Christmas 2014

We went out of town for Thanksgiving this year, so we used the first day of Thanksgiving break to pull out the Christmas decorations and decorate the tree.  I even had the kids help decorate the house, it was a lot of fun. 

 

 

One day early in December, Adam, Mike and Joe went camping and Ellie, Nate and I got to stay behind.  The school had a Holiday Party on Saturday morning, so we went.  They had a Holiday shop where the kids could buy cheaply made overpriced things and lots of games and even a Santa.  They also had a coloring contest in one area.  Ellie whipped out a picture, but Nate was too frustrated with his coloring skills to do it.  In January, Ellie randomly got a $10 gift card to Target for winning the coloring contest!  She was very excited.

Nate was willing to go see Santa, even though he knew it wasn't the real Santa.  He asked him for a skateboard, Legos, a Nintendo DS, and about 5 other things.  Ellie wasn't willing to talk to santa.

On Christmas Eve, we had our traditional nativity and dinner with friends. 

Christmas Eve, the kids got to open one present that was, surprise, PJ's!  They were very excited and willing to pose for me!

Our tree on Christmas Eve.

We told the kids they couldn't wake us until 6 on Christmas Day.  They came down a couple of minutes before, but that was it.  I think they set themselves an alarm.
Joe got a super lightweight sleeping bag.  He has been interested in redoing our 72 hour safety backpacks with gear that is super lightweight so if we really did have to use them we wouldn't immediately be exhausted from the weight of the backpack.

Nate is demonstrating his skateboard and his nerf bow and arrow!

Michael got new rollerblades. He put them on and did really well on them.  He hasn't spent a lot of time on them lately, probably because it is pretty cold and it takes forever to put those pads on.

Natural Bridge Caverns and Wildlife Animal Park

Ellie's last gymnastic meet was in San Antonio.  We wanted to make it fun for the whole family since we were all going to be going.  To that end, I bought season tickets for the family to Sea World on Black Friday.  Unfortunately, Sea World was closed this weekend (only one of 3 weekends in the year they are closed).  We did some research and found that just outside of San Antonio is this cool place where they have a drive through wild animal park.

 In some places, the animals were so close to the car, in fact, we worried a little bit about the paint job with those horns.

 Some of the animals even came up and ate out of our hands.  This is Nate:

 And Michael:

 The bathroom was even themed for the park- not everyday someone gets away with calling me a cow.

 When this animal turned to the side, it looked like a unicorn.

 Near the end of the loop, I saw this weird animal in the trees with what looked like a bag of blood hanging off its bum.  I looked closer, and as I looked a baby was born!  We stopped and watched for a minute as the baby stood up for the first time....it was AMAZING.

 Right next to the wild animal park is a natural cavern.  We went inside and climbed down and looked at all the amazing cave formations.

It wasn't nearly as big as Carlsbad, but people have only been allowed into the cave when they were accompanied by a guide, so it is pristine and unspoiled.  The soda straw formations were especially fascinating to see.

The next day was Ellie's competition, which was right next to the Alamo.  None of us had ever been to the Alamo, so we went and looked at it.  I didn't know that Davy Crockett died at the Alamo (as well as everyone else that was defending it).  In fact, we lost the battle at the Alamo, but it was used later as a war cry "remember the Alamo" by Sam Houston's forces. 

 We also went on a riverboat ride.  That area of San Antonio is just gorgeous. 

Nate's field trip

Nate's field trip this year was to 7 acre woods.  The kids had a blast being able to run around from activity to activity for the bulk of the day.  They did mini-golf-

 Visited the petting zoo,

 Played on the harpooned junky boat,

 And the other, harpooned boat,

 went on a hayride, rode the zipline and played on the playground.  It was nice to be able to be there with him, although from the picture, I'm not sure how much he really appreciated it.

Winter class parties

The three youngest kids had Christmas class parties this year.  Poor Adam had finals instead, it really did seem unfair.  Ellie's was first- they had a really nice breakfast and then lots of games.  One of the games was to put an Oreo on your forehead and then try to get it into your mouth.  These pictures were too funny not to document:

Ellie and her teacher, Mrs. Frantzen

Nate's class party was a lot more low key.  We had pizza and cupcakes, and then we played bingo and did a craft.  It was fun.

Mike's party was not really open to visitors, so he had fun, but we stayed home.