Week of 11/20

This was a really busy week with Thanksgiving and prep, but we spent lots of time together and not too much time working.

Monday we had tennis. Logan is loving it.  Andrew is bummed to be in a group with younger kids than Seth, which is hard for him, but hopefully they'll all learn a lot.

Tuesday, Logan had his Thanksgiving feast in the morning.  Katsu went and basically watched him eat in his cool outfit and say a little prayer.  I really wanted to come but couldn't get a sitter for Noah.  Oh, well.  Then, we grocery shopped, made a cherry pie, and cleaned the house for our pie night.  I was kind of worried no one would come, and no one did, at least for the first 30 minutes, but then it was packed afterwards and a lot of fun.  Everyone just brought a pie and chatted.  The boys were upstairs playing with nerf guns and kids were on the drums and running around and it was just crazy and a nice way to start out the weekend.

Wednesday, busy cooking most of the day and trying to watch key Gilmore Girls episodes.  Boys had a half day of school and spent lots of time playing outside and watching screens, but fun was had by all.

Thursday, we started the day at the turkey trot.  Katsu, Andrew, and Seth ran.  It wasn't too cold, but it did rain near the end.  There was lots of other people we knew there from the neighborhood, ward, and work, so that was fun.  We told Seth he could run as fast as he wanted, so he did and Katsu and Andrew ran together.  Seth ran the entire time and finished in 26 min 38 seconds.  We were at the finish line and got him when he finished.  He felt pretty sick for the first couple minutes and told me he didn't want to do that again, but then after that he was just proud.  He ran faster than any kids his age or younger.  Out of the kids under 10, he was 4th.  Not bad for his first race.  Katsu had to motivate Andrew some, but he finished in 42 minutes or something like that, so a good 5+ minutes faster than his last race.  Good for him!  There were lots of his friends from running club running too, so that was fun.  And Seth was just proud of how fast he raced.

We went home, threw the turkey in oven, and watched the Macy's Day parade, and then finished cooking dinner.  It was just - kind of anticlimatic - and we had way too much food because the boys don't really like any Thanksgiving food.  Next year, we need to have less or more people to share it with.  We had turkey, stuffing (sausage, pecans, and apricots), gravy, rolls, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, apple pie, chocolate pudding pie, and pecan pie squares.  We rested and then had dessert.

Friday we put up the Christmas tree and decorations and tried to play games together, but each one ended up in fights and chaos.  Andrew was particularly awful and spent a lot of time in his room.  We had the elf on the shelf out and we played the elf games he brought with him.  The boys loved it and were making up their own games of hiding the flashing rudolf nose outside - until they broke it!

Saturday, we spent most of the day with me taking the kids shopping individually to buy presents for the rest of the family members and then wrapping them up.  We also went with Brother's Keeper to feed the homeless/poor.  The boys just played at the park, but it was a good time and the stuffing we brought was gone in a flash.

Andrew - lots of trouble as always.  He loses his temper like crazy and then will lash out verbally and then physically attack to the point where he hit me this week.  Not good.  At all.  But when he's good ... he's good.  He has worked hard on getting ready for the battle of the books because they are making the team next week.  He really enjoyed decorating the tree and then putting toys around it.

Seth - super anxious to open Christmas presents.  He was the one insistent on buying them and then has been giving out clues, so basically everyone already knows what his presents are.  He has been loud and whiny lately, but also spending lots of time outside with friends.  His main thing is complaining about how everyone he knows (including the smart kids!) get more screen time than he does and how I am the meanest mom ever.

Logan - he seems really tired this week and has been having lots of tantrums.  On Saturday, we cleaned up in the evening so we could finish getting everything done.  He hates picking up, so before we knew it, he had put himself to sleep and was already asleep.  This is not the first time it's happened either!  He spends a lot of time playing with our neighbor, riding his ziggle up and down the driveway or playing in the sand box.

Noah - he was happy to be at home a lot this week and wore more costumes than I can count.  He is always dressed up as something!  He is talking a lot more and has been enjoying talking about the parade in Raleigh and how he saw Spiderman.  He is loving all the Christmas decorations and presents and wants to open them already!  He bought his brothers' Christmas presents - ornaments - so he could give it to them right away and I think he got the concept of giving.

Recent pictures and a video from Logan's party

Fall - Oct & Nov

I can not seem to get enough time to blog, so I'm going to do the last month and then I'm going to try just a little weekly update.

We have been really busy the last month with Halloween, Logan's birthday, Katsu out of town, and then Logan's birthday party and just normal busy-ness.  So, we didn't get a lot of reading time in.  We need to get back to reading, too.  Plus, Seth has been sleeping with Andrew and so we are all in different rooms and haven't gotten into it.  The boys have been doing lots of reading.  Seth has finally started reading chapter books and taking tests on them for school.  He read the Poppy books from Avi and just finished them all.  He also read one of the Battle of the books books - he really wants to be just like Andrew.  Andrew has been reading the Tennis Shoes books and another series.

Fun Things

• Katsu and I went to see the Parsons Dance Company and really enjoyed it.  So nice to get out!
• Noah had lots of fun carving pumpkins in preschool.  He loved Halloween so much and loved to see all the pumpkins and say "Halloween".  He keeps saying Halloween all the time.
• Noah & Logan went to a truck birthday party.  Noah didn't warm up till near the end because there were tons of kids there, but then he didn't want to leave.
• Trunk or treat.  They had a carnival first and the boys liked that - Seth and Noah were too scared to do the spooky room, but they liked playing the games and getting little treats.  And of course, they loved getting treats at the trick or treat.  Someone took pictures of the families, so I'll have to get one because that is the only halloween picture we have of us.  Whoops.
• We were going to try out a couple other trunk or treats, but Katsu had a migraine, so we ended up just having a quiet night at home.
• Noah and Logan had Halloween parties.  I brought the treat bags for Noah's party and had fun making them - glad it's done, though.  They both got to wear costumes.  Andrew had a party at school, too.
• Halloween - we had people over for dinner which was a little crazy!  They came earlier than I expected and I had laundry everywhere, but oh, well - I just kept folding it.  The last year or so, it has become really hard to stay on top of the laundry.  The boys didn't want to eat the chili and at one point, Seth's chili "accidentally" flew over the fence ... finally, they went out trick or treating.  They were so excited.  They wanted to do the whole neighborhood.  The whole family went out most of the time, but Katsu felt sick near the end.  We should have all gone home, but the boys were demanding to see more, so I took them, but they were too tired to even stop and ask for candy. Monday on Halloween is a little crazy and not my favorite.
• Wed. was Logan's birthday.  He had a little cake and got his presents - some Imaginext Batman things from his grandparents, which Noah promptly decided were his and we fought that battle for the next week, and we got him a Ziggle and a sticker book.  He loves the Ziggle and wants to play with it all the time.  Then, Katsu took him and Noah to school, and then left on a business trip to Phoenix.  We brought in cupcakes for Logan's class.  We got a pizza for his birthday and maybe watched a movie - we took it really low key.
• Saturday while Katsu was gone, Andrew had his running club race.  It was pretty chilly and I wasn't thinking and didn't bring chairs, so we were standing there waiting for a long time.  But Seth found his friend and they played his video game thing for a while - poor Logan and Noah were more bored.  I was so proud of Andrew - he finished the 5k!  And he wasn't even the last person!  The boys have been so excited since then they are planning on running a 5k for Thanksgiving and want to go running all the time. We went to Chick-fil-a afterwards to celebrate.
• Election day was busy.  Andrew ran for student government president (he made his class representative and barely even told us!).  He had made some posters and made a speech.  He didn't win (he told me it was because some of his friends didn't vote for him ... poor thing), but he didn't seem too sad about it.  He is so busy already with being a representative, running club, battle of the books, leadership, plus all his gifted pull-out programs, it is probably for the best.  Seth and Andrew voted for president at their school (Clinton won).  Logan voted for president at preschool, too.  His classmates were trying to figure out who to vote for, asking questions like "well, who is the boy?" or voting for whoever's name they liked best.  Then, apparently, Logan said "Well, let me tell you what it's all about it.  There is a boy and he wants to build a wall.  And the girl does not want to build a wall."  The kids were so fascinated (they thought it was a lego wall) and his teacher was impressed he had a clue what was going on.  Their class voted for Trump.  Noah went with me and voted with me - no lines.  I should have done early voting, but I procrastinated forever who to vote for in all the 30ish positions I had to vote for.  Katsu and I stayed up for a while watching election coverage ... I am still not too happy about the results nor are the kids.  Today they told me that they think the popular vote should win, not the electoral college.  At least they are learning some civics ...
• The next morning, Logan had his postponed (from the hurricane) trip to the pumpkin patch.  Katsu went with the first part while I gave my class a test, and then I was there the second half.  They had tons of fun at Briley's.  I went to see the little animals and on the hayride.  They only had the big pumpkins (all the little pumpkins were destroyed in the hurricane flooding) and we each picked one out.  We never got to actually carving pumpkins this year (whoops!), but they still are going strong as decorations outside.  It was fun to spend some one-on-one time with Logan.
• Boys got a couple days off school for Veteran's Day and parent-teacher conferences, but no scheduled any conferences, so they just played and had a babysitter when I went to work.
• We had Logan's birthday party on Nov. 12, because I figured I really didn't want to do it without Katsu home.  I was worried that no one was coming when there were only 2 people after 15 minutes, but almost everyone we planned on showed up.  It was a fun party and went much better than last year.  The boys ran around for a while and Andrew/Seth led them in some Jedi training, I think.  Then, they did nerf gun shooting of death stars.  Then, we did donuts on a string (that was a hit!).  Then, the kids ran around for a while.  Then, we did the egg race (eggs colored like storm troopers).  We also did little lego guys frozen in ice and they had to try to break it with a spoon.  They LOVED that one.  We had cake and chips.  Logan insisted on a darth vader cake, so Katsu and I cut out a stencil out of a file folder and then used it to powder sugar the top of the cake.  It looked pretty good - even better in pictures for some reason ... ha ha.  Then, we opened presents.  Did a Darth Vader pinata.  And then played some more games - we tried volley ball with a huge ball, but the boys all started to fight.  And so the party really ended up at just an hour and a half long, which was just perfect.  It was pretty fun and I am always so glad when they are done!  We went to Chick-fil-a for dinner because the boys got free nuggets with their report card and we were worn out.  A nice evening.
• Monday we had to bring healthy snacks to Logan's class, so we sent in a sampler of 4 or 5 different kinds of apples, which they loved.  The boys also started tennis.  Logan, Seth, and Andrew are all playing.  Logan is LOVING it.  He wants to practice all the time and is doing a pretty good job - you have to be 5, so he was just old enough.  Seth got moved up on Wednesday to an older group, which is harder for Andrew.  I hope it won't stay like that.  I love tennis because it is not too far away, they are all at the same time, and it's not evenings or weekends.  Hopefully, they will enjoy that and running as life-long fitness pursuits.
• Tuesday, Seth had his awards day at school with a little party since they didn't have a party for Halloween.  Seth got all S's on his report card with weirdly only like 3 other people.  He has had a sub for about a month now while his teacher is on maternity leave.  His sub loves him.  But it has sure made some weird dynamics at school for Seth.  Supposedly he was supposed to be pulled out for some enrichment, but that has still not happened.
• I also had my Book club and it was fun with like 5 people.  We read Serafina and the Black Cloak, so it was a quick easy read.
• Andrew had his award day on Thursday and got an award for all A's.  He also started Science Olympiad.  Originally, his teacher didn't turn in the paperwork on time, so he didn't make it, but she talked to them, and now he is on it.  He is doing the competitions for data crunchers and one about earthquakes and that kind of science.  He is excited.
• Friday was a play for the boys and Katsu took all but Noah to see it - Skippyjon Jones - Snow What.  They enjoyed it mostly, but mostly just like seeing it together and then going to McDonalds for ice cream and playing chess.
• Saturday we drove to Raleigh to see the Raleigh Christmas parade.  We hit random traffic, but got there in time and sat at the end of the route which I really liked.  The weather was fabulous - like 70s by the afternoon.  Unusually warm for the Christmas parade.  It had 3 balloons - a penguin, a shark, and Shrek.  We could see them coming from far away, so that was fun.  They made the shark go into the crowd, which was pretty fun.  The boys sat and ate cookies and enjoyed it, even though there was no candy.  Lots of bands, some cars, lots of floats and dancers.  Noah loved the people dressed up in costumes, especially Spiderman (he showed off his ever-present Spiderman costume) and the star wars characters.  Everytime he sees someone with a Santa hat he says "ho ho ho".  Then, we ate a picnic lunch by the Duke Energy center and walked to the natural history museum.  There was also a Native American festival going on, so we looked at the dancing and the amazing costumes.  It was really fun.  The boys were a little crazy at the natural history museum, but we survived.  We stopped at Trader Joes and picked up our favorites and some holiday food and then drove home.  After some bickering, we finally picked a Japanese restaurant and went to Osaka to celebrate Nichi-go-san for boys who are 3 or 5 or 7.  It was a buffet, sort of.  It's one price and then you mark off which food you want to eat on a little sheet and they make it and bring it out for you.  The boys LOVED it.  Katsu and I were not super impressed with the quality of food, but, it was a fun experience.