A few holiday pics

Just a few pictures. Not as many as I'd like, but the new sd card for one of our cameras apparently can't be read on my computer with our old card reader. So I may have some more Christmas pictures to post a week or so into January (damn Super Saver shipping at Amazon).

For an update, I think my kids spent three entire days wearing nothing but pajamas (underwear was changed daily, and pajamas were changed as needed). They finally got dressed today, mainly because we went out for breakfast and then Alex went to get his first haircut in New Jersey. He was very apprehensive about getting the cut, but finally started warming up to the idea when he discovered he could watch a Power Rangers episode while having it done (much more fun than watching the Snip-Its characters he never really cared about).

We had another "Bedford Falls" experience with our wonderful neighborhood. Every Christmas Eve (though we did it Christmas Day this year due to rain), one of our neighbors organizes luminarias up and down our street. So whoever wants to participate pays a nominal cost for materials, and at 5:30 on the given day everyone goes out and lights them up. It is very beautiful, and many people can enjoy it since we are a slightly busy cut-through street. I tried to get some pictures (which are on the other camera), so hopefully I can post something eventually.


Here's our beautiful Christmas tree, though I had forgotten how many damn needles fall off the real trees. Unfortunately because of that I think our tree is coming down tomorrow. But I'm leaving the rest of the decorations up until New Years.


Our festive, non-working fireplace. We realized we need to get a screen for it, even before we get it up to speed (the people we bought the house from never even attempted to turn it on in the entire time they lived here). You can see our new fifth stocking on the right underneath Aex's stocking. Grace requested one for Lucy, which Gramma nicely whipped up in no time at all.


I am trying to create some new Christmas traditions for the family, and one I came up with this year was making some popcorn/cranberry garlands for the birds. We have a smallish evergreen tree right outside our back door that the birds like to get in, so we had the perfect place to hang them.


This picture just made me laugh because Grace loves to do this with poor Lucy. "Look, look - doesn't she look CUTE like this!"


Another tradition of ours, started with Grace a few years ago. We HAVE to decorate cookies for Santa. What else would we leave him???


Grace admires her new Kit bed from American Girl on Christmas morning. She's wearing the Kit nightgown for big girls she opened up on Christmas Eve. She gets happy to see anything in those reddish-pink boxes.


Alex opening up his new Batcave. As in previous years, he was ready to stop opening presents and just play, no matter how many gifts were left. I thought it was weird that I had to say "No Alex, you have to open more presents before I get the Batcave out of the box."

Merry Christmas!!!

Pictures will be posted later, but our holiday can probably be summed up in two statements my kids made.

Upon opening a gift on Christmas Eve from Grandma and Pawpaw, and seeing that it was a Fisher-Price Carnivore that transforms from a race car to a T-Rex, Alex says "I like this car so much my stomach hurts!"

And this morning, Grace looks around our living room and says "It looks like a Target exploded in here."

Everybody is happy.

Snowy photos

Just a few pictures from our snowy weather we've had this past week.


Our snowy house. I actually have Christmas lights inside the front windows - you just can't see them in this photo. Once again we have a house with no exterior electric plug, in the front at least.


Our snowy street.


Our snowy park.


Alex enjoying one of his first sled rides. We got some closer-up pictures, but I liked the expression caught on his face here.


Gracie on one of her rides, obviously a little more daring than her brother.


I'm sure Jim has learned his lesson that once you give in to being the tow truck, you'll be doing it the rest of the morning.


Alex with his (of course) Power Rangers hat on.


Grace would wear her hair like this every day if I let her - unbrushed and free-flowing.


Three things I love the most, staying warm inside.

Here we come a-wassailing

Wow - what a different experience Christmas is this year. We have our snow that arrived last Friday. It actually first came on Wednesday or so, but that was only a couple inches. Friday we got about another four inches, and last night a couple more came down. So we were able to take the kids out this weekend for their first sledding excursion down the hill behind the school (Grace is already up for finding an even bigger and faster hill).

And of course it will be different simply because it will just be the four of us for the first time.

But tonight we had a totally new experience of actually going Christmas caroling. One of our neighbors hosted about 10 families for a wonderful dinner, and then we all went out and caroled up and down the street. Went back afterward for cookies, hot chocolate and adult beverages. Even Alex ended up having a good time, though once again he refused to go play with the kids in the basement and preferred to sit somewhere close to me with the adults. But once we started walking out in the snow and he could start pelting Mommy with snow chunks he got into the spirit of things. Grace just trotted in the front with all the kids - we didn't see her much until we were heading back inside. At one point one of women turned to me and asked if it was much like the holidays in Dallas. I said if we did that (caroled door to door) on our old street our neighbors would have thought we were insane.

Happy Birthday Dad

I know it is posted a day late (my computer stayed downstairs last night), but a big happy birthday to my amazing father. The one always willing to fix something or help on a project when he comes to visit, the one always ready to drop down on the floor and play with the kids, the one who is nice to just about every person he meets, no matter how weird, annoying or bizarre they are.

I love you Dad!

NYC!

We finally made it to NYC for a short day trip. Took the train from Westfield to Newark, switched to another train to end up at Penn Station. I was very happy Jim was along with us since he does the trip every day. I probably could have figured it out on my own, but not with two kiddos in tow. We went to the Museum of Natural History. We were going to try to go see Santa at Macy's (our neighbor told us that a stop-over at "Santaland" was well worth the trip), but we ended up sticking to just the one destination. Good decision on our part, since the museum is so big there was no way to make it through it all in one day as it was, and we hated having to leave poor Lucy in the kennel for so long.

Note: the pictures are from the camera phone, since we realized we'd forgotten the good camera at home about 5 minutes before the train was to arrive. So sorry about the quality.



Grace enjoys the train ride into the city.


What you are greeted with upon entering the museum.


Tons of really cool dioramas to see (Great Wall of China here) that Jim, Grace and I enjoyed. Alex - not so much.


Hey, dum-dum. You got gum-gum? The minute Alex saw this on a wall display showing various collections he needed to traverse the entire museum to get to it, not looking at a thing along the way. (BTW, quote is from "Night at the Museum" if you haven't seen it.)


Of course Alex wanted a picture in front of the triceratops. And picked out a stuffed one as a souvenier, which luckily was green.


I think the kids had the most fun in the outer space area, probably because it was the most interactive part of the museum. You can see what you weigh on a lot of other planets, push buttons to make displays light up, look through little telescopes to see various views of things, all sorts of things kids like to do. And there was so much more we could have seen there, but the little ones still have short attention spans.

I think we need to watch Night at the Museum again tomorrow night.

New tradition

We journeyed out to a tree farm to cut down a tree this past weekend. Went to Hidden Pond Tree Farm which took us a little under an hour to get to from Westfield. "Everything is free except the tree" is their motto, so we got to enjoy hot chocolate and Grace and Jim went on the hayride (Alex had enough by the time the hayride came about, so he and I and Lucy were getting the tree tied onto the car).


A little shot of downtown Westfield through the car window. Alex loves that red building because it had big inflatable decorations for Halloween on it and now it obviously has Christmas ones up. Hope it finds holidays year-round to keep it going.


Kids with the trees. Alex of course picked up a stick as soon as he could to fight imaginary bad guys with. Once we picked out our tree the kids enjoyed running in and out of trees until their faces got too cold for it.


"I love this place!"


Alex unaware of the whipped cream that the hot chocolate left behind.


Grace savors her hot chocolate. Now that we live up north where it is cold, hot chocolate is one of her favorite desserts after dinner.


My cute kids.


It's nice because the kids are now old enough to decorate most of the tree by themselves. I put the lights on and add the ornaments to the top branches, but they take care of most of the rest below. Of course we end up with a lot of ornaments on the bottom few branches (Alex's favorite place to put them - often two to the same branch), and no ornaments on the backside of the tree, but since we now have a tree in a corner instead of in front of a window the backside isn't quite as important anymore. This Batman ornament is Alex's favorite - he's been moving it to a new position at least once a day.


Our pretty Christmas tree.

Did anyone else see this?

Not my photo (borrowed from the Charlotte Observer), but this shows the awesome crescent moon with two bright stars that are actually Jupiter and Venus. We missed it last night (and I didn't even notice the news reports about it yesterday), but I saw it tonight on the way home with the kids from Target. I dragged the kids out to the street once we got home to look at it and we talked about how it is most likely two planets since they are so bright. So much to our excitement we looked it up on the computer and discovered Jupiter and Venus. Grace even wrote little letter to take to her teacher tomorrow telling her about it.

As you can see by the picture, much of the east coast ended up with a frowny face rather than a smiley face. But it was still cool to see. I was going to try to get my own picture, but by the time I got outside again some clouds had already drifted up and covered the planets and were closing in on the moon.

Also, happy anniversary to my dear husband. Who tends to forget the date as often as I do, and luckily neither of us minds.

A 4-year old's thought process

(As he is looking through a toy catalog)

"Mommy, we need to go find a money store so we can buy some more money so I can get all these Star Wars toys."

"Alex, wouldn't we need money to buy more money? Where would we get that?"

No reply. Just a little mind working that one over and over.

Is it Christmas yet?

Alex will be fun to watch this year - at age 4 he has REALLY grasped the idea of Christmas and what comes with it (meaning presents). He's still a little confused on the concept of time. When he asked me last week when Christmas was, and I said it was the holiday after Thanksgiving, he was a little surprised the Friday after Thanksgiving that it wasn't Christmas. So I had to explain to him that Christmas was actually about a month away.

He then came in a little later to report that "Mommy, the TV thinks it is Christmas."

Curse the commercials on Nick and ToonDisney.

Another Happy Birthday

To my dear sweet husband. I couldn't ask for a better partner for me or a better father to our kids. I love you!

Happy Birthday!

To dear brother Andy and dear friend Christi. I miss you both!

Lots of pictures

Now that we finally have our internet connection up and running, I've got a bunch of photos to post.

Most of these are from our first day in New Jersey.


Our new little house. Of course Alex likes the green shutters on the windows.


Lucy after 1500 miles in the car with evenings cooped up in hotel rooms. She ran topspeed laps nonstop for at least 20 minutes as soon as we made it to the house.


The explosion of leaves in our backyard. Strangely, the city of Westfield picks up the leaves a few times during the fall, so everyone just rakes them into big piles out into the street at the curb. Very strange to see the first time.


Grace and Alex LOVE the playhouse. Grace has already seized control of many of my discarded kitchen items (this kitchen is smaller than my Dallas one was) to stock it.


Alex loves the "pokeyballs" from the Sweetgum trees that are all over up here. They are his "bombs" that he throws at things.


Grace was happy once we found the monkey bars at the school across the street.


Of course we had to immediately take them over to check the park out.


Here's our huge moving van packed with all our stuff (including the VW station wagon). It was filled to capacity, mainly with our stuff. A woman's furnishings from a one-bedroom apartment and her small compact car were in there too. This was one BIG truck.


Grace yesterday before her first day at school. Your first day picture is a little different when you are starting in November in New Jersey versus in August in Dallas.


And everyone was happy to get donuts after the first day of school.

Alex can read?

Last night as I was reading "Mr. Brown can Moo, Can You" by Dr. Seuss, Alex was being his usual stubborn self and saying he was not going to participate by repeating the sounds in the book (this was our first time to read the book). Well, I'd turned past the first page with the "Moo" on it and finally convinced Alex to say the words once while I read, and I say "What does Mr. Brown say?" to which Alex replied "Buzz." Which was the word on the page I hadn't read yet. I asked Alex how he knew Mr. Brown said "buzz" and he said "Because it is right here Mama. B-u-z-z."

Now I don't know if I should be proud that my son can already read a word, or if I should be concerned because the one word other than his name that he knows is probably due to watching many hours of Toy Story and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.

In other news, Grace starts her new school today and is very nervous about it. Also the television and internet should be hooked up tomorrow (thank God!). It is sad that we have discovered we ALL are very dependent on our television - Jim and I feel like we've been living in a bubble for the past week or so.

Our South Park family

To occupy ourselves in the hotel room, we played on the computer last night. The kids had a lot of fun with this website, where you can make a South Park version of yourself. Here is what we ended up with:


Jim as created by Grace.
Julie as created by Grace.


Grace created by herself.


Alex created by himself. Note the green hair.

Moving along

We are now more than halfway to our destination in New Jersey. For the most part the trip has been pretty easy. The navigation system in the new Toyota is wonderful to have. Not that the drive route is hard to figure out (so far it has just been a couple highways), but it is nice to see the countdown of how many miles and estimated time until we reach the next hotel. And I'm sure the system will be invaluable once we hit the Northeast - no more long, straight highways up there.

The hotels haven't been too bad either. Very clean, but they seem to be shrinking in size as we reach each subsequent one. Could be reality, or could be a cooped-up feeling held over from the previous 6 hours in the car. And if I survive my two bouncing-off-the-walls kids every evening I'm sure I'll be a much better person at the end of this all!

So our first day of driving took us from Texas through Arkansas to Memphis, TN. We stayed at the Days Inn Graceland, which was literally across the street and half a block from Graceland. The hotel had a guitar-shaped pool, free Elvis movies and Elvis music and pictures everywhere (Mom, it wouldn't surprise me if Susan Brown stayed here sometime).

Yesterday we drove across Tennessee, which took an entire day. But we went from Memphis, in the bottom left hand tip, to Kingsport, just about in the top right hand tip. The Great Smoky Mountains are beautiful. In fact, the entire state of Tennessee is beautiful. Gorgeous Fall color all along tree-lined highways. Today we drive to Maryland, then on Saturday just a short half-day drive to Westfield, NJ.

One last note - we resisted in purchasing a DVD player for the kids, but did set up a laptop with two headphones for them. Wow, it's like valium for them back there. And we also haven't made this a sightseeing trip. Our stuff is set to arrive on Monday and we want to give the kids a couple days in their new town before the craziness of unpacking begins. Plus it is hard to sightsee when you have a dog with you. So we stick another Spongebob DVD into the player and barrell on down the road.

I pray...

...that none of my friends ever have to eat at the Burger King in Arkadelphia, AR. Ick.

It's almost here

The packers came today and within about 7 hours packed up just about our entire house. The additional cost to me was totally justified by the fact that if I had been packing the house myself it would have taken me probably an entire week, which just isn't conducive to trying to sell a house at the same time. I was very surprised when it was time to bring the kids home from school that they didn't freak out to see everything packed away. Alex got a little upset once or twice in the car as I was describing that his room was in boxes to get him prepared. But then I pointed out that anything NOT packed in boxes wouldn't make it to New Jersey with us, and didn't he want all his things to make it there? But once we got home both he and Grace seemed okay with it all.

They load up the truck tomorrow and we begin our four night stretch of a different hotel every night. Should be interesting on how that is handled, both by the kids and by the dog.

Tomorrow should be full of tears. Both kids will have their last days at school. I think goodbyes at Alex's school may be the hardest - I've had kids there for the past 4 1/2 years, plus I worked closely with all those ladies for a year and a half. It will be sad at Grace's school mainly because she loved going there so much. And we'll be going to dinner with Mom & Dad - don't even get me STARTED on how that will end after a bottle or two of Sangre de Toro at Cafe Madrid!

But here's a few pics of what we are moving to. We didn't get any shots of the front of the house when we were up there last weekend, and I don't want to share the photos of the bedrooms that REALLY need some different paint colors. But I've got these to tide you over until we make it up there on Saturday:


Our back yard as seen from the not-to-code deck. Just need to add some more railing so my kids or dog don't go flying off a 5-ft up deck edge. The little playhouse seen here in the back of the yard should be a big hit with the kids. It could use a freshening coat of paint, but I don't think the kids will care one way or another.


I hadn't realized it when we first saw the house (with carpets, etc. in it) that the hardwoods downstairs are laid out in these great patterns. Both the living room and dining rooms have these cool diagonal lines going through them, and there is this neat cross-hatching in that space between the two rooms.


Our nifty little fireplace. It's probably about 5 feet high and has outlets on the top at either end of the mantel, so the first purchase we made for our new house were two groovy lamps at Ikea to light up the room. Of course that involved a trip to Ikea in Newark, which while you are browsing and seeing all this cool, cheap furniture feels like a fun time. Until it is time to self-serve your furniture pieces in the warehouse area, transport them yourself on big weirdly-rolling dolly cart to pay lines (which we used the self-serve ones just to get out quicker), only to discover the sides to your 7 ft. tall pantry shelf unit will no way in hell fit into your tiny Ford rental car so you have to deal with the purgatory that is the Ikea returns area. You come out prepared for the 30 minute drive back to your house saying NEVER AGAIN. But then you discover the side pieces for the pantry can actually be ordered online, and you realize that ANY delivery fee is better than going through all that again. Wow - sorry for the off-topic rant there!


From the house you can walk three houses to the right and find this path that will take you to the 250 acre Tamaques Reservation (park) chock full of fun stuff for the family - play areas, baseball diamonds, hiking trails, jogging track, etc.


And here is the little pond you first hit upon reaching the park. I wish we'd had the camera with us the day before when we walked over - there were probably at least 20 of these geese hanging out there that day.

Hopefully once we get up there I'll be able to post some more photos of the house (esp the front) and at least one photo of Grace's new school, which is literally three houses to the left and across the street. But first I have to survive the 3 1/2 day drive. Yikes.