Blogging is time consuming, so I've been a bit neglectful. But because the whole Facebook-o-sphere doesn't need to see our family pictures I'm going to break down and write a blog today. Here's what has been happening on the East Coast over the last month or so...
Fall came and all of the leaves fell. There were A LOT. Most we were able to mulch up with the lawnmower, but we blew some of them into a pile for Jon and the dogs. This is our small pile.
But then it got cold and the fountain in our pond froze. So much for moving water not freezing. I think the 3 goldfish in it are still alive, we've since bought a heater for it. This is when we were jealous of CA weather.
For Thanksgiving we went to PA. We had just had a storm that dumped mostly sleet. The power was out in PA until about 2 hours before we arrived because the ice caused downed power lines. Wish you lived here, don't you.
It did make for some beautiful scenery though!
We decided we wanted to do a fun activity with the kids before leaving, so we took Jon and Micaela along with their cousins Nick and Kendall to an ice skating rink. No one was any good, but it was fun! I was a bit impressed with Jon's balance and the boy's fearlessness. Micaela was good and fast when she was holding someone's hand.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree... two goofballs putting the topper on the tree. We did this after getting home from Thanksgiving in PA.
The weekend of the USC-UCLA game Kathy Higerd posted a picture of all her grandkids in UCLA gear, and we just couldn't have that. Unfortunately our school spirit didn't do much for our team.
We also do an advent calendar every year. This year instead of small candies or presents every day we decided to do activities or give clues to a few bigger surprises that we had hid around the house. Some of the activities were to make coffee filter snowflakes, make christmas cookies, and have a fancy candlelight dinner (even though we are not fancy people in our sweats).
Kurt and I also had Christmas parties for our respective offices. Kurt's was at the hotel on West Point and they played a cool Christmas Jeopardy game that Kurt had put together. The kids went to that one, but Jon was kind of bored, so he's laying on the floor with my iPad while we all talk and eat. My Xmas party was an adult-only ugly sweater themed event at a Restaurant in Cornwall. It was a lot of fun until Micaela called to tell us Jon was throwing up (24 hour flu). I won the ugliest female sweater award.
We also bought season hockey tickets to watch the West Point hockey team. They are a young team and are not very good if I'm being honest, but it's still a lot of fun to go.
And then we had our first snow storm, followed by a day of melting and freezing to make everything icy. And then it snowed again.
Jon finished his first half of Kindergarten and loves to write. This is his Earth Manual and his book of sight words (which he calls passwords). He's still working on his letters and likes to do them backwards, but he sure does have being "cool" down. The picture below is what he told me "cool" looks like.
Because we are going to PA for Christmas, we decided that we would open the presents we have here before we go. Mainly the stuff mom and dad had sent. Since I have to work tonight (Sat) and tomorrow morning, we decided that this morning would be our mini-Christmas. The kids didn't seem to mind. Micaela got her big present (a new tablet and desk) and Jon got a T-Rex Robot that takes voice commands from mom and dad which is awesome.
