Today

What I loved about today:
 - Working with Levi on his homework. Right now overall he has a great attitude when I tell him it's time to get to work. Sure he'll try to make some deal to lessen whatever it is, but he is pretty happy to do it.
- During some of my work time, which is when Levi is at school and Max is hanging with my grandma or playing, I watched an episode of Psych. I don't know why but I am completely in love with it. It always seems to relax me when I'm stressed.
- Watching the boys play freeze tag for an hour after school. It was too nice and sunny not to let them and I got to chat with someone I haven't in a long time.
- They earned enough money to get some toy figures they've been wanting so we finally got them, they were beyond thrilled.
- Holding hands with my boys when we walk and them totally letting me kiss them in public. 
- Reading an huge book all about Lego and how they were invented. I could barely get Levi to put it down!
-Listening to the boys with their action figures and having them, in their toy voices call each other 'bro' quite frequently. It's hilarious. 
-  Today was leftover night so Jason and I had leftover taco soup and the boys had pancakes. Everyone was happy and all we needed was the microwave.
- Reading and being read to. They just love books. 
- Right now listening to Levi explain to Max about the American Revolution (one set of figures he got were soldiers from the Civil War and we've been working on what the difference between the two are)

What I did not love about today:
- Right before we went to pick up Levi I was getting something together and Max decided he needed a snack and spilled half of our container all over the living room and we had to just leave it. It was awful and I was not happy.
- Grocery shopping with kids during the day. Enough said.
- Finding out a coupon wouldn't work. Grrrr. 
- Trying to get the boys to clean up their toys. I'm pretty sure I put Max in timeout 3 times.
- Waiting for something to come in the mail that should have been here a week ago and it has yet to come.
- Having Levi swollow a Lego. I panicked for a bit but then realized it was a pretty small smooth one. He was a bit worried about how it would come out though.
- Feeling like I didn't get much accomplished. But that's most days.....

Take the good with the bad. The Goodrich's have survived another day on Earth.

Snow Day

You'll never guess what we encountered during our trip to Montana. Snow and lots of it. The boys loved it especially since we haven't really had any all year.

Most of our trip was filled with lots of hanging out, playing with new toys,coloring, watching movies, snuggling, reading books....but we decided to take some time and venture out in the cold and get some wiggles out. We walked up the street to Addison's school.

 Snow ball fight!!!!!

Jason got in on the fight. 3 kids against Jason, not sure if that's a fair fight.

Revenge.

A Montana Christmas

Confession. When it comes to taking pictures during family events and on big calendar days I am terrible at taking pictures, but I suppose that is a good thing. I'd much rather be particapating in the fun than just watching, documenting. But here is what I have of the day.

On Christmas Eve Christmas movies were watched, cookies, milk and raindeer food were put out, new pj's were worn, stockings were carefully laid out and children were shooed off to bed.

Santa came and man, those kids must have been really good this year! I don't think much more could have fit under that tree. 

Max checking out the stockings, he just couldn't resist touching things.

 We were at Grandma Tami's house and had to wait a bit while we waited for Pegi and Addison to come. Max decided to examine the presents and see which ones said 'Max' while Levi decided to pull out his break dancing moves and buff the floor with his behind.

 

Kids are SO funny! I am not sure what happened at this moment, something very very little but Levi had a moment and literally a few words and five seconds later he was all smiles the rest of the day.

Stockings!!!!!

Finally, time for presents.

Creature power suits. I think they liked them and Max stayed in his for most of the afternoon. I still have a bit of work to do and need to add a velcro opening on the back.

One of their favorite things was something Jason found for them. Lego headlamps for camping, or just for fun. I think they would have worn them all day if they could have.

I let the boys each pick out something for dad. Whenever they need to pick out a gift for him it usually ends up being a toy. Jason is building quite a collection! This time Max picked out a snake. Jason had a childhood toy snake that Max had been playing with which broke so he wanted to replace it. Levi got him a transformer, Bumblebee to go with the Optimus Prime they got him last father's day.

Happy kids, happy moms, dads, and grandparents.

The aftermath. I think they just wanted to keep all their toys on display and in easy reaching distance.

Road Trip!

It's been a couple years since we did a big road trip, a big trip being more than 5 or 6 hours, but Montana was calling our name so we were off like a heard of turtles.

Normally when we go to Montana we go to Jason's dad's house, spend the night then go on to Montana breaking the trip in two and making it much more manageable.

Well, that was the plan.

But sickness broke out at the Goodrich house starting with Jason who then gave it to me. It got pretty bad. Normally when I have a cold or sore throat I just take my meds and don't ever go to the Dr.s. For me I pretty much only see them for regular visits and when I'm preganant. But that Friday I woke up and physically could barely get out of bed until 4 or so, leaving the boys to spend pretty much the whole day watching TV and movies which they didn't mind one bit. At least they weren't sick too. My throat was so swollen I hadn't eaten or drank anything for a day and a half because of the pain so I gave in and took the boys with me to a quick visit to Zoom Care, I even got an appment for them because I knew what I had and that they would soon have it if they didn't already. The second the Dr. saw me she confirmed, strep. The boys had the very beginnings of it to so she gave us all meds. I'm sure I was a hot mess. Even as they were giving me the medicine and as I was paying I could barely stand and had to sit down for a few.  I even almost passed out. Ugh. I hate it when I feel so weak.

Luckily Jason went too, got his meds and because we were all in rare form we decided to push our leaving time another day so we could recover.

Well.....because we did that as we checked weather forecasts it showed if we went as planned (to Washington, spend the night, then Montana) the roads would be really slick and pretty dangerous. So we quickly decided we would beat the coming storm and push straight through to Montana so we would make it there in time for Christmas.

I had prepped a lot to keep the boys occupied during the trip. Audiobooks (yea for Magic Tree House!), new small toys for them to unwrap as we went, new headphones for movies, colored pencils, coloring books, books, stickers.....lots of fun stuff. It all worked pretty well.

Despite all the difficulties of our getting out of the house and on the road, it was a pretty good trip. Overall the boys were very well behaved and happy, though we had our moments of frustration when things just weren't going well, but overall not bad.

Except that we hit a deer.

Yeah, it was a first for us all. While we were in the pass there was a ton of snow on the ground so we were going pretty slow. It was very late so both boys were conked out but because of the snow both Jason and I had our eyes glued on the road and up ahead we saw two deer, one which was on the side of the road and one that was just walking across. We very well couldn't stop despite the fact we were gong pretty slow because it was all snow and ice and that would not have been good on a road with steep banks, no other people on the roads and in the middle of no where, so we just had to keep going at the pace we were at and hope the deer would realize what was going on and stay the heck out of the way.....it didn't. I screamed. Loud. The deer bounced off the hood and onto the side of the road.

Surprisingly the boys didn't wake up from all my screaming and while the bumper front was bowed out a bit, no headlights or anything was broken, so we continued on. Two miles down, the road was perfectly clear. We actually got lucky when we hit it because if it would have been even a bit further we would have been going much faster and I'm sure a lot more damage would have been done and people could have even been hurt.

We eventually arrived very late, but happy to be there at last.

Oh, these were the books Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Monte got for the boys. They were beyond thrilled.

Polar Express Party

From the time we put the turkey leftovers in the fridge on Thanksgiving up until we open presents on Christmas day I am pretty much a crazy woman. Well, much more than I usually am. Most nights I am up till 3 or later with a few all nighters thrown in there which makes for a pretty tired mama. Like I've said before, this year I have felt a bit less stress because I knew what was coming and my boys are older. My list of things to do for everyone and their mother was still a mile long and I felt like I would have some sort of freak out if more things was put on my internal to-do list. In fact I had to turn down handfuls of request, events and other things because I just couldn't mentally handle more.

So what do I go and do? Something VERY Kendra. I decided to throw a party. I actually like to have something else do think about and plan for, besides my kiddos and jewelry, during the holidays to keep me from going insane. Before the holidays began I made sure to plan for some really fun family Christmas time like lots of holiday movies, drinking hot chocolate, having the boys do christmas cards, doing decorations.....things like that. Among my planning I had thought about taking the boys on the Mount Hood Railroad to do their Polar Express Train. The Polar Express movie is one of the boys absolute favorites. they watched it dozens of times throughout the year...it's just magical I suppose. 

Anyways, we decided against it for a number of reasons. It's crazy expensive, they're younger (I like to hold off on doing those big expensive things until they are a bit older and can remember.), it's more of a once and a lifetime sort of things, and it's kind of far.

What is the next best thing? A Polar Express party of course! Levi was thrilled with the whole idea of it and helped me plan it. It wasn't complicated and pretty easy to put together. We kept the party small and ended up inviting a number of kids who Levi loves to play with either in his CTR class or kindergarten class but have yet to invite over. I printed off some tickets for them to 'check in' with and they wore their pj's.\

While we were waiting for our 'riders' to arrive, we got our crafty on.

Meet Jackson Lyman. He's a fun kid and I love that we always sit behind him and his family in church. He is Levi's age and has a little bro Max's age, the perfect people to sit behind.

And Sr. Charles showing off his coloring skilz.

All the kids, per usual, had to take a look at Jason's fish tank.

And of course we HAD to pull out the trains to get us in the mood.

Lastly Levi and Max helped me pick out a bunch of goodies to have before the movie, when they saw the table and heard that they could have whatever they wanted, lets just say they went a little crazy.

 

This is a terrible phone picture but I was sitting with 3 kids on my lap and trying to keep everything from getting too crazy (me and 9 kids, most of them boys, makes for a mad house!) so that is when quality pictures are thrown out the window.

Oh, and on the way out I let each of the kids fill up a goodie bag for them and to share and included a bell.

Fun was had by all, though I was pretty tired by the end, happy but tired. I am pretty sure we will be making this a regular thing!