Children's Museum Visits

Saturday evening after Thanksgiving we went over to the Children's Museum. We've found the best time to go is in the evening on the weekends, less of a crowd. The rotating exhibit was called XOXO and was about love and forgiveness so there were a lot of fun activities the kids enjoyed. 

One area had a paper shredded where it instructed you to write out what makes you angry or mad and then let those feelings go as you shred the paper. Another one had you draw or write out a feeling or emotion then crush it in the paper crusher. Isaac really liked this one and wanted to make a special paper for everyone he invited to his party that was coming up. We spent a good amount of time there while he was busy creating.

They also had yellow and blue tags that you would write on then hang up, yellow said "what do you do when you're mad?" blue was "What do you do when you're happy?" Mary wrote 'silly' on the one that she does when she's mad.

While I was still in the XOXO exhibit with Isaac and Mary, Kyle took Emma and Thomas around wondering. They made it to the big board game room.

Meanwhile, working on gifts for friends: :-)

Eventually we made it to join Kyle and the others.

A large battle ship

and a large wordsearch.

We left and went to have dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.

This past Friday I took the girls and Thomas to the children's museum during the day. Thomas didn't get to explore much when we were there Saturday night so we made sure to go to the little tot area for him.

He found the water table and ended up getting SOAKED! 

Luckily he dried by the time we left so he wasn't wet out in the cold. 

The girls are at the perfect play stage, being 4 years old and having a twin has it's perks. You ALWAYS have a play buddy. It's not ALWAYS the best thing ever, but they sure do have a lot of fun.

We went up and made little bags in the creative studio, so they could put more of their smashed paper creations in it. Then they checked out the wobble chairs before we left.

Since we didn't have Cossetta's last weekend when we went I was wanting it for lunch. So the four us us enjoyed lunch followed by gelato for the girls and a latte for me :-) 

I was really hoping Thomas (and maybe the girls) would nap on the way home but that was not the case. Thomas was so tired. We had to pick up Isaac from chess so I couldn't put him down when we got home because we only had about 45 minutes to spare before we needed to load up again. The downer about a fourth child is you just get dragged everywhere. The good part is he is so loved and always has something going on. We went to get Isaac then came home. I got Thomas down for a quick late nap. 

Kyle came home and the kids all put on their holiday PJs that had arrived that day. I found a great deal the morning of Black Friday so snagged up some matching PJs. They had fun running around in them. They wouldn't sit for a group photo, of course so this is what I was able to capture. As you can see Thomas was sad and clingy after waking up from his nap. 

"hold me daddy"

Emma was super excited to be matching Thomas. Thomas was saying "just leave me alone already!" :-(

Mary was cooperative :-) 

Thanksgiving & Tree Decorating (Catalog of Ornaments)

We didn't do too much for Thanksgiving this year. We had a turkey waiting to be cooked that was living in our freezer so our main goal was to use that up. We decided to grill it out on our ceramic grill... was thinking we'd eat around 1ish so started it that morning. 

Watched some of the parade, which is my favorite thing about Thanksgiving. 

Mary was so cute and dressed for the occasion in her nice winter dress.

We made a couple Thanksgiving crafts to pass the day.

The turkey ended up taking a LOOONNNNGGGG time! It was an 18 pound turkey (since I got it late last year with our free coupon I was limited in sizes I could get and had to get a big one). 

In the end it took about 9 hours. Ha!

We were all pretty hungry by the time it was ready to eat. We had fended off the kids with snacks all day, lol. It was a nice meal together as a family :-)

The following day we decorated our fake tree in the living room. This is the tree that has all our personal ornaments on it. Last year it was a little over crowded so we only did the kids' ornaments this year as well and Kyle's and I's annual ornaments.

Our 2018 ornament is the tri-legged women from Sicily. This is the symbol of Sicily. We got this ornament when we went to Vulacno the island. It is made of black ash from the volcano.

Last year's ornament: 2017

We didn't really have a 2016 ornament, might have to look for one about buying/selling a house. But December of 2016 I went to NYC for my cousin's wedding and this was their little party favor, so it works as our annual ornament :-)

2015 is this linus ornament. That year my mom was visiting at the beginning of December and we went to see the Charlie Brown Christmas at the Children's Stages Theater.

2014 is an ornament from FAO swartz toy store when we went there the winter before the girls were born. I'm so happy to have this ornament. One) it's a representation of a huge milestone trip, we had this trip planned but I was pregnant with twins and was so scared I wasn't going to be able to go. But I was!  Then it's also significant because FAO ended up shutting down :-(

2013 was from our family trip to New England. We went to Boston, Maine, Cape Cod. So fun! And how easy it was to travel with ONE kid, haha.

2012 was an ornament we got at church that year at Church of the Open Door. They had a little bazaar of items made from women in another small developing country.

2011 was from our California trip, when I was pregnant with Isaac.

2010 was another NYC trip. Can you tell I LOVE NYC? :-) Especially at Christmas time. My cousin patty gave us this ornament and another one (it's a hotdog stand). This year Kyle and I were visiting over Christmas time and went to Times Square for New Years Eve/Day

And our first ornament when the tradition started the year we got married. Our 2009 ornament was a glass globe which has since broken, but we can still keep the ornament. This year we explored cross-country skiing and felt this represented Minnesota life well. 

And this year I made these ornaments for the kids. I saw someone share a video on facebook and was inspired to make them... haha cuz you know I have so much extra time. Isaac actually was interested in helping and made his own name.