Happy Thanksgiving!
We are so blessed.  To have our wonderful family and friends and all that is truly important.

 So my friend, Jessica, put up a great advent calendar idea on her blog last year.  I stole it and have re-vamped it (bigger cups) for my crew and we are doing it this year.  I really can’t wait.   It only took a short time to create the cups and type up and cut out the fun things to do, some are simple (play a board game) and some a little more challenging (build a fort and have dinner in it) but I know all will be a hit.  Had to coordinate with our calendar but it made it a bit easier since we already had some holiday parties planned.

Looking forward to starting a great new tradition with our crew.

Check out Jessica’s link click here for a more detailed how-to.

Here are the things we are filling our cups with!

1 – Family game night
2 – Trip to the $1 store to shop for eachother
3 – Christmas party @ church
4 – Make wish lists
5 – Make pinecone bird feeder
6 – Write letter to santa
7 – Christmas party
8 – Have breakfast for dinner
9 – Find a Christmas tree
10 – Christmas party
11 – Decorate tree
12 – Make and decorate cookies
13 – Family Christmas movie night
14 – Make a fort and have dinner in it
15 – Make paper snowflakes and decorate the house
16 – Drive around to see the lights
17 – Kids make dinner for Mamas
18 – Walk the labyrinth
19 – Drink cocoa and read Christmas books
20 – Play a board game
21 – Make a Christmas craft w mama
22 –
23 –
24 -Go to Nana and Papa’s for special dinner and open a present!

I’m a proud mama, my boy got up in front of the whole school and spoke clearly and confidently then he and his buddy, Ryan, did an aikido demonstration. Nicely done, Levi!

Goofing around on vacation this weekend…I love snuggling with my boys!

Trey loves his brussel sprouts!  I found this at the store today and he’s so excited to cook them up and eat them tomorrow.

Don’t have much to add except I’m blessed with this breathtaking view.

 So I know it’s nerdy to get excited about an appliance, but apparently that’s what moms do.  It’s fabulous!  Problem we have now is all the extra space.  Seems a trip to T&C is in our near future.

Sometimes you are just so tired that you fall asleep on the couch with legs dangling and your face buried in your brother’s stinky feet.

I love this picture of Carlos amongst the pile of stuffed animals.  We were purging (not all of these actually left the house but a lot did) and cleaning out what I lovingly call our “Hoaders” room and Carlos made himself comfy.  We made great progress and you can actually walk in and see the floor now!

Levi has been in school for over 6 weeks now.  For some reason, even though he’s known his teacher for the past 3 years (she’s been at the school all that time AND she’s the mom of one of the kids in his class) he still didn’t know her name.  We would ask him over and over and he would scratch his head and say “Really?  Again?  I don’t know!  I told you that.”  We would then say, “Your teacher’s name is Ursula” and go on from there.  We brought this up to the assistant teacher in the class and she thought he must be joking with us, but he wasn’t.  We let the teacher know that he was struggling and we were working on it.  Well, this weekend I finally had enough of the shoulder shrug and “I don’t know” attitude and told him he was going to sit down and write her name 50 times.  He, being the sometimes all-knowing and often times back-chatting 8 year old he can be said “How about 100 times?”  I agreed.  I got the paper ready, wrote her name at the top and numbered to 100.  He got to work, writing and saying her name 100 times.  Now, you may think this is harsh but Levi is a very visual learner and it only took him about 15 minutes to finish.  He came in and said “My teacher’s name is Ursula!”  By the end of the weekend, he had it down and he was proud to be able to greet his teacher on Monday morning by saying “Good morning, Ursula: