Yesterday we took the kids on a train ride to the North Pole.

Once we got there, we were allowed to get off of the train and wander around. There was a surprising lack of snow and it was a 50 degrees, which I can only assume is a record breaking high for Santa’s home town.

They had hot cocoa and cookies and the kids spent some time coloring pictures before we went in to see Santa and Mrs. Claus.

I had them all nicely coordinated in festive Christmas sweaters and visions of a photo with three smiling kids danced in my head.

The children, however, had other plans.

There’s a little more than three years between these two pictures.

The hat is a little small now, but the smile is the same.

I was ambushed by some punks with snowballs this afternoon.

Don’t worry, I got them back.

The kindergarteners celebrated 50 days of school today. They each had to bring in 50 of something (Adam took in Lego bricks – big surprise) and dress like someone from the 1950s.

This was the best we could do. I’m not sure how on point we were, but Adam was happy with the outfit and so that’s good enough for me.

These monsters got haircuts Tuesday. We have an appointment to get their photos done tomorrow night and I’d say they’re ready.

Well, as ready as I can get them anyway. Adam is still going to be sporting a remnant of last weekend’s black eye (he and Luke bumped heads), but there isn’t much I can do about that.

I thought about postponing the pictures until it was gone, but I figured something else would happen anyway.

This is the season we are in right now – bumps and bruises, runny noses, sleepless nights, and crazy hair. It’s all par for the course with my active (sometimes wild) little ones. And if tomorrow’s pictures aren’t magazine perfect, I’m okay with that.

Today Luke got something off of the mantel over the fireplace. I still am not sure how he managed it. When I asked him, he said, “I climb up, like a monkey.”

The other day he and Maggie were doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. I told him to stop and he looked at me and said, “No Mom, we’re being bad guys.”

I’d guess he’s right and bad guys probably don’t listen to their mommies.

He is something else, that Luke of mine.

On a semi-related note, two nights ago Adam woke me after a nightmare. He told me that in his dream he had a pile of green fruit snacks and Luke stole them. I got Adam back to sleep by promising that in my dream, I would put Luke in time out.

We spent last weekend in Indianapolis. Lego KidsFest was the reason for our trip. It was amazing. It was huge. It was, according to the brochure, over three acres of Lego fun.

They had the convention center divided in to different areas. The first one we went to was the monochromatic build. Adam was so excited to see so many green bricks.

Here’s a picture I took at the end of the day of some things that were not built by us.

There were some incredible life-sized Lego models. I loved that the kids were able to touch (most of) them and see them up close.

One area was called “Creation Nation” and had a large outline of the United States mapped out on the floor. Adam and Dave each started with a blank baseplate and built whatever they wanted.

When they were done, they gave their creations to one of the staff members to place on the map. On Monday, this picture was posted on the Lego KidsFest Facebook page, showing the completed map after the five sessions of KidsFest were over.

There was a Lego Duplo build area. I think we probably spent most of our time there.

There was a big pile of bricks. Luke loved running through it. They had an even bigger pile of the regular size bricks, but it was more crowded and mostly older kids (plus those bricks aren’t exactly Maggie friendly).

They had some easy instructions on the tables for the kids to follow. Adam was pretty proud of his ninja turtle.

And of course, more models to play on and enjoy.

The models, whether made out of Duplos or regular sized bricks, were just amazing.

I can’t even imagine the creativity that goes in to building these things. They even had a fan under Batman’s cape, so that it was constantly moving.

They had a Ninja Turtle Pizza building challenge. The kids had a relay race to get Lego bricks to top their pizza. They had to use tongs to carry the pieces.

They was another area where they built cars and then raced them down ramps.

One of the last areas we visited was the Lego Art Gallery. Maggie was asleep in the stroller at this point, so she and I walked around while the boys made their art.

When they were finished they added them to the gallery wall.

I’m not sure what Luke made, but Dave’s is a little monster guy, and Adam made a car. I was so impressed with how he did the wheels. He placed them on an angle, so that it would look like they were turning.

It was so fun to see what other people made. Here are a couple of our favorites.

The whole event was run fantastically. It was sold out, but didn’t feel too crowded. The staff did a great job engaging the kids. I really loved how they had display cases in a couple of the areas, so the children could show off their work.

We took a ton of photos (no surprise there). I had a hard time narrowing it down to the ones you see here.

If we’re ever lucky enough to be near one of these events again (this one was about a two hour drive for us), we’ll definitely be going back.

Adam got to move his clothespin all the way up to the top of the behavior chart for the first time today!

So since I had to go to mall anyway tonight, I picked up a small cookie cake for him to celebrate. He picked out the colors and asked me to have them put a heart on it.

We’re pretty proud of that boy of ours.

The weekend before Halloween, we took the kids trick-or-treating at the zoo.

Their costumes were really cute and we got a lot of comments from other people about them. I’m not sure how much longer they’ll agree to coordinating costumes, but I am going to embrace it for as long as it lasts.

This is the face Maggie makes when I tell her to say “cheese”.

The bears were enjoying some pumpkins while we were there.

It was a lot of fun, but really crowded. We got to see some animals we missed last time we were at the zoo though and the kids had a good time. They all slept on the ride home.

(Adam had a Lego meeting that morning and got a new Lego set. So he had a GREAT day.)

I had a parent-teacher conference last week at Adam’s school. His teacher said that he is doing wonderfully and she doesn’t have any concerns about his progress at all. She said he behaves well in class, follows directions, and gets along with all of his classmates.

He knows all the letters he needs to know (they test them on upper and lower case and also a few different styles/fonts), can count to 100, and can identify the sight words they have worked on so far.

They use a clothespin behavior chart in his classroom. They start on green and can move up if they are good. He moved up twice that day (he’s one of the three pins on purple). He hasn’t made it up to pink (outstanding) yet, but that’s his goal. They reset the clothes pins each day. If they finish the day on blue, purple, or pink, they get a sticker. Once they get ten stickers they can pick a small prize. He was the first kid in his class to get ten stars and came home with a candy corn shaped eraser a couple of weeks ago.

I’m pretty proud of this kid and I couldn’t have asked for a better first parent-teacher conference.