The Saturday 8!

1. At Algoma, all 6th graders are required to take band. Lucy chose the clarinet and has been quickly learning the basics - including a few songs - for her first ever band concert on Tuesday. 

She didn't have a solo. I took the pic while she was warming up.

The concert was . . . interesting. Lol. Honestly, though, I'm super impressed that these kids are able to play recognizable songs 3 months after picking up an instrument for the first time. 

2. On Wednesday we began our 9th annual countdown to Christmas with my made up Advent activities. It's one of those traditions that I started when I only had one kid, but has quickly become an expected part of our Christmas season. I don't really mind. I love coming up with creative ideas and ways to make the holidays magical for my kids. Although, of course, I always worry about imparting too much magic and creating entitled brats. 🤷 It's a fine line. If anything, my hope is that our version of the Advent calendar - wherein we spend time together as a family - is less harmful than the commercial versions that give the kids a present every day. (I just wait until Christmas to get all my materialism out at once.) Anyway, I wasn't feeling very inspired to do any kind of creative presentation this year like I have in the past. But I did get these really cool Advent cards that my sister-in-law, Esther, turned me on to. They have a letter on the front with a little mini-devotion on the back. So I've just been putting those out every morning along with a note detailing our plan for the day. If I was more on top of things, I would've aligned my activities with the letters, but ain't nobody got time for that.

3. Wednesday was a candy cane taste testing challenge.

Do anyone else's kids watch those stupid YouTube shows where kids do the most random challenges? Pop-tart taste test or chicken nugget taste test. My kids love those things, so I knew they'd love this. I even video-ed it so they could imagine themselves as little YouTube stars. Haha. Since my phone was video-ing, though, I didn't get any pictures of them doing the test. Here were their choices:

I bought 4 boxes with flavors like strawberry, lemon, green apple, Dr Pepper, Root Beer, 7-Up, Oreo, cherry, pineapple, etc. It was a hit.

Lucy figured out how to make part of the video into this GIF. Haha. Her technology skills have surpassed mine.

4. On Thursday I pulled out one of my Black Friday finds . . .

And the letter happened to correspond with my plan! Haha. 

I let the kids decorate their gingerbread men with chocolate chips and writing icing. They thought it was the best thing ever and didn't even ask for syrup! Win! (I hate cleaning up that sticky mess!) 

5. Friday was the kids' Christmas program at school. Lucy is too old this year and Lena refused to participate, so we just went to watch Levi. 

He was being a little bit like Lena and didn't want to do it until I bribed him with ice cream. Haha. And then of course, he refused to wear the cute button-up shirt I had for him. It was all I could do to get him to wear a shirt without the words "Under Armour" emblazoned on the front. 🙄 He did well once he was up there, though. (Top left, green and grey shirt)

6. I worked my butt off all week to finish the first of my big final projects. On Wednesday I worked on my Library Site Visit Report for 4 solid hours while the kids were at school, then picked it up for about 4 more hours later that night. It was time consuming, but I did really enjoy it. I'm realizing that I really enjoy some elements of graphic design . . . although I'm not sure that's the right label for it. I'm not particularly artistic. I can't make up my own logos or designs, but I love arranging elements on a page. For this report, I did a lot of formatting (columns, text styles, etc.) and adding in pictures, quote boxes, and charts. It's also what I loved about the Soccer Camp "marketing" I did last summer - making flyers or facebook posts that present information with some fun visual elements that I didn't have to create, but did get to arrange. So that project is turned in. Now I just have to read 400 pages of my history book, watch a terrible movie about the Underground Railroad, find the historical inaccuracies and the research to prove they're inaccurate, and write a paper about it before Thursday. Piece of cake. 🤦

7. Today's family activity was bowling, and already the first time this season I get to use this meme:

The first problem was the shoes. Levi has some weird sensory issues about shoes and insisted that his didn't fit. Finally, I exchanged them for the next size even though they were too big. Then, they were too slippery, no matter how much we tried to explain that bowling shoes are always slippery. Once he finally got over that, the ball was too heavy and the bowling alley didn't have a dinosaur slide for him to push it down. The third problem was the other nice parents around us were buying pizza for their kids (even though it was 3:00 in the afternoon - NOT a meal time!). Lucy and Levi begged and begged and begged for pizza. When I said no, Lucy shut down and pouted the rest of the time. Levi whined and cried and insisted that he was "starving" even though he'd eaten McDonald's 2 hours earlier. I was raging inside that these kids are those entitled brats I was worried they'd become. Is it not enough that I'm paying for you to go bowling? You have to get food too? It's so irritating. But then Levi started winning so his attitude turned around. And Lucy got a couple spares so she begrudgingly started to enjoy herself. And as we were leaving, a kid in the arcade gave us like $5 in quarters because he had to leave and didn't want to bring the money home? So it ended on a good note, and now I'll share pictures to perpetuate the myth that my life is all rainbows and unicorns. 😁

My camera doesn't handle motion very well. Haha.

I caught her victory leap when she made a spare! Haha.

8. Bonus point for more pictures!

Found on Levi's wheel of thankfulness. 💖

He asks me to take his picture like this probably once a day. 

On this day, he looked up an older picture of himself doing the same pose and declared, "Yep. My muscles are getting bigger." 💪

Tonight, Nova came over for a few hours and Levi inspired her to pose as well. Haha.

Doesn't that view just make you so happy?

Do you see it?

I've got one present wrapped so far! 

Finally finished the "Bible in a Year" plan that I started in January of 2020. At least it didn't take me two full years! Lol. I read it chronologically for the first time this year and loved it.