addison road, track meets, and class parties

wednesday*december 17

***disclaimer: frankie set my phone to some weird setting and i was too busy and brain preoccupied to change it for a few days***

kid swap day at the aina's! while the girls played, i google worked, wrapped presents, organized, and cleaned. as always, it was fabulous. i consider myself so lucky to have friends that value the importance of alone time and that also are wonderful to my children. i am always confident and happy to drop them off because i know they will have as wonderful a day as i do. s'wonderful all around.

my day was cut a little short because at 2:30 i had to leave to head up to prince george county for  christian's indoor track meet. this is the third he's gotten to go to (one last year, two this year) and the first i've been able to make it to, (i was in seattle for harvey's memorial last year, and this year he went the same night as matt's work party) so i was pretty excited to go. the traffic was majorly cray-cray, so i called my boo, and he rerouted me away from the beltway. on my detour i spotted this. our addison got a kick out of it.

i finally made it to the track meet and, holy moly, it was also majorly cray-cray! there was so much going on! long jumps, triple jumps, shot putting, running, it was nuts! i found christian, waved, and waited for his turn to long jump. i sat there with my awesome camera (thanks dad!) and my lists, receipts, and phone. while i waited i planned and calculated and researched. i was cleaning my glasses when i looked up and christian was gearing up to run! ahhhh! i missed snapping his first jump (shhhh) but i caught the rest. of course, i didn't have a clue how he did, and even if i did know how far he'd jumped, i still have no frame of reference for whether that's good or not. this is our families first foray into track, so i know nothing. i knew nothing about cheer either though and i turned into a nice, respectable cheer mom, so i got this. turns out the boy came in solidly in the middle, 16th out of 32. spoiler alert: he came in smack dab in the middle for all three events. not too bad. :)

he ran the 300 and also did the triple jump. thankfully his events were all pretty quick and then i was free to go. i grabbed him some subway and headed on my merry way to the andrews air force base commissary. i had lots of shopping for frankies class christmas party, plus some family stuff. i had never been there before, so it was fun to check out. :) and really any alone time is pret-ty nice.

while chris was running and i was watching, addie went caroling with her daisy scouts and then matt took the girls to go get laney. 

#divideandconquer

thursday*december 18

thursday was busy prepping for her party. i decided to have parents send in money and get the supplies myself this time. all morning i worked coloring sugar (it's better for the birds when making reindeer food), mixing snow paint (glue and shaving cream), and loading the jolly green. the schoeny's came over for a little while too. it's funny having boys around when we're so used to girls. :)

we headed to the school (later than i planned) at 1:45. frankie has a great class and there were lots of parents there to help set up. i divided the kids into 4 groups and had them rotate through each station. fyi - 4 and 5-year-olds are not good at remembering which group they've been in. they made reindeer food, ice cream cone Christmas trees, snowmen, and grinch fruit kabobs. in between activities i played christmas songs and they danced and wrestled on the carpet. it was fun and crazy and busy. during the craziness i did manage to sneak out to the cafeteria to see my fav 1st grader busily making her gingerbread house.

she's always so happy to see us and delaney is especially always a hit. addie was already pretty much done by the time we got there. i wish their parties weren't always on the same day, but we do the best we can.

we also presented frankie's teachers with their gift card books. i had found a cute idea to make gift card scrapbooks for the teachers to personalize the generic gift card, which i think is one of the best gifts for teachers. i cut cardstock and sent two copies home with each child to draw a picture of what each of their teachers would be doing over Christmas vacation, along with the corresponding gift card. so frankie drew a picture of each one going to the movies with her corresponding daughter (the girls come to help in their class every day after middle school). it turned out really cutely and they got lots of different gift cards (target x3, starbucks, dunkin donuts, amc, and red robin). they loved their books! all in all, it was a great day! and gorgeous skies too.

even though i was pooped that night, i made my spinach dip, chopped my veg, and headed over to neighbor beth's ladies Christmas party. she came with me to super saturday, so i felt kind of obligated. it was really fun and there were a ton of lg ladies there, so i'm glad i went. i ended up leaving with what i brought to the gift exchange, a phenomenon that's happened to me twice in my life. i choose to see that as i like to give things that i would really like to get, and that's a good thing, right? ps - there were at least 3 other veggie trays, and only about 4 desserts total. another cray-cray moment.

 

supah fun and busy december continues.