Mums the Word

Okay, I know that it is starting to be something that I can no longer hide. I am pregnant. BUT we are telling our kids as part of a Christmas surprise so PLEASE do NOT talk to them about it, or ask them about it. I am 17 weeks and get to find out the gender before Christmas (again, all part of the SURPRISE!!). I am one of those lucky few who have great pregnancies. I was exhausted during the first trimester and took naps almost daily, but besides my lack of waking up at 6 to work out to which I wish I could still do but not really, I feel great. Again, SILENCE PLEASE!!

Pictionary

To any of my old college buddies, do you remember playing Pictionary? I have such wonderful memories of crazy pictionary battles at the Presidio. I decided to bring this game out during our quarantine last week and the kids really took to it. We just took turns drawing on a white board and guessing, but the kids thought it was a blast. Nathan did the best drawing on Sunday. He had been begging to play it again all day and we finally said okay. He said he had found a great card and wanted to see if we could guess it. I wish I had the picture but Annabelle erased it, so you will have to use your imagination. First he drew tires and what looked like a truck. We kept guessing things like car, truck, bus. Then in the bed of the truck he started to draw a bunch of circles with 1 dot in each of them. We tried to figure out what those were, tires, donuts, balloons? Finally we gave up and Nathan found the card for us to look at. It said "Tummy tuck" and he had interpreted "tummy truck." Greg and I laughed pretty hard over that one. So the circles were tummies and the dots were of course the belly buttons. This game will probably be a regular at our house now, but we will have to encourage them to draw only after they are sure they read the word right.

Thanksgiving Break

Greg came home sick on Monday and was home all week with the flu (which Ryan had the whole week before that). On Wednesday I took the kids to Toys R Us to get some Christmas ideas and Annabelle all of a sudden spiked a fever and looked exhausted. She fell asleep in the car and was sick the rest of the week. Luckily she mainly just had a yucky cold and not all the flu symptoms like the boys.
Thanksgiving Day I took the boys over to my cousins for dinner/lunch. It was delicious, but it just wasn't the same without my Greg and Annie. When we got home I decided to carry out a tradition Greg's brothers like to do and so I beat the old Nintendo game Super Mario Brothers 3. We have it on our Wii and since it is one of the few games my family ever owned, I am quite good at it. Nathan and Ryan cheered me on as I beat all the levels and finally Bowser at the end. I have to admit I, too, was very excited when Bowser fell through the bricks.

The day after Thanksgiving the boys were SO anxious to start decorating. Greg was still out of commission and I didn't want to get the boxes out of the crawl space so I told the boys that if they got the boxes out I would help them decorate. They were awesome helpers!! It is going to be nice to have these two big boys helping me my whole life. Although I don't know if I will ever understand why they like to wrestle each other. We decorated the house (I don't have that much stuff, but they remembered everything from years before and got so excited with each piece), but told the boys we had to wait for Greg and Annabelle to wake up before we decorated the tree.

I don't love our tree, it is fake and too small, but it is perfect for the kids and they did a great job decorating it this year. I only moved a couple of ornaments and left the rest to be haphazardly placed. We had hot chocolate and just spent the rest of the day watching Christmas shows. It wasn't the most exciting Thanksgiving holiday, but we spent A LOT of time as a family and it is them that I am most thankful for, so what could be better (besides a healthy family).

radKIDS

This last week has been CRAZY! I signed my boys up for radKIDS (a self defense and safety program) and while it was a lot of fun and the boys learned some great things, it was a lot of work for our whole family. I ended up helping 4 of the 5 days (which was OK, just took up my evenings and made dinner later than usual) and so both Annabelle and I learned a lot of the safety strategies as well. The boys also were exhausted each day and went to bed without too much complaining (though it didn't help them sleep in any earlier). Here are some pictures of the last day-Simulation-when police officers come and get all geared up so the kids can practice their moves.
Nathan all geared up and ready to go:

Ryan beating up the detective.

Annabelle practicing her peppers.

Saying good-bye to Bob the dummy.

I noticed this card on the ceiling in the school cafeteria and remembered how Nathan had told us that about a year ago a Magician came to the school and Nate had written his name on the card and then it had been thrown up to the ceiling, and it is still there. Pretty cool!

Learning to Read

Ryan is in kindergarten and learning to read. He doesn't have the patience that Nathan has to sit for long periods of time, but he does have a great desire and it is doing awesome. Last night at dinner he was even trying to read the words on a water bottle he was using. It said Symantec 5K. Imagine our surprise/horror as he attempt to sound out 5K...let's just hope that word never is said again, knowingly. Greg and I didn't say a thing, but it was pretty funny, after I realized he was trying to read something.