Life Lately And a Birthday

 It's been a while since I have updated the blog.  

We had a great Thanksgiving break and the kids are back in school today (some were more excited than others).

The tooth fairy is broke at our house.  Nora has lost several teeth in the last few weeks (I think she is at 6 total already). 

And another one bites the dust.....

She asked me last week what I think the tooth fairy does with all of the teeth.  When I told her that I don't know she said that she does know.  She said the tooth fairy sells all the baby teeth to the market and they make shark teeth out of them, so that they can sell them.

Interesting story.

Before it got too cold we decided to break out the tent in the backyard again.  

We fit all 5 of us in it.  

Of course we had to roast some s'mores that night.

We celebrated Nora turning 6.  

The birthday table is such a fun tradition.

The happy birthday donuts were a big hit.

Nora is a very sweet, sassy and fun little girl.  She is always up for helping out and thinks about others all of the time.  She also likes to tell on others (we are working on that).  She is doing great in school and loves it.  

She is still a fantastic doll mommy and loves to play Barbie.  Her room and the playroom are always a giant mess, but she can play by herself with Barbies and dolls for hours.  I had told her that we need to clean out some toys and she said that was no problem.  She brought me a couple little Barbie accessories (like Barbie shoes) and said she doesn't need those anymore.

She wanted to measure herself on her birthday to see how much bigger she got.

It does feel like she grew up over night.

She wanted to open a few presents before school and then wait and open the rest after school.  Evan kept trying to talk her into opening all in the mornings (he always says he will open a couple on the mornings and the rest after school, but he struggles with that.....once he gets going he wants to open them all).

Lego Dots bracelets from her cousins in Germany were a favorite gift

Sleepover in the theater for the birthday girl.  She got a robe, teddy bear and caboodle for the special occasion.

Hannah has been busy baking again.  These turkey cupcakes turned out so cute.

We rented out Skylight movie theater to watch The Elf.  Such a fun experience to have a movie theater all to ourselves.  

Of course Scott and I dug up our old Elf costumes for the occasion.

Hannah said she was glad it was a private showing, so she didn't have to worry about anybody seeing her parents like this.  Ha!  Embarrassing your pre-teen kid is one of the greatest pleasures in life!

We had a very low key Thanksgiving break and stayed home.  We did another book day and had a lot of fun with it.

We started the day with reading The Pajama Zoo Parade.

Our list for the day

We made animal tambourines and a had a (very loud) parade around the house.  

Hannah made a peacock

I made a giraffe

Evan made a clown shark 

Nora made a purple flamingo

We made binoculars and went on a treasure hunt.....

I hid all of these little politic animals in the house and they hd to work together to find them all.  I asked them how many they think they can find in 15min.....they said 20 out of the 26 and they did it.

We played some minute to win it type of games....this is where the fighting started, because they are all a little competitive.

We made individual trail mixes.....of course we had animal crackers.

For our math sheets I printed magic squares and they all loved them.  We have now printed a bunch more magic squares.

This picture is for proof that Scott did grow a beard.

On Thanksgiving we made cute little place cards out of leaves and corks....

We had told the kids that they need to run a 5k on Thanksgiving day (Scott and I normally do a turkey trot), but that it can be in increments.  They just have to get to 3 miles by the end of the day.  Evan got on the treadmill at 7am in just is underwear (no shoes) and just knocked it out all at once.  The girls broke it up into a few runs throughout the day.

We baked a pumpkin pie!

And did a family Scavenger hunt.  It was boys against girls.  The boys won, but there was some arguing about that.  One of the things on the list was to find a turkey and take a picture of it.  Since we were not fixing a turkey for thanksgiving this proved to be a little challenging.  The boys asked our neighbors to take a picture of their turkey......

Selfie in front of a Christmas tree.... 

We found a pilgrim and a scarecrow....

Hannah set the table for our thanksgiving feast.  We grilled steaks and burgers and then had a few of the more traditional sides with that.  

The next morning we ventured out to get our Christmas tree.....I think it needs to be at least December before putting up a tree, but nothing seems to be normal in 2020, so I agreed to go get a tree on November 27th.

We searched for a while to find a tree....

Evan just wanted to find the biggest one.

The girls took some selfies while we were cutting down the tree.....

....and Evan was pouting behind this tree, because he didn't think we got the biggest tree out there.

Evan was still mad and didn't want to be in the picture

Then we let him saw off some of the small branches and all was good.

Saturday night Scott had the idea to break out our Fondue set.......it hasn't seen the light of day in over a decade.

Everybody was a big fan.

The kids kept telling us how much fun they had.