Lots of catching up to do...

Time is flying and I'm having a hard time keeping up. I want so bad for this season of advent to be a peaceful one, but so far...not so much! I really thought this week was going to be a calm one, but on Wednesday alone we had 4 dentist appointments, where we found out Jake probably needs to have some teeth pulled, has some potential decay (my first kid with this), and will need to see the orthodontist soon (my third kid for this!). Also while we were there our buddy "X" was dropped off so we could babysit him. Then we rushed home just in time for our writing club (ie a bunch of kids getting dropped off here), then as soon as the last of the kids got picked up from writing club we headed to the library for a program about Hanukkah. Here my kids got addicted to playing dreidel and haven't stopped since. Along the way we collected a couple of extra kids, so now it was time to rush back home and feed 5 kids dinner before AWANA. While the kids were at AWANA, Mike and I did some Christmas shopping, then it was... pick up kids, drop off friends, sort through some presents, evaluate what we still need to get...etc...etc... I love life like this and wouldn't trade it for anything, but peaceful it is not. We did, however light the two advent candles during the very chaotic few minutes of eating and dreidel playing. Tonight we are heading to EPCOT (and again we have a few extra kids) to see the candlelight Christmas processional. It is chilly out tonight and has been raining on and off. Just two days ago it was "shorts weather"...crazy! I am hoping the video at the bottom of this screen will hurry up and finish processing so I will be done before Mike gets here to pick us up. Jake isn't going to play baseball this year, he's playing basketball instead. It's annoying how much the seasons overlap, but I'm not complaining. He is planning on being in GREASE though (and Jonathan and Madi will be too) rehersal for that starts right after we get back from our northern trip (his basketball games start then too). Ok, I'm rambling killing time waiting for this video to post. Mike is here and 5 kids are eager to get heading to EPCOT. I wonder if I'm making it go slower by typing...hmmm... Jake read the last story in Reading Made Easy this morning. Both Jonathan and Madi learned to read from this book, but Jake did some other things (and more or less taught himself), he and I have been doing the last few lessons recently though because it has a really sweet story about an "oldtimey" boy who is so excited to learn to read. Well, actually he didn't just "read" the last story he sang it. I have a video of it uploading right now, but it is going to end up at the bottom of this post. Writing club friends (or "aren't you worried about socialization?")... This isn't that old...we never actually carved a pumpkin for Halloween, so Jake carved this one this week...he did it all by himself and he did a really good job! Jake finished his math book this week! (and started the next one) Parade... Seussical... Jonathan doing his tech work... The bird girls... Performance troupe at Chick-fil-a...

Nevermind...the video was taking forever and everyone wants to get to Disney....