Sleepover Dance Party Baking Fun

Alex's buddy Cecily was here for a sleepover this weekend. We crammed tons of fun into the visit. The kids decorated Valentine's cookies, had a dance party, made monkey bread for breakfast, made Valentines (no pics, unfortunately, but they were cute), and had a great time together.

Here are some pics and links to a couple of videos:

They love Adele!

Then we moved on to lots and lots of Justin Roberts. Here's Yellow Bus.

Very serious about sprinkles

Almost finished

Dance Party Superstars!

Back in the kitchen to make breakfast

Our Little Reader

We've tried very hard to pass our love of books and reading on to Alex, and it seems to be working. Lately, he's been very into the Magic Tree House book series. They have a few of these in his class at school, which is where he discovered them. The two main characters are Jack and Annie, and apparently he and several of his classmates will play "Jack and Annie" a lot. We now have five different books from the series checked out from the library. We got two more today, and he was so excited that he read one while we waited in line to check out our books, one in the car, and then hopped on the couch to read some more when we got home. I missed getting a picture of him lying on the couch and reading, but this was the next best thing.

Various School-Related Items

Yesterday and today was the first LabArts Expo. Students from the Nursery School classes through Seniors in high school had artwork displayed, and today there were several hours of performances as well. Alex's class had a display of their self-portraits where you could lift up a picture of the self-portrait to see the picture of the student that they worked from underneath. We had lots of fun looking at the artwork and enjoying the performances. Alex really seemed to like the dancing and the cellos.

We also had a parent let us know that Alex was in the video for this year's big fundraiser for the school. It can be viewed here (Connections 2012). Alex's class at their garden starts at 46 seconds in to the video.

Finally, Alex had a playground mishap and his first visit to the school nurse on Friday. He got his finger caught and the tip is pretty torn up. No stitches needed though, so that was good news. The nurse reported that he was very brave, and he's been doing pretty well with letting us take care of it.

In front of his class's display

Legos Anyone?

We thought that we might go to Legoland over break, but it ended up not working in the schedule. However, Alex and I had a day with a couple of hours to kill by Dave's office, so we took advantage of that to go to the Lego store at Water Tower Place.

Alex had lots of fun and saw many, many things he wanted. We kept the purchase to a minimum and got a lot of value out of seeing all the models and doing some building. Plus, he got a picture with the model of Woody, which made his day.

Zoo Lights 2011

One of my favorite traditions that we have started is our annual trip to Zoo Lights. This year we had to bump our first scheduled date and were running out of time, but on the 28th we made it. As always, it was quite beautiful and a lot of fun.

The view on the main pavilion

Alex with Humphrey Snowgart

The trees in the sea lion habitat dance to music.
This picture does not do it justice.

In one of the light tunnels, a new addition this year.

Alex and Dad with the snowman,
our annual photo op

Christmas Celebrations

Prior to traveling for the larger family Christmas, the three of us had our own little celebration.

Putting together one of the new Lego minifigures

One of his new Toy Story books
I love that in the middle of the celebration, he stopped to
read his new book. He even asked if he could.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has
become a bit of an obsession this year

For the big family gathering we met in St. Louis this year. The last time we had Christmas outside of Mt. Carmel was when I was Alex's age when we went to visit my grandparents in Florida.

Dad's played this game with all of the grandkids

This year, Alex got him back

Mom opening the annual calendar

Patiently waiting

Alex got to pass out the gifts,
an honor going to the youngest in the family
(Forrest and I had the longest stints in that position)

A Tale of Two Hanukkahs

We had our first Hanukkah of the year over Thanksgiving with Dave's family, and we had our own celebration starting tonight. Both were very fun and festive, although there were fewer silly hats at tonight's celebration.

Lighting the menorah.

Hot Wheels! Not sure who is more excited about this.

A new book from Aunt Laura!

Joshua lighting the menorahs.

Looking at this year's calendar with Grandpa Diamond.

Two silly boys in silly hats!