Baby Schrades: November 2011

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Gingerbread Houses with Lucas E.

Susie had a tradition when she was little where her mom would invite her friends over to decorate gingerbread houses each year. We were thrilled to be invited to Lucas E. first annual Gingerbread Decorating Party!

It was really fun to see how serious Lucas B. and Ellen C. took this project. I joke that Lucas is such an engineer, like his daddy. He insisted on having the box nearby so he could decorate his house "like it was supposed to look," or just like the picture on the box. And see the nice red roof on Lucas's house? He made me do that because I could make it look more like the picture than he could : ) Ellen, on the other hand, had fun by gobbing icing on one side of the roof, for most of the visit, and then picking out (and eating) candy to decorate it.

Monday, November 28, 2011

A Happy Birthday Note

Lucas's teacher, Ms. T, has a birthday this week. This was one of the first things that Lucas told me today, and the next was that he wanted to make her a card. He got right to work and here is one of the sweetest cards I've ever seen, done completely on his own : )

For those who don't read kindergarten-learning-to-write language, it says: "Happy Birthday to Ms. T. I love you Ms. T. - Lucas

His teacher recently told us that at this stage of learning to read, they don't worry about vowels, hence "happy" to Lucas is spelled "HP". And "love" is "lv". It's amazing to me to see him learning to read.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Santa Visit!

Today was our BIG day to visit with Santa!!! We were all very excited! It was a perfect Santa experience. The location was not crowded and the Santa was awesome. We arrived at the same time as another family, but their child hesitated and Ellen pushed ahead. Seriously. She was on a mission to see this man. The both hopped right up and talked to Santa for about five minutes.

They were so cute, that afterwards we had our own little photo shoot...

LOVE these turkeys!

This is "Ellen face"...

Their lists for 2011...

SLUMBER PARTY!

Lucas was invited to spend the night with his best neighborhood buddy, Finn, last night. Don't they look ecstatic? Ele sent me texts throughout the evening with updates. Apparently they stayed up until almost eleven and woke up at 6am! But they had a blast and want to do it again soon!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

North Hills Christmas Tree

We were feeling festive tonight, so we headed to North Hills to see the big tree there. Hooray for Christmas lights!!!

I love this picture of Jeff and Dennis (his dad).

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving!

What a wonderful day we had today! We prepped a little yesterday by getting our themed place mats ready for the big meal. If you can't tell, Lucas is thankful for "food" and Ellen is thankful for lyons, brother, daddy, mommy, teachers and Tyson : )

This morning our day began early with Jeff's 2nd annual Turkey Trot... and 8K that begins at ends at the Wh*le Foods near our home. It is a festive way to start the day, especially since Grandpa Schroeder was here with us to see him run.

Here are my two turkeys, waiting on Daddy to finish the race:

Ellen catching a ride from Grandpa!

And here is our runner with Dennis and Lucas...

Sweet little Ellen was pooped from all of the excitement so early in the morning. She finally had had enough and used my book bag for a pillow : )

A little bit later we found ourselves cooking, playing and watching football. It was nice growing up to have Thanksgiving dinner made for me, but I kind of like cooking it myself. I had an excuse to spend all day in the kitchen and the kids would pop in and out to help. Here are Lucas and me cleaning the turkey. Not sure if I like that part of cooking. Last year, my first time, it was great. This year it was somehow undercooked. Not sure if I'll go for round three next year!