I got a funny e-mail from my mom this morning. She told me to set the DVR to record Rudolph tonight b/c apparently my 3 yr old needed a refresher in holiday pop culture. According to my mom… “We were walking in the mall on Black Friday. We went to the Build a Bear shop which had been transformed into Santa’s Workshop for Christmas. They had stuffed snowmen and deer and Santa bears.

For those of you taking advantage of the sales found online today, I thought I’d remind you about my Shopping for Sudan opportunity. If you shop from Amazon.com, please bookmark my site and click on the (shop now) link on my top left side bar. It will take you directly to amazon.com Help me get the word out about Shopping for Sudan! Tweet and or post a link on face book to my Shopping for Sudan post (Here is the link if you want to copy & paste it: http://lifeatthecircus.

I have had a fabulous week. We took the week off of school, and aren’t going anywhere but here. This weekend we did some much needed, long overdue DEEP CLEANING. I literally stayed in my PJs till 5:00 on Saturday and started in my bedroom cleaning and organizing till the dust bunnies under my bed were all sucked up by the Dyson! (in the middle of this day when my house looked like a tornado hit, the breakfast dishes were still on the table and I was still in my pjs my MIL showed up to take the kids for a few hours… a blessing so valuable and appreciated I swallowed my pride and opened the door so she could pick up the kiddos)

It became quite clear to us that our little man was ready to try solid foods when he started opening his mouth like a baby bird anytime we were eating with him on our lap. We couldn’t help but laugh when he started reaching out for Daddy’s fork, mouth wide open, just begging for a taste. Here he is holding our Smores ingredients while on vacation… his poor pathetic face seems to be saying, “They aren’t even nice about it!

Every year I have high hopes for being on top of things in the Christmas season. Last year, as hard as I tried, I was no where near on top of things. In fact, my Christmas cards became New Years cards and weren’t even mailed till the middle of January. This year, however, I have high hopes. Thanks to a special promotion from Shutterfly, I have already designed my Christmas cards!

Notice anything different about his smile? Take a closer look… See it on the bottom right? Say goodbye to his cute toothless smile. My baby got his first tooth!!

We decided to add a little pizazz to our normal morning chaos as we got ready to leave for our tutorial today. Since it’s the last day the tutorial is meeting before Thanksgiving, they had a Harvest Party at the end of the day and the children were encouraged to come in costume. My son went as an Indian and his little sister went as a Pilgrim. (costumes courtesy of Mommy’s costume bin from her school days… I was Pocahontas one year for Halloween and the “Pilgrim” dress was actually a costume from a church play).

When a tour company approaches you as you board their boat offering the chance to back out with a full refund, a normal person would heed the warning, take the money and run. But we aren’t normal. Because we have a quest to visit every national park during our married life together. And this quest brought us all the way down to Key West. And we didn’t drive all the way down to Key West only to turn around and head 100 miles north without first taking a boat 70 nautical miles further west to Dry Tortugas National Park.

Our time at Biscayne National Park was fun, but way too short. We took a 3 hour tour (which thankfully turned out much better than the infamous 3 hr tour). I think the kids favorite part was the 45 minute ride out to Boca Chita Island. They described their ride out their as “the best rollar coaster ride ever!” The wind was really blowing. I thought it felt much like those super sonic hand dryers that look like they are ripping your skin off.