The Holiday Season

We've been enjoying the holiday season so far. I love the tradition and sharing in it with Gavin...and also creating our own as a young family.

We've done a lot of the things already that the holidays bring - the great Christmas tree hunt, making two round of Christmas cookies (Gavin is getting really good at helping!), and we introduced a new holiday tradition, Elf on the Shelf.  Gavin is liking the elf concept, named him Herald and is enjoying how he travels to new fun spots each morning.  I'll do an Elf post after Christmas to share all of the things Herald has been up to!  I have photos of each day :)

Gavin has also taken an interest in photography, often wanting to take shots with our "nice" camera.  Here are a few of his early pieces while we did some yard clean up on a nice fall weekend:

Our little Native American with his school-made holiday projects for Thanksgiving.  He made the turkey with his super friend fourth grader Brayden "who knows everything".

Oh, another of Gavin's photography moments.  Not bad, huh?

A couple of weeks ago, we went on the great Christmas tree hunt.  We seem to often luck out on the weather - a mild 50 degree day!  We landed on a nice fir, but a little shorter than we would have liked.  We had the perfect tree picked out and temporarily tagged it (just with our own internal tagging system), went to look at another top contender, decided on the original, only to find it being cut down by another family when we went back.  Darn!  That's never happened to us before!  Hope they're enjoying our lovely tree!  As Gavin would say in one of his favorite phrases of the moment (compliments of his preschool teachers, I believe) - "Those little Rascals" (pronounced Rasc-oh's).

Will it be tall enough (with hindsight, no, it won't!)

He refused to open his eyes in his photo with MaeMe and BaPa.

Gavin's idea of lighting the tree!

And we decorated at Grace's for Christmas.  Gavin had a fabulous idea to get her a pink tree.  And I made her a Christmas wreath.  We also decorated her maple tree with ornaments.  Just a small way to include our angel and sister in our holiday traditions.

So, what's Gavin been up to as far as development - he is getting very good at numbers and letters and even very basic math addition and subtraction.  His coloring skills are improving.  He's getting better at staying in the lines and choosing appropriate colors for what he is coloring.  Fun art work projects are still making their way home in strong force.  Also, several new songs have entered our house. And creative stories that he makes up as he goes along.  Many of them have ghosts, monsters, bears, whales, sharks and Goldy Locks in them.

Going to the Lodge!

We spent the weekend before Thanksgiving at Great Wolf Lodge.  It was a ton of fun, even for the adults.  Shirley came along and couldn't get enough of the "yellow slide"!  Gavin's favorite was the big huge bucket of water that dumped ferociously every 5 minutes.  It was too much water pressure for him to take a direct hit, but he would have given the chance.  We let him stand just outside of the main "target" zone.  And a few times in the target zone with Brad there to huddle over him for protection!  No matter where we were in the water park, every 5 minutes Gavin had to stop to at least watch the bucket dump.  For days later, I was still hearing the dinging that went along with it!

Here are some fun photos and videos! 

Santa arrived for a visit to the Lodge by Coast Guard helicopter!  And then the kids were able to sit in the helicopter and we met the lieutenant of the helicopter.  It was an awesome little boy fantasy experience!

Beware, it's a long, but fun, video!

 Back to the water!