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.