Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas so far. And Ethan actually woke up on his own- this is a first, as we usually get bored of waiting and go wake them up on Christmas morning. Sloane was SO excited about her Lalaloopsie!

an unwrapping pro...

Ethan having fun with throwing paper around!

Is there any more under here???

Yum! Christmas paper!

The Christmas paper explosion...

Sloane's loot: Lalaloopsie, a boat, Strawberry shortcake (and hair supplies), an iXL(like a nintendo ds for toddlers), a princess (ugh) tea set, teacup piggie, zoobles, rc car, kitty,guitar and so.much.more.

Cameron's loot: Lego sets, guitar, video camera, electronic drums, video game, a lego starwars alarm clock, and some art sets

Ethan's loot: ipod touch, guitar, legos, 2 new books, and a video game, and a sole skate (one footed skateboard)

Rockin out with their new guitars wearing pjs from santa

Boy what a day AND mess! Now to find a place to put it all.....

Christmas parties!

Cameron, Mackenzie, & Sloane at Cameron's class christmas party



Ethan and WyattEthan and Mrs. Tate This is a picture of all the 3 little piggie houses that the Kindergarteners made- Cameron's is the one on the middle shelf all the way to the right next to the trophies- he made it from popsicle sticks.

Science Fair winner!

Ethan and Wyatt won 1st place in Physics for 5th grade and were able to advance to the District Science Fair. Here are all the District qualifiers from 5th grade :)

Then at District, Ethan and Wyatt got a Bronze medal- I am not sure how many schools they ran against but I think there were 4 other Elementary schools. Not bad! He now has a taste of winning and has plans for moving on to State next year!

Santa

Well, the kids are ready for Santa! And surprisingly, Ethan STILL seems to have no clue about anything fishy going on with that Santa guy...Jim and I have taken bets on when Cameron will find out and break the news to Ethan. LOL! Cameron is completely excited about Santa and his eyes sparkle everytime we see one in a mall, and Sloane is really into him too! We went to the mall a couple of weeks ago while the boys were in school, and there was no line, so we did a test run- I thought she would be nervous or freak out or something but nope- she loved it, sat on his lap and even talked to him! It was really surprising! So, We finally went last Saturday and took the kids to a mall we hadn't been to before. We thought for sure there would be a big line the saturday before Xmas, but luckily we were there early enough in the morning that nobody else was in line. This santa was THE best Santa I have EVER seen, ever! I think he might have been the real one. He sat the kids on his lap, turned to the side and did a low hohoho chuckle that was totally real. Then he talked to the kids, told them he has an elf at the house watching them (we really DO!!!) the only thing off was that he had a bit of a Texas accent- LOL! Don't know how you would get that in the North Pole....
Anyway- Ethan told Santa that he wanted a Sole Skate (a 1 footed skateboard type thing), Cameron said he wanted a video camera, and Sloane asked for a boat (!?) and she is now really stuck on that boat idea. So we will have to see if the kids get what they wanted. I WAS really surprised that the kids were good at narrowing their ideas down to 1 thing.

Sing a song

This month we have been very busy with school singing programs! Everyone has had their chance to have the spotlight. I thought Cameron wasn't going to have a chance because their 'regular' musical for school isn't until Spring, but all the Kindergarten decided to get together at a nursing home and sing. Then the NJE All Star Singers held a concert Tuesday night at the school, they sang more songs than at the parade and it was a really nice show. Ethan even got to go to the front and peform a Dreidel dance for their Hannukah song, and when they sang Silent Night, they also perfomed in sign language. It was a great concert!

Happy 40th Jim!

I finally sucked it up and threw a party for Jim since it was his 40th birthday. We usually have just a small family thing but this time we invited the neighborhood and ordered enough bbq to feed everyone, and of course a big huge Costco cake! (had to be big to hold all those candles!)
The party turned out great! Wow, that's alot of work the week before Christmas though!

Fort Worth Christmas lights

We went downtown to see the lights with some friends. We were hoping to see Santa but we got there too late. We did walk around and look at the lights though, then had a nice dinner. There were quite a few different horse drawn carriages around- that was fun to see! Sloane wants a horse!!

Ethan rocks! (literally)

Ethan has been enjoying choir this year, and finally it is the time of year to show off! They had a concert at the parade of lights in Joshua last week. It was VERY cold, but they got up there and sang! Next week they put on another concert for the school- I can't wait!

Also- some very big news.....Ethan and his partner Wyatt got 1st place in Physics for the school science fair!!!!! It was a stressful project because his 'partner' didn't ever help out when he came over to work, and his parents really didn't give them too many opportunities to work together, so really Ethan wrote the paper on his own. He did a GREAT job (obviously) and he did so much more on his own this year- I really only had to guide him a bit and rearrange some of his sentences so they made better sense. Jim laughed because we used the exact same look for the display board as last year (hey- he got 1st last year too, so there must be something to it...)

The biggest news is that not only did he get 1st place, but it was good enough that he is advancing to the District science fair, which means competing with all the other Elementary schools in Joshua (around 4 others) He is very excited. And I can't believe this but in all the craziness getting everything ready for the fair, I forgot to take pictures of him with his project.

He goes to District on Wednesday so everyone keep your fingers crossed!

Sloane's Christmas program

Slaone's preschool had their Christmas program last night. We went out and bought a fancy dress just for the occasion- Sloane was SO excited to buy a pretty dress. She picked out a black velour/tafeta one (my girl doesn't skimp on herself!) It was regular price- $48 but thank goodness it was on a REALLY good sale! LOL! She even got to buy shoes to go with- they have a little heel on them. This is the most frilly girly stuff I have ever gotten for her. She told me her shoes are princess shoes.
She was really nervous when we arrived at her program- lots of people and lots of chaos, but thank goodness her teacher was there to make her feel better. I thought she would be the one kid of mine that sings at these functions because she sings SO much, the boys always clam up when there is an audience. Well, Sloane was no exception :) But at least she stood still and was cute! They had the 2yr olds dress like angels because their song was 10 little angels. At the end she didn't want to give up the wings- she liked being a butterfly! LOL!

Sloane's little outfit came with a matching doll dress- luckily we had a doll that it fit!

beautiful!

This right here is what I love about Texas. The sky! We got pretty trees in Virginia (that I miss dearly) but we didn't get anything neat in the sky (or maybe the trees blocked it all!)

The Mitchells

Grandma and grandpa

The Mitchell boys!

And....The Mitchell dogs! Every last one of them! Finn, Callie, Copper, & Baby! Believe it or not, all of these guys got along pretty well!

Thanksgiving!

This year for Thanksgiving, Jim had the whole week off so we made the most of it and got some family visits in! The first half of the week we went to see Mike & Shirley- we had a great time! The kids were very excited about being able to bring Finn- Bagel never liked to travel. Finn had fun on our trip, and was really pretty well behaved! Then Tuesday we went further north (really shouldn't be done in fall/winter...) to Bob's house. It was great to see Bob and Wendy again. The boys were kind of bummed out because Josh and Kyle went to visit their dad but we lucked out and they came home the day after Thanksgiving, so we did get to see everyone! Mike and Shirley came to Bob's for Thanksgiving and it was great! Wendy made the CUTEST cherry mice- the kids went crazy over them.

Cameron says these are his hamster cheeks :)

One thing everyone loves about Bob's house is that they have games! Pool & ping pong! Jim said his butt got sore from playing so much ping pong. Not really sure what that is about....

They also have a chess board set up and both the boys spent alot of time trying to play. My guess is that they had been watching Harry Potter play chess and that is what piqued their interest. Whatever works!