The calm before the storm

Though Michael's schedule remains busy as usual, I'm rather enjoying this "extra" week before the craziness of December hits.  I sorta like having a 5th Thursday in November!  :)  Now, having said that, it also seemed awfully early to be putting up Christmas decorations last Friday, but decorate we did.  The boys had a good time dancing around to Christmas music and helping with the decorations.  They both have trees in their room, so they each got to help with the family tree and then decorated their own trees with various leftover ornaments as well as ornaments that are just for their little trees.  Noah has so many ornaments that some of "his" came back out to the big tree. 

Our Elf on the Shelf also returned this past week.  Noah loves "Joe" and was very excited to see his return.  Josiah doesn't really know what to think of the elf yet.  He's excited about him because Noah is excited.  Here they are on Joe's first day back with us: (can you see Joe tucked into the tree next to Noah?)

 This year, Joe discovered Pinterest and so his hiding places are a little more interesting... he drank half a bottle of syrup the other day and yesterday we discovered him reading a story to all of Noah's Pez dispensers.  I really should take pictures...

And speaking of pictures... click here

Hang on, because the next month is going to be a wild ride!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

... early fall?!?  With temps near 70 on my porch right now and the sun shining brightly, it doesn't seem like it's Thanksgiving here in Ohio.  Normally it's at least dismally grey and not warm enough to go without a jacket at least... not that I'm complaining!  I'll take 70 & sunny any day!  :)

Last Wednesday was Noah's last lesson with his piano teacher, Mrs. Zwiebel.  Next week he will start with a new teacher that is highly recommended by Mrs. Z.  Saturday was the annual Ribbon Festival at Bluffton University and he did such a great job.  He played Hedwig's Theme by John Williams from the Harry Potter movies.  If you are my friend on Facebook, then you've already heard one rendition of this... The performance here is the polished version.  :)  Sorry for the shaky video - I was more nervous than Noah was!  lol

There are pictures from the Ribbon Festival and a few others here.

Happy & blessed Thanksgiving to you & yours!

Whatever normal is...

I suppose that this week has been more normal than the past few.  I've spent only a few hours at school, things seem pretty quiet around the church and we're busy but not excessively so.  The pictures that I ended up putting in this album are a hodge-podge of activities from the last month.  I went through my phone pictures and found several I don't think I had uploaded, so there are several from October.  Maybe I'm caught up now??  :) 

Since the last time I really sat down and blogged, we had Parent Teacher Conferences for Noah and are once again so proud of him!  He had all As and even an A+ or two and his teacher had nothing but accolades for our boy.  She asked that we would have him retested for the enrichment program through our school district and he is also in a math enrichment group with several of his classmates to try to challenge him a bit.  Overall, Noah is doing great... but who would expect anything else?  ;)

This past weekend, the boys and I went with our friends, the Campbell girls, geocaching.  They hit 100 (and went beyond) while we were out and the boys & I now have 66 finds.  You'll see a picture of the girls finding #100.  :)  It was a beautiful fall day and we had fun, mostly because we went 12 for 12.  It's rare that we have a day of geocaching and find every cache we look for.  And of course, we always have fun with the girls.  Unless the winter weather is like last year (which I doubt), that was probably our last geocache outing for the season.  We are fair-weather cachers!  :)

I know, I know....

...it's Wednesday.  And it's 9:26pm EST.  And I haven't blogged yet.  And to be honest, it's not going to happen.  You see, despite the fact that I am a "stay-at-home-mom" to two wonderful boys, since Monday, I have managed to log approximately 12 hours of volunteer work at the school.  I know, I know, 12 hours is really not that much in 3 days but keep in mind that I also did about 12 loads of laundry, cleaned our bathroom, took Josiah to the library, took Noah & Josiah to the library together, took Josiah to Tiny Tots Gym class, practiced piano with Noah, took Noah to piano lessons, helped Noah with homework, picked up food for the teachers twice (not included in the 12 hours mentioned above) and did some other school-related work from home.  That doesn't include the every day minutiae that's not worth mentioning....

Granted, I chose all of this and so this should not be considered whining or complaining... it's just an excuse for not giving you pictures and a post about the boys.  Come back next week and maybe I'll have had a few spare moments to take pictures and then write about them.... after all, there's no school on Friday so I should have fewer volunteer hours!  ;)