Christmas happenings!

 

 Over Thanksgiving weekend, we went to the multiples club Christmas party and saw Santa. He is such a nice man and the kids always like seeing him. They do know that he's not the real Santa, and I think they still believe in Santa but this might be our last year. They're starting to ask really logical questions and their smart minds are quick to point out the flaws in the story!

The next weekend we went to Firethorn with my parents for their annual Christmas party. We did crafts, ate snacks, read "The Polar Express" and saw Santa (who gave them gifts this time!) The kids know that this is also not the real Santa and the gifts he gives them come from Grandma. But they always enjoy it anyway. We ate dinner there and then braved the snow and ice to get home for bed and school the next day!

These last few pictures happened after the nice one you saw. It proves how hard it is to get 6 kids to sit still for a picture. Maddie and Tobias were not having it!

Christmas Piano Recital

This year, the kids' piano teacher, Ruth and I combined our students for one big Christmas recital. It was a gorgeous day and everyone came and played wonderfully. Here are some pictures from that day.

 

 Cousin Carter has been taking lessons from me for about a year. Here's a few pictures with him!

 

Here's some video from the day!

 

Family fall pictures

 Sebastian and Tobias

 Sebastian, Maddie, Will, Xander, Tobias, Grace

We got all the Hoefs cousins together in November for a few pictures down on the UNL campus. We got some really cute ones. Here are a few - I'll post more later after I download them all. Thanks Curt for a fun afternoon and some really great pictures!

Thanksgiving

 These aren't Thanksgiving pictures, but I just included them anyway. They are from the boys' scout cake auction in November right before Thanksgiving. I just wanted you all to see the cute minion cake we made!

I took pathetically few pictures at Thanksgiving, but here are the ones I did take. At least we had a family picture! I don't know why I didn't take very many pictures, I just didn't. It was a nice Thanksgiving. The kids are all old enough that they disappear and play in other parts of the house and the adults can talk (i.e. drink) with relatively few annoyances. We spent Thanksgiving day at the Niebuhrs house. No black Friday shopping for us. We went to the Hoefs that day for the Husker football game and a dinner later that afternoon. Saturday was spent decorating the house, with maybe a little shopping. Sunday was our big multiples club Christmas party, so we were at church all day helping. So, it was a quick weekend but fun! The kids are anticipating Christmas and we've had some fun festivities, which I will post about later!

Long overdue posting about stuff from October

So, I apologize for my lack of posting this fall. Working full-time has been really kicking my butt. I am just barely keeping my head above water between work, teaching piano and all the activities the kids have to do. I'm afraid blogging has been a low priority (along with cleaning the house, apparently, because that hasn't gotten done much lately, either). However, there is an end in sight. The long-term sub I am doing ends in 3 short days. Then after the holiday break, I am back to subbing on an as-needed basis and will have much more free time!

These are pictures from the kids back in October, the 19th to be exact. The kids played in the state piano festival. Remember, they played in the district one in April and got really good scores. So they qualified to play at state. Well, they did another amazing job! The judges were tougher and their songs were harder, but they all got I- and improved their theory test scores. Xander got above a 90% on his! We were super proud of them and they even got trophies. They are doing a nice job on piano. After the first of the year, I am going to be their piano teacher. This will just be a temporary thing, hopefully. They are also starting to talk about new instruments, so I think after the first of the year we will look into getting them started on something else. Grace is talking about the violin and Will, cello. Xander is undecided as usual, but we'll figure something out for him!

Turkey Trot

The kids had their first fun run experience on Thanksgiving Day. Our local YMCA does a "Turkey Trot" every Thanksgiving. There's a 1 mile fun run, and a competitive 5K and relay. Brian and the kids did the 1 mile run, although Brian wanted to do the 5K. It was a freezing cold morning, and we were out there starting at 7:45! We dressed them in warm layers and hats and gloves and braved the cold. They actually had a really good time. There were bagels, hot chocolate and a bounce house afterward, so they were doubley happy. After that we went home, showered up and started our Thanksgiving celebrating. More on that later!

Big Bang Theory Trunk or Treat

Here are some pics from the kids at Halloween at our multiples club trunk or treat. Sorry it's taken so long for me to get them up! So busy these days! Anyway, if you are not familiar with the Big Bang Theory, that is who the kids dressed up as. It is a pretty entertaining show about 2 geeky guys that live in an apartment, they are scientists and huge geeks, and the cute waitress that lives across the hall. The boys dressed up as Leonard and Sheldon, the two geeky guys. Grace was Penny, the Cheesecake Factory waitress. I think we did a pretty darn good job on their costumes. Here are the pictures we modeled the costumes after.

 Ellen sewed the yellow vest and little green apron, and we added a white shirt, denim skirt and some flat shoes. I think she looks like a pretty good Penny!

 Leonard's typical dress is a t-shirt, hoodie, jacket, jeans or pants and Chuck Taylor sneakers. Somehow Will found those nerd glasses in his bedroom, so we added those, too. A good match!

Sheldon always wears some sort of super hero t-shirt, in this case we chose a Green Lantern shirt, with a long-sleeve shirt under pulled up to his elbows. He always wears slacks of varying colors, we chose navy. Brown shoes complete the outfit. I think we did a nice job on matching this one, too!

Not a lot of people got the kids' outfits, only those who were really familiar with the show. But the ones who did get it, thought it was clever! I even did a few things that were out of character for me, although nothing came of them. I entered them in a multiples Halloween costume contest on Facebook and I tweeted a picture of them to #bigbangtheory. As I said, nothing came of either one of those actions, but it was still fun to put their clever costumes out there for everyone to see, the kids were certainly proud of their creations. Did I mention that these costumes were their idea? They actually were! I was prepared to let them be whatever they wanted, and not matching. Hope you all had a happy Halloween. I'll try to post more later!

Piano

Here are some videos of the kids playing piano. I recorded them as a practice performance. They are playing in the state music teachers' festival this weekend - they have to go in a room and play for a judge and get a score. They also take a theory and ear training test. They did really good on the district one in the spring, which is why they got invited to state. They have been working on these songs since August and I think are doing a pretty good job. Enjoy!

Throw Back Thursday

Since it's Throw-Back Thursday, I though I'd post a super cute video of the kids long ago. I believe this is 2009? Makes them around 3 year old, I think. Regardless, it is easy to forget how cute they were when they were little and how much you want to eat up those adorable voices! Enjoy!

 

Soccer is done and a camping trip!

 

We finally finished up the soccer season. Here are a few pictures of the kids' last day, it was freezing here so they were really bundled up. The last video is Grace's team. They do these insanely long, complicated cheers before they go out on the field. I finally got a video of one on the last day! She really liked that team, so it turned out to be a good season for her. She really improved her playing a lot, and was quite a competitor! The boys also did improve this year, too. A lot less standing around and more going after the ball.

The boy's cub scout pack had a campout the same weekend as the last soccer games. Brian and all three kids went. It was freezing here, so we had to pack lots of warm clothes, long underwear, fleeces and lots of sleeping bags and blankets. The low was about 38 degrees that night they were out! But, they had lot of hot cocoa and a big fire, so they were warm enough. They got to shoot BB guns, do archery, play flashlight tag, look at stars (when there weren't clouds) and eat cook-out food. They slept on the ground and Brian could barely walk the next day, but the kids had a blast. I also had a good time - I stayed home and got the house cleaned, went out to dinner with my friends, slept in - it was nice!  Enjoy the pictures! More to come later!