Thanksgiving/Christmas

This year we celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas on the same day with my family.  My brother and his family went to Disney Land over Christmas.  We week prior to Thanksgiving all of Spokane lost power due to a wind storm.  We had wind gusts up to 75mph... possibly even higher, but the gauge at the airport got taken out by the wind and they weren't able to get an accurate reading after that. 104,000 people without power!  Some people were out of power for over a week.  Jason bought a generator on the second day we were out of power and on his way home from buying it our power came back on.  Go figure!  But my brother was out of power for a week, so we loaned him the generator.   After dinner we played Card Bingo, which was so much fun!  This was Laura's idea and we have decided to make it a family tradition.  Everyone chooses a prize from the table and hides it in their lap.  You use 5+ decks of cards.  Everyone gets a hand full of cards.  Then you flip a card over from the deck and if you have that card in your hand you call out bingo.  Then you get to steal a gift from someones lap, but the trick is you have to remember who has what gift.  If you guess wrong then you don't get anything.  The most popular prizes were a package of chap sticks, scented markers, a back scrubber, chocolates...  My little cutie doing his "cheese" pose.  He actually says "cheeeeeeese" and gives me a cute little smile while turning his head every time he sees my camera now.   Christmas gift time!  Connor was so excited to get Pokemon stuff.  I had a hard time getting a clear picture since he was jumping around excited.   Grandma got the boys all these Minion microphones that sing a goofy song.  The boys all loved them.

 

Disney Frozen on Ice

Jason surprised Connor and I with tickets to see the Disney on Ice- Frozen show.

 

 

Girls Night out

JoAnn, Loraine and I went to a Paint Nite in Idaho.  Wine, appetizers and painting... fun!

Halloween

I traded shifts so that I could have Halloween off and spend it with my boys.  We started the morning off with some science experiments.  Connor and I created some crystals.

 

 We made sure our porch was ready for trick-or-treaters.  The boys made the scarecrow earlier in the week when I was a work.  We made sure the fishing line was hooked to each hand and the line strung through the window... ready to pull and scare the teenagers.  Along with the walkie talkie in the pocket.  And our jumbo huge spider was perched on a web with his eyes lit up bright... along with all our glowing pumpkins.

 Connor picked our theme, so this year we were the Pokemon family!  Connor was Charizard,  Kaiden was Dragonite,  I was Pikachu and Jason was Ash Ketchum.

  

 

 We started getting trick-or-treaters at 5:00!  We weren't even done eating our Jack-o-lantern pizza before the door bell started ringing.  The boys loved handing out candy.

 

 We did a loop around our neighborhood to trick-or-treat ourselves and then headed back home.  It was chilly out with wind and rain.  One of our neighbors turns his garage into a haunted house.  Jason and Connor went through it.  I stayed outside with Kaiden.  I was going to go through it after they got out, but Connor got too spooked and wanted to get away from the haunted house... so we moved on.  Once we got home Kaiden took over handing out candy.  He loved it.  Although if your face was painted up scary you didn't get any candy from Kaiden!  Everyone else he happily dropped a candy or two into their bag.  While Kaiden manned the door, Connor was busy with the scarecrow.  He roared, he flung the hands up and everyone laughed and had a good time.  Jason retired to the living room to watch some TV... probably football and relax with a beer.  I kept an eye on the boys and made sure even the kids with face painting got candy, since Kaiden sure wasn't going to give them any.  We all had a fun Halloween!

 

 

 

Kaiden also recently started letting us know when he has to go potty.  He grabs himself or tugs on his pants and runs to the bathroom.  He usually tells us after he's just gone potty in his diaper, but he's making the correlation that he needs to go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet.  I bought him a little potty, but he still prefers to sit on the big toilet with the little seat instead.  Oh and when the boys are outside with dad... Jason has taught Connor that he can pee in the grass outside.  Apparently Connor has his own little pee spot outside.  When Connor goes pee outside, Kaiden lifts up his shirt, pinches his belly and arches his back.  Trying to copy big brother... only he's not exactly sure what to do.  LOL  Kaiden now says: Mama, Dada, Ice, Hot, Up, Hat, Go...  He tries to copy us and say "Ready Set Go" but it sounds more like "I et GO."  He loves his cars, trucks and basketball. 
Connor's favorite sport is still basketball too.  He loves his shiny crystals.  And Pokemon.  OMG he will spend hours looking at his Pokemon cards or flipping through the book that tells things about the different characters... or talking about Pokemon.  He's always talking about Pokemon!  He's getting really good at reading and math.