I'm taking a break

Hey everyone!

I wanted to let you know that after this post I'm going to be taking a blogging break for the holidays.  I've realized this week that life has gotten too busy and I need to lighten my load wherever I can.  My job has gotten MUCH busier, our calendar is full in the evenings, and I'm getting swamped!

The past week I have endeavored to bring the holiday spirit to the Bickel household.  This weekend we did our annual photo-a-thon in an effort to get three boys to all smile at the same time.  This is made especially challenging by the fact that William is an expert at the fake smile.  This kid obviously studied pictures of his father and thought, "oh, if I just clench my teeth and open my lips, that is the same thing as smiling."  Henry is currently incapable of keeping his hands to himself when in close proximity to anyone.  For some reason, whether at home with his brothers or at school next to his buddy Johnny, he seems to need to half-tackle-half-hug whoever he is sitting with.  Jack presents his own challenges as well.  He is an expert at raising his hands to his face just as the camera clicks.  How we can still get blurry pictures of our children when we have a very high speed camera is beyond me.

There was a great deal of moving around, begging, cajoling, making funny faces, saying little-boy approved hysterical words, giving Luke bunny ears and general ridiculousness on my part in a effort to get real smiles of children sitting up in a relatively straight position.  Luke kept snapping away.  We came out with over 50 images, one of which is an actual decent picture.  This is a pretty comparable number to attempts of years past.  So enjoy those cards when you get them this year!  It took a lot of work!

 

I also did a couple of holiday crafts with the kids this week.  On Monday we made Christmas countdown chains for their bedrooms.  Henry and William insisted on coloring on each link of the chain.  William did cute little pictures of various things.  Henry did about 3 pictures of "mountains", two pictures of "teeth" and then did a tiny scribbled line on the rest.  When assembling the chain, if Henry saw one without anything on it, he panicked, grabbed it from me and swiped it quickly with a marker.  Jack lost interest after link number two.

The next day we did an activity with little jingle bells.  Jack kept running around the house yelling, "MY jingle bells!"  Henry and William kept getting frustrated that the bells would fall off when the bumped them with the side of their hand or tipped over the tree they were attaching them to.  Not my most successful idea.  Tonight we attempt our first round of Christmas cookies.  I'm sure that will go great.

Well, enjoy the month, folks!  If I find the time, I'll update, but don't count on it!