December 20, 2014-Happy (early) Birthday Campbell!

A holiday night out on the town...

(click here for today's pictures)

• We did sleep in a bit this morning so that was nice but the almost birthday girl was ready for her almost birthday doughnuts-we celebrate birthdays a lot around here. The kids are always ready to light some candles and sing.  One of Whitman's new words of the day was "happy"-it won't be too long before he will singing along with everyone else.
• Robby ran early while I made the kids do some school-ha, ha, ha! Oh, they just had to do 3 boxes and they were all finished in less than thirty minutes so don't even think that we were learning mandarin today or dissecting frogs.  Though Reagan is diagramming sentences in her language book: subject, verb, direct objects, predicate adjectives, predicate nominatives, adjectives and adverbs.  I think this is all well and good but I don't think we did that even in high school. I guess some day if she needs a talent that could be her talent.
• After our bit of school, we went upstairs to pick up the toy room and then did a bit of reading. Robby and I made some chili and then I had my shower.  Whitman walked in the bathroom and heard the shower running and then he started pulling on his shirt and said "shower."  I let him in my shower but this caused me to have a pretty quick shower because the little guy probably wouldn't like the water as hot as I do and I sure didn't want to stay in a cool shower.  As soon as I stepped out though Keaton stepped in and when she was finished Campbell stepped in. Here I could write "You wouldn't believe our water bill" or I could say "So thankful for our tankless water heater."
• After we pulled our prune (Whitman) out of the shower, I took him to bed and then I headed out to finished up my Christmas shopping and pick up a few groceries.  I made about 6 stops and was home in a bit less than 3 hours and hopefully finished everything up-we will see what I think of to add under the tree.  I did forget to buy enough cheese for tomorrow night's goodies so we will have to stop tomorrow and pick up some more.
• Once I made it home, all of my people were outside playing and raking.  We raked for a bit and even put the kids to work-that really is more funny/frustrating than helpful but they do need to learn to do some work so it is good for them.  After they finished our little bit of raking, they had some more play time while we served up the chili for our very late lunch/very early supper.
• The kids all had showers or baths while Robby and I worked on our 2 of at least 3 loads of laundry washed today (no, I didn't slack this week-we did laundry yesterday too-it will never end!)  Then it was time to load up for our annual Christmas light festivities.
• We drove to NLR first and found a house lit up and the lights were synchronized to music so that was interesting to watch and we did sit there for quite a while watching the house.  Then it was on to the Enchanted Forest in Sherwood.  The line of cars was long and poor Campbell must have been a bit stressed out tonight because all she could talk about was how long it was going to take us to get out of the traffic along with questions about if we knew where we were going and how to get home (these questions stemmed from us having the gps on)
• The Enchanted Forest was really neat and the kids loved looking at all of the lights.  Whitman and Keaton took it all in and the others were shouting and calling out the light displays that they saw.  
• The next stop was for yogurt for the kids followed by a stop for a caramel apple cider from Starbucks for me and then a peppermint shake for Robby from Chickfila-it is Christmas after all!  The kids were a bit bummed that they didn't get any of Robby's shake-they couldn't even remember having their ice cream moments before then.
• Final stop of the night was the State Capitol to see the lights.  We went to all of the levels but the kids were most impressed with the mail chute.  Last year they had a lego display in the windows at the capitol but this year they had a display of African American dolls-my boys were not impressed at all with this.  
• Back at home, everyone put on their pajamas and then we all stayed up late watching the hogs play basketball.  The boys were thrilled to watch the hogs win and when it was bedtime, my crew was exhausted.