Almost Christmas???

Is it really almost Christmas?!?!  Brady and Izabell are super excited for Christmas this year!  We have been doing some fun Christmas traditions too, some old, some new!  Grandma Sandy picked up an advent calendar for the kids and everyday Brady has been opening the little windows and it tells us something to do for that day.  It has so many fun things and we have been doing pretty good with getting everyone of them done, maybe not on that day but in the next couple days after we open it.  Izabell has been taking a ring off her chain every night for a countdown to Santa and our Elf on the Shelf (Hoddle) of course made his yearly visit!

Finally a good picture for the Christmas card!

Making paper snowflakes, one of the calendar activities!

Watching Christmas movies!

They found Hoddle, his first visit back!

There you are Hoddle!

 We also have had fun making some fun Christmas treats!  These you just take mini donuts and use m & m's for the noses and mini chocolate chips for eyes, mouth and pretzels for the antlers.  I had to have something for the chocolate chips to stick and I had blue gel on hand so that is what me and Izabell used, Brady did not like that so just stuck the chocolate chips in the donut!

Snowmen and Reindeer :)

Then one day on our calendar we had to make marshmallow snowmen.  Now for those of you that don't know me well, I am not a big fan of marshmallows so even though this project makes me want to gag we had a lot of fun doing it!!!!  Since Brady doesn't like the gel stuff I have for this project we used peanut butter to make the things stick!  We also used mini chocolate chips and m & m's again and pretzels for the arms, again all stuff I just kind of had on hand!

The kids helped me wrap presents too.  We took them to the dollar store where they could get stuff for their grandparents and aunts.  They LOVED this and I think it will be fun for them to be able to give them those things and know that they picked them out :)

Concentrating so hard!!  He did really good :)

Izzy did good too!  Don't you love her yellow clip, she put that in herself :)

All the finished products!

One more cute thing from the calendar was you had to pick a friend and write them a letter.  We just did this one with Brady because he is really practicing this at school!  So here is Brady's letter to his friend Easton!  So proud of him!!!

"Easton, I like to play with you.  We

like to ride bikes"  The 4 & 5 are their ages then "Love Brady"  so cute right?!?!?!

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday and Great New Year :)

3 Years Old and Kindergarten!!

It has been busy busy busy around the Gallagher household.  Izabell turned 3, Brady started kindergarten and I started back teaching!  I can't believe my baby girl is 3.  At her three year check up she weighed in at 30 pounds and was 36 and 3/4 inches, just below the 50th percentile for both.  So when she was born she was off the charts and now she is just a little peanut!  She is just now into her 3T clothes but some 2T things still fit her.  She is doing really good with puzzles and will do about a 50 piece puzzle all on her own.  I can't believe it!!!!!!!!!  She LOVES strawberry shortcake and has decided that is what she wants to be for Halloween.  She also loves, babies, books, coloring, her taggie and blankies, lip gloss and chapstick, the pool or anything with water, dressing up and wearing her dress up shoes!  But as much as she loves the girlie things she also loves to wrestle with daddy and Brady, have pillow fights with Brady, jumping, climbing and running everywhere.  She also can't wait until she can play t-ball when she is four!  We are thinking about putting her in gymnastics this year and then dance next year along with t-ball of course :) 

My birthday girl (we let her open a few presents right away in the morning!!

More presents from GeDa and Grandma Sandy and Grandpa Rick!  Grandma Deb sent a Wii for the kids for their birthdays and we have really been enjoying that :)

We did a joint birthday party for Brady's 5th birthday and Izabell's 3rd birthday.  I decided on a "Beach Theme".  It turned out really well and was fun putting it together!

Brady is now in kindergarten!!!!!!!!  Again I can't believe it, he is just growing up so fast.  They changed the kindergarten program at the school he attends and he now goes every day all day.  He is LOVING it but is pretty tired and hungry when school is done.  He always finishes eating whatever he has leftover in his lunch and kind of just chills out as soon as he gets home.  He is making new friends and also seems to be doing good on school work.  They are making sight word books at school and he has brought home about five or six of those so we try to read them every night.  He has only learned a few words so far but he still enjoys reading the books!  Just today he brought home some math homework that he worked on, patterning, writing numbers, an addition and subtraction problem and he did a good job!!  Thankfully this is all still math that I can help him with :)  He has also wanted to get hot lunch a couple times and there is just something about him getting hot lunch that makes me feel like he is so grown up!  He is also really into writing "words" now and asking me what they say.  Sometimes it really is a word but sometimes it's just some letters together but even that is really good :)  Brady also gets to go to music, gym, art and library.  They keep them pretty busy in kindergarten, which I LOVE!!!

Hope everyone is having a great start to the school year!

The end of summer???

Do we really only have a week left of summer (well summer break)???  It has been a great summer!  The kids are both at ages where it was a lot easier to get out of the house and head to the park for a couple hours or stop in at Sandy Pines for just the day.  We were busy almost every day.  The last three weeks a lot of our time has been spent in my classroom getting it ready for the school year.  I had to move rooms so there was a lot of unpacking and then repacking and putting things in storage for the year and moving it again for the Early Childhood Center next year!!!  I could go on and on about our summer but there is so much that I think I will just post some pictures to look through since pictures can tell it all!!

Brady's friends birthday party at the gym!

I did a superhero theme and the kids had so much fun, but they were moving so fast in there a lot of my pictures were blurry!! 

Then we had the Fourth of July!  What a HOT DAY!

The parade was really good but REALLY HOT!  We always go to the parade in Grandville and then to my aunt and uncles.  Our cousins always come into town and Brady and Izzy love to see them!  And our kids are around the same age and always have fun playing together!  Brady hid inside for awhile because the neighbors were letting off some fireworks that were a little to close for comfort for Brady!  He came outside once the Grandville ones started (which we watch right from my aunt and uncles front yard!).

And then there is Sandy Pines, we spent quite a bit of time out there this year.  And did some things to fix up the landscaping a bit.  Mike fixed some things on the trailer like the central air!!!

At Sandy Pines, we spent a lot of the time at the water park.  When I mentioned hot it was like over 100 and the only relief was getting into water or sitting in air conditioning.  Every time we are at Sandy Pines it means Smores to Brady so we couldn't disappoint just because it was HOT so we started a fire just for a couple smores and then put it out :)  We also enjoyed some good pizza!

I have a few other things to get posted from things that we did this summer and HOPE to get them on here before school starts.  One important thing was by baby girl's THIRD birthday!!  I can't believe it a five year old starting kindergarten and a three year old!!!

Hopefully more to come soon :)