Christmas - Part 2

At this point, I may New Year’s blogged about by Valentine’s day, which is good, because Valentine’s Day is such a big event around here.  I guess this post is mostly about more pictures.  It was hard to pick just 6.  I couldn’t believe I photographed our Charlie Brown tree where Santa left gifts, but neglected to take a picture of our beautiful “real” tree in the office.  I love how it is getting cluttered with homemade ornaments from the boys.  This will not be the best documented holiday.  I also forgot to take my camera to any of the 3 family celebrations.  The rest of the pics just show the progressions from opening/playing with presents in the wee hours of the morning, to our monkey bread breakfast on Christmas morning, to our dinner (lasagna as requested by Kyle) with Grandma and Pop who braved terrible roads to join us.  Without the rush to get to church, I was actually sane enough to remember to put a baking sheet under the monkey bread and prevent the drippings from smoking up the house.  We didn’t miss that.  I also enjoyed Jason in his Grinch pjs.  He is so not a pj person and was such a good sport to wear them for my benefit.  We had fun surprising Grandma with a new laptop computer, complete with Team Jacob wallpaper.  I think that covers it.  Next up, New Year’s Eve.

the rest of the story...

Our pre-Christmas festivities eventually lead into Christmas Eve. After what is becoming our traditional get together with mom, Keith, Ash and her fam and sometimes my stepbrother Chris during the day on Christmas Eve, we settled in for our usual Christmas cookie making. In true engineer fashion, Jason has perfected the sugar cookie dough recipe and as usual, a good time was had by all. We decided to switch things up a little this year and go to mass on Christmas eve since getting there at 10 on Christmas morning has nearly killed us in the past. Since our kids are night owls to begin with, we opted for the less crowded 10 pm mass. And less crowded it was indeed, due the blizzard that was raging as we made our way there and back. By the time we headed home, Jason had to make his best guess where at where to drive But is was worth it, the church was so beautiful and peaceful. We stopped in front of the nativity and Ryan quickly pointed out “Baby”. People thought is was so special and it was, I just didn’t tell them he gets excited at the site of any baby (or dog for that matter). Grant was actually pretty tired. Because we were there early we started a quiet game of Eye Spy. Grant’s turn brought “I spy with my little eye, something green and pointy”, Um, could it be the big Christmas tree, Grant? After making it home, we were all surprised to find that Santa had actually come while we were at church. You can see in one of the pictures that Kyle was so excited he didn’t even take off his hat before tearing into his stocking. It was very fun, Kyle was having serious doubts about Santa at the beginning of the season, but this, seeing the presents appear when he knew that Mom and Dad had been at church with him put him firmly back on team Santa, for at least one more year. If I could caption the photos with the time they were taken, it would be pretty scary. Ryan, who never so much as yawned during church, stayed up until midnight, and Grant and Kyle caught their second wind and didn’t lay down until 2am. Jason and I crashed not long after, so thankful for our beautiful family and the fact that we didn’t have to get up the our do anything the next day.

Pre-Christmas Festivities

I believe after some grousing, my last post indicated Christmas pics would be posted and highlights described. In the interest of organization, I thought I would split it into two, this post focusing on pre-Christmas merriment. After having so much fun with the gingerbread house kit last year, we (meaning me) decided to take it one step further and do one from scratch. It was the closest I have ever come to utilizing my PE license, but I think it turned out great. Kyle really got into decorating it and was so proud of the end result. Grant enjoyed eating the frosting and candy decorations. The scale of the chimney (well over half the roof line was consumed) amused Jason and I, but allowed Kyle to complete the project with a gingerbread Santa. Ryan’s favorite was the spice drops (he must get that from me) and he new exactly where to find them on the house and when the stash ran out, he put his hand out and just said “Gone!”. And would you check out the bokeh in the pics? Pioneer Woman would be so proud. Those hazy dots came courtesy of a cedar Christamas tree Jason aquired. It was orginally for the boys room but ended up finding a home in the living room. I actually grew to love it.

The other big event was our annual trip to Crown Center, complicated this year by the fact that Kyle is in school all day and we couldn’t go during the day and avoid the big crowds. Since avoiding crowds is so important to me, I picked Kyle up as soon as he got out of school and we headed downtown, telling Jason to just meet us there. The plan worked and we were able to get the Santa pic with only a short wait. During the wait, the boys played in the Crayola land that was set up. I was able to watch them play while waiting in line while Kyle did a great job sticking close to Ryan to keep him out of trouble and make sure he had a good time. He is so patient, he helped Ryan onto the slide time after time and never complained. Jason conveniently showed up just after we had the picture in hand and we headed to Fritz’s (the greasy burger dinner Jason and I look forward to all year).

The aforementioned Cedar Christmas tree was not aquired in the dead of night from the side of the road. We are not that redneck.

Catching Up

I meant to post this before the Christmas madness took over. Kyle received an award for exemplifying the character trait of kindness last month. This is his 2^nd award in as many years at Hawthorn Hill and I am of course beyond proud of him. Having received an award in kindergarten (for exemplifying responsibility), I told him that he probably wouldn’t win again given how obsessed schools seem to be with including everyone these days. But apparently this was not the case, so kudos to Kyle, again. I feel bad in saying this award has made me take notice of just how kind he is, especially to his brothers. During our still to be blogged about trip annual trip to Crown Center, he spent nearly the whole time in the play land following Ryan around making sure he had a good time. I barely made it to the assembly with Grant and Ryan in tow and Grant completely freaked out at the number of kids in the gym, but I was glad we could go and get some pictures. The one of him at home also shows his new smile, courtesy of a fort building incident that ended with his chin abruptly hitting the coffee table and encouraging that front tooth to make an early exit. Once the swelling went down, I thought it made for really cute holiday pictures and I always reminded him to smile big so we could see his missing tooth. I realized I was the mom of thee boys when I saw the blood gushing and yelled at him to get away from the couch before he started dripping.

As for the Christmas madness, I guess I can say that we survived, but it was hard for me this year and I really don’t know why. I could probably just copy my post from last year with the guilty feelings of overbuying and worry about what will happen if we can’t hold it together another year and next Christmas finds us in different circumstances. I also can’t seem to deal with the absurd disarray the house inevitably falls into and I get so frustrated when we lose things both old and new. I wish I could just enjoy all that we have in the moment because God knows I am so thankful and appreciative. Again, maybe next year. I will post pictures and outline the highlights of which there were many in my next post, but for now, I must work at keeping my only New Year’s resolution, going to bed at 11:30, every night. So far, so good and I do feel about a million times better this week. It’s just so hard to go to bed when I am not tired and have so many things that I should be or would like to be doing.

Terrible 2's Already?

As you can see by the previous post, we have made no progress on the binky front. In fact, it has gotten much, much worse. He doesn’t even trust us to hold in while he eats. Any attempt to mess with his “me” (we have no idea why he calls it that) are met with screams, tears and general unrest. I know it needs to go soon, right now I am saying after flu season. We will see, we may be pulling it out on his way to preschool. It hasn’t seemed to impact his vocabulary, he continues to spout off new words left and right, recently adding “MINE” to his repitoire. The towel that I put on the floor when they are taking a bath, yes that is his and Grant had better not stand on it and don’t even think about wrapping up in the blanket we keep in the living room, it's his. The Santa picture kind of sums it up. It was my second year in charge and I worked so hard finding a new Santa and a nicer backdrop and was so excited to get good pictures of my kids. I don’t know what I was thinking. At least we could all be there this year, last year we were still keeping Ryan away from crowds since he was only 5 months out of surgery. Hard to believe what a difference a year makes. No real story behind the basketball pic, just Kyle being his superstar self. He is SOO excited for us to open up the gifts he picked out at the Santa shop. He has wrapped and rewrapped and tried his best to get us to agree to an early open date.

Random quotes heard lately: “Don’t kill me, you love me” (Grant, to Kyle) – “Digger”, “I’m thirsty”, “Empty”, “Dog”, “Dog”, “Dog” (Ryan to anyone who is listening) - “Here’s a tip, mom, we like hamburgers, not meat burgers” (Kyle to me after I had made a chuck roast into bbq beef sandwiches and was pretty proud of myself, until we sat down. Meal time is about to push me over the edge. If it’s not a spaghetti (with store bought premade meatballs on the side, no sauce or something that was at one point frozen, they “hate” it and “feel sick”. Can you imagine how the turkey meatball soup went over today? It had spinach in it.

Baby, Bye, Bye

Just because I knew it was coming, didn’t make it any easier.  Ryan had his first official haircut on the November 22^nd and now looks oh so grown up.  It took a couple of days to get used to, but I managed.  Jason used his patented set the kid on a diaper box and put in a movie approach.  Sometime I can’t believe how talented he his, he cuts the boys hair and his own.  He did mine for a long time, but I bought a “real” haircut and color from the CHD Families auction and got hooked again.  I just try to go as long as possible because I feel guilty spending that money on something so fleeting.  I put these pics in the email so long ago, I can’t really remember what else is up there.  I think I put Kyle in his Indian costume he made at school.  He was so proud.  His teacher continues to sing his praises.  Recently we I emailed her about picking him up and she replied with the following “You probably hear this all the time, but Kyle is the sweetest boy EVER!  He always works extra hard, tries his best and is very careful to follow directions.   He's also quite the math whiz.  He picks up on concepts quickly and is able to explain his thinking to the class.  I am very lucky to have him in class!”  I just wish he believed in himself as much as everyone else does.  Math whiz he can’t really argue with.  Sometimes he just starts writing out random problems, like 3-3+100 + 1 – 11 = 90 and 2 X 2 X 2 = 8.  I think it’s ironic that he understands multiplication, but still writes some of his numbers backwards.  I just can’t wait to see what he becomes. 

 

I’m obviously a little behind.  Jason spent a long week at a training class in jolly old England and it was survival for quite some time.  We missed him like crazy.  His flight out and back weren’t two late, so we took him and picked him up at the airport, which I thought the boys would enjoy, but I thought wrong.  Oh, well.  The day he left, I fixed a big dinner at 1 because I had read eating dinner in the “new” time will help you adjust.  Kyle, none to happy with the pork chops I had fixed said “Well were not going to England, so can we have peanut butter sandwichs?  We survived, but I still don’t feel caught up, instead of blogging, I should be WORKING, balancing the check book, filling out rebate forms, folding laundry, sorting laundry doing laundry, on-line shopping to finish up the boys Christmas and did I mention WORKING.  Last year my goal was a stress free Christmas, this year I will settle for a Christmas without a major meltdown.

 

I did not get up at 3:30 to go Black Friday shopping.  THOSE people are crazy.  Also crazy… grown women who see Twilight:New Moon… twice!  Not me.

My sweet boys...

While doing some fall organizing (or some attempt thereof) we have rediscovered the set of Lincoln Logs, which is all great fun until someone gets their house knocked down.  This has happened more then a few times, mostly with the middle and youngest, which is why I was so surprised that after Kyle spent a good deal of time on his latest creation, he let Ryan knock it down because “it’s what he wants to do and it will make him happy”.  Sometimes I can’t even believe what a good kid he is.  Ryan has taken to stuffed animals of late, particularly this little bear rescued from the basement.  It’s really to cute for words to see him walk around hugging it.  He has another we call big bear that he drug into my room the other day.  When I asked him to put them in his bed, he walked all the way to his room and did that very thing.  So amazing.  Grant has just been hanging around lately.

 

I did not skip baths, let Kyle do his homework in the living room and put the kids to bed after 10 tonight because Jason was working and I wanted to watch the CMA’s.  I also did not take a nap today while Grant was watching tv and then wake up and forget to walk to the bus stop to pick up Kyle.  Had I done this, I wouldn’t have gone outside to get the mail and been surprised to see him standing in the neighbors driveway.