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Diet Coke and Mentos - Merry Christmas!

This very messy story started back at Thanksgiving. My very loving sister decided to purchase and wrap Advent gifts for each of the kids. Now, I knew I should have been worried when I heard Grant say, "Dasha, try some of this gum!" The twelve days of Christmas in our home brought gifts that exploded, made rude noises, or required a Hazmat team to clean up afterwards. Obviously, the kids completely loved the gifts and it was a great way to get them to roll out of bed each morning without shaking them or dumping cold water over their cute little faces! However, one of the last gifts was a little tube that fit on top of a Coke bottle and functioned as a little chute for a pack of Mentos. For anyone who has never seen MythBusters or read about exploding Mentos - Coke and Mentos don't mix! So, here's how we spent the day after Christmas, blowing Coke bottles up! (Please note that all of this went on while my sister took Dasha to the zoo. Ha ha! She just thought she was getting the easy job)! :) One day, she's going to have kids and I'm going to get my full revenge! Play dough, permanent markers, and toys that make wickedly loud noised (without an off switch) are going to top my list of gifts!

This is my sister and her little dog, Rosie.

After opening presents at Grandma's, Dasha decided to read everyone The Night Before Christmas.

Well, my time is up. Currently, the boys are in the garage clearing everything out so the contractors (definitely don't look like the YMCA boys) can start building Eric's new office. We've decided to go ahead and add a room to the back of the garage instead of trying to force two Randolph family members to co-habitate. This works great for some families but with the age differences between the kids, it's not going to work for us! Argh!

Happy New Year from the Randolph family!

Merry Christmas from the Randolph Family

Christmas Scavenger Hunt

I know that you'll have to click on the picture to see all of the details and captions but it's well worth it! Our Community Group (aka Sunday School class) participated in a Christmas scavenger hunt. We ended up going as boys vs. girls and to say the least, Woodstock never knew what hit them! From jumping on mattresses at Kohls and Mattress King to wearing Waffle House and Starbucks aprons, we all had a blast. I still believe the girls officially won despite some minor technicalities. Oh well. We had a great time!

Deck the Halls with Medieval Dudes

Decorating for Christmas has been slow going this year! Between my "fragile state" and Eric's traveling, we're taking the decorating one thing at a time! Maybe we'll have some ornaments on the tree before the 25th. However, this is Grant's attempt at putting a holiday touch on things! If you don't have boys, I'm not sure you can relate! Absolutely ANYTHING can be turned into a make-shift battle field. I'm quite used to finding GI Joes in my bathtub, under my desk, or lodged in the stone work around the fire place. My dad has even given Grant some old grenades - yes, real ones - as keepsakes. Unsuspecting visitors get very nervous when they walk into the foyer and see a grenade laying on the table! Oh well. But as for the decorating, I guess the medieval dudes need a good dose of holiday cheer, too! (At least these guys have all of their clothes on and are dressed in their finest clothes unlike some of the Barbies running around at our house)!

Things are progressing pretty routinely with the pregnancy at this point. I'm 23 weeks and beginning to think about the logistics of really adding another little body to this funny farm! Naming this poor baby girl has become something akin to a comedy hour, though. Eric refused to even think of names until we were sure that the sonographer was really sure that we were going to have a girl - he was still hung up on that leg bone being, well, ... you know. Anyway, we had another ultrasound last week and were assured that "The Bean" is definitely a girl so Eric doesn't have an excuse now! While Grant is suggesting names with a strong military flair such as Duke and Shipwreck, Dasha is going for names she is familiar with such as Dora and Hannah (as in Montana). So goes that drama!

We're looking forward to some quiet time over the Christmas break. Eric has been traveling more and more (he's in San Antonio now) and I'm trying to finish out this semester of school and manage a classroom of 30 excited kids without losing my mind!* After this semester, I'll only have about 20 hours left for my doctorate so the light is beginning to shine at the end of the tunnel! However, I'm not quite sure how "The Bean" is going to play into all of this.

Bottom line, God continues to bless our craziness. We've given up on trying to be reasonable and we've surrendered to the fact that God's will might not always be reasonable in our minds but that's where we need to be! So, deck the halls with medieval dudes in tights and whatever else this Season may bring! We hope you all enjoy these days of Advent with your families.

*Keep reading if you want a good laugh about a craft that went awry in my room...
We just finished reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. I love this book because I can easily present the "real" Christmas story through the context of this book! Anyway, when the children talk about swaddling clothes on the baby Jesus, they never know what that means. I thought I'd be really crafty and let them make a baby Jesus ornament. I made homemade clay so the kids could shape Jesus' little body. I didn't have any white flour so I used whole wheat. It gave the clay a fleshy color so that was perfect. The kids were to roll the clay into a hot dog shape and then we were going to paint a little face on and swaddle the "baby" in a piece of fleece cloth. Well, the play dough flesh colored hot dogs didn't look like baby Jesus at all!!! Thank goodness my kids didn't really seen to notice but EVERY adult that walked down our hallway had to stop and stare as they watched 30 kids rubbing little hot dog shapes to smooth the clay out. (We'd also stuck paper clips into one end to hang the ornaments with). I'd post a picture of the naked ornaments but I'm afraid Blog Spot might be alerted to adult content!!! :) Don't despair, though. We did get the babies swaddled and they're cute as little buttons now. Whew! Thank goodness for the innocence of children. What a laugh the adults had, though. Next year, back to good old white flour!