St. Paddy's Day at the Ran house

With St. Patrick's Day approaching, the kids' after-school program worked on building Leprechaun traps to catch the little guy. They thought it was the coolest thing ever! Well, of course we needed to build some at home too. Legend has it that the Leprechaun is the size of your thumb and he has a pot of gold to give away to the person who can catch him. But he's not easy to catch so you've got to be EXTRA prepared. The kids built a trap with gold coins to lure him in. 

 ...but they DIDN'T catch him! So close! He even left tiny footprints all over their things to show how close they were!

Even though they didn't catch him, Lucky, the Leprechaun that visits our house each year, left them some special treats (and tricks!). He left a special breakfast, complete with green milk and yummy cinnamon rolls. He also dyed the toilet water green and left donuts and a dollar for each kid! Even though they didn't catch him, they quickly forgot with all the surprises he left them! ;)

Carter's school open house

Carter has been loving second grade, and recently, we had a chance to go to his classroom open house to see some of the projects he's been working on. Each day, students get an hour to do research and work on a project with a topic of their choosing. They are working on sentence structure, how to research, handwriting, etc. during this time. Carter LOVES these projects -- he's done one on bears, too. This one was on alligators (sweetly spelled "alligaters" throughout).

Since it was during the Olympics, they were also each assigned a country to research. He was assigned Norway.

I thought his whole research paper on Norway was so cute. He did a great job! I also loved his self-portrait, complete with mint chocolate chip ice cream. YEP -- sounds about right. So proud of my sweet boy! 

Mommy and Addy's day out!

While Seth and Carter were at a Trail Life trip, Addison and I decided to have a girls' day out. We needed to hit up Target (duh!), Ulta and a few other little places along the way. I wanted to get foundation matched at Ulta so that took a bit longer than I had anticipated. Addison was on such good behavior that I was going to buy her something small. The clerk mentioned to her the huge make-up box by the register which was the hot deal of the day for $9.99. You know where this is going, right? YEP. Once you tell a 5 year old girl about the make up box in the mermaid box, it's all over. 

So, that sweet little thing got herself enough make-up to last until college. :) She was THRILLED! After we were done with our errands, we headed to Panera.

Sweet pea knew just what she wanted: a bread bowl with soup! Surprisingly, she ate most of it (more than I thought she would!).

Then we headed home for....what else? MAKE UP application. We spent a lot of time getting it "just right" (which in little girl standards means as much make up as humanly possible.) Unfortunately, I forgot to take the "after" picture. We also curled her hair too as part of our salon time. We had a really fun time on our girls' day! Love special time with her. 

Tubing!

We have been wanting to take the kids somewhere fun to go tubing for awhile now. Ski Roundtop near us is SO expensive though, so much so that it likely wouldn't make sense with a 5 year old little girl who would probably be "over it" within an hour. HA! So I was super excited when I found a Groupon for a place about 40 minutes away for literally half the cost (maybe a little more?).
 

We went yesterday, and we got there close to when it opened. We had the hill mostly to ourselves for a bit, which was totally awesome. I forgot how much I love sledding and tubing! It also helped that it wasn't freezing cold that day, so we weren't miserable! The hill had awesome freshly made snow on it, and we flew down really fast at the beginning of the day. 

 

The kids definitely got a kick out of the conveyor belt that took us to the top! (Mommy did, too, because WOW, was that a huge hill.) After probably two hours of tubing, it really started to warm up and the hill started going a little slower -- and TONS of people started to arrive. This meant that there was about 10-15 minutes between each run.

We did a couple more good runs and then it started to drizzle and one sweet, little girl was done tubing. So we headed inside for lunch at the restaurant. We had SUCH a fun time and it was great for us to get outside and enjoy a new activity as a family!

Trail Life Pine Car Derby race

One of the favorite events of Trail Life is the Pine Car Derby race, which is in January each year. It's always a little chaotic for us, prepping the car for this race in the post-holiday madness. But this year, Seth and Carter took some time to really work on the car together whenever they were able. We opted for a mouse trap theme this year, thanks to cousin Logan's inspiration from his race last year.

Carter's car did ok speed-wise, but wasn't in the top of the pack to continue on. Thankfully, he is pretty chill about stuff like this. He had a lot of fun with his troop mates!

BUT - when it came time for two of the awards for best look, Carter's car won! He was definitely very excited for this. Who knows what we'll come up with next year to top this one!? :)

A couple days away!

What a FUN few days, and so refreshing for the soul! Our really good friends surprised and blessed us in a big way a week or so before Christmas when they told us they had a free stay at a hotel in Baltimore and could not use it. We were shocked and so excited because we were totally able to use it. Because we went to NJ early this year and because we all have off the time time over Christmas, we had NO plans. The hotel was a Hyatt in Inner Harbor. Despite the many times we've been to Inner Harbor, we've never been to the ritzier Harbor East/Little Italy part, so we were really excited. I'm so thankful that we were able to switch the dates without penalty, too, when Carter got the stomach bug on Christmas! 

The kids were SO excited when we got to the hotel and Carter said "THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!"

We had no real plans for the whole trip which is kind of amazing. We spent the afternoon at the pool (where else?!) and then headed right across the street to Dinosaur BBQ. It was really good! Then, we came back and played board games in the room and went to the lobby cafe for dessert. 

It was COLD on 12/29, the day that we decided to walk around Inner Harbor. But we bundled up and headed out. Inner Harbor is shockingly dead in the winter, so we really didn't see or do a whole lot. We looked at the ships, went to the gigantic Barnes & Noble, had lunch and Cheesecake Factory, went to the candy store, and looked in the Gallery shops. We then took the long way back, through Little Italy, to see parts of Baltimore we had never seen. So pretty! 

When we got back, Seth went out to try to find me authentic tiramisu and grab a drink at the brewery next door. The kids watched a movie and I RELAXED! Praise God! Seth found me tiramisu but it was not good at all. For being authentically Italian, I was super disappointed. For dinner we went right outside the hotel to Jimmy John's to grab subs and a light dinner and then checked out Whole Foods and got the kids dessert. And....we SWAM! Because when there is a pool -- even a tiny one -- in your hotel and you have two little kids, swimming is magical!

The hotel had an AWESOME hot breakfast included so we ate breakfast both days right in the hotel lobby. Yesterday (12/30), we woke up to snow and scary-looking roads. We grabbed breakfast and headed out for one scary ride home! We saw so many accidents and cars off the highway into ditches. I spent most of the trip home praying (seriously). But--we made it home a-okay. We had such a fun time, and even said that we'd love to make this a tradition (going somewhere, not necessarily there every time). 

Christmas Day 2017

Merry Christmas! We had a (mostly...more to come on that) fun and lively Christmas Day at our house, as you can imagine with a 7-year-old, a 5-year-old and a dog. We actually had to wake Carter this year, which is super rare. He's normally waiting (im)patiently for Addison to wake up. They were VERY excited to see the living room when we finally gave them the "go ahead." 

(Making them pose before we let them dig in!)

We managed to do gifts a bit slower than normal this year which was nice. As always, we had the yule log going on the TV for our "fireplace" and Christmas music. The kids didn't ask for a whole lot this year...they were pretty consistent in what they said they wanted, too, when they were asked by people. 

The big thing the kids wanted were fit bits!

In a total lapse of judgment, we bought our already boisterous peanut a real, live, working microphone! :)

Here are the gifts this year (Addison, Carter, Danielle, Seth)

After we did gifts, my parents and gram stopped by for a visit and to play for a little. We had appetizers for lunch and showed them what we got. Later in the day, we watched a movie cuddled on the couch and just took it easy. Which was a good thing because, at bedtime, Carter randomly threw up with no warning whatsoever. And that began the Christmas Day Stomach Bug 2017. The kids didn't know this either, but we had a trip planned to go to Inner Harbor 12/26-12/28. I quickly called and postponed the trip for a few days later because I had a bad feeling things were about to spread through the house.

Thankfully, my sweet boy was only sick for about 4 hours. He had a fever on the 26th and was really tired and mopey. He took two long naps and wouldn't eat much. But by 12/27, he seemed as good as new! More on our trip to come...