The Great Blog Catch-Up: Christmas (Eve And Morning)

On Christmas Eve we decided to go to a Crib Service at a cathedral for two reasons: 1) Crib services are kid-oriented daytime services and 2) how often do you get to go to a Christmas service in a cathedral?

It turned out to be a great idea because the service was very interactive and the boys heard the story of Christmas in a fun new way:

However the cathedral we chose was actually over an hour away from our house. We went north to S.outhwell Minster:

With our Christmas Eve church service over by noon, we got to relax for the rest of the day while making cookies and eating dinner.

After dinner the boys got to open their presents:

McColley had distribution duty this year since he can read all the tags:

Brayton was quickly covered in presents:

Pearson was too enthralled by the iPad to care about presents:

But he did get excited when the toys started getting unwrapped:

All three boys ended up with pretty nice hauls:

And then when they woke up Christmas morning Santa had left them each a 'snow man' and a stocking full of goodies:

It was a very Merry Christmas!

The Great Blog Catch-Up: Brayton's Birthday Edition

December 18th was not just Brayton's Christmas Pageant day - it was also his 5th birthday!

After Daddy got home from work Brayton had his favorite food (pizza) for dinner. I made him a special Mickey Mouse birthday cake for dessert:

He easily blew out his FIVE candles:

And then he got to open his presents - cards first:

There were quite a lot to open!

His party was held on Saturday December 21st and had a Lego theme:

Daddy made chocolate Legos to top vanilla cupcakes and we gave away Lego ornaments to the guests:

Brayton had such a good time at last year's party that he wanted to do the same thing again - bouncy castles and ball pits!

The Great Blog Catch-Up: Christmas Pageant Edition

On Wednesday December 18th Brayton and Pearson's preschool held their annual Christmas Pageant:

Unfortunately Sheep #3 didn't want to participate:

Camel #1, however, had pride of place right behind Joseph and Mary:

The Camel with the Green and Purple Humps was ready to go with all his words and choreography memorized:

His favorite song "Santa Got Stuck Up The Chimney" was early in the program:

The pageant ended with the "12 Days of Christmas"... and a desire to hurry the song along:

Our Camel did a great job being up on stage! (And, yes, he picked his costume and was VERY proud of it.)

The Great Blog Catch-Up: Santa Sleepover Edition

During the holiday season Leg.oland Wind.sor was doing special Santa Sleepovers. You got to spend a night in the Legol.and Hotel and then the next day you got to visit Santa in the park.

On Friday December 13th we checked into a Pirate Room for our third stay at the hotel (we have now stayed in all three types of themed rooms):

On Saturday the 14th we checked out at the very last minute and then went into the park. Our visit with Santa wasn't until later in the afternoon so we got to fill up our morning with other festive activities.

Our first stop was the ornament building table:

After the boys had built their ornaments they got to help an elf place it on the Legol.and tree:

Then it was off to the cookie decorating table:

Pearson got a little help from Mommy to decorate his snowman:

Brayton decorated his all by himself:

As did McColley:

We got in line for Santa at 1:30pm and were soon following his elf into a winter wonderland:

Each boy got to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas (and luckily there was no screaming since no one had to actually sit on Santa's lap):

On our way out Santa gave each boy a pre-Christmas Lego present:

We did one last ride to catch a view of all the park's holiday lights coming on before heading home:

The Great Blog Catch-Up: Scouting Edition

So, it's not that we haven't been doing things... it's just that I haven't managed to clean off my computer enough to upload all the pictures to get blog posts up. Now that it's 2014 it's time to get caught up (please ignore the 'dates' of these posts, I am back dating them to get them in the correct year.)

McColley has been quite the busy cub scout. It all started on Thursday November 21st with his pack meeting. The pack had invited a bird specialist to teach the boys about raptors:

During the presentation McColley got to pet an owl:

And then at the end of the meeting he also got the chance to hold an owl!

Then on Saturday December 7th McColley got to march in his very first parade:

His whole pack marched in the parade and threw out candy for the onlookers:

Brayton was a bit hesitant at first to grab the candy:

But he soon got bold enough to grab handfuls since every group in the parade was throwing candy:

After watching the parade take off we cut across a large field to see it come around the block:

By that point McColley was helping his den carry the pack's banner:

The parade on Saturday was followed by a pack activity on Sunday December 8th - McColley and I went ice skating!

McColley started out uncertain and used the penguin to figure out how to ice skate:

When someone else needed the penguin he joined me along the rink's boards for a while:

And by the end of our 45 minute session he had figured it all out!

*****

McColley has also been busy at school. On November 21st his class held an 'Author's Chair' session:

Each student read aloud a story they had written. Each story was about how they (a turkey) were going to survive Thanksgiving:

McColley also had another 'Author's Chair' in December. This time the stories were about how the kids would spend a day trapped in a snowglobe:

Wrapping Up Our Irish Adventure

Once again I'm a week behind in getting up a blog post... but last Friday the 15th we were still in Ireland. Our first stop of the day was Be.lleek Pottery (where they were having a sale!): 

After we'd gotten our pottery fix we headed to Don.egal. Only after we arrived did we realize the city's car parks were actually pay and display (everywhere else we went either had free parking or parking garages where we could pay by card).

The problem was not that we didn't have any change. The problem was that Doneg.al is in the Republic of Ireland and required Euro change... not Pound change.

We drove through town until we spotted a bank with an ATM outside. B dropped me off and drove back around the town centre while I got cash:

I then had to go to a little shop and buy a pop to break the bill so we had change for the meter.

Eventually we were able to park and discovered that it was going to cost us less than an Euro to park for our stay... and then after I'd purchased the parking ticket a nice lady offered us the remaining time on hers! It was definitely one of those things that only happened because we'd had so much trouble finding change.

Luckily Castle Don.egal was worth the hassle:

The interior has been partially restored to the era when it was last used as a full time home:

The Castle was built for defensive reasons and has a lovely view of the river it guards:

On Saturday the 16th we had to check out of our lovely holiday let and drive to Belfast. Along the way we took a quick detour:

We decided to spend our day in Belfast visiting the most popular tourist site in the city:

We went to the Titanic museum which was AMAZING:

They walk you through the entire ship building process (via an amusement park-style ride) and then take you from the hull of the ship through the completed upper decks:

The museum covers pretty much everything about the Titanic from the special docks that had to be built in order to build it through both the UK and USA commissions ordered to figure out what went wrong.

In partnership with the Titanic Museum is the Titanic Dock Museum:

This museum is the only structure still standing that was actually used to build the Titanic. We walked around the pump room:

And then out into the dry dock where Titanic's interiors were installed:

We then had to walk back to the Museum to get back into our car. By the time we got back the outline of Titanic was glowing:

Unfortunately the Titanic Museum closed five and a half hours before our ferry left. (We only realized after we'd finished up at the museum that spending all day talking about a sinking ship was probably not the best idea before we got onto a ship to go home.)

To fill the time before we got on the ferry we thought we would take the boys to a movie. When looking up theatres on my phone I discovered that all the movie theatres in Belfast stopped showing their family friendly movies at 4PM... considering it was 5PM by that point we were a bit frustrated. I finally found one theatre in the suburbs of Belfast that had a 6:30PM showing of 'Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2'. It ended up being perfect timing and we boarded the ferry right on time!