Tina, Colleen, and Kerry Thanksgiving and Uncle Thomas Visit

Good news - the kids are going to be in a Christmas program at our new church! Bad news - we went to the first practice last night and it seems nothing amps Bradley up like Christmas program practice. He was fairly active the entire time but my favorite moment was when he playfully swatted the pastor's kindergarten age son on the bottom a couple times during the middle of a song (the pastor's son really likes Bradley and was delighted by this) and then Bradley saw the children's director walking purposefully up to talk to him so he skip bounced his way to safety in the middle of the stage and continued bouncing around, chasing other children, jumping off the stage on repeat, and occasionally yelling lyrics to the song. Everyone was so nice afterwards, I told them I was going to try to channel Bradley's enthusiasm for good and they told me they were so happy he was having a fun time. He wasn't ever being mean, he was just SO excited. And in all fairness, he wasn't the only child having a bit of a raucous time at this thing. But anytime another child did something Bradley enthusiastically joined in. The Scott children are easy to lead astray.

Sometimes my children have no excuses for their behavior. I tried to prep Patrick for a trip to meet a friend at the Chick-Fil-A play place a week or two ago. It didn't go as well as it could.
Patrick (cheerfully) "And if I hit them I'll say sorry!"
He did hit/push a couple kids and he yelled sorry at them afterwards but we still chose to leave after the second incident. Only one time was with a cute girl we know from church, so at least we knew her and that makes it better? He was at least defending the friend he was with, whom she was criticizing for breaking climbing rules in the play place. Criticize a friend of Patrick's and you get yelled at and pushed. Sigh. This is my payback for being overly concerned with rules as a child.

Patrick had preschool homework where he had to decorate a thankfulness acorn and have me write all the things he was thankful for. It says "monsters, kitties, games, my lion tiger, and shimmer and shine." By the end I was actively trying to encourage him to include things like Bradley and Eleanor or Jesus but he was adamant that those did not make the list.

Here is Patrick explaining why he was sticking candy in his ear at lunch time:

I told Patrick I would do something for him if he smooched a kitty so he put his mouth near her and did nothing. I told him that didn't count and he told me it was an invisible smooch.

I found unicorn magic ice cream in the chest freezer and got it out for dessert to great excitement. Patrick: Did we kill a unicorn?!

Nathan had the kids watch a movie called Zethura with him and apparently there was a very exciting plot development where the aliens say they want to eat meat and the people realize that they are the meat the aliens are talking about. So I came across Patrick playing with play doh chanting "People are meat! People are meat." Thanks, honey. Great movie choice.

This video takes place right after the references to eating people.

I need to sit on a more regular basis and listen to what the kids say when they play together. I got these gems the other day:

Playing Legos with Eleanor: "Don't worry but this leg does NOT have a person on it."

Eleanor: And this boy and this girl HAVE to be in love (smooching)
Bradley: I have to take off her head. Pretend he can't recognize her now.
Eleanor handled this development surprisingly well.

Also, I'm not saying my children are competitive but they were were playing a game with little racket nets and some balls when I got out of the shower and things were getting a little heated over points. I told them whoever pet Layla first (she was wandering by) would get love points and all three children hunted down the cat and aggressively pet her.

Here is Patrick loving Layla when she made the unwise decision to jump on his chair for pets during lunch one day.

Eleanor has been having a fabulous time at school with all the opportunities it presents her with to do as she pleases. I recently found out she told her teacher we went to St. Louis even though our trip got canceled. And we're trying to sort out why she's telling her teacher 2-3 times per day that her stomach hurts in order to go to the nurse's office. She likes her classmates and she likes school but I think she likes getting to make an important trip to the office and getting fussed over a bit by the nurse who may just be a little bit too nice.

Eleanor posing like a kitty beside the kitty magformer she made all on her own.

Eleanor has been paying attention at school whenever it serves her purposes. She was threatening to send Patrick to the "maze in his mind" if he continued to be mean to her during bath time the other day. I checked with her teacher and she got this from a video series on empathy they were watching at school. The idea was sometimes if you were mad you got stuck in a mind maze of anger and the way out was to think of things from the other person's perspective. She's so close ...

Here is Eleanor's version of the first Thanksgiving:

Bradley is so excited and ready for his new baby sister. The other day I was reading to him on the couch and he had a hand on my tummy and he was very excited to feel her kick. I get a lot of questions about when will the baby be "awake" like that again and he pats and smooches my belly a lot.

He also enjoys kitty company in his bunk bed at night. Sookie likes the top bunk a lot.

The bottom bunk. I don't know which kid is happier.

Patrick has been very tired lately.

Layla is getting increasingly cozy in how she chooses to cuddle with Patrick during nap time.

Nathan got home from a work trip and cuddled with Patrick on the bed during his nap. Patrick woke up enough to see it was Daddy, moved to cuddle him better, and promptly went back to sleep.

Daddy and Patrick are quite the napping duo.

We don't like Daddy being gone but it's almost worth it for reunion cuddles when he comes home.

It's looking like it's going to be a very snowy winter and the kids aren't complaining. We had our first snow before Thanksgiving!

They are all very on top of the routine of snow play time followed by hot cocoa.

The kids found Patrick's Little Riding Hood and the Three Bears puppets he made at preschool and despite the official puppet theater we own in the basement, this is where they chose to play together.

This is often their favorite place to play. The more central and in the middle of all the things the better, I guess.

I've been told to slow down a bit this pregnancy because things are fairly ouchie already. Happily, this has meant good things for my game website and for cuddles with Meg. Someone made a purchase via a link on my site so I've made 43 cents for approximately 1,000 hours of work, hurray! And they didn't even purchase a game, I guess they clicked on one of my links and ended up buying an Elena of Avalor guitar and I got credit for this somehow. Fairly hilarious. 

It's a good thing I'm not really in this for the money. It's a blast playing new games with these kids and with Nathan and our friends. Bradley is currently obsessed with Dragonwood. 

Bradley had a cute cub scouts event right before Thanksgiving.

They did a cake walk and this is the cake Bradley selected to bring home. Apparently the turkey cake he made with my mom was very popular and was the second cake picked. It's nice to have a grandma who loves to bake who lives just 5 minutes away!

We were so happy to have Aunt Tina, Grandma Colleen, and Kerry visit for Thanksgiving.

I'm very proud that we remembered to take pictures at the beginning of the trip rather than on the last day.

It was amazing weather while they were here, in the 60's each day so we got a lot of good park time.

A highlight was a dinner at a hibachi grill the night before Thanksgiving.

Bradley and Eleanor had been when they were very little and didn't remember it at all so it was a new and exciting experience.

Our primary goal while we were there was to have Bradley catch a piece of food in his mouth. It took a few tries but he got it!

Eleanor surprised us by being cool with having food thrown into her mouth. Patrick was adamantly against the whole idea.

We had a lot of cozy game time at home together.

 

And reading books.

This is what Eleanor elected to wear on Thanksgiving Day.

And we got even more outside time! Amazing weather.

Cuddles to end the visit.

And Eleanor has taken to writing special notes to family when they visit and have to leave.

This says "Bye bye, why did you leave?" and there's a picture of Eleanor crying. She gave this to Aunt Tina on her final night here.

After family left we started the prep for Christmas by giving the kids new snow globes. Variety again proves to be the bane of my existence, every child wanted a snow globe I had given to another child. And no, it didn't work out evenly.

They were very excited to get out the Christmas jammies again.

Tiring business. Especially for Layla it seems. 

This has been my favorite year putting up decorations because the kids have legitimately helped quite a bit.

And Daddy was so lucky to get good help putting up Christmas lights outside.

And we were so happy to get to go to the Luminary Walk at the Arboretum on a beautiful 60 degree evening.

Nathan and I are equally obsessed with making strategic decisions to avoid crowds and we're proud of our luminary walk routine, we've got it down pretty well so it's an easy good time for us.

We even ran into friends, which was a nice bonus.

 

And we were some of the first to see Santa, which was very exciting. Bradley asked for a long list of things as did Eleanor and Patrick just asked for monsters and roared.

Here is Eleanor reciting a long list of needs and wants.

This was supposed to be a girl only picture outside of Santa's house. This is the best smile I got out of Patrick all night.

Family picture inside of a wreath! 

And we even made it over to see the Fairy Garden lights, which we've generally skipped but everyone was doing so well we decided to give the extra loop a go at the end. We had many spirited debates about the differences between fairies and gnomes.

A little tired at the end. But so worth it!

And then we got to have Uncle Thomas come visit us. Nathan got to pick him up from the airport during the beginning of a blizzard, which was rather exciting.

And then Uncle Thomas came in and said hi to the kids and immediately started hitting himself. How embarrassing.

Uncle Thomas was instantly quite popular with the kids and at one point Patrick informed him that he wasn't a grown-up because he didn't act like one. High praise coming from the 3 year old.

He brought cool toys for the kids for Christmas and Eleanor was very excited to do a crystal lab with his help.

And we discovered that if you go to Legoland the day after a blizzard it is mostly empty. Best Legoland visit ever.

The staff even put on a little car racing event and handed out some fairly impressive prizes!

We went over to Kaleidescope after this (also mostly empty!) and the kids were in art heaven.

We went home and assembled the new Lego kits.

Cuddled and read some more.

And I "might" have taken the kids out of school early the next day for more quality time with Uncle Thomas. I didn't have much choice in the matter, there was considerable angst to be going to school even in the morning and missing precious Uncle Thomas time. Here they are watching Bradley battle a boss for Super Mario Odyssey.

I woke Patrick up from his nap and carried him down to the action. He immediately looked at me and yelled, "Not YOU!" and ran over and snuggled with Uncle Thomas.

Uncle Thomas had to leave and we were all very sad but Eleanor made him plenty of artwork to remember her by. Here Patrick is ready to be shipped off to the Strait of Gibraltar so he can be joyfully reunited with his wonderful uncle!