We really like to go see Santa as soon as we get a chance and let’s face it, with 4 kids, 6 nieces & nephews, parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, bus drivers, etc. a list a mile long…I have to get started on shopping!!  We usually take the kids to Bass Pro Shop to visit with Santa and mess around with all the toys they have out.  This year was great because we were nearly the only ones there!  So we got to spend some quality time with Santa.  He was awesome!  I don’t know how Santa feels about this, but I think he might be in the weeds trying to get an iPad, a phone, a PS4, a trick rip stick, and an American Girl playhouse on that sleigh!

Here’s a YouTube video clip of our visit…

As a backup, we have sent letters with our address so he knows which chimney is ours!

Speaking of turkeys, I got to host the Conley side of the family for Thanksgiving this year! It was was super fun and we have so much to be thankful for!  I have learned a ton from my amazing mom over the years.  She has taught me a tremendous amount about cooking and being a good hostess…thank you mom!!

I must admit I was super nervous about cooking a turkey.  I had only done it one other time!  I think we figured out that the last time I hosted, we had just moved into our house, and I was super sick being pregnant with Morgan.

Thankfully, my turkey turned out and everyone said it was delicious (unless they were just saying that to be polite!).  And all of my china, crystal, and silver we received as wedding gifts were finally used!!  Actually, I think this was about the 4th or 5th time I’ve used them, so it’s not that bad is it!?

And you cannot help but laugh out loud at what Reece put on her plate for Thanksgiving lunch….

3 grapes, 3 crackers, 1 piece of salami, and 8 M&M’s.  So glad I cooked all of this delicious food!  What a stinker!

And at the Michie family Thanksgiving we were lucky to have my Grammy D. there this year!  I forgot my camera so we are dealing with a few alien eyes and bad shadows from my cell phone…sorry!

We love her to pieces!

Reece loves Nanny & Papa’s dog, Tip.  We’re pretty sure this is the only love this poor hunting dog gets all year…

Happy Thanksgiving!!

 

 

At Manchester Park Elementary, it is a First Grade tradition to disguise a turkey.  The premise is the turkey needs to disguise himself so that it doesn’t get eaten for Thanksgiving dinner!  The 1st graders each create their own disguises and the remainder of the class tries to guess the turkey based on clues each student provides.  Pretty fun, right!?  Of course, Reece chose to do a Peacock!  When Morgan, Jake, and Drew ere in 1st grade, we made it into a fun family project.  Reece always does things a little differently and before I could even begin thinking about it, she had sat down at our kitchen island and completed it!  This girl is efficient!

This was Drew’s…(a minion)

And Jake’s….(a business man)

And Morgan’s…(a KSU cheerleader).  I had to go find this one…it’s still hanging on our garage art wall, so she’s seen better days!! 😉

A good variety of disguises I’d say!!  I think Jake’s cracks me up the most.  He went through a phase of  wanting to be business man,  hang out with Brian at work, and have a briefcase and papers.  He’s outgrown that phase for sure!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

Our little Reece has always been her own little person with unique ideas and she happens to LOOOVE peacocks!  So, it was a bit of a no-brainer when Halloween rolled around, what she was going to be!  She had her sights set on a peacock costume in the Chasing Fireflies catalog for a few years now.  If you don’t know this already, Chasing Fireflies is a kids catalog with ridiculously expensive clothing and accessories.  However, all of it is also ridiculously adorable.  It’s a great place to get costume ideas and if you are super crafty and amazing like my BFF, Lisa, you can replicate pretty much anything in there!  She replicated the peacock costume several years ago for her sweet little girl, Olivia.  The costume was still in tact and she was kind enough to let Reece borrow it.  Thank you Lee!  Have you ever seen anything so fabulous!?

This leads me into all of the other fabulous peacocks that are part of Reece’s repertoire!

A peacock print lunchbox…

These Peacock PJ’s we had to have…even though they are 4 sizes too big!

I went to every Target in the KC area trying to hunt down this peacock tank top…

This is Reece’s Peacock/Turkey…more to come on this one…

This is Reece’s 1st grade peacock print backpack…

This is her super cute Kindergarten Animal Research Project…

And look at this amazing art she created in her Kindergarten school year!!

This one hangs right behind me in my office and I adore it!!

And of course…we cannot forget “Lily” the peacock she got for her 6th birthday…

she even strapped Lily into the car with headphones…isn’t she a great friend!?

Have you ever seen so many peacocks!?

Reecie, I think your love of peacocks is so stinkin’ cute.  You always become so passionate about things in your life…it’s precious and hilarious at the same time!  Keep your passion, it will serve you well (hopefully in a spectacularly fabulous career and not as a peacock trainer!).

I definitely can’t gloss over Halloween!  It’s probably my favorite holiday.  I’m guessing 99% of America says Christmas is their favorite holiday, so I like to be a little different!  I also think carving pumpkins is fun and the kids are getting pretty good at it!

This year I had the opportunity to volunteer in Reece’s 1st grade class for a pumpkin project.  They divided into groups and predicted which pumpkins had the most seeds, then we counted the seeds and decorated the pumpkins.  Reece’s group did a Mummy – super cute huh!?

Each year I always attend the school’s costume parade and volunteer for the school parties and I’m in love with my little peacock and T-Birds!!  Sometimes the boys need some ideas of what to be for Halloween so I made the suggestion to be T-Birds!  I pretty much just thought they would look cute in those outfits, it wouldn’t cost me anything, and I love Grease.  It came with a little reluctance, so I picked up the movie for $4 at Target and we watched it (with some fast-forwarding).  They liked the movie and were on board to transform into T-Birds!  Yaaaay to me for escaping their desire to wear boring morph suits for Halloween!  You know what those are right…those leotard things that are all one color and cover your entire body including  your face so you can’t see who it is.  I will never understand the point of those!!

My T-Birds are way more cool and handsome than the real ones, right!?

On Halloween night, we host a family Halloween party.  It’s super fun and awesome!  Years ago we started doing a Halloween-themed food contest where participants make some sort of a spooky dish.  We vote on our favorites and decide on a winner!  The contest is growing and becoming even more awesome because my kids are creating their own dishes now too.  I LOVE this!  Here are Jake and Drew making theirs…

Morgan always does an amazing job.  She may have a future as a pastry chef…she made these spider web cupcakes completely on her own!!  How she has time to fit this into her schedule is incredible to me.!? You rock MoMo!

Here are a few of the other awesome spooky edible creations…

And the the winners were the spooky owls, bark with a bite, and spider web cupcakes!  Despite my dad’s adamant  belief that the scoring system is flawed…he’s in charge of the scoring next year (even though he doesn’t even create a spooky dish!)

We had a wonderful time trick-or-treating in the neighborhood – it was a nice, but very windy night which is not ideal for peacock feathers!  And we all discovered that the pièce de résistance of Halloween night is if you score a FULL SIZE CANDY BAR!  They already have their routes planned for next year!  I personally don’t understand what the big deal is…I say just eat 4 or 5 small candy bars and that equals a full size one!  As you can see, I don’t practice any restraint at all when it comes to eating candy on Halloween!

Bye Bye Halloween…see you next year (and by then, we might still have candy from this year…we hit the jackpot!)

Wishing all of you full-size candy bars and an amazing fall season with family and friends.

 

Ok I’m moving backwards a little bit…back to the end of October!  I told you I was behind on topics I wanted to cover.  For a slight second, I thought about skipping a few on my list, and then I came to my senses.  This journal is for my kids to look back at when time allows, enjoy and reminisce !  According to Jake, we could’ve skipped this one because they came home with 2nd place medals.  Jake and his 5th/6th grade competitive soccer team competed in the KC Fall Finale at Lone Elm Park.  Drew was also participating as a guest player on a 3rd grade team with a few of his past teammates.  It was a weekend full of soccer, great athleticism, and lots of fun.  Both of them were not 100%  satisfied with silver medals around their necks…they would much prefer gold.  In my opinion, any color medal is fabulous as long as you gave it all you had.  Rarely do I see my boys not giving it everything, so I’m 100% satisfied.  Boys, let this be a lesson, not all memories are going to be your favorite ones.  There are ups and downs and you should be proud of what you did to help your teams.  Both of you are amazing team players!

Apparently wearing your PJ’s backwards, flushing ice cubes down the toilet, and sleeping with a spoon under your pillow works!!  Someone told my kids years ago to do this ritual to get snow to fall and they are still doing it!  And I’m still missing spoons from over the years…someday I will probably find them in a crevice somewhere in this house!  I’m not sure who this person was that told them to do this, but it has apparently made a strong impression at the Conley house.  We won’t be getting our sleds & snowboards out quite yet but these guys are excited for this 1st snow of the Winter season!  I adore the excitement this brings my kids each year.  Check out this cute little video clip of Reece communicating with the North Pole last night…it’s somewhat related to our snowfall 😉

Some very organized moms put together a little outing this evening for the PRT girls BB teams (7th & 8th grade).  Way to go overachiever moms – you’re sorta making the rest of us look really bad right now 😉   After a shorter after school basketball practice, they all enjoyed Planet Sub for dinner and walked over to Olathe Northwest High School to watch the varsity girls take on Washburn Rural High School.  Aren’t they so cute!?

Our PRT girls got to create the tunnel and be part of the pre-game festivities.  What a great night!  It beats doing homework any day, right MoMo!?

Me and my littles watched the end of the game online…who knew they streamed HS games online now!?  Things have come a long way since my days at Olathe South High School!  What a game…the Ravens won 54-52 in the final seconds.  Wow…that looked exciting and fun as the crowd stormed the court in celebration.  Quite a bit different than a middle school game where sometimes you can hear a pin drop!   I’m actually feeling quite proud of myself for finding this live streaming…way to go mom!  As they were panning the crowd, we noticed the Manchester Park school nurse in the crowd and Drew was so enamored with that discovery that he had to text Brian that he saw her.  Mrs. Vanderslice…you’re famous (according to Drew at least!).  He has already said he is going to fake a pain in his stomach on Monday so he can go to the nurse and talk to her about the game and find out if her daughter plays on the team.  I cannot make this stuff up!  These kids crack me up!  Way to go Lady Ravens, what a great way to start the season.

 

They’re back!!!  It’s December 1st and our sneaky little Christmas Elf, Sparkles, has created a marshmallow wonderland in Reece’s bathroom sink.  Sparkles came into our family on December 1, 2008 and we love him!!  He’s actually a very nice elf…despite all the talk from the kids wishing we had a naughty elf, I’m happy he’s nice.  I like niceness.  Especially during the holidays!  Right, kids!?  He’s going to be keeping an eye out on all of us over the next 24 days and reporting it back to the North Pole.  Santa…I’ve actually been super good this year!  So good that I don’t even want Christmas presents, I’m perfectly content.  I would love it if my kiddos would say that, but I guess that’s just crazy talk!  Snowflake is our reindeer pet and he’s pretty sweet too.  Welcome back Sparkles and Snowflake!P.S. Drew and Jake, you look super handsome with your new haircuts.  And STOP EATING the marshmallows, they’re pure sugar!

 

I can’t let this one go without documenting…this rock star scored 11 points in her game today.  So very proud of you MoMo for always giving it your all.  You have SO MUCH going on in your 13 year old life and you handle everything like a champ.  Keep it up baby girl, you teach me so much every single day.  And according to dad, I already have a PhD in everything, so that’s saying a lot 😉  XOXO

This is Angie, our longtime in-home daycare provider and she made it for the final seconds of the game!  What a game it was too, a 21-19 win!  Way to go girls!

Here is a short video clip of Morgan scoring the 1st point of the game.  I know she was hoping for 2 but we’ll take it!