Thanksgiving break

We had a great Thanksgiving holiday and Anna decided to wear her Pilgrim costume.  This is all I got of it but she was excited to show off another project from school (since we had already seen her other costume during the feast at school).   

Matt had a great craft project to do with the kids.  They made the pumpkins we had left into snowman heads!  :-)  First they had to be painted white which they enjoyed.  

 And they liked showing off the finished product.

 Olivier with his skeleton snowman.  He is very attached to the skeleton pumpkin so we left one side a skeleton and one side became a snowman head.

 Mason showing off the ones he worked on.

 And Anna with her snowmen.

 Today we put the tree up and decorated a bit.  We usually do it while the kids are napping but decided not to this year.  It was a lot more work but they loved being more involved in the process.

 It is fun to see them get into the holiday!

Park time!

The kids had the day off from school today so Matt was in charge of keeping them busy!  They spent the morning at the park in front of Anna's school.  

And Olivier showed off his ability to go down the pole by himself.

Thanksgiving feast at Anna's school

Anna's kindergarten classes had a Thanksgiving feast!  She was very excited, after all, what kindergartener doesn't love to put on a costume, sing, tell a few jokes, and eat?  :-)  

Here is a collection of songs, and a fair amount of Spanish in there!  

Anna had the closing joke!  :-)

All the kids enjoying the feast!  

Playing with my new camera

For my birthday Matt gave me a new point and shoot camera that also takes video clips, but now the sound will work!  :-)  More video clips coming to the blog again!  My fist victims were the kids and Lina who was spending the night.  I got this cute shot of them.  

 And much more willing victims watching the beginning of a movie while waiting for dinner.

 Joe and Heather got a great deal on some costumes which the boys have really gotten into.  Olivier was very excited to put it on and show off his muscles.

 Anna was excited to put on a knight costume (as was Mason but I didn't get a good photo).

 And Mason shocked me (MAJOR shocker!) and wanted to wear the Power Rangers costume also and show me his muscles.  Then he wanted to see the photo and see where his eyes were.  Thankfully I was able to show him his eyes zoomed in and he was happy.  Silly boy!

 The kids have been having to bundle up to play outside in the evening and I got this cute shot of Anna.

Enjoying playing around with my new toy!  :-)  I am a lucky girl!

Take a guess where we went today? :-)

Happy Birthday Day!

Olivier and Mason were very excited to celebrate their birthday, and they have a classmate with the same birthday which made for an exciting day at school.  They took a trek to the Secret Forest, which is always a treat (especially for Olivier who gets extra dirty!).  

Once everyone was home they each got two more gifts to open.  It is nice to see that it doesn't take much to make them excited.  Mason was thrilled to get the game Hungry Hungry Hippo and Olivier got a Mack truck that will hold his little cars.  And even better, they have been sharing their toys.  :-)

 Silly boys!

 And they even played with Anna!

 I don't have their official height and weight but will post them after their doctors appointment on the 22nd.  One thing I do know is that Mason at age 4 is about a quarter of an inch below Anna's 5 year old height.  Yup, he is almost as tall as her!  Olivier is starting to grow like crazy as well which is very exciting!

It was a great birthday and I am surprised they haven't started asking when their next birthday will be!

Party Time!

It is that time of year again, birthday party time!  Wow, where does the time go?  Mason and Olivier were very excited to have a monkey gymnastics party!  It is fun to see how the group has changed as the kids have gotten older.  

They started off with stretching in the cheer room.  It is fun to run around on the bouncy floor!  

 Sadie wasn't sure if she wanted to participate yet and went between mom and her big sister!

 After warming up, it was off to the obstacle course!  They had a really big one set up with plenty of room for the kids to run around on.  And they had to be on their toes, the direction kept changing!  Mason making his way around.

 Rhys and Sadie started warming up to the activities a bit around this time.  Too much fun was being had by everyone else!

 Silly Rhys!

 And we can't forget Gus!  His dark blue pants sure got messy from the chalk writing on the trampoline.

 Matt jumped into the pit, which made Gus laugh (it was so cute!!).  Then they started throwing pit blocks at each other.  Silly boys!

 Mason had fun bouncing on this super soft mat.

 Matt enjoy the pit with the kids.  He wishes we had one at home!  :-)

 A great grin on Sadie's face!

 And Henry!  AKA the boys triplet!  Especially during the party since he was also wearing a long sleeve white shirt with a design on the front.

 I think this may be the kids favorite part, running down the tumble track into the pit.  I was able to get some great "blur" shots as the kids went down.  Here is Olivier!

 And Camille!

 And Anna!

 And Andy!

 And Eli!

 And Julie!

 And Audrey!

 And Natalie!

 And Henry!

 And Sadie!

 And Gus!

 And Mason!

Somehow I missed getting Lina jumping into the pit! Shame on me!  And I am not sure Rhys made the run and jump so I may have missed her too.  Bummer!

We then got the big group together for a photo!  I think this is the best one I got.  Anna was being silly with the noodle causing a few photos to not turn out so great.  That or Olivier was making a silly face.

 Then it was cupcake time!  And since they had a monkey party, we had monkey cupcakes of course!  We sang happy birthday and cupcakes went around.  Oddly, I didn't hear any complaints about them!  :-)

 After the party we came home and the boys opened their gifts.  Wow, two four year olds opening gifts is a bit on the wild side!  Yikes!  They love all of their gifts!  It was fun to watch them throughout the afternoon check out every gift.  Olivier tried on his Batman costume and showed us how strong he is.  So much fun!

 After eating some lunch the boys wanted to go ride their bikes since they got new helmets and accessories for their bikes.  While Daddy was getting things ready, I took the boys photo with their new helmets!  (And yes, Mason is still wearing part of his Spiderman costume, we let him keep it on except the cape.)

 Mason saying cheese!

 And the last gift the boys got big bikes!  No more tricycles in this house!  They were very excited!

 Olivier on with his new bike, with the new bell he got for his birthday.

 And Mason with his bike (and new horn which you can barely see!).

 And they were off!  They did really well riding around the neighborhood along the path.

It is exciting to watch them grow!  More to come on Tuesday for their actual birthday!  Yeah!