Christmas 2013

Merry Chrismas from the Alts!

After not posting anything since April, I'm finally caught up! (For now.) Click through the old posts to see what we've been up to this year!

 



Christmas Recital

Erin did really well at her piano recital. She played “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”

 

 

Decorating for Christmas

We always spend the Saturday after Thanksgiving decorating for Christmas.

 

 

It wears us out.

 

Halloween

I didn’t make the kids’ Halloween costumes this year. Robbie has been wanting to be a Jedi, especially since we went to Disneyland. Erin decided to be a 50’s girl.

 

 I did buy some fake hair from the dollar store and braided it for Robbie’s Jedi costume. I resisted giving him a haircut the weeks before Halloween because I needed his hair to be long enough to attach the braid to with a rubber band.

 Since Erin wears prescription glasses, we didn’t get her any cat-eye 50’s style glasses. But I used some mailing labels to draw a cat-eye façade that I stuck to her prescription frames. It actually stayed on all night and didn’t gum up her glasses. Win!

Every Halloween, Rob wants to make a temporary enclosure around our front walkway, and this year we finally did it. He brought home some cardboard from work and we painted it all black. One Saturday, we all went out in the garage with neon paint and went to town painting it up. Rob set it all up on Halloween with the black lights, and it was pretty cool.

 

Teeth

Erin will eventually need braces, but she’s had some stubborn baby teeth that need to come out before she can get started with orthodontics. After her checkup in August, the dentist scheduled an appointment for five extractions.  She was a little nervous! Especially since she’s never had any real dental work done besides cleanings. But she did great. Some of these were pretty big!

 

Robbie is finally getting rid of some baby teeth, too. He lost his first tooth last September, and the next one didn’t come out until February. In July, both his front teeth finally came out, a few days apart.

 

I love it when kids are missing both top teeth! Very cute.

Robbie's Room

We re-did Robbie’s room on Labor Day weekend. I was a little sad to see the “little boy” décor go, but he was SO happy with his new ASU room!

Piano

We finally found an affordable piano! We bought it on Craigslist and then turned around and sold our keyboard on Craigslist. This is much better for Erin to practice on.

Lizard

We found a tiny lizard one day and I decided to let the cat have a look at it. Keep in mind, our cat is definitely not a hunter. She would definitely starve to death if she didn’t live with us. But she was definitely intrigued by it! She isn’t the sharpest crayon in the box… she sniff the glass and then walk all around it. Then she would paw at the glass and scoot it around the floor, but she didn’t know she could just reach into the glass to get the lizard. It was pretty funny. We set the lizard free outside before she had a chance to figure things out.

Back to School

The kids started school shortly the next week – 6^th Grade and 2^nd Grade. Even though they go to a K-8 school, this is Erin’s last year in elementary school. Next year, she will be considered junior high, and their class structure changes a little so it’s not their homeroom teacher teaching all the subjects.

 

This is also the first year they get out of school at the same time. Grades K-1 go to school until 3:00 but grades 2-8 don’t get out until 4:00. For the last two years, they went to a friend’s house after school until Rob or I could pick them up. This year, Erin has a house key and they let themselves in when the carpool drops them off.  I usually get home about a half hour after they do.

State Capitol

I took a day off the week before school started just to spend time with the kids and finish getting back-to-school stuff together. We had lunch with Rob and Chipotle and then the kids wanted to go to the state capitol. There’s a small museum inside, and Robbie really likes the memorabilia and replica of the USS Arizona.

 

You can go to the top floor and look down through the rotunda to the ground floor. Erin thinks it’s pretty cool, but Robbie kept his distance.

 

Erin's Birthday

For the kids’ birthdays, we let them each invite a friend to Big Surf like last year. Robbie invited our next-door neighbor Ziondric and Erin invited her best friend Rachel. This was only a couple of days after she broke her toe. She wore water shoes, which kept her splint in place. Aside from banging it a couple of times in the wave pool or on the slides, she did fine.

Since I’m in the Young Women’s organization at church, I went to girls’ camp this year. It was a three-day camp, and the last day was Erin’s birthday. On the way home, Rob called to say some friends had invited us to an AZ Rattlers game that night and did I want to go?  I got cleaned up and off we went! I had never been to an arena football game, but it was pretty fun. The kids really liked it.

Since I wasn’t able to make a cake, we picked up a cinnamon cake on our way home and we had it after church the next day. Erin is growing up fast!

Cow Appreciation Day

We went to Chik-Fil-A’s annual Cow Appreciation Day again. Always worth it because everyone who dresses up gets a free meal!  And it’s kinda fun.

Erin's Toe

Erin had an interesting month of July. One day when Rob and I were at work, she broke her toe! She’s a pretty level-headed kid, so when she called in tears we knew something was wrong. She had been chasing Robbie when he stopped abruptly and her foot smashed into his heel. She said her toe was bent sideways across the other toes and she had to grab it and move it back into place… she relocated her own toe!  Ugh. So Rob left work and took her to urgent care.

 

This was in the waiting room:

 

After an X-Ray, a splint, and a walking boot, she was good to go. She’s one tough kid! She only needed Tylenol a couple of times, and she got around on it pretty well.

Robbie's 7th Birthday

Robbie turned 7 this month! On his birthday, we went out to eat and opened some presents at home.

We had some family over for cake and ice cream that weekend.

 

It was a good birthday!

May Update

So I mentioned our morning routine was changing drastically since I got a new job in March. I’ve been working in Miami, AZ as a contract administrator for Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold. Since it’s a 1.5-hour commute one way, I have to leave by 5:00 every morning. It took a little getting used to, but it’s not so bad. Miami is my hometown, so it’s kind of fun to go back there every day. Plus they have the best Mexican food in the world!

Because my work day ends earlier, I actually get home earlier in the evening than I did when I was working in Mesa. Weeknights have always been hectic, so that’s been helpful.

Rob is now getting the kids up and ready and driving the carpool every morning. Their routine is pretty much the same as when I was doing it, except Erin does her own hair now and she also makes their lunches in the morning.

Erin did well at her piano recital. She played a duet of “Beauty and the Beast” with her friend Lily.

This was the first year both kids were eligible for Honors Night at school (it’s only for grades 1-8, so Robbie was too young last year). They both got trophies for Principal’s Honor Roll!

What We Do - Mornings

I wanted to do a post about a typical day, so I took some pictures of the kids a couple of times during out morning routine a while ago.  I was glad I did, because our morning routine changed quite a bit shortly afterwward.

Rob was working four 10's, so he would go in early and get off early, and he had Fridays off.  I worked from 9 - 5:30, so the kids and I had a couple of hours together every morning and I would drive the carpool to school.

Erin would get up and would be dressed and making her bed right as I was finishing getting ready for  the day, so I would help her with her hair.  Then she'd start practicing piano while I got Robbie up.  He would be ready when Erin finished piano, and we'd sit down to read scriptures together.

After that, it was time for breakfast, usually cold cereal.  But sometimes we'd have cinnamon toast, and sometimes I'd make eggs.  Their favorite was mornings when I needed to run to the store for something.  They loved this because it meant they could get donuts for breakfast! Yay for an unorganized mom!

After breakfast & brushing teeth, they would "do their writing".  We have them write their spelling lists every morning - it's good practice for spelling and it helps their handwriting!  Robbie also works on his Rocket Math, and if they have to work on memorizing any poems, they practice those, too.

 

 
If they got their boring stuff done quickly, they had time to play before we had to leave for school.  For Erin, this was mostly messing with the cat, checking her e-mail, drawing, or listening to music.

 

 
Robbie dawdled a little more, so he didn't always have much time for playing.  But he usually played with Legos.  Erin's best friend and her twin brother would get dropped off at our house shortly before we had to leave, so the girls would do girl stuff together and the boys would try to annoy the girls.

Then we'd pick up two more kids and drive to school.  I'd wait for the crossing guard to get them, and then head to Mesa for work.  This picture is from last year, but this is all our little carpool buddies crossing the street wtih Mr. Glen.  They're all good kids.

Now I have a new job, and I have to leave much earlier in the morning, so Rob changed his schedule around and it's his turn to have mornings with the kids.  I miss it, but it's a good job, and I get home a little earlier in the evening now.  I'm glad Rob gets a turn to have mornings with the kids - it's a good way to start the day.

Disneyland

A few weeks ago, Rob's parents invited us to go to Disneyland with them.  Erin had only been once, when she was 3, and Robbie had never been.  We decided to surprise the kids, so we got them out of school at lunch time one Friday and off we went!

We learned that if you register as a first-timer, you get to ride in the front car of the Monorail.

I can do all kinds of crazy, scary rides, but I can't do spinning anymore.  Rob took the kids on the Teacup ride and whirled them all around.

Erin has been over princesses for several years (yay!) and Robbie is indifferent toward characters, so we didn't have to spend much time looking for any.  But they both liked the Star Wars villains!  They were pretty cool.  Here they are with Darth Maul:

 

Erin chatting up Vader:

 

We rode the rockets in Tomorrowland.  I like this picture, because Rob is in the rocket in front of Robbie, and you can see Sandy and Dan leaning on the railing below us.



 

 

Erin was behind me.

 

 

In California Advendure, we got to go to Radiator Springs and meet Lightning McQueen

And eat a turkey leg.

The highlight for Robbie was Jedi training.  He was SO happy they picked him to participate!  Here he is getting his robe.

 

I love this picture - pure joy for a 6-year-old boy getting ready to become a Jedi!  He was pretty sure his "first-timer" pin is why they chose him.  The training was really cute, and he got to fight Darth Maul with a lightsaber.

 

I was really happy that everyone was tall enough for all the rides and nobody was scared of anything!  We rode Space Mountain first, and everything was fair game after that.  We loved Tower of Terror, and I think the whole family's favorite was California Screamin'.  The line was short for that one on our last day, so we did it several times in a row.

 

Who knows when we'll go back, but it was a lot of fun!