Last of December

James got a hold of my phone and left some selfies for me:

We were cleaning out our carport and found another secret stash of eggs! Those dang chickens!

A sweet family in our ward gave us a basket filled with treats for Christmas. The basket is perfect for collecting eggs!

We bought an outdoor tent/shade cover for our lawnmower and the kids' powerwheels so that we could move it all and have enough space in the carport for both of our cars. I think this is the first time that we have ever used a garage/car space for actual cars!

The new home for the lawnmower:

Baymax's dad (and his owners of course) came over for a visit. It was so fun to see them running around together! Baymax kept trying to play with him and Chauncho wasn't a fan, so he kept snapping at him or growling at him to teach him some manners. It was nice for him to be around a dog bigger than him that he can't push around. I think it was the first time he hasn't been the dominant dog.

Both of them looking at us from outside. Those tongues!

A friend asked me to make a memory bear for her out of some clothes of her dad's (who passed away a few years ago). This was almost a year ago and all the materials have been just sitting in my sewing room. I finally sat down and got it done. It turned out so cute! The bow tie I made out of an old tie of his.

We came back from the feed store with a truck bed full of hay. Before Anthony could get the hay out, I was walking by and heard this scratching noise coming from the truck. I peeked over and saw this chicken trying to make a nest for herself. Will they lay eggs everywhere but where they are supposed to??

I was reading in the hammock one day and I looked over to see Anthony helping James hook up the boys' power wheels together. I don't know when they started doing this, but when Rett's battery starts to get low James loves to hook him up and "tow" him back to the house.

James's den leader invited us to his annual New Year's Eve bonfire at his house. Everyone brings old Christmas trees they have and they throw it on the fire throughout the night. The kids had a blast! We stayed and hung out until 10:30 when we were too tired. The kids could have kept going until midnight, but we were exhausted!

Christmas 2019

Christmas Eve Anthony, James, and Daniel took the boat out for some sheepshead fishing. They had a blast and we got to eat some fish for lunch.

Sheepshead have crazy human-like teeth!

Baymax likes to make himself comfortable. He doesn't realize that he takes.up.all.the.room.

Christmas morning the boys were so excited to check out the loot. Rett came out of his room and yelled, "I can't believe we were on the good list!!" I told them they could open their stockings before everyone else woke up.

Time to dig into presents!! James's big present was the hoverboard he has been wanting!

Rett got an assortment of angry birds and ryan's world toys that he has been asking for. There was a lot of squealing and jumping up and down :)

Rett's final haul:

James's pile:

Anthony tried to be very sneaky when he bought my Christmas present this year. He got cash back from Home Depot after running errands with Rett. Then he drove up to Daytona to a music store to buy me a new, nicer quality ukulele. It would have been a total surprise, but the next day I was driving somewhere with Rett and he said from the backseat, "Oh! Yesterday Daddy and I went to Daytona Beach!" I said, "Oh, you mean New Smyrna Beach, to Home Depot right?". He replied, "No, we went to Daytona Beach to a music store!". I told Anthony you can't count on 5 year olds to keep any kind of a secret at all, no matter how many times you tell them not to say anything!

I surprised Anthony with this windowsill mushroom growing kit. It was so fun to do and the kids loved watching it grow every day!

Robin and Michael and the cousins came over to visit the Saturday after Christmas. We visited, played with the animals and exchanged a few gifts. This t-shirt for James was awesome!! So appropriate for Florida!

More December

We went a few days without getting any eggs in the chicken coop, so I knew those little stinkers were laying them somewhere else. It took me a few days, but I found their secret nest behind the air conditioning unit!

The boys picked out presents for the family from the Christmas store at school, and they couldn't wait to give them out. So we opened them early!

I added an extra in Anthony's present: a handheld blow torch lighter. He loved it!

We forced the boys to hug each other after each present. They looked like they were hugging a cactus, but at least they did it!

Anthony got a delivery of dead rats (snake food) and it came packaged with dry ice! I was going to just throw it away, but Anthony dug it out of the trash so that he and the boys could do experiments. They loved it!!

James's cub scout den went on a night hike to pass off their 1 mile hike requirement. They had the best time! They found lots of animal tracks and they even came across a run down shack.  His den leader told them a ghost story and signaled for some of the other parents to go around to the other side of the shack to scare them. When the dads started banging on the outside of the shack, the kids ran straight out screaming! Good times!!

Rett with his two preschool teachers: Ms. Wendy and Ms. Shawna.

I volunteered to do a food activity for Rett's class so we decorated house shaped graham crackers with candy to look like gingerbread houses.

Santa came to preschool!

James 2 decided to hide in the peanut jar:

Getting ready for fun at our ward's Christmas party:

This year the Christmas party coordinator wanted to have some live music for the party so a few friends from church and I volunteered to do a few songs. I did the first one playing my ukulele, but it is kind of hard to hear. 

After the music, Santa came to the Christmas party! The boys have been sitting on this same Santa's lap since James was 10 months old!

I decided to give homemade gifts to James and Rett's teachers this year, so they all got an assortment of handmade gifts from our farm. They all really enjoyed them and I liked giving things that were consumable so that it wouldn't just take up space in their closet.

James got his first few cub scout awards at the December pack meeting. It felt like he got a lot and when I looked back we discovered that he probably got a different boy's awards. He did actually earn two of them, so he only has to give back the extra two.

After the awards, they played a present game where everyone passes the presents left or right depending what the Cubmaster says. They had a great time, but ended up trading afterwards anyways.

For the last day of school before winter break, James's class had a pajama and polar express day. They had treats, a hot chocolate bar, and got to watch the movie

His principal dressed up like elf on the shelf and the vice principal was Santa Claus for parent pick up.

A local cardiology office sent Anthony this wreath for Christmas. I thought it was a really neat gift!

James and Rett invented a game where they draw their own treasure map and then run around the yard "defeating bosses" in order to find the treasure. They were having so much fun being creative, even in the rain!

James enjoyed sleeping on large pillows on the floor of Rett's room while the cousins were visiting so Rett wanted a turn too. I got some couch pillows from the sewing room to make another makeshift bed so they could both sleep on the floor. They were so excited to have a "sleepover". They slept like this on the floor for over a week until I made them clean it up so I could vacuum the floor.

We had a really bad storm come through and we even had a tornado warning! Just to be on the safe side we spent the hour the warning was in effect in the bathroom. We piled pillows and blankets in the bathtub and read books the entire time. Rett was really scared and nervous. It didn't help that James who wasn't scared at all was genuinely curious about how destructive tornadoes are and how they work and kept asking all these questions. I finally had to tell James to stop talking about it! For days afterwards Rett kept adding in his prayers "And please bless that there will be no tornadoes".

I decided to try out some blue light filtering glasses for when I spend long amounts of time on the computer or on my phone. They are supposed to prevent you from getting eye strain headaches (which I get often at nighttime) and help you sleep better (since the blue light can suppress your melatonin). Target had a few in their eye care section by the pharmacy, of course Rett and James had to help me try them out.

Some family friends sent the boys target gift cards for Christmas so they decided to combine them and go in on a Ryan surprise egg. They love Ryan toys! We don't get it, we're hoping that they move on to a new obsession soon...

A week after buying Anthony's new truck, the transmission went out in our van! It was a big surprise because we fully expected to drive our old van for many more years. We ended up buying a new (to us) van from the same place we bought Anthony's truck from. I miss our old van and I'm slowly getting used to the new one. The entire process was terrible, our salesman this time around was much smarmier and we just wanted to finish and get out of there. On the positive side, now both of our cars have a certified used warranty that covers repairs on anything mechanical for 7 years or when the car reaches 100,000 miles. So hopefully we are done with surprise mechanic bills for a long time!

A shopping plaza in Daytona had a big free "wonderland" event for kids and the boys loved it! They had a snow machine and let 25 people in at a time to play in it.

They had a polar express train ride complete with golden tickets and a conductor that punches them. So much fun!