An 18 Year Old in the House! What!

Hannah turned 18 two days after Thanksgiving.  How can this be?!  She gave me a list of requests and we tried to accommodate as many as possible.  Top on her list was hibachi grill and sushi.  So we went to a hibachi grill on Friday with my parents since they were in town for Thanksgiving.  

Roman sits in the regular wooden high chairs so much better now!

On Saturday, her actual birthday we started the day off piling in the van to go get our Christmas tree.  Normally, we don't get our tree this early, BUT we have been searching for a decent place to cut down a tree or even buy a decent precut tree here in Texas.  And we heard of this place an our away that was only open for three weekends, and one of them had already passed us by.  So we decided to do it anyway, although I had had my reservations about the tree living until the 12 days after Christmas if we bought it that early.  Turned out I was right.  It was crispy as toast by Christmas day.  Nonetheless, we went to this farm the morning of her birthday and we stopped to get her coffee on the way.

Riding to get the tree!

Brian said that it was the easiest tree to cut down, and we fondly remembered cutting down our Griswald Family Tree years ago in Germany when we had super high ceilings and let Hannah choose the tree.

Hannah opened her presents from the family and cards from her siblings.  Then she went to dinner with her dad for all you can eat sushi.

Here's her creepy creative cake that I made her.

Shortly after her birthday weekend was her drama production of the Greek play, Antigone.  She is super shy in front of people so she volunteered to be the assistant stage production manager.  She's in the black sweatshirt on the far right of the back row.  The play was really enjoyable.  I had read this play for my book club a year or two ago and it was really nice to see it performed.  Her class did an excellent job!

The whole cast

She's finished with theater and can move on to Art class where she feels much more at home.
 

Roman's First Haircut!

We finally stayed healthy long enough for Nanna to come rescue our long haired scraggly boys and give them a haircut.  Roman got his first hair cut too, but he was very wiggly.

This was after the first attempt, still too long on the sides a bit.

Finished product after round two, longish on top and short on the sides

 

Sitting Pretty and My Flower Bed

He's finally sitting well enough to get a picture of it.

I'm glad I got pictures of this back in November because as I write this all my flowers had to be cut down to the ground after the freeze over Christmas.  My fall front garden was so pretty!

 He was in bad need of a haircut at this point, but such a cutie, nonetheless!

in Stitches

 Drew's friend got staples in his head in the middle of one of the camp outs for their troops.  The very next meeting, while some boys were climbing on a kind of a rock wall, a rock was kicked loose and hit Drew right in the forehead.  Brian called me to tell me what happened when he was already on his way to the Urgent Care for stitches.  Poor guy!

Annual Home-school All Saint's Day Party

St. Jude Thaddeus

And St. George was there too!

A Parade

Lots of Saints there!

Don't forget the cute little St. Juan Diego

 

Homer and the First Lost Tooth

Genevieve had her 11th grade Homerathon which is a party they have every year at their school and there was a competition for the best costume.  I put her hair in a crown braid and she hand painted some leaves from a garland that we used at her birthday party and pinned them in.  She won second place!

And my little Bobby, at age 7 years old, finally lost his first tooth!