Santa Train

Getting our decorations up

That crazy Peeka!

Kya, Ryker, Colton, and Abby checking out the pond at the Santa Train

These two were chasing each other for a quite a while and finally Abby says, "Ryker, I think you're getting a little too rambunctious."  Sounds just like Audrey!

Lunch at our house after.  Yep that's my kid with no shirt, as usual...making faces for the camera...as usual.

 

Abby, thank you for tolerating the shirtless wonder and not moving your chair to the other side of the table.  I do not expect you to be this kind when you are older.  I know he's only going to get more embarrassing.

The next day, Ryker and Kya went to Grandma's for a little while.  Seth brought Ryker back in this!

Uh, buddy, that is made for a small GIRL!  He kept pulling at his butt and when I asked him what exactly was going on down there, he showed me that he was wearing the underwear that go with the costume.  That was a bit too much for me and I made him take them off.

Kya quickly scooped them up and put them on!

 



Breakfast with Santa and other Christmas Happenings

We said good morning to Peeka and headed to Anacortes to pick up Grandma Vi and have breakfast with Santa.

 

Eating pancakes

Ryker and his BFF from preschool last year.

Making cookies!

These two goofballs had concocted a plan to ask Santa for a rabbit.  I didn't hear a word of it until they were on Santa's lap asking for a rabbit, lettuce, and carrots.  What the heck?!  At least they had enough foresight to ask for food for it.  Kya also asked for an orange robe (which she later changed to one we saw at Costco, so we wrote him a letter to make the change) and pink sunglasses.  Ryker asked for an excavator.

Off to the parade!

After the parade, we went to the Elk's Kid's shopping day.  They had free food and drinks and lots of items for sale for cheap.  Ryker and Kya took their own money from their piggy banks to shop for family.  They put a lot of thought into the things they bought an on some level, most of the gifts fit the person they were buying for.  They had fun, but I we probably won't go again.  It was too hard to keep them from buying a bunch of junk.  They wanted to get a lot more than we left with.  I think their homemade gifts are better.

Kya checking out the sweet powder room.

Yay, Dad's back!  Seth took a break from crabbing for a couple days to spend Christmas with us.

Look who we found taking a nap!  Must be Papa Moose's brother!

I want an upside down tree!

We were trying to leave, but Kya was not coming out of this house.

She loved it!

Wrestle Mania? More like Wrestle Maniac!

Dear Seth,

You were only home a few days, but in that time you've totally changed Ryker's wrestling style again to an unsuitable style for me.  Today, while you're enjoying a drive to Oregon to work on the boat with an another ADULT, I was beat to crap by a 4 year old.  First, he informed me that most of my "moves" are not real wrestling moves!  Even my signature "Zerburtowski!"  Did you tell him that shit?!  How dare you!  If you ruin our sing-a-longs by telling him I can't really play the guitar, you're moving outside with Cosmos.  Next, he proceeded to hit me in the face and upside the head and kept giving me his "crazy eyes."  I didn't know what to expect next out of this kid.  I usually wrestle him on my knees but finally stood up because he kept flying at me so crazily, I was fearing for my safety.  I stopped for a moment to help Kya frame out her puzzle so she could get the inside pieces in and he flew off the couch, grabbed hold of the hood of my sweatshirt, and tried to choke me out.  It was so unexpected that he actually took me to the floor.  Then I was laughing so hard about him trying to drag me by my hood, that he was able to jump on top of me.  He was laying across me trying to pin me, giving me a birthday spanking on the hip, and yelling "How do you like me now, Fatty!"  I don't know if I can blame you for the use of the word fatty, but I know you taught him the rest of the phrase. 

Amidst all the ugliness, I did manage to convince him that my new move, "The Baby Stroller" is legit so don't take that away from me when you get back.  I need to take in some wrestling matches next year and learn some defensive moves before he starts watching WWE and comes off the top rope at me.  At what age am I allowed to refuse wrestling with him.....or do I need to sustain an injury first?

I hope you're having fun playing with your boat pals!  You've really screwed up my operation here!  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go give this kid a sedative.........

You're loving wife

Ready to Rock the American Crawl

Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, she's not even busting out the dog paddle yet, but Kya had her first swimming lesson today.  She was AWESOME!  She's been watching Ryker now for months and begging for her turn.  She was soooo cute.  There is a huge difference between watching a 4 year old in his first swim class and a 2 year old.  She was actually more relaxed and trusting in the water than Ryker.  She would come back and give me thumbs up after each thing they did because Ryker does it to her during his class.  She told everyone she saw that day that she was going to or had been at swim lessons.

Posing in the second suit she picked out.  The first was much more little girly, but we had to take it back because she was way to long for it.  I figured a size 5 should work on a 2 year old, but we had to go back for a 6.  The purple whale pattern was gone on the second go around.  Maybe if her mom would take her shopping somewhere other than Costco, she'd have a few more choices.  Haha, I'll put Grandma Katha on it next time.  She buys much better stuff.

The two boys on the left are from the gym.  She had played with them today and told me that they were going to swimming lessons next so she'd see them at the pool.  Sure enough, there they were, in her class.  She's so social these days with all her gym friends.  On a sad note though, Eliana, her best friend from the gym who is there every day at the same time we are, moved.  She is pretty heartbroken.  She's now trying to become BFF's with a little girl named Claire, or ClaireBear as she calls her.  My kids have already had more of their friends move than I had move in all my years K-12!  We need to quit buddying up with these military families! 

The kids stand on a table because the water is too deep to touch.  Of course, Kya walked off it within the first 5 minutes.  I knew she was getting close, so I got up to tell her to scoot back right about the time she fell off.  She sunk like a rock and the instructor rescued her coughing and snorting water and snot.  They explained the table to her then, but I think she'd already figured it out.  She stuck close to the side of the pool after that.

She moved down the wall soooo slowly.  I felt bad for the boy behind her because he was moving much faster and having to wait for her.  He was a nice little guy though.  Ryker would have tried to crawl over her dunking her head as he passed to get by.

All this swimming reminds me of a little secret I have.  Seth is coming home tomorrow and we are heading to the Great Wolf Lodge on Wednesday to hit the waterslides!  The kids are going to be pumped.  I told Kya that we would take a little vacation when Dad got back and have one last big Potty Celebration since I was doing away with the end of day parties.  She's cool with that as long as it is somewhere FUN.

http://www.greatwolf.com/grandmound/explore/toddlers

Pretty sure this will qualify as somewhere fun!

 

Bring on Santa and the Black Ninja

I cleaned up (threw out) the massive amounts of artwork around the house when we got back from Montana to prepare the house for Christmas decorations.  I had to take a picture of a few.  As I can not save everything, I needed to a least document some of there accomplishments.

 

Ryker drew this around September of 2012, so just before he turned 4.  I was amazed.  He told me what it was when he handed it to me but for the first time, he didn't need to.  I could actually tell what it was.  I didn't know who it was, but other than that, this drawing was great!  It is Seth riding a unicycle and Seth wearing a big cowboy hat.  It is also very imaginative because he has never and will never see Seth doing either of those things in his lifetime!

 

This is Kya's painting, also done around the same time, so just before she turned 2.  She finally likes to see the colors separated and not everything smeared together into brown.

Patchwork turtle by Ryker.  "You know, made of pieces, like a quilt" he told me.  He's gotten into sewing at school and it sounds like he and Miss Tina may have talked about patchwork patterns.  Whatever the inspiration, he nailed a "patchwork turtle."

This was the first thing Kya went for when getting out the Christmas decorations.  Good thing too because it is none too big!

Ryker was disappointed that the Santa costume no longer fit him and that I didn't have a Christmas costume for him.  He disappeared upstairs for a few minutes and came back as the self named "Black Ninja" and told me to take his picture too.  I don't know what a ninja has to to with Christmas, but he was pretty pleased with himself and he's learning to be resourceful instead of sitting around whining about Kya having a costume.

Guess who else showed back up when we got home?  Yay Peeka!  He even had a little envelope with a little note tucked under his arm for the kids.

Dr. Seuss: Day II

When Dr. Seuss' birthday falls on a Saturday, you have to celebrate the whole weekend.  One day is just not enough.  This morning we had, Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish, and The Lorax truffula trees pancakes.  Yes, in hind sight I should have made my fish red and blue.  I also should have put berries on the toothpicks instead of puffballs because Kya really wanted them to be edible!  There is always next year.

Kya chose the Truffula tree one.

 

Ryker ate a fish and a hat.

 

Then they spent a couple hours dressing up.

We ate lunch while we Facetimed with Kara.  Then we went to the BEHS production of Seussical the Musical.  Ryker loved it, but we had to leave early because Kya couldn't make it through the whole thing.  She like it, she just wanted to talk about it and watch it from the isle not her seat.  In her defense, we were pretty far in the back and she couldn't see that great.

 

We cleaned the playroom today and found all our Seuss books so they picked out a few favorites to read tonight before bed.