Some of my kids birthdays hit me harder than others. Each year I feel the passing of time in a way I never felt for myself. Each year I am washed with a wave of nostalgia and spend a good amount of time looking back at pictures of that precious child through the years. Each year I do my best to shower my child with love and attention and all of their favorites b/c we spend 364 days reiterating to our children that life is not all about them, and on their birthday it is mostly about them.

Cut out sugar cookies are my kids favorite Christmas cookies. And I must confess that they are my favorite to make. Because, the mess and the silliness, and the giggles, I love it! I typically have them cut out the cookies one day and we decorate them another. This year we decorated them with our cousins. More kids, more mess, more fun!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania with my family. On the way home, we stopped at a new to us tree farm to cut down our tree. It was an unseasonably warm day and we had a wonderful time finding our tree. Looking forward to the Christmas season!

This weekend was our annual raking of the leaves, which is always followed by the annual Daddy tossing the kids high into the sky. And truthfully when I saw our annual raking of the leaves…. I mean Scott’s annual raking. I occupied myself with indoor cleaning and only went out to snap some pictures of the fun at the end. The kids LOVE when Daddy throws them high into the pile.

Last week was a busy week at our house. Scott was on travel for three full days. The girls had a big meet at their gym. They had to score out of level 5 in order to be able to compete this year as level 6’s. Saturday the boys had a tournament. It was the first one for our 5 year old. Throw in the normal hustle and bustle of school and practices and scouts and you get the idea.

We went on a field trip today to the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. Man, I forgot how many cool exhibits it has. We haven’t been for several years. While we had seen some of these things before, it was so neat to see them again. And we added new things to our experience this time around. We started the day by attending a class with some of our friends from our tutorial, which was led by some museum workers.

This year we had another eclectic crew going door to door pedaling for candy. We had Big Ben Roethlisberger. Cleopatra Athena and a knight…. who put together his own costume with the help of his older sister, Athena, all with supplies gathered in our costume bin. Things I loved were the fact that the boys costumes cost me nothing, as they gathered the supplies from around our house… and the girls costumes can be used again this spring for our history night at school, since we are studying ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome this year.

The look on my daughter’s face when I told her that I was able to change her dr appointment (again) so she could attend the fable festival for her writing class at our tutorial, was one I don’t want to forget. It was one of those times when I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was to her. But, when I told her I was able to switch her appointment, her face lit up.

Sometimes when Scott tells me he has to go on travel for work, part of me wishes I could just crawl in his suitcase and tag along. So when Scott came home and told me he was going to be traveling to Florida for a week and suggested that maybe we come, I was thrilled! I had to do some finagling with our schedule…. move an eye doctor appointment, get someone to trade meal train dates with me and brace the girls for the fact that they would need to miss a week of practice (this of course was met with GREAT weeping and gnashing of teeth, b/c these girls love gymnastics practice more than just about anything on earth)….

Our tutorial was off on Monday and we decided to have Scott take off as well and have a family fun day. We toyed with the idea of camping trip, but instead opted to stay home and go on outings Sat, Sun, and Monday. It was a really nice weekend. We found a hike only an hour away. It was PERFECT! We slept in, took care of a few things around the house and hit the road a little after 11.