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!