Spoiled

With everyone being home so much this last week, the dogs are becoming especially spoiled! Holly is really getting the royal treatment from the boys...

Down Dog

I had some company for yoga this morning!

More Christmas

Just a little proof that the boys did actually dress up nicely for Christmas! It was for our Christmas Eve church service, to be specific...

They also got a little goofy too--big shock!

The day after Christmas, we met my friend Debbie and her boys at Union Station and spent the morning at Science City and also had lunch and wandered around Crown Center. It was a very fun morning!

Christmas Time is Here!

Merry Christmas everyone! We are celebrated this morning by opening presents, staying in our PJs and watching A Christmas Story with Grammy. I'll start with this past Saturday, though, when we visited Union Station to see the decorations and J got to ride the train...

Later in the day, the boys decorated their gingerbread houses! It has been all they could do not to eat them these past few days...

The boys had fun opening up and playing with their toys this morning. Chris still loves legos and was able to put most of his technic sailboat together by himself. Jonathan loves his rockstar guitar from Grandma and Grandpa!

And Grammy is silently correcting your grammar...

She's also busy spoiling Athena...

We fully intend on staying in our pajamas at least until 3PM. Enjoy your Christmas!

Winter Fun

The Christmas season is in full swing and we've been busy having some winter fun! After not having access to our kitchen for a week, we spent a lot of time eating out and I, for one, do not want to see the inside of a Panera for at least 2 months. The kitchen is all done now and pretty much put back together so eating will return to normal. Today, the boys had a half day and we went skating with Christopher's friend James. It was so fun--outdoor skating, what could be better? Jonathan wore C's old hockey shorts, although he refused the helmet and gloves...

He really likes being out on the ice as does Christopher! Earlier in the day, Jonathan's class had their winter party...

Mommy brought the healthy (aka, boring) snack for the class while they also had yummy sugar cookies. Christopher's class didn't have a party but last night, Chris participated in the upper school concert! Apparently, a few weeks ago, Chris auditioned to sing the fourth verse of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." I didn't really know about it until his music teacher called me and said he had been selected to sing! Each year, one boy and one girl from each grade (1st through 12th) sing the song. It was so fun! And I am continually amazed that this kid will get up and play piano, sing, or dance in front of a lot of people. Here is a picture from last night. Hard to see but Chris is in the red sweater!

Minimal Kitchen and Doggie Donuts

For about a week, we are going to be without our kitchen due to painting--both cabinets and walls. The picture above was before the painters got here and my kitchen has never been so clean! Of course now the doorways are covered with plastic and the counters with paper so our kitchen is currently off limits. That means I have a very good excuse for not being able to bake holiday cookies (at least for now). Most of our kitchen has migrated to the dining room, which I will not take a picture of. It's a mess but I certainly know where everything is!

Also during this time, Athena has still been recovering from her foot injury. We boarded Holly when the painters got here but we had to keep Athena with us until she got her stitches out and her cone off. Well, the stitches came out today but the vet recommended leaving the cone on for another week because her foot is still a little raw. Unfortunately, the big old cone will not fit into the crates they use to transport the dogs to boarding so now Athena has to wear a doggie donut!

I'm not sure which one she despises more!

Winter Concert

Christopher and the rest of the fourth graders at PHS had their winter singing concert last week. It was called "Coming to America" and had the theme of immigration (which they are also studying as a grade level). Their songs included the Neil Diamond song, "Coming to America" (minus the sparkly blue blazer) and several songs in different languages including Swahili, Hebrew and Spanish. It was a great show! The children could either dress in clothing native to the country their family came from or like immigrants supposedly dressed in the early part of the 20th century, hence the newsboy cap on Christopher's head. He loves this hat so much and even wears it around the house. Here he is wearing it while doing a little writing...

Jonathan likes the hat too, and I have to say that my boys look extra Irish while wearing said hat!

You can see in the background that Athena does not feel the same way about her hat. They had some fourth grade artwork displayed at the concert as well. Here is a sculpture made by Chris as well as a very cool two-in-one picture with his self-portrait and a picture from "Day of the Dead."

And amazingly, Christopher still loves to build. Jonathan and I came home from something and Chris had constructed this tower on the dance floor. Obviously there was not much dancing going on yesterday, at least on the stage...

The Cone of Shame

It's all fun and games until someone is wearing a cone... Let me preface this by saying two things:

1. All is good, really!
2. Tuesday evenings need to stop including trips to urgent care/emergency rooms.

Long story short, I let the dogs out before dinner to run around the backyard. They were maniacs! I saw them zooming back and forth, having a great time in the cold weather. I let them in as usual and the next thing I know, there is a trail of bloody paw prints going around the kitchen. Thank God Christopher was able to help me figure out which dog was injured and he isolated Athena so I could get the crate and put her in it while we figured out what to do. Her back paw was bleeding and had obviously been cut but it didn't look too bad so we took 5 minutes to clean up the blood before it dried and called Brian and the emergency vet. In a moment of quick thinking, I had Chris grab his dance stuff because the emergency vet is across the street from the studio, where he had class this evening. We brought Athena to the vet where they had to sedate her and put a couple stitches in the bottom of her paw. This is an extremely inconvenient place for stitches so it is bandaged to the max and we have to limit her activity for the next 10-14 day (right). I guess it could have been a whole lot worse. Aside from being extremely peeved and embarrassed about her cone, she is managing okay. We had to go out and get a larger crate in order for her to fit inside with said cone so the living room looks awesome with all our Christmas decorations and a big ass crate in it!

Blizzard

Apparently while we were in Louisville, there was a "blizzard" in Kansas City. We had about a full 6 inches. Look out! Anyway, the boys were happy about the snow and Jonathan was especially happy because in his entire life, there has not been a snowfall in KC greater than 3 inches! They both took full advantage...

It's nice to see Jonathan fitting into snow clothes that once belonged to Christopher. He especially loves his red snow pants, which were also going to school with him today, as Mrs. Marklewitz said they would get to play in the snow at school! After warning the boys not to throw icicles at each other, I should have instead been warning them to stay away from our vicious coffee table!

Poor J had a little run in with lots of blood but no stitches ended up being necessary! Poor Chris, on the other hand, was extremely concerned about the amount of blood that happens with even a minor head injury. We ended up at the urgent care where they glued and steri-stripped him back together. Today we just told everyone it was a hockey injury and you should see the other guy!

Mid-America Oireachtas 2018

We just returned from Louisville, Kentucky, where Christopher competed in his first Oireachtas! (Oh-rock-tuhs). It was a really cool experience and Chris kind of soaked in all the dancing. He danced great and went up against some really amazing dancers in his age group. On Sunday, Chris danced hornpipes and reel. He didn't get the recall (basically the third round) so he did not do his set dance but it was a great experience for him (and us) to get to see how a major dance competition works. In a nutshell, there are three judges and if you score in the top 50% of your age group you get recalled. For all of the boy age divisions, except Christopher's, there were fewer than 20 kids which means all of the dancers would be recalled. If there were more than 20 (in Christopher's case, there were 22), only 11 would get recalled. Chris was a little disappointed not to get recalled but we tried to help him keep perspective by letting him know that 9 of the 11 kids who recalled placed in the top 10 at Oireachtas last year. Also, he was the only kid who hadn't competed in an oireachtas before in his group. I mean, we didn't even know what oireachtas was this time last year! There were some incredible dancers who have been dancing for years! Although he was upset at first, he had a good attitude about it and recovered quickly. He told us he would be back next year in full force! Here are some of our dancing pictures...

We also watched a bunch of the older kids dance on Friday and it is fun to see how they have taken Chris under their wing. They all watched at the award ceremony on Friday as 5 of our dancers qualified for nationals and two of the older boys qualified for worlds!

We also went to the Louisville Slugger bat factory while we were there. It was such a cool tour and the boys loved seeing how they make professional wooden bats. Very cool stuff! I may have also taken a few swings myself...

 It was a great trip to a new city and a great dancing experience for Chris!

Birthday Party

Jonathan went to his friend Abigail's birthday party today and had a great time! And as usual, he was very happy to see his friend, Lina, who apparently has it in her mind that she is going to marry Jonathan. Not sure if he knows that yet!