Ugly Sweater Christmas Party

So this year I was eager to host our own Ugly Sweater Christmas Party! I had all these ideas, and researched as well. I couldn't wait to hit the local thrift stores to find my ugly sweater.....UNTIL I realized everywhere was OUT. People buy and sell them on eBay. So...I got mine on eBay. It wasn't quite as ugly as I'd like but it was something I definitely wouldn't have worn out in public. We had a blast tho! I made ornaments for our guest to take home, each unique with a painted on ugly sweater. We played a Christmas themed pictionary!. Girls lost. boo. I also made up cards for a game called humdingers (anyone play cranium will know this one), all mostly holiday music that we had to hum to get our team mates to guess. We also did a tacky gift exchange, in which I won a used trophy ( the best ever!) We played musical gift. I had spent all the night before wrapping that gift 10 times in 10 different types of wrapping paper. It was a success. We really had fun and I really enjoyed myself. My husband did suffer a bit the next day, a little too much drinky drinky for him. Ahh well, once in a blue moon.

This is my friend Cilla humming beautifully!
Christmas themed Pictionary!
Hmmmm..what is she drawing?
My photo booth area.
My husband and I posing. It was a great time. I recommend hosting or going to one next year!

Rocky Neck State Park

This past summer we did some camping at Rocky Neck State Park. Now, we don't have the luxury of RV camping so we did the old fashioned in a tent camping. I hadn't been in years, actually since we lived in Hawaii in 2007. It was a lot of fun. We went with our good friends the Morales Mob. We played games, went swimming in the ocean (which I have decided New England never gets warm enough to swim in the ocean). All in all, it was a blast! We did encounter skunks the last night we were there...they kept trying to go from campsite to campsite for food. It was interesting but they never did spray.

This is how I camp, with a battery operated fan! Holler!!!
All the kids roasting mallows for smores!

We popped popcorn on our stove. It was actually not that great but hey, it was for the memories!

Our home for the weekend.

7 months later

So much has happened since last June. We moved towns, we were not happy with the schools our children attended. Our daughter had the hardest 5th grade year with a teacher who thought bullying her into paying attention was how to get her to focus. It left her completed ashamed, scared and there were days she told us she didn't want to go to school anymore. She had even gone as far as writing a note to a friend about how she was alone. Even after confronting her teacher and her teacher telling us it wasn't right cause she too was the type of student like Hannah who would get very embarrassed of not knowing an answer. It didn't matter, she kept doing it and my daughter ended 5th grade on a miserable note. We have since moved to a much better school district. And to our surprise our 3 year old got to start pre k early! He is delayed in speech but the other district had offered him one hour on Fridays to come in for speech therapy. When we moved to our new town, this district said the best thing for speech delayed children is to throw them into a classroom with their peers. He's been doing GREAT! We still have some trouble understanding him but he's really coming along! He loves going to school and it's really given him the routine that he's needed. Our 7 year old loves his new school, the great thing about it is....although he is one of the top students in his class he is not as advanced as the last school said. Which means at this school he's actually being treated as part of the class, the last school would put him and another boy in their own group alone and they were both miserably bored. All in all, our move has been successful!

I also finished another semester of college with a 3.8 gpa! I begin another semester in just a few days but I'm extremely nervous. I haven't taken chemistry since high school and I was a miserable chemistry student. Ahh well right! Okay so that's my quick update. Onto blogging!