The Four Blevins : 2013

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Okay, so we got a little behind...

This is when it starts to get crazy. We had our first Christmas get together on Saturday and in getting ready for that, my daily blogging has ceased. Since then, our activities have consisted of more random acts of kindness, seeing Frozen at the movie theater,

new pajamas...

and driving around looking at Christmas lights with hot chocolate...

Today's activity was to make a Christmas snack mix (popcorn, pretzels, M&M's and white chocolate drizzled on top).

Yum. :)

Joy has been keeping up the shenanigans- here is our last week in review.

Playing angry birds...

Getting in her morning workout...

Putting together a Christmas puzzle...

Writing a note to Santa...

Playing Peek-a-boo in a t.p snowman...

Playing with the copier...

And this morning we found her in front of a cup pyramid.

It's one week until Christmas!!! I can't believe it. This month has flown by. I've been pretty productive - I'm almost finished shopping and I spent all day Sunday making the 32 "Thank you/Merry Christmas" treat bags for the kids school personnel and Brian's subs. Orange cranberry bread, Oreo bark and the popcorn snack mix mentioned above in today's activity.

I'm glad I set aside the time on Sunday because there is literally no time left until Christmas- everything is scheduled! Hope you all are ahead of schedule too!

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

12/11

School was delayed 2 hours today, so we were able to sleep a little late. I got up when I heard the boys and when they saw me Hudson said "Where is Joy? I've looked everywhere!" I told them we didn't have a whole lot of time to look because they needed to eat breakfast and start to get ready for school. Reed wanted waffles (which is exactly what I wanted to happen) and went to the freezer and found this...

She brought us frozen treats! Hudson smiled and said "Well that was nice!" :)

Our activity today was to do a random act of kindness. I'll leave it at that - I think it's weird to do a RAK and then go tell people about it, but at the same time I know I have people who read this who want to know what our activity was for the day.

On another note, I realized that Christmas is TWO WEEKS from today. Um.... Yikes. :)

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

12/10

We awoke to quite the sight... Joy had tied up the Grinch! Guess she didn't want to hear anymore "Scroog-y" stuff outta him!

The activity for today was to watch Despicable Me 2. It came out on DVD today so I knew it would be the perfect activity. I had a ladies Christmas party to go to so the boys got to spend some good quality time with Dad. :)

Monday, December 9, 2013

12/9

Joy got into the candy last night! She's a little messy...

Our activity today was to make a penguin ornament.

These were a lot easier than yesterday's craft. We used hot glue to put them together and they turned out really cute.

We got out and about a little bit today- Brian left his truck here for me so I could drive something with 4X4. Otherwise we would be stuck here- our road is still a solid sheet of ice. This was taken about 3:45 this afternoon.

I was headed to the gym and as I was pulling out of the driveway, the mail carrier was sitting at out mailbox. She had a tire chain on one back tire, but the other one was just spinning. I had no idea how to help, but she asked if I could put a floor mat under the back of the tire for traction. Much slipping and sliding (I'm talking about me walking on the ice) later, the floor mat worked like a charm and she was off. Once we get to the highway, the roads were just fine. School has been cancelled again for tomorrow- I can see how a bus would not be able to navigate our road but also how someone without 4 wheel drive would be out of luck. Better safe than sorry. On the flip side, the boys are pumped that they have yet another day off from school. 😊

Sunday, December 8, 2013

12/8

Last night Joy was doing some stealthy intel on the boys ...

For our activity today, we had another craft.. A nativity scene.

It was a ton of foam pieces that you stuck together to make the scene. Well, not only were we missing a few pieces, but it was harder than I anticipated. It ended up cute though.

The temp went a little above freezing today so we decided to venture into town for some lunch. We live at the end of a court, so our road was pretty icy. This was taken on a more traveled section of our road, but still not great.

The closer we got into town (and encountered the heavily traveled roads) the better it got.

Lunch was a welcome break. We ran and got a few things at the grocery store and then headed back home. We spent some more time outside enjoying the sunshine.

My three boys checking the output on the windmill.

Reed made a snow (slush) angel.

In amongst these trees is our future home site - yippee!!

Since the roads were still very wet and icy and it's supposed to freeze again tonight, school has been cancelled again for tomorrow. The boys were very excited. :)

Saturday, December 7, 2013

12/7

This morning Joy decided to warm up with a nice marshmallow bubble bath.

Here's what really happened... I fell asleep early last night. I woke up at 5:30 to go to the bathroom and suddenly remembered Joy. I went into the living room (only to find each kid on the floor asleep from the "Christmas tree camp out"). I stepped over the sleeping bodies and reached for Joy... And she wasn't there. Brian had moved her to my bathroom and said that even if the boys couldn't find her, at least she will have moved. (He couldn't care less about this whole elf business, but he knows I do so he helps me out in little ways like this. In other news, my husband is awesome.) so anyway, then it all came to me. Since I was about to take a shower, I thought Joy might want to do the same and there you have it.

Moving on to our advent calendar... Sigh. This winter storm has thrown an icy road wrench in my advent activity plans. We were supposed to stay at the Gaylord tonight and do the ICE show tomorrow… but we needed to stay home. We had freezing rain/sleet all Thursday night and there is about an inch of ice covering the roads and it's not supposed to get above freezing until tomorrow afternoon. I LOVE the Gaylord, especially at Christmastime, so I was fairly disappointed when I realized that we needed to cancel. But I moved some things around and it has been just fine. This morning the boys got to open another activity present and it was a perfect one for being stranded in the house - another Shrinky Dink tree!

We colored the Shrinky Dinks and decorated the tree skirt.

And I chose the elf just so I could color him with the correct color scheme... ☺️

They LOVED the one we did last year, so I was super excited to find another version of it online. It went over just as well this year and it turned out great.

They have gone outside a couple of times - Hudson threw a "snowball" (translation - ice chunk) and hit Reed in the eye and then Hudson slipped and hit the back of his head on the ice covered driveway. Now we're watching TV… it's much safer. :)

Friday, December 6, 2013

12/6

The news has been warning us that we had a winter storm coming our way. We woke up to a cancelled school day and a very cold elf this morning...

And it looked like this outside...

It was a lot of freezing rain/sleet, so the boys were sad they couldn't make a snowman. But they did enjoy playing outside. (And a side note, Reed is wearing my coat. Sigh. I need to put a brick on that kids' head to keep him from growing.)

"Mom! Watch me slide!"

In between outside fun, we had many warm up sessions of candy cane cocoa and the Rainbow Loom. What did we do with our time before the Rainbow Loom?

After dinner, we did our activity for the day… a Christmas Tree Campout! We made a pallet on the living room floor, watched a movie and ate Grinch cookies (chocolate chip cookies tinted green with some Andes mint pieces thrown in).

We're snuggling in, looks like another COLD night ahead!

Thursday, December 5, 2013

12/5

With all the hoopla that's been going on the last few days, we caught Joy relaxing with a nice drink and a little recreational reading.

The boys got to open their first activity "present" today... A Lego train!

The boys worked hard and I never ended up getting a picture of the finished product… The trains ended up getting taken apart and turned into 'canons' about 45 seconds after being put together. :)

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

12/4

Joy decided to get in on the Rainbow Loom craze...

Our activity for today was to have a little treat and watch Elf. When Reed pulled out the tag, he said "Yes! I've been waiting to watch Elf!!"

I even wore my new shirt to celebrate (Sorry for the blurry picture, but it says the best way to spread Christmas Cheer is singing loud for all to hear. :) )…

(Just a quick P.S.A. - If you haven't seen Elf, I highly recommend it. It's very slapstick, but I save it to watch only at Christmastime and I laugh out loud EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. It's just that good.) Moving on, we were supposed to have hot chocolate, but since it was 83 degrees outside today (seriously) we had mini cupcakes instead. And with this warm weather, I was able to wear flip flops and admire my Christmas pedicure!