mid december (five days until Christmas!!)

i'm trying to consistently make the kids do saturday chores

they're sure cute when they do them

 henry wearing my boots and olive's coat to help with Christmas lights

 michael's jammies are cozier than mine

 family game of apples to apples jr

 these two in matching jammies are the CUTEST

 jude insists on holding his bananas himself 

it's adorable

 noah was home from school after having a stomach ache and fever the night before

he asked for tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch and said i was the best mom in the world when i complied

 nothing better than mail days in december

 eleanor took this and i LOVE it

and him

 extra tall laundry cart day

 we made a bunch of toffee to give friends and neighbors

 the next morning jude was much more interested in the toffee than his breakfast

 ready to go out to lunch with michael

 snow at micron

 we went to teriyaki for lunch

 it was such a fun lunch date and it didn't hurt that henry was at school

 henry's hideout in the pantry

 jude finally saw an allergist

 not a fun process for a sweet baby

 the only thing he was positive for was a cat allergy

but the allergy doctor gave us lots of good tips to deal with his eczema

 olive got a haircut

 eleanor's boots broke on the way to school and i had to run her a new pair 

 new rug

 helping himself

 nightly baths for jude are often accompanied by henry

the nightly 20 minute soaks are supposed to help his skin

 we finally got snow! the kids were so excited

 i love big family breakfasts

 silly henry forgot his clothes

 i'm a little embarrassed to say that the first santa that henry and jude have ever seen/sat on his lap

was in a gas station and looked nothing like santa

 micron is finally doing well enough to give a proper Christmas party

it was really fun to get dressed up and go out on a date

the dinner was good and it was fun to spend time with michael's coworkers

 we left the kids home with movies, pizza and snacks and they were great

when we got home it was late but they were happily playing games at the table together

 these two had their Christmas piano recital

they both did great

it was olive's first one and she really enjoyed it

hazel impressed everyone because she practices a lot and did really well

 henry brought me a snack of snow with a spoon

 henry is constantly begging me to keep the rental car we have while our van is getting fixed

after we were rear-ended a month or two ago

 the other afternoon i got to watch noah's band perform some Christmas songs

and it was video day for eleanor at ballet

and it was olive's 2nd grade Christmas performance

busy afternoon but so fun to watch all of them

 eleanor insists we skip to the car after kindergarten every day

she suggested it once and i told her mom's don't usually skip

and i hadn't skipped in a long time and she said, "well, you should"

i agreed so now we do it every day

 our pretty rental car is going to be hard to give back when the van is fixed

it's so nice and spacious

 my darling laundry helper

five days until Christmas and we're very excited!