After 8 years, Lydia still loves her stuffed dog Emma. She wanted to show off how cute they are one day when Lydia pulled on a lei necklace.
We had a lot of leaves to rake and the kids were excited to help me. Of course, they got to play in the piles as well, but the rule was they had to clean up all the leaves that wound up out of the pile once they were done playing and jumping into them. Here are some decent pictures I got of Karina and Derek jumping into a pile of leaves in our yard they helped me make.
Then the kids took turns burying each other in the leaves like they were at the beach. They also found random objects to hide in the leaves and then took turns digging through the pile to find the "buried treasure." I admit it works out well when chores can be combined with play time and since we had nice weather in early December, it was great to be outside in the fresh air.
Tanja found a gingerbread cookie decorating kit that had three large cookies with their own sets of candies and frosting. It made it nice for our three kids to each have their own to decorate for an activity one afternoon.
Karina is in a county-wide 5th grade reading competition called Battle of the Books (300 teams will compete). She and her team have 10 books to read and study in preparation for the day of competition when they have to answer questions about the books. Tanja is the coach for the team, so they have had regular practices twice a month at our house. Karina's team chose the team name Bananas for Books and they designed their own matching costumes inspired by bananas (complete with the hilarious hat seen below). Here's Karina modeling the team costume.
We made our yearly pilgrimage to a nearby home that goes all out with holiday lights and a light show every year for Christmas. The local news featured the house with a video; if interested, click
here.
One of the highlights is the light up dance floor where the kids can dance to the music playing while the synchronized lights flash.
One of our neighbors put together a fun Elfie Selfie display in their yard for people to take pictures in. We had fun with it one day on our walk.
Back home, Snoopy gets plenty of attention, love, and cuddles. His health seems pretty stable and he is doing well.
One day, Karina spontaneously started giving Lydia a horsey-ride around the living room. Glad we got a picture of it.
Even in old age, Snoopy looks very majestic in my opinion. He'll celebrate his 17th birthday pretty soon.
Nice to get a picture of all three kids smiling at the same time.
Santa made a trip through our neighborhood one night on the fire engine. Because of COVID concerns, the kids didn't get to sit with him this year, but drive through visits are still exciting. The girls were at an activity, but we hurried to the road he would be driving through with Derek who was a very excited boy. Unfortunately, we had to rely on the phone for a camera since we rushed out of the house to meet the fire truck, so the pictures of Derek dancing around didn't turn out well.
The kids each got to open one present on Christmas Eve.
Karina got another fidget - a cool Rubik's Cube variant (think it's called a mirror cube) where the blocks making up the cube are not the same size or shape. As it twists, you can end up making some cool shapes. Tanja's managed to learn how to solve it reliably.
Lydia got another stuffed dinosaur.
On Christmas Eve, our stockings were hung by our chimney with care...
...and sure enough, St. Nicholas soon was there (though fortunately our kids waited until daylight to come down to the tree).
Derek made sure to give hugs to the givers of each of his presents.
Lydia with another stuffed dinosaur (Karina and Derek each gave her complementary dinos).
Karina of course got several books, including Harry Potter illustrated versions.
Tanja wanted earrings corresponding to the kids' middle names (Jade, Scarlett, and Jasper). She found someone on Etsy who designed and custom-made the earrings for her with jade, red jasper, and grey jasper stones. I think they turned out great and love the significance. Lydia got a similar pair with jade, red agate, and picture jasper stones instead.
Tanja decided to remove the wall paper in the office. She had wanted to do it since we moved in 8.5 years ago. Nearly the whole house had wallpaper borders when we bought the house, but the office was one of two rooms Tanja didn't remove it from (the other is Karina's room which still has a flower border that Karina says she likes). Derek and Karina were good helpers spraying down the wallpaper border, and peeling it off. Then Tanja removed the glue and painted, and redid the kids' artwork on the walls.
It was a good Christmas for all of us I think.
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