Christmas

 At Cornerstone, there are several times during the year where the 5th graders help their "buddies" in pre-k and kindergarten. This picture was from their Thanksgiving feast. Matthew says one of his buddies is pretty self-sufficient and the other one is exhausting. 😆 Last week he helped them do "Christmas shopping" and wrap presents for their family. 

It's so fun to see him being a big helper. It wasn't that long ago that he was the little buddy at the Thanksgiving feast!

Some of the 5th grade moms threw an amazing class Christmas party. I got a little sad thinking how I only have a few months left with a kid in elementary school!

The Christmas concert this year was held at our church. The school has grown quite a bit in the past few years. There's no way we could all fit in the school gym anymore!

This is 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. Matthew is back right.

I took advantage of not having a baby or toddler this year and not travelling for Christmas (more on that later) to bake a LOT. We enjoyed eating the cookies, but also shared them with neighbors, friends, teachers, and coaches. 

Isn't this one cool? Thanks YouTube!

Our annual white elephant Christmas party did not disappoint. We just love these people! Laughing and talking and reminiscing is good for the soul!

The night of our party ended up being the night of Notre Dame's playoff game. Thankfully they won easily!

On Christmas Eve, we decided to go skiing. Scott hung out in the lodge, doing some work. Matthew and I stayed together, and Micah and Hannah skied together. Spotting elusive teenagers is a little like bird-watching. Don't startle them, and look quick before they're gone!

Look! There they are!

I see them!

The money shot - they're on the lift behind us!

 We actually did one or two runs with them (I was super proud of Matthew for going out of his comfort zone to do a harder trail with them!). Hannah wanted to show me her jump (Micah is also jumping at the very beginning of the video.)  Video link

For the first time ever, we are having one Christmas, in our own home, on Christmas day!! We got to go to Christmas Eve service at church last night with our wonderful church family. Then Gramme came over to spend Christmas day with us. 

Instead of getting together with Eric's family over Christmas this year, we will be seeing them for New Years...in Pasadena, California!! If you're watching the Rose Bowl parade or football game on TV, you might just see us!

Champions!

 The past two weekends were the championship tournament for our town's rec basketball league. For the first weekend, the first and second ranked teams had a friendly scrimmage, rather than having a bye. It was the most fun game of the season! The boys were smiling and laughing and having so much fun with each other. The coaches were letting them take whatever shots they wanted, so there were a LOT of three-pointers and a few crazy half-court attempts. 

Matthew isn't in these pictures, but they show so well how much fun they were having. 

The following week, the number one seed had a surprising loss in the semi-finals. Matthew's team won their game and had a commanding performance in the final game, finishing as league champs!

Later that afternoon, Matthew had another Tallmadge vs Tallmadge game - this time for his travel team. And he came away with another win! When we played the other Tallmadge team last year we lost, so it was exciting to see how much we've improved. 

These pictures are from another recent travel game: 

In other sporting news - Hannah scored a goal in one of her indoor soccer games! No picture - but Gramme and I both got to see it happen. 

Hannah has had a very busy social life lately. Her "posse" (as I call them) had their "Friendsgiving" and a Christmas party and multiple birthday parties, with two more planned during break.

All three kids have done well with school so far this year. We're especially proud of Micah getting A's in his two college classes. He'll take two more classes for the spring semester, along with his two high school classes. 

Other Recent Stuff

 Micah had his sports banquet for cross country. As expected, he lettered again and received a scholar athlete award. 

I had fun making cookies for the banquet.

Basketball season is in full swing for Matthew. Both his rec team and his travel team are doing really well. The rec program ends by Christmas. He'll have a lot of tournaments with the travel team in January and February. 

boxing out under the hoop

The middle schoolers and high schoolers at church did a fall retreat together. We gave Carter and Jackson a ride, so of course I forced them to take a group picture. 

2011

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, poor Hannah took a ball to the face during an indoor soccer game. It didn't look bad from our perspective (she's taken worse hits!), but it gave her a mild concussion. For a whole week she had a bit of a headache. While her symptoms weren't terrible, trying to rest for a whole week was hard! She couldn't do anything that would strain her brain or exercise - very little school, no screens, no reading, and limited amount of time focusing on crafts. She was frustrated and bored, but handled it without complaint.

Since we couldn't go see "Wicked" as planned with her friend, we poked around in Home Goods instead.

Hannah and her friends planned and cooked for their own "Friendsgiving". 

"Miss Jen" was the guest speaker at the middle school's FCA meeting.

Sadie is a giant attention hog. She always wants to be where the people are (often on our lap, if we'll let her).

checking on us from outside

Who was digging? Me??

standing guard over my lap - she gets a little jealous when Baby K is here

Hard to believe Baby K is a year and  a half! She's still doing great and has the best laugh.

This year at the First Glance Auction, our table pooled our resources to bid on two "club seat" packages for the Cavs/Nuggets game. (We had so much fun at the Guardians game last summer; it seemed like a great idea!) What we didn't realize until after the fact was that the two sets of seats were not close to each other. One group was in an actual club, and one group was just "at club level". The girls had an amazing time in special seats with delicious food and drinks. The guys...did not. 😂 They still had a lot of fun, of course, but I think they're going to be salty about this one for a while. 

a blurry picture of the guys' seats from our club (Also, that's Micah and Carter at the top because it turns out that the Cavs tickets from the Cornerstone School auction were to the same game and were only a few rows away, so we let them tag along.)

While we were at the Cavs game, Gramme came to shuttle Matthew back and forth to practice, and she and Hannah went out for a dinner date. 

Gramme has already seen several basketball and indoor soccer games. And we got her to lead a Fantastic Friday session about bells and chimes!

We decided to cut down a real tree for Christmas this year.

Micah tagging along with the Oysters for some skiing

Thanksgiving

 We had the privilege of hosting of hosting Thanksgiving this year! It was a little squishy, but we made it work. Nana and Papa slept at a hotel, and all the cousins were good sports about sharing rooms and using air mattresses/cot/camp pads. 

It was not warm, but the kids still spent some time playing outside.

Sadie was in heaven with all the extra attention.

We all went to Top Golf. Even people who had never swung a golf club before had fun.

I took all the cousins (minus Micah) to see Moana 2. 

My Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Steve were visiting my mom for Thanksgiving; we were excited to have them join our crazy bunch for Thanksgiving day!

Per our usual arrangement, Julie was in charge of Thanksgiving dinner. We did our best to follow her directions and ended up with a delicious meal. 

This was before Matthew peeled part of his finger and got excused from kitchen duty. 

I'm not quite sure how Micah got a spot at the adult table while Jack and Julie were with the kids...

This year's matching Christmas pants have Papa's face all over them.