Bubble Soccer

For Clifford's end-of-the-season soccer party, the team decided to try out bubble soccer. Due to the arena being booked out, the soonest the team could have their party was this last Saturday. It was hilarious watching the kids (and adults) try to run around in the bubbles and attempt to knock each other over. Clifford spent a lot of time upside down, and since he's so small (compared to the weight of an adult), he couldn't swing his legs hard or fast enough to get himself back on his feet, so the instructor spent a lot of time helping him out. Peter and Kristjan took turns playing as well. I did too, being the only mom who tried it out. The instructor switched groups out every 10 minutes, but I barely lasted to even 5 minutes. For one thing, it really isn't as easy as it looks and you can get tired pretty quickly, and I had an issue with feeling claustrophobic. At least I could say I tried it. After our time was up on the field, the coach handed out team sweatshirts in lieu of trophies.

Here's how Clifford spent most of his time in the bubble (NOT on his feet lol)

Peter and Kristjan taking a turn (they're both wearing red shirts)

Peter taking a tumble

Peter and Kristjan exhausted

Clifford wearing his new sweatshirt

Here's video of Clifford during one of his many times upside down

Snow Day

Saturday morning we headed out to to attend Snow Day at Gold Creek Church. Unfortunately, it rained that day, so boys didn't really play much on the snow. They did go on a few rides that were available outside before we headed indoors to ride the go-carts and see what crafts were available to make. We had Clifford's soccer party to attend later that afternoon, so we didn't stay too long. Just long enough to make a treat before they decided they wanted to leave.

Boys sledding

Riding on the pirate boat. Not sure if I videoed them on the ride long to see it, but towards the end the ride started moving pretty fast. The looks on their faces were hilarious. 

 Up next was this ride. Lucky for me, I didn't have to go on it. Later in the day Peter complained of feeling sick from being on it, which is exactly why I didn't want to do it!

I took video of them on the ride. The size of the video is too large to post here in the blog, but I have a copy of it up on my Facebook page. I made the settings "public" just for this video, so hopefully the link below works and you can see just how much fun they had on this :)

Video of Ride

Once inside, we headed for the go-carts. I usually like to take video and pics of everyone else having fun, but Peter made me jump in for this one. I quickly snapped a pic once I was buckled in. It was a lot of fun. Sadly, just like when I play any racing game on the xBox, I came in dead last in real life LOL

 Boys making a treat to eat

Hawk House

On Friday Clifford spent the night at his friend Kenneth's house. While with Kenneth's family, they drove down to Kirkland to see the "Hawk House". I remember this house being in the news recently, mainly due to neighbors complaining about it and the unwanted attention the neighborhood was getting. But come to find out the homeowners of this decorated house were actually being filmed for an episode of ABC's "The Great Christmas Light Fight." Pretty cool. Kenneth's mom sent me picks, so I thought I'd share on here :)

The "Hawk House", all decked out!

 Blurry pic of Clifford and his friend, but proof they were there! :)

An Awful Start to My Tuesday...

Yesterday morning, after running a few morning errands, I came home to find this!!!

 UGH! I think we're cursed with the month of December in this house! Last December we discovered a leak between the bathroom and kitchen wall on Christmas Eve. Now this year, I came home to find a flood in our basement. I frantically searched to figure out where it was coming from. The only thing I had going while gone was the dishwasher. I searched the walls for water damage or dripping water, but all looked fine. The only thing I could think of was it had to be the water heater, but I couldn't find where the water was coming from at first glance. I immediately called Peter at work to share my discovery. He had the audacity to ask me "Are you sure the dogs didn't pee on the floor?" Ummm, NO!! Please give me some credit; I know the difference between a puddle of dog pee from a flood of water........

I ran upstairs to grab all our junk towels to try to clean up the mess (so far my biggest complaint for this fiasco...besides not having any hot water....was I didn't have enough towels to clean up the mess from the water).

I ended up calling Peter back at work and told him he needed to come home. Since he carpools, I had to go pick him up. Once he was home, he found where the water was coming from. So he turned the water off, started draining the tank and called our landlord. Then we were off to a few stores to price a new water heater. After about 2 hours out and about, we found one and bought it. Unfortunately, due to Black Friday sales, Lowes was booked out 10 days for delivery/install. UGH! We had them hold the water heater for us while we made arrangements to find someone with a car big enough to haul it home. Luckily, our buddy James could do it. That evening the guys picked it up. So we have it sitting in the house, but we can't hook it up until (hopefully) tonight. We need to let the wall dry and look at tearing up linoleum. The rest of the basement floor is concrete, so luckily any water damage should be minimal.

I just gotta say, I'm so grateful of Peter's skills. Any time something goes wrong or breaks, he can fix it!

Hello December!

Over the weekend I (slowly) worked on decorating the house in Christmas decor. I typically have everything up the day after Thanksgiving, but between traveling home, grocery shopping, and plans with friends both Saturday and Sunday, I wasn't able to get anything done until Monday. Once boys were off to school, I quickly worked on emptying the storage containers, and shortly after lunch, both the upstairs and downstairs living rooms looked festive. I unwrapped all our tree ornaments and had them sitting out on the table so we could decorate as a family later that evening. Every year I give the boys a speech about how fragile the ornaments are, and how important they are to me, just so they know not to goof around when decorating. After all these years, even through the curious toddler years, none broke......until now :( . Over the course of decorating the tree, Kristjan dropped two of his. One of the two that dropped was his baby's first Christmas, which is unreplaceable. I was devastated! Kristjan could clearly see how upset I was, but after I took a few deep breaths, I reassured him I wasn't mad at him. Though Peter was able to save the day and fix both with some tweaking and the hot glue gun, you can still tell where the pieces broke off (Oh well, I'm sure next year it'll be a funny story to tell). We finished decorating in time to sit down to watch a family movie before heading off for bed.

 This years individual and family ornaments

 The perfect treat to go along with decorating the tree

 Our table full of ornaments

 Peter being a goofball. He exaggerated his happy dance as I brought out our treat :)