Santa!

I love taking the kids to see Santa, and I just knew this year would be a great picture since last year Annie did relatively well.  She was not having it this year.  Jacob asked for a Wii and Gwyn asked for a snowflake again.  Annie wouldn't even look at him.  I just love looking at these pictures, I've got all the previous years framed, and I set them out each year at Christmas....here are pictures from previous years (2011 - relatively calm):

2010...poor Annie:

2009...poor Gwyn:

 2008...poor Gwyn:

2007...poor Jacob:

 2006...relatively calm Jacob:

Jacob's first grade class went to the zoo this week, and I signed up to chaperon.  I was a bit jealous of the moms of girls who were watching their girls hold hands and skip together, while I had 5 boys of whom liked to burp and run as far ahead of me as possible.  It was pretty entertaining to watch the look on their face as the sweet girls were posing for a picture with a metal giraffe sculpture, when all of the sudden all of our boys ran over,started climbing all over it, and making tooting noises with their armpits.  We hit the entire zoo in about 2 hours, then went back to the reptile house about 3 times.  Nice, I just love snakes!

I think next year I'll sign up to chaperon the play!

 Brian's vessel, the DB-50 was docked in Galveston for the first time ever, so we went down to take a tour.  The kids were pretty excited about it...especially since they gave them ice cream at the end:

 Quite a big boom!

 My lil engineers!

Gwyn with her face painted:

 While we were down in Galveston, we checked out the Moody Gardens Festival of Lights...pretty much a 1 mile walking path with tons of lights decorated.

 Gwyn wanted to hug Jacob, Jacob wanted nothing of it.

I took the kids to see a small theater production of Beauty and the Beast since my friend Julie's kids were in it.  Gwyn absolutely loved it (even though she wasn't feeling well), and Annie was so good.  She basically stared, open-mouthed the entire time.  It was so cute!

 Nicholas was Chip:

 Brian took Jacob on an overnight cub scout camping trip.  Of course I don't have any pictures, but he had a great time.  Built a fire, went hiking, found bugs, played soccer with flashlights, ate smores, and apparently danced in front of the entire pack when it was his Den's entertainment section...lovely!  I took the girls to a friends house where we decorated cookies, ate pizza and made some crafts...can you guess which snowman is Annie's?

 Brian was in Norway all week, there were a couple of nights where Kong Kong didn't move (oops), but I tried to make up for it other nights...here he is trying to fly away in the balloons:

 Upside down with marshmallows in his armpits:

 He left out special plates with marshmallows shaped in the first letter of their names:

 Riding Gwyn's my little pony:

 She is cute, but she is ornery!

 I got called to school saying that Annie was sick, so I left my spot while I was waiting to get my car inspected and raced to go get her.  She was laughing jumping up and down, and I said are you sick?  She said, "No."  My little  goose.  I was a little upset with her and took her home with me, I tried to just go ahead and take Gwyn, but she didn't want to go.  She did end up waking up about 2 nights later in the middle of the night with ear pain, and I had to take her in on Thursday...sure enough an ear infection, boo!

 Love this picture!

 Yes, we are Houstons and this is how we dress when it gets below 60.

 My neighbor gave us a pool chemical bucket full of grapefruits from her tree.  They were awesome and I juiced them all in hopes of kicking this sinus infection that I've had since the first of November on my own...no such luck...a visit to the ENT and now I'm on another round of antibiotics...boo!

 Here is a picture of my sweeties before Santa:

 This is what Annie did while I was in the shower...

 I took Jacob to an owl prowl with his Tiger Cubs group at the nature sanctuary by our house.  We went at night with our flashlights and looked for Screech owls.  We had hot chocolate and then he dissected an owl pellet, and to his delight found rat bones!  He then put them in a ziploc bag and put them in my purse to take home.  He did not zip the zip loc bag and so I had to dig those rat bones out of my purse later that night.  Nice.

 Christmas art:

 Sweet little Gwyn was sick all weekend, but thankfully she is all better!

Funny things the kids said this week:

Annie (crying hysterically):  Jacob said I'm on the naughty list.

Annie:  Is that my coffee?  I need one.

Gwyn (told this to a friend's family at their house):  Jacob is the burper in our family and I'm the tooter.

Annie (asks Brian on the way home from school):  Can I have a boyfriend?  Atticus said he's my boyfriend.

Jacob (after I told him Annie was 3 and to let it go after he tattled on her  for something):  Mommy, that is something a 2 year old would do, not a 3 yr old.  Annie is 3, she knows better.

Annie:  Mommy, how do you spell Atticus?  (later)  How do you spell I love you?