Holiday Recovery

Well, the Holidays are officially over! I've spent the last couple of days boxing up our Christmas stuff and trying to detox my body from the massive amounts of chocolate I managed to eat. But it was definitely fun while it lasted---I've always loved Christmas but there is something especially joyful about celebrating it with little kids. Here are a few of our memories.

We made Gingerbread houses (actually decorated the pre-made ones from Costco) with the other Utah Woodruffs.

A favorite Young Family Tradition is the matching PJ's that we get every year.

And here's the Ghost of Christmas past...Mason forgot to take the pillow out of the case before he stuck it on his head.

Aren't they just so cute?

Reading "Room for a Little One" and "The Night Before Christmas"

A few Visions of Sugarplums....I don't know if you can tell but that middle picture has four kids (Jake, Mason, Hallie & Alexis) all in Hallie's top bunk.

Even though it's a tradition that originated in Kyle's family, my family have been pretty good sports about "Jingling around the House" with us on Christmas Morning. I look a little scary, I still don't do 6:30 am all that well.

Here are all the boys enjoying their Christmas toys. Mason got an addition to his train set and Jake (and Kyle) got a cool new Hot Wheels stunt track.

Hallie got a cupcake baking set and a Felicity Doll.
Here they are in their new robes snuggling up by the fire.My parents came over and helped us ring in the New Year. We ate Tostatas, Tostitos and Tamales, played games, watched a movie, had fireworks, and then banged pots and pans to bring in the New Year around 9. It was perfect.

Goofballs

Knock Knock

Who's there?

Nothing?

Nothing who?

Nothing but a goofball!

That is by far the kid's favorite knock knock joke. We hear it over and over (and over and over) and over and over again. But it definitely seems to fit!

Flashback

I'm killing time at my parents this morning (the roads are slick and scary so I'm giving the snow plows a little while longer to do their job before I head home) and found these old pics of my babies. They were so cute I just had to post them. Can you tell who's who?

And one more...

Fun in San Antonio!

As you can see, we had all kinds of non-stop fun while we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa Woody in Texas last week. We went to the San Antonio Children's museum, the Alamo, the River Walk, the temple... In true Texas Christmas fashion we also got to drive over to Gruene (pronounced Green) and see Cowboy Kringle (aka Santa) ride into town on his horse. And we stayed overnight in Burnet where they put on a huge live re-creation of Bethlehem from the night Christ was born. It was really incredible. Thank you again Mom and Dad Woody for such an amazing trip!

Jingling Around the Class!

Hallie was invited to share a Christmas tradition from her family with her class. She took in our jingle bells, lined up her class and showed them how to jingle around the room. It is a long-standing Woodruff family tradition to line up from oldest to youngest in Mom and Dad's room on Christmas morning and sing Jingle Bells through every room of the house before we get to the Christmas tree. Kyle has done it every Christmas for as long as he can remember and our kids have loved carrying on the tradition!

Hey There

Happy Election Day! Here I go. I'm going to take a deep breath and---update my blog. Whew! I think I can do it. We've had a sickly but beautiful fall. The weather has been warm and sunny and is just now starting to turn cold. We've managed to catch just about every disease that has come our way from stomach flu to strep and I've decided I should get my motherhood status upgraded (maybe to sainthood??) for the amount of throw-up I've cleaned up in the past few weeks. Poor Hallie managed to cover the entire (walls, floor, etc.) east lobby of a theater during a play, and Jake got my entire cart full of groceries at the store last week. One nice thing about having them lose it in embarassingly public places is that the bulk of the clean up goes to the unfortunate employees who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mason has been sick for the past couple of days and started it off Sunday night by throwing up all over the table at family dinner over at my parents house. (I know, ew, luckily no one had started eating yet)Other than that he has managed to keep it limited to our house and our car. I miss those employees.... Jake is going in to have his tonsils out next Tuesday, we're hoping that after that we'll all be on the mend. But life hasn't been completely gruesome, here are some of the happy highlights of the past month. Mason and I got to chaperone Jake's pre-school class on their trip to the pumpkin patch.

We went on a wagon ride and ate donuts!

One of our favorite places to end up every Fall (or any other time of year) is Snowbird.

Here is our Dynamic Duo. Jake and Mason were adorable as Batman and Man-Man. I know what you're thinking--he's dressed as Robin. But Mason absolutely loved his costume unless we called him Robin. He insisted his name was Man-Man and ran around the house shouting "To the rescue!" I love Halloween!!!And this is our beautiful Tink. She put her magical party planning powers to use and put on a great party for all of her local cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. She planned it all out from who to invite, what games to play, and what we should eat. I just followed orders. We sure love our little fairy!

And our other little fairy....

Here are some more pics of Halloween & Hallie's Party.

Back To School

Here is Hallie all ready for her first day of FIRST GRADE! Having her gone all day has definitely taken some getting used to. For the first week or so Mason repeated "Where's Hallie?" almost non-stop and Jake kept asking if we could please go pick Hallie up from school now. Hallie, on the other hand, absolutely loves it. When I picked her up on her first day she said she couldn't believe the day was already over and that she wanted it to go on and on and on.

The funny thing about this next picture is that the whole time I was lining up the kids and asking them to smile, Mason kept glancing over at Jake and trying to mimic him. Until the second I took the picture Jake's arms were folded too.

Jake has officially stepped into the big kid club. He started afternoon preschool three days a week and is loving it. The home his school is in is only about a block away so he has really loved getting to ride his scooter there and back. He absolutely refuses to wear a backpack though. When I asked him why not he looked me in the eyes and said "Because I don't need it." And he's probably right. He seems to be getting along just fine without it.

Mason, on the other hand, loves to wear his backpack when we walk Jake to school. Having both the older kids gone three afternoons a week has given Mason and I some one-on-one time which has been really fun for me. Although, Jake's school is right during Mason's prime melt down time so most days he gets a nice long quiet nap and I get a little free time. Which I'm going to start being really productive with one of these days! Or at least I'm going to keep telling myself that. So far I've just been working my way through my summer reading list.

Pepto Pink

Our blog is going to be shiny white for a bit until I get around to changing it again. I had to get rid of the pink, it was getting to be a bit nauseating.

Itty Bitty Ball

Jake got to have one of his dreams come true this summer when he and his cousin Kevin signed up for Itty Bitty Ball together. He is always having to go be a spectator for Hallie at soccer and dance, Kyle at softball, Kyle and I both at our races. This was his chance to go be the one to play and he loved every minute of it. They had four sessions where they learned the basics for soccer, baseball, football, and basketball. It was a really cute program. Mason could not be convinced that he wasn't signed up too, so he tagged along and tried to do everything he saw Jake doing.
And Hallie took to her turn being the cheerleader with gusto.
Jake was very intense about the whole thing. It was so adorable and so very Jake.
Here's our other up-and-coming baller.

Mason loves to put on Kyle's softball gear and strut his stuff.
And by stuff I mean his rib cage. I swear we feed him!