Christmas at Kortus's

The boys were so excited to get their new hats.. and of course Lego and Play Doh too.  Kaiden's face doesn't look excited in the picture, but he was.  He was screaming and jumping for joy when he saw all his new play doh toys.  The boys each got Grandma and Grandpa a few gifts that they picked out themselves too.  One of which was the #1 Grandma necklace that Connor picked out himself at the Santa Express. 

Christmas at Sue's

Christmas

We celebrated Christmas early since we traveled over to Kelso to spend Christmas with Jason's family.

Connor made this picture on a tile for me at school.  He loves to draw and has tons of notebooks full of "Pokemon" pictures he invents.  I love that he put so much effort into his drawing for me.  I put it in the center of our mantle to display his beautiful work of art.  Connor also wrapped and gave me one of his notebooks full of drawing for a Christmas present.  BEST GIFT EVER!  I love his drawings.  He spends so much time on them.  If Connor is not outside playing with his friends he can usually be found either sitting in our formal dinning room (re-labeled as Connor's Lego room) making new Lego creations or drawing pictures in his notebook.  He prefers to just have a bunch of Lego pieces so he can invent and create his own masterpieces.  He's such an inventive and creative kid.  I love his imagination.
Kaiden also loves to be outside.  He spends about 50% of his time outside riding his bike.  The other 50% of the time is spent playing with Connor and his buddies (mainly Connor and Collin).  Since Collin moved though it's mainly been Connor and Raheem and occasionally Raheems little brother, Landry.  Raheem is a year older than Connor and Landry is a year younger than Kaiden.  The 4 get along great though.  When Kaiden is inside the house he's either playing cars/trucks/trains, Go Fish card game, or Play Doh.  He loves Play Doh and will play for hours.

December- Every Wednesday we have Cub Scouts for 1 hour. On 12/12 Kaiden and I went shopping for big kid undies.  He picked out some Paw Patrol underware.  He's been wearing those instead of the pull ups, which he's been keeping dry for a while.  On 12/15 Kaiden had his first day wearing his undies and keeping them dry ALL day long!  We still have him wear a pull up at night, but 80% of the time he's still dry in the morning.  In fact Jason has accidentally put him to bed in the undies a few times when I was working and Kaiden still woke up dry. 
We've been going to lots of Chief's Hockey games.  Jason's work has a suite and gives out tickets, which is so nice.  We get a room with comfortable seats, side table and bar to put drinks/snacks, room for the boys to roam around and play, our own bathroom and an outlet for Connor to plug his phone into and play games.  Connor uses one of Jason's old phones and only gets to play the games on the phone once in a while... like when we go to Hockey games.  He used to play Pokemon Go, but now he's into some dragon game.  12/17 Connor had his first ski lesson at 49 degrees north for the season.

Santa

We went to the River Park Square Mall to see our favorite Santa.  Jason was complaining about the traffic on the drive there, but surprisingly the line for Santa was really short.  Kaiden insisted on bringing his snow globe santa to show Santa.  Kaiden asked for play doh and an air plane.  Connor asked for a Nexo Knights Lego set.  Afterwards Connor wanted to pick out some gifts at Santa Express, which benefits the Vanessa Behan Crisis Center.  You fill out a form saying who the child is shopping for and the amount you want to spend, then a volunteer takes your child shopping (in the same store but hidden from sight).  The kids get to pick the gifts out themselves.  Then they decorate paper bags and the gift goes inside the bag and gets stapled shut until Christmas.   Connor loves to go every year and puts a lot of thought into the gifts he picks out for everyone.  This year Kaiden was finally old enough to go with him... except he doesn't really have the concept down yet.  He found some toy cars on a table and spent his time lining them up.  He has some of his dad's OCD and likes his toy cars/trucks to be in a straight line. 

Thanksgiving

It was just the 4 of us this year for Thanksgiving.  My brother's family decided to stay home this year and invite a friend from his pharmacy class over.  My parents decided to stay home since they had a new bed being delivered.  Since it was just the 4 of us we had a very low key, simple, relaxing Thanksgiving.  We started off with the Turkey Trot at Manito.  Jason does the run/walk every year and sometimes talks Connor into going with him.  I'm usually home cooking.  This year we all did it.  Kaiden rode on dad's shoulders for the majority of the walk.  After wards we got coffee/cocoa and came home to play games and relax.  Dinner was a rotisserie chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, asparagus, salad (both boys love salads!), olives, and for desert I made chocolate chip pumpkin cookies.  We ended the evening with me and the boys watching the Charlot's Web movie while Jason worked on setting up his trainer with a new riding app (he's a bit obsessed with cycling).

girls night out

Movies "Daddy's Home 2" and dinner at Black Bird with my 6S girls- Kimbarley and Biljana

first snow fall

the snow has arrived! The boys (Connor, Collin and Kaiden) built a snowman in the front yard.. where our beautiful cherry tree used to stand before the last wind storm literally blew our tree over and pulled the roots right out of the ground.  While Connor was at school Kaiden and I decorated the snowman with pumpkin face pieces.  The green side faces our house and looks pretty friendly, but he picked the red ones to face the road and they look pretty creepy.  The boys also made a fort in the basement and they both camped out down there for several nights in a row.  We left some lights on so they wouldn't get scared and some lights at the top of the basement stairs just in case they decided to go up stairs to their beds during the night, but neither of them got up during the night at all.

Halloween

This year for Halloween we were a stick family (like you see on the back window of cars).  We dressed in all black with lights.  Connor had orange lights, Kaiden blue, me pink/purple, Jason white/green.  We each had 2 strands of lights, except Kaiden who had one.  The lights run on batteries, which we put the battery pack in our pockets.  I used black thread to sew Connor's lights on.  Packing tape to hold Kaiden's on.  Safety pins to hold mine on.  Jason used binder clips to hold his on.  We waited for it to start getting dark out and then we hit the neighborhood.  Once again everyone commented on how awesome our family costumes were.  The kids had a blast and Connor loved his light up stick man costume!  Just as we were heading out Connor's friend TeJon stopped by, so he joined us for some trick-or-treating too.  After walking around for a while we headed back home to hand out candy at our house and "man the scare crow."  We built our usual scare crow for the front porch with his hands hooked to the pulley system through our bay window and a walkie-talkie in his pocket.  Connor's job was to pull the arms when big kids came to our door.  Jason scared the big kids with the walkie talkie.  TeJon shined a bright light at their feet when we opened the door,  Kaiden handed out the candy.  I took pictures.  We all spied through the window and watched for the kids and then Jason yelled "man your stations."  Then after Jason had a few beers he danced in the window with no lights on (so all you saw was the stick figure) to draw kids in.  We had a blast. Below is pictures from Connor's school harvest party.  The kids dress up in costumes, march through the school then come back to their class for treats and to watch the Charlie Brown Halloween show.  Kaiden loved sitting with Connor and his friends. The football player next to Kaiden is Kaiden... one of Connor's buddies and his old basketball team mate.  Kaiden always has to say Hi and talk to our Kaiden because he thinks its neat someone has the exact same name as him.  Below that is Connor with his best friend, Owen.  

 

 A haunted house in our neighborhood.  Connor was too spooked, so we didn't go through it this year.