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.