Merry Christmas

 Normally, on Christmas Eve, we go see a movie, but there wasn't anything out that we hadn't already seen or really did not want to see. So, we went bowling. Max beat everyone in the first round, which was a first! He was pretty excited.

After bowling we went home and prepared our traditional Christmas Eve dinner with steak and kind crab legs. This is probably Max's favorite meal of the whole year. 

We let our bellies rest while we tracked Santa.

Christmas morning, Max was excited to see the Pac-Man arcade game that he asked for along with a million other gifts. He has quite a few Thank You cards to write!

We spent the rest of the day relaxing until it was time to pop the bottle of champagne and get the fondue pots going for the Christmas dinner. 

Here's to wishing our family and friends, near and far, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

All Things December Leading Up To Xmas

 We kicked off December with Max's holiday choir concert. It's his last holiday choir concert for elementary school. Ugh!

Max took some cute pics with his dogs.

I chaperoned the 6th-grade field trip to the MIM. I had four boys in my group and let's just say they were all bored. I am glad we were only at the museum for two hours. It's definitely a place you can explore all day long, but four 12-year-old boys cannot do that. After 15 minutes, they were asking when we were leaving. Either way, it was fun to chaperone and see Max with his buddies. I was exhausted once I got home from all the overstimulation. 

We watched a holiday movie outside one night. This is turning into a holiday tradition. The evening started out quite warm, but by the end of the movie, it was really cold out. 

Max earned the PRIDE award for second quarter due to his good behavior. Next quarter, we are working on that honor roll.

We went to Max's last jingle jog. This is not something he enjoys. I guess it's too much movement. I enjoy watching anyway. 

I was gifted Suns tickets from a printing vendor that I referred a large client to, so all three of us went to the game. It was Max and my first time at an NBA game. I definitely had fun.

My parents arrived in town for Christmas and to watch the dogs while we went on a cruise. The first day, we decorated gingerbread houses and watched a Christmas movie. 

Somehow, December went by so fast! 

November Round-Up

 Now that we are in December and sped fast past Thanksgiving, I will give the update on November. We started going to Farmer's Markets again. This is something Max really likes to do. He likes to go and taste all the different local foods. He's such a little foodie!

Max had a Ruby Bridges walk at school one morning. I joined him on this educational walk and saw all the kids from different backgrounds come together to participate in such an inspiring walk to school.

We had the annual Children's Museum charity event with our friends. We cleaned up
nicely and had a great time with everyone.

Grandpa T and Grandma S were in town, so of course we had dinner with them. 

Max had the annual Turkey Trot. This got me a little sad, thinking this is the last Turket Trot I will get to see. 

It was time to inject the bird for Andy to smoke. This is Max's favorite part about Thanksgiving.

We had a smaller Thanksgiving this year with just us and Grandpa T. Even though it was smaller, we still made all the food, including Grandma's Buns.

We had sushi dinner with Grandpa T before he headed back to the cold and snow.

We kicked off the Christmas season with tickets to the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert. This was Max's first time seeing them, and it's always a cool concert and gets you into the holiday spirit.

Happy Halloween!

 It's that time of year again where we get to dress up in costume and celebrate my favorite holiday! Early in the month Max and I did our tradition of going to the Halloween store to check out the costumes. This is the first year Max didn't know what he wanted to dress up as so we went to get inspiration to see if he could figure it out. We had fun in the store, but left with Max more confused.

We went to the "pumpkin patch" to get our pumpkins. This is always an annual disappointment for me.

Max decided to paint one pumpkin with the Wicked logo.

Sammy enjoyed pumpkin carving and ate most of the pumpkin guts. Zoe had zero interst in eatin the pumpkin. 

The other pumpkin he carved with Andy to be the character from the movie Monsters Inc and it turned out pretty cool!

After a few nights of Googling, Max came to the conclusion that he would be LED man. We got him the LED mask that featured 50 different faces he could pick from, and the LED gloves. He then wore all black. This turned out to be a cool costume and he picked the scream face for the night.

We hung out at our friends house while the kids trick-or-treated. Andy reluctantly dressed up that night too. I was very happy he sucked it up and dressed up for my favorite holiday.

We had a great time that night and I look forward to doing it again next year!