December 31 - Happy Holidays Everyone

Hello everyone-I am typing this from beautiful Keystone, Colorado where we are spending New Years with Uncle Bryan. It has been an amazing week! And last week we had an amazing Christmas! The kids loved all their gifts, thank you so much to all our families. You are all so generous!  

Happy New Year!

Cookies for Santa 

Letter for Santa

Christmas Eve dinner

Christmas Morning

December 21 - Christmas Photo Shoot

Jillian & her BFF Penny

 Last week was another crazy week at the Yamo house. I was in Florida for work (first trip in almost 2 years) from Sunday through Wednesday. Luke had a class party on Thursday, I hosted a book club Christmas party Thursday evening, Luke and Jillian both had Polar Express parties on Friday (another mom and I had to make and serve hot cocoa to 120 5th graders), and then we had 2 (you read that correctly, 2!) holiday parties on Sunday. The Kinderstars came over Sunday afternoon for cookie decorating and the Girl Scouts came over that evening for dinner, hot chocolate, white elephant and board games. It was a wild, crazy, fun week!

The Girl Scouts

Hot Cocoa Charcuterie Board

Last but not least, I mailed our Christmas cards last Friday so you should all be receiving them this week! Love these kids!

December 13 - What a Week!

Last week may have been the busiest week we've had in years..

Julia: 2 theater performances, science fair & cross country meet

Luke: alpha showcase (as part of an enrichment program at school, Luke spent every Friday of fall semester learning about stop motion movies and made a few with a partner), robotics competition (3rd place!! He rocked it!)

Jillian: lost 2 teeth 

Julia and Jillian: Nutcracker performance to support our friend Hannah, who danced the part of Clara. 

Wow!!

Robotics

JD was a mentor for the elementary school robotics team for the 7th year. This was Luke's first year participating as a programmer and his team did incredible at the regional competition. They handled the pressure and placed 3rd! We will find out this week if they make states. Fingers crossed!! I am so proud of Luke, he did fantastic!!

Another tooth bites the dust

Nutcracker!

Checking out a cute new cookie shop

Stop Motion Movie! Super proud of Luke. He made a 1min movie with 700+ frames!

December 9 - Congrats Julia

This was a big week for Julia. After 8 years of science fair, she placed 2nd and is heading to Districts for the first time. Congratulations Julia! And thank you to those who helped with her project, we looked at a lot of forks and bikes! Also this week, Brookside's Theatre put on their first live show, Scrooged. Julia had 3rd billing and played Fran. She did a great job! Jillian and I went Monday night while JD and Luke went last night. We are so proud of her! 

Scrooged

December 7 - Tooth Fairy is Back!

You guys, our little girl is quickly becoming a big girl. Yesterday morning, Jillian announced that she had a loose tooth. She could not wait to go to school to tell everyone. She literally walked in the door, outstretched her arms and shouted "Teachers! I have a loose tooth!". When I picked her up at the end of the day, the tooth was OUT. She was so excited. So excited in fact that she lost it in the car, but we assured her the tooth fairy would know anyway. She woke up this morning and came downstairs crying hysterically because she looked under the pillow and didn't find anything, so she thought the tooth fairy forgot her. We went upstairs and looked inside the pouch and she was thrilled to see a dollar!

December 5 - Merry Everything & Happy Always

We bought our Christmas tree yesterday and decorated last night. Holiday decorating is always an adventure with a 5 year old who lives to move things around the house (and try to change out her stocking for a unicorn stocking about 100+ times) but we got it done! We still need to do the staircase and outside lights but the majority of the inside is holiday ready! Happy December everyone!

December 2 - Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 2021 is in the books! We traveled to Raleigh this year to spend the holiday with Greg, Jill, Victoria and Andrew and it was a great week! Special thanks to Greg and Jill for hosting and planning such a fun week!

Roadtrip Part 1
Our plan was to leave the house at 5am on Saturday and I'm happy to report that we actually left on-time for once!  Our drive was pretty uneventful and we didn't hit any traffic until driving through downtown Atlanta. We stayed overnight in Buckhead and the kids loved the 16th floor hotel room. We ordered dinner from Cheesecake Factory across the street and the kids loved "walking in the big city." After a good night sleep, we drove the rest of the way to Raleigh and got in just before dinner. 

Fabulous Week!

Wow, what a week! Greg and Jill planned so many adventures, it was awesome. The kids went rock climbing, to a trampoline gym, played in a nearby beautiful park (compete with a lake) and a ropes course. They also played a lot in the backyard. The kids also played Mario Kart, Monopoly, One Night Werewolf (I think they would have played this all day long if we let them LOL) and a few other board games. Andrew and Victoria loved Luke's diablo yoyo and Victoria had a blast teaching Jillian some cheers. It was an active week for sure!

In addition to all of the fun activities, I was in love with the beautiful trees, some still with some fall color. So beautiful!!

Roadtrip Part 2

We stopped in Montgomery, AL on the drive back that was all decked out for Christmas already. We ate at an Italian restaurant downtown while the Auburn/Alabama game was on and it was pretty exciting. The game went into triple OT and there were a lot of Bama fans in the restaurant. On the walk back to the hotel people were shouting in the streets "Roll Tide!" 

We hit some bad (horrific) traffic on the way back in Louisiana that delayed us 4H but we finally made it home around 10.30pm. 

Once again, thank you Greg and Jill for a fabulous week! And Greg cooked a delicious turkey this year, yum!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful turkey day!!

Some more pics

November 16 - New Appliances are FAB

 

After 18 years, our GE washer and dryer (the first "big purchase" JD and I ever made as a couple) finally went caput. The dryer started making an extremely loud metal on metal sound and the "on" button only worked half the time while the washer stopped draining. I headed to Home Depot and bought closest thing I could find an old school washer (top load with an agitator) and dryer. Ladies and gentleman, I am pleased to announce our new Maytag appliances! There were limited options for a top loader with an agitator and I went with the one that could be delivered the fastest. I am thrilled with them-the washer is almost twice the size as our old one. So exciting!! 

November 9 - One Step Closer to Normal

 First shots down. No tears & zero side effects (shots were yesterday)!

November 8 - I was a Dinosaur!

PSA: Wearing your sister's goddess headband to school is good. Wearing your sister's goddess headband and then rolling around on the ground playing 'dinosaur' is bad. Very, very bad. "But mom, I was a dinosaur! I had to roll out!" And this everyone, is what I found when I picked her up one day last week:

I spent 1.5 hours working on it before JD came home. He spent an hour breaking the headband into tiny pieces to get it out of her hair. I spent another hour after that working on the mother of all knots. A stroke of luck-Jillian does not have a sensitive scalp. If Julia had done this, I would have had to cut it off her head. Jillian amazingly sat there quietly for 3.5 hours (with a 20min break to eat dinner). At the end of the day, we didn't have to cut out any hair so it was a success. Jillian now says "Don't worry Mom, I will def be sure to take my headband out next time I'm a dinosaur!"

November 3 - Halloween Wrap-Up

We had a busy Halloween weekend, let's dig in!

Friday

Jillian had a Halloween party at school and decided to wear her unicorn dress because "I want to be a unicorn, not a ladybug." At pickup, she got to go trick-or-treating at school on the "Haunted Walk"  with two of her Kinderstar friends, Amelia and Grace. The girls loved it! After getting all that candy, we headed to Julia's school for-you guessed it-MORE candy. Her school was hosting a trunk-or-treat and we weren't sure what to expect. This was our first one and it was packed-we had to do several loops around the parking lot before we could find an open spot to park. Julia was working the event for NJHS so Jillian and I went to all the different cars and she quickly filled up her Halloween bucket. There were some great themed set-ups, Jillian's favorite was FFA with the live farm animals the kids could hug. 

Saturday

We hosted a Girl Scout Halloween party on Saturday evening. Fun fact-when planning a Halloween party, go shopping early because if you wait until October 30, the stores have zero Halloween decorations. It was even difficult to find candy (after 4 stores I finally found some). Luckily Tammy came through and helped me with orange lights and skeleton decorations. We had 8 girls plus Jillian and they had a great time. We set up tents on the driveway and did the whole party outside. The weather was beautiful!

Sunday

The kids carved pumpkins in the afternoon and Jillian declared "This is disgusting, I never want to do this again." She amended that by saying "Next year I'm wearing gloves, I don't want the icky stuff on me." Julia headed off to her friend Hannah's house to go trick or treating with Hannah (Girl Scout), Danielle (swim friend) and Allison (elementary school friend). JD took Luke and Jillian trick-or-treating around our neighborhood while I manned the door with the dogs. We had a lot of kids come by-so many that I ran out of Halloween candy and ended up giving out Christmas Hershey kisses that I picked up at Target the day before. 

It was a busy but fun weekend!

 

Trunk or Treat

Girl Scout Party

Happy Halloween