Busy Busy Busy Season - Christmas Pageant and Gingerbread House Makings

'Tis the Season right!?!  I feel like December is flying by and there are only 9 days until Christmas which is 8 days until Christmas Eve.  AHHHH!!!  How is that possible?  I have a lot to accomplish before that deadline.  Tommy's birthday is on the 21st and his party is on the 19th; the timeline is really making me reconsider celebrating his birthday on his 1/2 birthday.  A nice June party seems fun!  And I digress...we have been very busy over the past few weeks, but this past Sunday, we had some festive fun.

Sunday started with the Christmas Pageant at our church in Lake Oswego, Christ Church Episcopal Parish.  I have to say, I absolutely adore our church!!!  Everyone there is so welcoming and I am thankful to be a part of such a community.  Morgan was an angel and Tommy was a King.  Morgan was the "opening act" as the kindergarten and under age groups sing the welcoming songs.  They were very cute and did a great job!  Tommy had a speaking role and nailed it.  He spoke very clearly and with good inflection. I am thankful for the wonderful women who ran the pageant - Susie, Cynthia and Deborah!

Here are some pics of the kids:

Morgan as an Angel.

Tommy (as a King) & Morgan (as an Angel)

Even the King was wearing Nike shoes

Father Jeremy talking to the kids before the procession into church

Then from the Christmas pageant we headed home and prepared for our annual Gingerbread House assembly.  I baked the gingerbread house pieces last week - usually I do that on Thanksgiving weekend (it is good to have them dry out a bit for assembly), but other commitments got in the way of that this year.  But it all worked out okay.

Baking the houses.  With the extra dough, I made little gingerbread girls and boys.

This is a tradition that comes from Mike's mom, Jan Olinger.  Even as a child I remember seeing Mike's kitchen table filled with candy and gingerbread houses in various forms of completion...I always thought that was so much fun...and it is!!!  The house pieces are all made from a blue print and recipes that Jan gave me when I asked about Gingerbread Houses when Tommy was a baby. I figured it might be time to start to get the tradition started with our family.

Jan came over directly after the Christmas Pageant and she made the cement icing while I cleaned up the rest of my house that was in chaos.  Then we started to set out the candy.  Our longtime friends the Mitchells come over every year and make these houses with us.  They have been doing it since Tommy, Ari & Mckenna were little...maybe 4 or 5 years old. The nice thing is as they get older, the more freedom we can give them with the icing and they can really decorate the houses mostly on their own.

They start with three walls up and decorate the inside of their house.  Then we put the front and roof on with the icing.  The outside of the house and "yard" are where they are super creative.  Each child has such a different way of decorating.  This year Tommy was more captivated he has been in previous years (usually his attention span is not very long when it comes to crafts/creative items).  I will let the pictures speak for themselves, but I think all in all they had a fun night of decorating!

The whole crew working on their houses

Grandma Jan helping Tommy assemble his house

Even Grandpa Casey was getting in on the action

Mckenna hard at work on her house and Tommy escaping the decorating fun

This was the candy that we could not fit on the table.  Riggins' bed held it up nicely!

And the finished products looked like this:

Morgan's House

Tommy's House

Both houses with their lights on

Another view with both houses with their lights on

So all in all it was a great weekend filled with fun and festive traditions.

Cheers to Christmas traditions!

Life Gets in the Way

Well I was all revved up to clean out my house in my posts at the end of August, but life seems to get in the way of all the best plans.  I keep saying "Oh once I get through this event or get through this month"...but now I am really wanting to get this place cleaned out.  So with the taking down of Christmas in January it is my goal to get it cleaned out.

I have been really trying to spend time with people I love.  I have so many wonderful family members and friends and some are going through some rough times.  So another goal as I approach the end of 2015 is to.really concentrate on my relationships.

I also need to definitely start setting deadlines for myself as I have decided I am the biggest procrastinator that I have ever met.  So while we are in Black Butte over Christmas Break, I am going to come up with realistic deadlines for cleaning out the house, organizing the garage and getting my life back on track!

What has been going on with the Leeper family:

• School started in September and both kids LOVE their teachers.  Morgan is loving being at Tommy's school.  She now gets very defensive that it is her school as well.
• September and October were filled with a lot of soccer practices and games.  The kids LOVED playing and Morgan loved getting her first athletic trophy.
• Morgan continues her hip-hop/ballet class at Moonstar Dance and will have her recital in June.
• In November we were able to escape and go to Black Butte for 5 days and it was really fun!  
• Mike took me to a fancy-schmancy fundraising gala in Seattle last week.  It was a beautiful event and fun to spend the night out in Seattle with Mike.
• Mike is enjoying his work still with Denali Advanced Integration and traveling all over the country.  
• December is a busy month with Tommy turning 9, school activities and Christmas.  I do love this time of year, but it has really become totally insane with all the activity.  

So this is a totally random post but just thought I would put out what was going on in the Leeper home.  I will have more composed thoughts and subjects soon!

Cheers to crazy December times!

Playroom...check

Hello again!  I know this is crazy, two posts in a matter of one week.  You might wonder what has happened to me.  Well apparently I have a lot to say.

Today I conquered the playroom.  I know it is not even September yet and I started "the great cleanout."  One room down, many more to go!

The problem with the playroom is there are so many little pieces and they are all shoved in each little crevasse.  None of the games had all the pieces because they had been spilled out and then placed in whichever basket was closest.

Playroom - BEFORE

So it took all day, but I cleaned out each wicker basket, sorted and organized each little piece of everything that was shoved everywhere.  I also moved the "stove" out as Morgan notified me she was "done with that."  Which is good because little does she know about the large puppet stage (she is getting for her birthday next week...shhhh) that is going where the stove used to sit.

Playroom - AFTER (with area cleared and ready for Morgan's Puppet Stage)

So tomorrow I will have an extra large black garbage back out by my garbage cans, but totally worth it to get the clutter out.  I am slowly piling all the stuff for either the garage sale or donation in the living room (or what I refer to as the unused room).  But I need to get it out by next week as it is Morgan's birthday party, so I am fairly sure most of the items are going to get donated.

But it feels really good to have that room taken care of and finished.  Hopefully the kids will keep it somewhat orderly, but who am I kidding, I will need to keep on top of it.  The next rooms to get tackled are the kids rooms. Ahhhhhhh.

Cheers to one room being "done!"
 

As the School Year Approaches...

September is coming at us full force...next week it is September.  That means school starts and the schedule starts getting real.

It has been a while since I have blogged...really the past two years have been a complete blur.  I WAY over-committed myself with Tommy's school, church and community volunteerism and pretty much could not keep my head above water from September of 2013 to mid-July 2015.  As of mid-July, I have stopped all my leadership roles in volunteering and have decided to focus this school year on our family and on me - what really makes me happy.  For a while there, I was too busy to even think about if I was happy and then I was so over-stressed, I realized I was not happy at all...in fact I was downright miserable.  So now begins the work.

I am going to clean out my house...this is my goal for September.  I am writing it down so I can somewhat be held accountable for this goal (not that I think that people who ready my blog will actually track this), but if I write it down and throw it out there, I will make it happen.  I need to purge the excess in our house and then with the salvageable items either have a huge garage sale or take many trips to Goodwill.  I did already start this process and clean about a 5ft x 5 ft space in our bonus room called my "wrapping paper closet."  This ended up with a large black trash bag filled with garbage and then a stack of stuff that is either garage sale or Goodwill bound. So I have started.

I am also going to try to be a better friend and family member.  I am going to try to schedule coffees and lunches with friends.  I just need to reconnect to people because while I was always really busy over the past two years, I was lonely because I was too busy to stay connected with friends.  I also need to really live in the moment with my family - not be looking at what meeting I need to get to or what project I need to get done.  I need to appreciate being where we are at and savor the times where we are just together...hanging out.

Getting back to working out...for a while my world revolved around getting my workout in.  That has severely dropped off and I am really looking forward to getting that back.  Working out is my stress relief and makes me a very happy person.  But I also know it is going to hurt...I am nowhere near where I was two years ago, which not only makes me sad, but also a bit discouraged.  But I need to get back on that horse and start to ride that road again.

Volunteering in both Tommy and Morgan's classroom is a must-do this school year!  I love being in their elementary school...I never realized how much I like it until I was spending most days there over the past two years.  It is a great place to be and Tommy's (and now Morgan's) school is a really wonderful place.  I love the staff at Charles F. Tigard Elementary School and I love helping in any way that I can.  So I am looking forward to volunteering in both of my kiddo's classrooms this year.

On top of all that, I am going to do a little self-discovery and figure out what I really like to do.  I am thinking about taking guitar lessons (I know crazy talk, but I have always wanted to do it) ...now that the kids are both in school for the whole day, I am excited to explore new things.

So while I might have a severe identity crisis as the reality of both kids being in school full-time sets in, I am also going to celebrate uncertainty in my identity because I feel that in times when I question what my identity is is when I am able to really find out about my true self.  And then hopefully I will be able to figure out what path I would like to take with my life.  I guess I am always thinking about that age old question, "what do I want to be when I grow up?"

Cheers to a new school year, a year of self-discovery and a year of making the most out of each day!