Christmas Parade

Saturday morning was a busy day.  We started it off at our annual town's Christmas parade.  We met up with Stephanie and Ava and had a great spot to view the parade.  Bradyn and Grady also found us and joined in on the fun.

 Of course their least favorite part were the fire trucks.

Adam had the lucky job of dressing up as clown and driving the Ace jack in the box.

As Adam saw us he drove over towards us and Brody and Ava went out to turn the crank so the clown would come up (Trevor stopped for the candy lady).  Caroline Cochrane was dressed as the clown inside and when she popped out she would throw candy everywhere.

Adam the clown!!

We also found a few other people we knew in the parade.

Janan

My cousin Cindy and her granddaughter

The kids have a hate/love relationship for the pirate ship.  They hate the loud bang but love to see it.  Trevor and Ava went out to get beads from this pirate.

Our church put in a couple floats as well - our music ministry

Our children's choir.  Brody was asked to ride the float but Jason and I felt that he only has a couple more years to enjoy watching parades.

The end of our parade always brings a special guest - Santa Claus.

Of course lots of candy was brought home - just what we needed.  The kids had a blast and it was only the beginning of the day.

School birthday

The Friday before Brody's birthday, I met him for lunch and brought lunch for the 2 of us and cupcakes for the whole class.  I love being able to do this.  Brody actually forgot I was bringing him lunch and he freaked out to Mrs. Proffit about not having his lunch box.  He was quickly surprised when he saw me in the lunchroom.

Now with me under the weather for the past few days, making the cupcakes were quite interesting.  I baked the cupcakes on Thursday but after the Connect4Reading I was done.  I fell asleep time I got home and woke back up around 11:00 to try and make the icing.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to, but Jason came to the rescue.  He made the icing from scratch and then piped it on all the cupcakes.  He started out pretty rough (but we all do) and then got the hang of it.

Boy was I thankful for all of Jason's help.  I definitely could not have done it without him.

Later that afternoon, my dad brought the bouncy house for Brody's party and set it up.  Trevor thought he would test it out.

Connect4Reading

So if it wasn't a crazy enough week, we also celebrated my mom and dad's birthday.  To celebrate my mom's, my mom and I took Brody up to the school for a Connect4Reading event.  This is where you play bingo for books.  I wasn't feeling 100% but ok to head up there.  Brody's teacher was the one who came up with the idea so I wanted to support her.

Brody was so excited and there was a great turnout.

We played several games of bingo and everyone went home with lots of new books - which made Brody so excited.

He came home with 9 new books and immediately sat down and started reading.

My big 6 year old

It really is hard to believe that my little baby boy is now 6 years old.  He is so grown.

Some of his likes:

- he loves school

- loves to read and is reading everything

- he is 48" tall which makes him tall enough to ride a lot of roller coasters (which is very important)

- he is a big helper around the house (when he gets in the mood)

- he loves to eat almost anything

- likes everything a particular way

Some dislikes:

- does not like getting a little scrape, he's a little bit dramatic

- no bandaids

- can't take Trevor doing things the "wrong"way

A few pictures of our big boy

We are so blessed to have such a healthy 6 year old who is full of life.  

What a week

So the day after Thanksgiving, my mom and I did our annual Black Friday shopping.  Left at 5:30AM and arrived home at 10:30PM.  Yeah, it was a LONG day but so much fun.  We don't really have certain door busters we go for so we are just out for the experience.  After about 6 or 7 hours of shopping we stop for our annual lunch at Olive Garden with good friends and have a nice relaxing lunch with Dr. Pepper (boy did I need that caffeine).  I did most of my shopping that day so it is nice to get a chunk of it done in a day.

The following week was CRAZY!!!  I decided to paint the house - main room, halls - everything with the remaining khaki color from 11 years ago.  Now, I have been trying to decide on a color for about 2 months and my walls looked like a rainbow.  So after 10 samples and about 30 texts back and forth with Stephanie, we finally decided on a color and thanks to Stephanie I had my work cut out for me the upcoming week.

My rainbow of colors

I had get it done quickly because Brody's birthday party was at the house on the next Saturday.  Nothing like putting everything together in a week.

We started painting Wednesday night before Thanksgiving and Jason, my dad and Brody did a little while I was shopping.

We then finished it all up Wednesday night.  Now if that wasn't bad enough to try and paint 3 rooms before a party - put getting sick in the loop.  Yeah that was me and after a visit to Solantic on Friday morning to get some drugs I was feeling a little better and ready for a birthday party.

Let me just say this paint roller is the best $25 I ever spent.  It made painting so much easier and faster.

Of course with a big ladder and tape in the house, here is what my boys enjoy doing.

My tape warriors.

Once the walls were all finished, we had to decide on the main wall because we didn't want to paint all of the walls the same color so we decided on a chevron wall.  So, the painting was a little more time consuming than I had hoped.

Jason painting the trim.

So off I went to taping off for the chevron wall.

After 9 hours of taping and 4 hours of painting - it was all done.  Thanks to Jason for finishing up the touch up at the top since there was no way I could climb up the ladder with no energy!!

I am very happy with the results.

 Now I have to change out my accessories.  What a change.  Oh yeah, and to make the week even crazier, our dishwasher went out.  What a week for this to happen, so off I went to wash dishes for awhile.  I was counting down the days until we bought a new one.