It Was a Big Week!

Gramma and Grampa Harley arrive on Tuesday!  I took the kids out of school to surprise them at the airport.  I wasn't sure if they were off the plane or at baggage claim so the boys hid until I could locate them. 

In cognito...

Bonnie came out first and got a monster two-boy hug!

Grampa was a moment later, and he got one too!

Tuesday night we let Luke open an early birthday present (he wanted to do his Tell Not Show on it...and I knew he'd want to sleep with it). He is so intense!

It was a fuzzy star wars blanket that I made for him.  

This is a super random picture, but such a funny  memory. We were giving Luke his last hugs as a 6-year old,and all of the sudden Josh was adamant about wrestling one last time with his 6-year old brother.  In the middle of putting them to sleep, we had to pause the book reading and wrestle.  

Wednesday was Luke's actual birthday.  He requested cinnamon rolls and sausage links for breakfast. Luke is really great at soaking up the attention on His Big Day!

Mike and I met him at his school for cupcakes in class.  I love the crown. 

He has a very sweet teacher who really goes the extra mile to make her kids feel special!

Wednesday night was cub scouts at the indoor archery range.  Luke did great, with a little help from daddy.

Josh is an old pro, of course.

Just like last year, Luke chose Buffalo Wild Wings for his birthday dinner.  Best mac and cheese in town, he claims. 

Our little snow blower woke up early Thursday morning to help daddy with the snow!

Luke got 7 cans of whipped cream from the Harleys, and Sparkles helped finish this first can off!

We got him this cute Rudolph hat, which he clearly loves. 

Thursday was Gingerbread Making Day in his class. I couldn't make it (darn work!) but a friend sent me this.  He made  a very elaborate Star Wars scene, and explained it all to us over and over. 

Sparkles found our small Millennium Falcon on the night that Star Wars 7 came out. 

Friday morning daddy helped Josh tie his tie for the big Holiday Program. I love this moment. 

They both looked so handsome and even agreed to stand in front of our tree. 

Of course they requested silly poses too. 

He's getting tall and skinny (with big feet!) 

Ruby wanted to photo bomb the silly poses. 

There it is! That's the picture I was waiting for.  Two smiling, dapper-dressed boys!

Friday after school they made a BB8 snowman. 

Champ helped me get ready for the Christmas Party.  She's a ton of help.

All dressed up, so glad we have a place to go! 

I have to share this. I love so much about it.  It says  -- without spelling errors -- "Dear Santa,  How are you?  I have some questions for you.  First, am I on the naughty list?  How do you go around the world in one night? Why do you take a daily nap?  Finally, I am excited.  Love, Luke"  

Josh is such a tender heart. At the Santa Brunch on Saturday, he grabbed Connor and put him on his lap.  The boys all hung together and didn't open their gifts until they had all received them.  So sweet!

Santa is still very exciting! 

Josh kind of shrugged and side-nodded a lot to Santa. I wonder if he said he had been "good-ish" when Santa asked. 

Saturday afternoon we went to Star Wars.  We bought our tickets in October. We had a long wait to get into the teacher, and Luke wanted to pose with the Kung Fu panda poster. Silly

This is Luke in his seat moments before the movie started. He was SO excited! 

Sunday morning at Soby's for the final time.  Luke got a Chewbacca shaped pancake.  Josh got "bye soby's" for his design. 

Sparkles is getting excited for Christmas! 

Sunday we had Luke's birthday party!  I found some cute and punny printables on Pinterest, so we had silly food. 

My two favorites are Use the Forks and 7 Leia Dip. 

Chewy is a favorite. 

The party was at a laser tag place, so this is Luke ready for battle. 

The whole gang. I love Ady's smile! Ty looks so intense! 

Luke made all the choices, including flavors, for his birthday cake.  He chose the writing, and decided that we didn't need to write "happy birthday" on his cake because everyone there knew it was his birthday.  No need for redundancy.  

He was so excited to eat it!

While we were singing happy birthday to YOU -- he pointed to himself. Such a little ham. 

I'm dying to know what he wished for. He claims he wishes for the same thing every time. 

Conor had this ice cream cake figured out. He ate it like a popsicle. 

The week before the week before!

Luke was so excited that his birthday was less than 10 days away, he asked to write his name on the 16th on my calendar.  Tongue out, standing on a stool, this is serious stuff!

Sparkles was up to her usual shenanigans.

Luke has a weekly assignment of Tell Not Show, where he describes an object to the class, and they try to guess it. He chose his autographed baseball for last week. I think it's just about the cutest little boy thing ever. 

This year we did a Lego Advent Calendar, and each morning the boys start their day with building a small character or prop.  They love it!

No cookies in there, Sparkles!

This one freaked daddy out in the morning!

Josh had an assignment to write about how he got into a snow globe. He wrote about how the shaking up and down makes him sick. His sweet teacher took photos of the kids in any pose they chose, and then they got to use it...so he pretended to throw up, and then put it upside down in his snow globe.  Such creativity, and such a gory imagination!

This year the school is giving awards to kids for exhibiting good behavior.  The boys both got one on Friday!

Josh being an excellent role model to his classmates, aww...I'm so proud!

See how excited he is?

Luke declared this a "lame" award because all you get is a piece of paper.  We tried to explain how important paper is -- think diplomas and house deeds, even drivers licenses -- but he was not having it. 

Such sad, sad boys.

Their new favorite game is for one of them to hide in the recycling bin and the other to work on 'drills' with them. They claim this is teaching quickness and reaction times. Whatever.

Friday night we went to the World Championship of Ice Climbing. We saw climbers from Russia, Japan, and Bozeman. It was amazing. 

It was 26 degrees out, which felt pretty cold actually.  We didn't stay long. 

They had a huge mammoth (the mascot of Marmot, I think), that the boys just had to pose with. 

RUN!

They look awfully scared!

Sparkles has been hanging out in the kitchen a lot lately.  

Saturday Josh and Gabe were doing some science experiments in the garage. It all seemed innocent enough, but then Josh came in with battery acid all over his face and arms. He decided to see what was inside a D battery, and it of course exploded all over him.  His face and arms healed up nicely, but that was pretty scary! 

Sunday morning we went to Soby's for breakfast.  Luke order a star destroyer from Star Wars for his pancake design. 

He could hardly wait to eat his whipped cream. :) 

Josh ordered a Darth Vader helmet.

Next stop, mall santa! Luke likes nutcrackers now that he saw the ballet!

Gone are the days where the boys get all dressed up to visit Santa.

Luke was afraid he'd forget his list, so he wrote it down at breakfast and kept it with him all morning (you can see it in the pictures above...).  He asked for a Seahawks helmet, flip fury nerf gun and Disney Infinity 3.0 (he spelled it three poonto) 

Smiles!

He's been wearing that Goofy Santa hat since December 5.  It's his Thing.