Traditions.....

One of the fun traditions that our family has done for the last few years is "Movie Night". This happens almost every Friday night, unless something else comes up that we absolutely have to do. But movie night usually takes priority over other non-necessary activities. (Heaven forbid something else get in the way. The kids could hardly stand it that Christmas fell on a Friday this year and Movie Night had to be postponed.) We get out the pillows and sleeping bags, make popcorn, and camp out in the living room and watch a movie. The movie we watch depends on who gets to be the "chooser" for the night. We rotate who gets to be the chooser so everyone gets the chance to watch what they like best.

Fortunately, Alyssa has finally grown out of her "Land Before Time" stage. Would you believe there are 18 Land Before Time movies? Well there are, and we have seen all of them at least once. Some of them 3 or 4 times. Bleh....

Tyler typically tries to choose movies that he knows will make Greg cringe, so he frequently likes to choose either "Enchanted" or "Hairspray". Personally, I think these are great choices, but also quite amusing coming from a little boy.

When Ryan is in charge of choosing (and if we have recently made a trip to the library) we usually end up watching some sort of educational children's video about trucks of some sort. We have learned all about monster trucks, construction vehicles, army vehicles, race cars, and various other types of vehicles.

When Greg and I get to pick, I think the primary goal is to choose something that we haven't already seen a dozen times. This is where Redbox comes in handy. We don't get to the movie theater with the kids too often, so this is a good way to catch up on some of the newer kids' movies out there. We've also had a lot of fun watching the "Planet Earth" DVDs. There is some amazing footage and the kids even get really into them.

So some weeks are definitely better than others, viewing-wise, but mostly I just love that we are creating fun family memories. Hopefully this is something the kids will want to keep up for years to come.

Post Holiday Wrap-Up

Okay, so I didn't do so great about blogging during the month of December, but we sure had fun! Here are a few of the highlights from the past month.....

GINGERBREAD HOUSES


The kids loved making gingerbread houses. It's one of their favorite things to do each Christmas time. They begged me for weeks to make them, so I finally got ambitious and actually made homemade gingerbread and measured and cut all the pieces. (As a result, my house smelled DELICIOUS for days!)

My sweet Alyssa and her masterpiece.

I thought they would appreciate having the real thing, but as soon as I presented the kids with the pieces Tyler said "I don't really like gingerbread. I just want mine to be made out of graham crackers." Little stinker. Of course when I made him one out of crackers he promptly dropped it on the floor and it shattered. He couldn't wait for the icing/glue to dry on another one, so he ended up using the gingerbread pieces anyway.

The candy on Ryan's house only lasted long enough for me to take this picture.

WRAPPING PRESENTS

I found a pile of presents in the hallway that apparently the kids had wrapped for each other and for me and Greg. They were mostly wrapped in shoe boxes and tied with old scraps of ribbon or some of Alyssa's hair ribbons. It's very sweet of them to think of others, but they tend to find weird little odds and ends and wrap them up in boxes and call it good. These packages mostly contained leftover Halloween candy, loose change, and unwanted Happy Meal toys.

The tag on this one especially made me smile. I like how it says "To Greg" rather than "To Dad".


CHRISTMAS MORNING

We slept over at Grandma and Grandpa's house on Christmas Eve. While trying to get just one decent picture before opening presents on Christmas morning Ryan kept informing us of how mad he was at us. He was not happy to be taking pictures when there were presents to be opened....thus his refusal to look at the camera. Oh well.

The coveted glitter balls. All three of the kids had been begging for these for the majority of the past year.

They were definitely a hit. The kids are still sleeping with them at night.

And the biggest hit of all was the one thing they all asked for from Santa every time they saw him....a trampoline. There was much dancing and shouting for joy upon the opening of this present. Now we just have to wait for the snow to melt so we can get it set up.


NEW YEAR'S!!!

The rest of us had more fun than this, but this is the only picture I got. Poor Ryan can never seem to make it much past 10:00 on New Year's Eve. He crashed on the floor, but his sweet little friend Abby put a crown on his head for him anyway so he wouldn't be left out. Alyssa and Tyler think New Year's Eve is the greatest holiday ever because they get to stay up as late as they want. They made it until about 3:30 a.m. this year. Not quite the all-night goal they had in mind, but pretty close! I thought for sure they would sleep in the next day, but nope.

RESOLUTIONS 2010

Yeah, I don't do the whole resolutions thing. No point in setting yourself up for failure in my opinion. So far the only thing I have resolved to do this year is:

1. Have a baby.
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to accomplish this one.