Christmas Eve 2013

Oh Nana and Pop how we missed you but we had a great Christmas Eve.  (Normally, we all attend Trinity's Children's/Candlelight Christmas Eve Service then have dinner and open presents on Christmas Eve, but since Nana and Pop are letting their antibiotic work we had a great family meal tonight with just the Singhs and Parkers and will do "Christmas" in the morning!)  KK and Kunkle were such wonderful hosts tonight.  We all enjoyed our steaks from the Tech Farm...esp John Cole!  I want to add I was very proud of Preston for being "OK" with the delay of present opening and he was great at the church service this afternoon.  Remembering the true reason for the season on this cold winters night. Can you imagine giving birth in a stable tonight? All the more reason to give thanks.  Merry Christmas everyone!  

Christmas with The Parkers

It has become something of a tradition for us to have dinner with Grandfather, Gran-Gran and the extended Parker family the weekend before Christmas.  We always look forward to a a FEW servings of Jeff's Great Aunt Myrtis' "Jambalaya" and spending time together.  You can definitely tell The boys very much enjoyed their gifts.  Thanks for a great night Grandfather and Gran-Gran!

Miss Reno's Christmas Party 2013

Don't know why I ever get nervous but of course the Christmas party this morning was a pretty big success!  We had breakfast foods, did some Christmas crafts and enjoyed our visit from "Glitter" and "Shimmer" the elves all the way from the North Pole!  They read the kids some books and even took their last minute requests to Santa. Preston asked for a "trein" and "a bel from the rinder" on his list.  Hmmm.....and to all a good night  :)

Breakfast with Santa 2013

We are so grateful to be part of the community of Squire Creek.  Really, it is just a blessing.  The LENGTHS they go to that make things like "Breakfast with Santa" happen are incredible.  The kids have a ball. They see all of their friends, or as Preston put it "everyone I KNOW was there :)" Getting a good picture of the two of them is pretty  much impossible, but I think we got some good candid shots. Preston added something to his Christmas list today on Santa's lap: an ant farm.  Hmmmmm, so I guess Santa still has some shopping to do?!?

Merry Merry!

CES Book Character Day

I'm just going to be brutally honest:  I put ZERO effort into Book Character day.  We have had some MAJOR issues going on with the house the past week or so and with Christmas activities and a little extra work and being a little under the weather I just was not up to the task of a super awesome costume.  As you can see we recycled from Halloween...which was fine with Preston.  Pictured is his sweet classmate Audrey Kate who won the whole school with her Pippi Longstocking.  I will know to step it up next year :).....

Jolly Ol' St. Nick

Thought we would do a trial run with Santa at CTB and GUESS WHAT?? John Cole was ALL ABOUT going up to "Ho Ho" and Preston was so into it he brought a toy catalog to give Santa some illustrations.  Said catalog is also very well marked with "Preston" and "JC" on the respective pages.  (Preston took it upon himself to pick out some things for John Cole--he is such a sweet boy!)

Hope you are having a great Christmas season.  We are BUSY...but I wouldn't have it any other way :)

The "Candy Caper"

About a month ago a letter came home in Preston's folder about the CES Science Fair.  Projects were NOT mandatory until 2nd grade.  I LOVE a Science project.  Of course Preston entered.  His ( ok it was ALL my idea but a 5 year old using "hypothesis" in in a sentence is impressive in my book!) idea was to have a selection of over-the-counter medications and candy that looked identical to see if kids could tell the difference.  Ideally (aka with no strep throat and quasi stomach bug) we would have done this experiment at Daddy's bank with all Kindergarten kids only one at a time...but real life set in.  Mucho thanks to our sweet neighbors for participating in the project on a random Monday afternoon after tennis :)

PRESTON'S (no joke it's what HE said) hypothesis was the kids could NOT tell the difference between the OTC meds and candy.  The hypothesis was proven wrong.  (In my opinion the best outcome.) 86% of our responses were correct.  Our youngest subjects got the most incorrect responses--a 10 year old knows a Peanut M&M!  Next year we (MOMMY!) plans to expand our experiment to more drugs and younger children.

Oh yeah--he won first place. Not sure now much competition he had...but a win is a win in my book!  So proud of my Preston Luke Parker!

**If you look closely in the last pic (Sent from our SWEET Ms. Reno) you will see his classmates clapping for him after his win.  Super duper sweet!