Community Christmas Performance

 

 Silas got to participate in a small community Christmas performance on the 10th.  .

In the morning, the kids made snowflakes and paper chains to decorate the old school house, which is now the community center.

Rehearsal:

Performance time: Patrick came to watch!

Jingle Bells:


Who's that?


I thought for sure he would think this Santa was totally bogus, but nope.  All he cared about was that Santa had a present with his name on it.  And, it was a Wizard of Oz pop-up book, no less.  How did Santa know that we'd gone to see the Kitsap Children's Musical Theater performance of Wizard of Oz that very afternoon!  Wow!

Dorothy meets Glinda the Good and the Munchkins.  

Silas, fresh from the critical acclaim he received as "boy who brings Christmas cards to girl sitting in chair" in the community Christmas performance tells us that he does want to be in a KCMT production once he's old enough.  And when they do Wizard of Oz again, he's going to be the Tin Woodman.  I can see it :)

Santa...or just Some Guy

You may recall from last year's Santa disaster that Silas has been more than a little hesitant to get anywhere near the big guy.

Clearly, as is evidenced by these pictures, he's over it. Not only did he sit on Santa's lap, but he talked his ear off as well.

These pictures were taken at Silas' preschool holiday party last Friday.  The kids were beyond excited to see Santa show up, and I think Silas got caught up enough in the moment that he let go of his fears.  While we were in line, he kept saying things like "Is that a real Santa or just some guy? I think it's just some guy.  If he was Santa, why wouldn't he just send his elves to do this?"  He kept going on about it until I finally said "Oh, just go with it Silas."  On the way home, I asked what his take was on this Santa. Real, or not real. "Not real," he replied.  "I knew because of his hat.  That's not the real Santa's hat."

 By the next morning, however, he was singing a different tune:  "He's one of the real Santa's."  Apparently, and quite logically, Silas has decided there are many.

Looks like he might be a Santa-in-training himself!

PDX

 The weekend after Thanksgiving, we headed to Portland. The main reason for our trip was to check out the art show Drew had a piece in at 23 Sandy Gallery.

 Silas interacted with the art...

 ...and became art.

 A trip to Portland would not be complete without visiting Bob's Red Mill (awesome awesome awesome). We saw Bob himself, sitting outside by this water wheel.

And we ended our trip at Powell's Books. In my family, one does not go to Portland without going to Powell's. It simply isn't done.

Long day, lots of driving, but the kiddo held up well, and I'm glad we went.

Thanksgiving 2011

Some pics from Thanksgiving...We had Thanksgiving brunch with Sarah and friends.

 Plenty of music-making opportunities there...

Back at home, briefly, Silas and I pose in front of his great-grandmother's piano, the newest addition to our household, and one for which we are very thankful (thanks Grandma G, for shipping it all the way out to us!).

Silas made this "control panel" with Sarah and he was most insistent on showing it off:

We then headed over to Seattle for Thanksgiving dinner.  Long day, filled with friends and food. :)

Silas' List of Thankfulness 2011

Here's Silas' list for this year.  Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I am thankful for:

--How this day was, how good it was

--Seeing Patrick

--Playing with Jack at school

--That I love mom and that mom loves me

--Reading Geronimo Stilton books at bedtime

--Having tea with dad

--Playing transfer center with dad

--Going to school

--Satsuma Mandarins

--Having the very last of the chocolate

--Cuddling with Mom

Auction owls

Well, you can probably tell by the un-carved state of the pumpkins that these pics are a couple of weeks old. Halloween stalled things for a bit, but I still wanted to share a few images from Silas' auction owl photo shoot. I made 3 owl hats like this one for his preschool's silent auction, which was last weekend.

Apparently, the owl likes to listen to some tunes:

Me and my owlet :)

I have promised to crochet Silas his own owl hat, since this one now belongs to the highest bidder...

Halloween 2011!

For those of you who haven't yet seen this picture on FB, here it is again: Silas as a wolf in sheep's clothing.  I think this might be my favorite of his Halloween costumes, to date.  I made the hooded vest and ears from the Bainbridge sheep's wool.  It's knit with spun yarn as well as with un-spun batting.  I also knit the wolf-paw gloves, but credit for the mask goes to Drew who cut all of the pieces, and my friend Barb, who sewed it together for us.  Thanks Barb!

We began our Halloween with a video chat with Grandma and Papa.  That afternoon, I dropped Silas off at school and got to see all of the adorableness that is a preschool costume party.

Comparing outfits:

Circle time, in which each child got to tell everyone about their costume:

He might not be a lion, a tiger, or bear (oh my), but I do think you might want to keep your distance, Dorothy!

After school, we headed to the Island, met up with Drew, saw some friends, and participated in the obligatory trick-or-treat madness.  Then it was back to the house to pass out candy for neighborhood nighttime trick-or-treat.  I took Silas to a few houses of people we know, but really, we were pretty tired by then.  Time for this wolf to start counting sheep :)

Jack-o-lanterns

Happy Halloween, everyone! 

Lots of pictures will follow, after the day's events...

Back to the pumpkin patch

On a beautiful fall day last week, Silas' class went to the pumpkin patch (you can see last year's trip here).

Drew went along and dutifully took pictures for me.

These next two pictures melt my heart:

Silas and his best bud, J.  These two are thick as thieves this year.

With the pumpkin patch trip behind us, we are gearing up for Halloween.  The costume is done.  Now all we need to do is to carve the pumpkins.

Grandparent reinforcement, stage 2

(A little behind with this, but here goes.) Grandma G came to stay with us the 2nd week that Drew was gone. She took Silas up to school and even got to work in his classroom one day.

Look, they're even color coordinated!

Playing outside of the school house...

We are very grateful to both sets of grandparents for traveling 2000 miles in order to help us get through those two weeks. Thank you!

He's home!

We picked Drew up from his retreat on Friday.  It was a long two weeks for all of us and we're so glad to have him home!

I didn't intend this blog post as a Halloween spoiler, but Silas REALLY wanted to wear the part of his costume that I'd finished so that he could show his dad. And that's all I'll say about it...for now :)

Grandparent reinforcement, stage 1

As some of you know, Drew is away for two weeks for yoga teacher training.  The grandparents on both sides have stepped in to assist while he's away.  My parents came for the first week.

He has no idea how funny he is:

We went to the harvest fair.  Silas sort of disliked the big slide this year, and was a bit afraid of the hay jump.  But ride a horse?  There was no way he was going to miss out on that!

We go to the harvest fest every year, and it was wonderful to have Grandma and Papa along this time.

Grandma made Silas a Lego bass.  Fun!

Their visit was all too brief.  Silas and I have been spending the past three days on our own.  I worked in Si's classroom on Thursday, and we hung out at the cafe with Patrick (a typical Drew activity) on Friday.  Today we went to the farmers' market, an activity that Silas and I engage in almost every Saturday.

Tomorrow, Grandma G arrives!