Santa

For the first time ever Ryan was excited about seeing  Santa.  He wanted to make sure that Santa knew he wanted an electric train for Christmas.  So, here he is visiting with Santa who so nicely comes to a breakfast that our neighborhood HOA puts on in the cafeteria of the local elementary school.  It is so nice -- no waiting, very few people, and they have food and crafts. 

School Christmas Program

Here are pictures and video from Ryan's school Christmas program -- The Friendly Beast.  His class was dressed as cows.

Walking in

We had bad seats and I am short, so I had to hold the camera over my head so that it would get more than the backs of other people's heads.  Therefore, the video is not the greatest . . .

This was the song that just Ryan's class sang. . . "Mary Had A Baby"


The whole school was signing this song -- "Emmanuel"
P1030745 from Ryan Focus on Vimeo.

P1030747 from Ryan Focus on Vimeo.

Ryan had one more song that he sang, "Silent Night", but since they had the audience join in, you can't really hear the kids in the video so I left it out.

Ice Storm

At the beginning of December we had a gigantic ice storm!  It may look like snow, but it was ALL     ice . . . lots and lots of ice.

It was still fun to play in!  

It is really hard to see in the picture, but all the little pieces of grass you can see sticking up are coated with ice.  Ryan got the biggest kick out of this.  He said that they were "icicles that were growing out of the ground!"

Even Daddy tried out our "sled"!

See how thick the ice was!

The ice lasted for several days, which meant we spent a lot more time inside than usual inside.  In an effort to keep himself entertained, Ryan built this train track!  Pretty cool!

These are some of the pieces of ice that we chipped off of our driveway.  We decided to bring out some paint and paint them.

The "Junk Yard"

Ryan had fun collecting, moving and building with the chunks of ice we cleared from our driveway.  He started referring to our front yard as his junk yard because he had collected so many large ice blocks!

Halloween

Ryan so nicely reminded me that I never did a "story" about Halloween night . . . so here it is.  He was really proud of the pumpkins this year.  We worked on these together.  He did most of the painting and some of the drawing.

Gerald and Piggie from the Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie books

Ninja Pumpkin -- he also did one in green that he gave to our neighbors because they didn't have a pumpkin.

He also had a pumpkin that he used a drill to drill holes in and then we put a light in it.  Apparently I didn't get a picture of that one.

Once again, a picture of "Super Why" on his way out to trick or treat!

Thanksgiving

Our Little Pilgrim

Don't you know that money grows on trees?  "Thanksgiving trees" that is . . . when Mimi is around!

Since my mom and sister hadn't seen Ryan since he had his birthday, we celebrated turning 5 -- again!

Christmas comes early!

Christmas came early for Ryan this year!  The weekend before Thanksgiving we went to visit with extended family and much to Ryan's delight he got some early Christmas presents!

Then, over Thanksgiving Christmas came early again . . . 

See, the white rocker that is on the end of the blue tube is launching into the air in the bottom picture!

Rainforest Cafe and Legoland

Ryan is currently a big fan of the show Go, Diego, Go.  It is all about the rainforest and the animals that live in the rainforest and he really likes learning about the different rainforest animals.  So, after visiting the pediatrician for his 5 yr. old check up, we thought it would be fun to go to lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.  It was his first visit and he loved it!

Our red eyed tree frog waiting for his lunch!

While he was waiting for his food he went around and took pictures of some of the animals . . .

The tigers were his favorite!

He also liked the croc that was out front.  The croc opened and closed his mouth and Ryan would try to throw pennies into his mouth each time it opened.  He even made it one time!

After lunch we went to the Legoland Discovery Center.

Waiting to go in to see the machine that makes lego.  

It was really nice because there were no people around since it was in the middle of the week.

Making Lego's

His favorite part -- riding the lego city police car around and around the track. 

Gingerbread Tents

One of the things Ryan has wanted to do the last couple of Christmas' is to build a gingerbread house.  One of the things I have grown to dread about Christmas are gingerbread houses.  Here is the story why --  Two years ago I was a mean mommy and ignored his requests and we didn't do one.  Last year I bought him a kit.  He wanted to do it all himself and it was hard to get a gingerbread house to stay together until the "glue" got hard and it kept falling down.  This resulted in a frustrated kid.  He finally agreed to help, and was happy when it was finished, but getting to together was a chore for all of us.  Now, this year Ryan was again asking to make a gingerbread house.  I wasn't sure what we were going to do about that until I saw an ad in one of the free magazines published by a city near ours.  They were offering a free gingerbread house kit for anybody who entered their "make a gingerbread contest".  So, we went and got a kit which turned out to have pieces to make a HUGE gingerbread house and the pieces were all homemade and therefore weren't cut perfectly.  I was a little worried how it would turn until until I read the directions which said to think outside the box and do something different than the typical gingerbread house/ Santa's workshop.  That gave me the idea to do a gingerbread tent which, fortunately, Ryan loved.  We only needed to "glue" a couple of pieces together and they pretty much stood on their own anyway.  Then Ryan got to decorate away.  This is what we ended up with. . . 

Since it was for a contest Ryan requested help because he wanted to win.  So, it was a team effort amongst all 3 of us.

Our gingerbread tent didn't win, but we did get honorable mention and a picture of the gingerbread house was published in the magazine.  Ryan was thrilled -- to him he won!

Gingerbread Tent take 2

We had a LOT of pieces left over after making the first gingerbread tent, so a couple of weeks later Ryan wanted to do another one.  This one he did almost entirely on his own!

Ryan had a blast making both of these gingerbread tents!  Still not my favorite holiday project, but definitely less disastrous than the last couple of years!