choice for going out to eat for lunch.  Applebees.  As far as kid’s choices go, not a bad choice.

It was a fun day!

Too cute!

Alec Santa video (click on it)