Christmas Pictures

Christmas week is over!  I have lots of pictures to share.  These are the kids dressed up in their Christmas party finery.  We had them wear these outfits to both family parties (we washed in between!).  :)

The Kreger Christmas...my picture in front of the tree didn't turn out but here are the kids eating:

Christmas Eve was a lot of work--we finished cleaning, moved furniture and got ready for the big day.  The kids opened new Christmas pajamas in the afternoon and we shuffled them all through the bath/shower.  

For supper, we had cookie cutter pizzas (and 1 big pizza since these were pretty small).  They were good and a cute idea!

Nathan enjoyed the ice cream tree for dessert!

We also built our Gingerbread House.  The kids love this but I don't really see the fun in it.  Nathan mostly ate candy instead of decorating.

Santa came and it just happened this year that every present was huge.  That made for some excited exclamations in the morning!!

Hunter is happy to see the turtle lair he wanted--he said this was his favorite present.

Samuel loves a spooky gift--he got 2 Scooby Doo houses in this box.

Love this picture!  Lily is excited about all gifts but she loves her Monster High school.

Nathan digging into his sock.  He's really into opening presents!

The aftermath!

Things are getting opened and put together so the kids are busy, busy, busy....

Nathan collapsed.  He had been up in the night with croup so he was exhausted!

Pettyjohn Christmas!  We took a generation picture...my sister, my Mom, me, my sister's daughter, my Grandma and my daughter.

This picture cracks me up.  Nathan loves his biggest brother!!

The PJ grandkids assembled.

The rest of the week has been opening more packages, putting toys together and relaxing.  

Brian insisted on a picture of this Lego castle after spending 5 hours putting it together.  It's still put together!!

It was a great Christmas!!  I am ready to move on now--going to be packing up decorations this weekend after we celebrate Nathan's birthday.  :)

Grandma + Snow = Fun!

This week was a fun one!  Monday-Wednesday, my Mom picked the kids up for breakfast and took them to her house until Brian was off work.  She did the 3 R's with them and then kept them occupied while I watched Christmas movies and napped.  It was glorious!  I am feeling pretty good now, too.  I am definitely noticing the fatigue I was warned about and I have 1 incision that is tender with some side pain but, overall, I am great.  It was a lot better than I had feared.  :)

On Wednesday night, I decided it would be great fun to have a slumber party in the living room.  We slept in front of the Christmas tree while the snow and wind started outside.  Thursday was a blizzard warning so we all stayed home to enjoy it.  Brian had the kids outside for awhile (I went out just for pictures!) and Nathan screamed so loud when he had to come in!!  

These 2 boys were the first ones back in the house and they wanted whip cream with a little bit of hot cocoa.  Ha!  The joy of snow!!

As a keep-busy-activity, I made some gingerbread play dough.  All 4 love new play dough so it keeps them occupied for a bit (long enough for me to nap and Brian to recover from shoveling).  

Friday, Grandma came back for lunch and to help with some cleaning.  My sister and her oldest stopped by after that.  We spent our afternoon watching A Christmas Carol cartoon and napping.  Perfect day!!  Bring on the Christmas parties!!

Surgery and Subs

Well, this has been a long, eventful week.  On Monday, it was school as usual and the kids were excited to hear it was the last regular day of school until after Christmas break.  We used the day to do all the last minute things on my list!!  Aunt Nikki came to visit to give Nathan an {early} birthday present and see me before surgery.  Unforunately, Nathan was sleeping when she got  here but he opened his gift the next day and was happy to have pajamas!

On Tuesday, we dropped the kids off early and I had my 1st (and I would like to think last....) surgery.  It was an interesting experience, for sure.  The kids got to come visit me that evening and that was a lot of fun.  We didn't get much sleep that night and were happy to be discharged from the hospital by lunch on Wednesday.  My parents brought our kids back with this pretty poinsettia:

Thursday started a somewhat-normal schedule with school back in session.  It was a long, stressful day for most people, I think. I felt more tired than if I had a newborn and was feeling the pain.  Brian was trying to plan Scouts and do school and get some cleaning done.  The kids were trying to take advantage of Mom being out of sorts, I think.  :)  There was the typical try-to-fool-the-sub by one particular child....  It was kinda funny later.  Ha!

 Today was a much more relaxed day and things still seemed to take awhile but it went better.  All in all, Brian accomplished everything on my list--they made Russian star ornaments and finished A Christmas Carol and got through some math, reading, spelling, handwriting things I had ready.  Not bad!!

Also this week, Lily had her last gymnastics until after the holidays.  Grandma Barb was nice enough to take her for us and it was picture week so she sent some great photos of Lily in action.  :)

*Notice she "Christmas'd" up her gymnastics outfit with Christmas bows and ribbons.  So typical of my daughter!*

Today was also the day we made our yearly Christmas cookies.  That was a lot of fun!  I actually helped with the mixing of the dough but then I just sat and observed while Brian did the rolling and using cookie cutters with the kids.  I helped frost and then snapped pictures while the kids decorated.  It's fun every year but the cookies are really good this year!!  :)

Hoping for a restful weekend and then I should be able to rest quite a bit next week.  It's been a good recovery and I've had lots of help from Brian and family and friends so I can't complain!!!

Counting Down

I am horrible at taking pictures.  It will be my New Year's Goal!!  We had a good, full week.  A long week but a good week.  :)  

We had a late start to school one day because Hunter dragged the game Sorry out and I figured it was worth delaying school for.  That was a fun morning!  We made tissue paper art to mimic Monet's Water Lilies.  We continued reading A Christmas Carol and it's pretty wordy but they keep up with the story and recognize the parts because of movies.  We were in our final European country this week and our final country before Christmas break.  Spain was the country and we enjoyed making papel picado today as a souvenir:

Next week, I am teaching Monday and then we'll have Tuesday and Wednesday off for my surgery, hospital stay, etc.  Back to school Thursday with Brian as teacher.  :)  I have a lot to do this weekend!!  I will blog again when I feel up to it!!

Good-bye November!

We started our last week of school for November with a sick day.  :(  The stomach bug hit my side of the family at our Thanksgiving and I was a victim on Monday.  Thankfully, it was quick moving and we picked up on Sunday.  We actually accomplished everything I had planned with a little combining so I was happy with our week!  The big excitement (for me) is that we finally finished The Wind in the Willows and started our next book, A Christmas Carol.  The kids quickly realized they knew the story when I mentioned Scrooge's name.  :)

We painted watercolors like Monet this week....

We ended our week in the Netherlands by making a 3-D ice skating rink.  This was quite the intensive project but Hunter mentioned multiple times how much he enjoyed it.  :)

They turned out nicely...hard to see their skating rink but they look neat:

We're going to accelerate Samuel's reading program next week so we can finish it up before surgery...everything is revolving around surgery right now (at least for me).  :)  We are soooo ready for December!!!!