Let's open some presents

Before I post pictures of all our snow outside, I figured I'd post a few of Christmas Eve/Morning present opening.

Since we traditionally celebrate Christmas Eve with Jim's family, the kids each picked out a couple of presents from Grandma and Paw Paw to open on Christmas Eve here.


Alex chose one of his biggest presents - a jungle adventure set with lots of cool animals and parts for it.


Alex shows off the best way to display your jungle adventure set snake.


Grace opted to chose one of her smallest gifts - glasses for her American Girl dolls.


Here she is showing off her Chrissa doll in both new glasses and new holiday outfit. Now it really is a little mini-me doll for her. Grandma did a great job of picking out the frames that most closely resemble Grace's own glasses.


Just two photos to show of Christmas Day gifts, both because in all the excitement it is hard to stop and take pictures, and our light in the morning in the living room isn't that great.



Alex opens his Nintendo DS from Santa. Now other than Eva he won't be the only cousin at Cousin Camp without one.


Grace opens her Me-Mo Ugly Doll from Santa. This gift was very special in that it is an Ugly Doll that Grace designed herself and put down on her letter to Santa, because since it doesn't really exist to purchase in a store only Santa could get it for her. And Santa did just that - had an elf make a special Ugly Doll just for Grace. Since she reads my blog she will probably comment on here how wonderful it is!

Little bit of decorations

Just a few pictures of some of our Christmas decorations this year. Pictures aren't that great due to using the flash inside, but you'll get the idea.


Little paper Christmas tree craft Grace and I tried out this year. Pretty fun, though I'm not sure if they will survive being packed away until next year.


The wonderful Christmas banner Grace made for us this year.


Someone added some friends for the angels on the table in the living room. The red and gold really brighten up the holiday season.


Gimpy Santa purchased probably almost 20 years ago at a church bazaar.


My felt wreath received MANY years ago as a gift from a godmother.


Grace in front of the Christmas tree.


Alex pretending to eat the bead candy cane he made at school, positioned next to his absolute favorite ornament - Batman who hangs from the tree by his grappling hook. Used to be Jim's ornament, but no more.

Once I download pictures from Christmas morning I'll see if there are any worth posting. Otherwise I may need to take some day-after-Christmas-Day photos.

Wow - I still feel the same way

I was looking back on old blog postings and found this one from December 2005 and was surprised to learn I'd been complaining about this for five years now:

Merry Hanukkwanzmas

The hoo hah lately over "Put the Christ back into Christmas" is driving me nuts. If you've been under a rock and don't know what I'm talking about, it's the religious right all up in arms and wanting to boycott retailers who focus on "Happy Holidays" versus "Merry Christmas" in their advertising. Never mind that there are actually other religions out there celebrating during the same holiday season. And while it may be weird to have to purchase a "holiday tree", BIG DEAL! Just call it a Christmas tree (or Hanukkah shrub or Kwanzaa branch or Festivus pole) when you get it home.

There was a great letter to the editor in the Dallas Morning News this morning about this. It pointed out that the American Family Association shouldn't be worried about the very "essence of what is being celebrated" being taken out of the season by retailers pushing Happy Holidays on us. If anything, getting a great deal on your dvd player/Playstation2/iPod enabling you to buy more, more, more is about as far from the real essence of Christmas as you can get. So just lighten up and focus on some real problems out there.


I liken the "uproar" to that regarding gay marriage. Gay marriage certainly doesn't affect the quality of my own marriage, and hearing "Happy Holidays" from a retailer doesn't affect the way my family chooses to celebrate Christmas. So there.

Traditions go on

Last weekend we continued our annual tradition of visiting the tree farm and chopping down the Christmas tree (actually "sawing" down if you want to get specific). As before, we went to Hidden Pond Tree Farm in Mendham. It's about 45 minutes from our house and is always a fun family outing. Unfortunately this year we left later in the morning than usual, and it was so busy already by noon that we had to wait in our car in line for an hour before we could even go park in their parking lot. But luckily that was the result of crowd management, so once we had our turn there it wasn't crazy and overrun with people. And we'd had the foresight to have the kids bring their electronic games to pass the time, but they actually had more fun climbing into the very back of the car and playing house until our turn came.



The tree farm offers free marshmallows for roasting and free hot chocolate and coffee (usually very much needed - you can see by our gear that it was definitely a New Jersey winter day). There are a couple stations set up for the marshmallows - this one is near the field where we cut the tree down.


Alex giving a scowl to Jim for interrupting his eating of the marshmallow.


Grace likes her marshmallows like her mama does - burned to a crisp!


As seen by the expression on their faces, sibling friendship and goodwill always seems to come out on this trip.


Jim celebrates the conquering of the Christmas tree. And will probably hate that I posted this picture here.


Apparently one of the most fun things to do out there is play some game you make up that involves running through the trees.


Grace and Alex posing as a "Christmas tree". I think Grace's scarf was the decorations.


For as much as a pain the needles falling off the live tree are every year, this couple of hours makes it all worthwhile.

It actually works!

I've often read that if you have a child that is a picky eater one trick to try to get them to expand their palate is to have them help make the meal. Now, my kids aren't especially picky, but there are some things that defy logic as to why they have convinced themselves they won't eat them. Grace is that way with sauces/dressing/condiments/gravy (even though everyone else in our family RAVES about my cream gravy for the pork chops the girl still won't even taste it). And Alex is that way with soup. Doesn't matter what kind of soup - he will flat out tell you "Mommy, you know I don't like soup!" Kind of a drag as this weather has gotten colder where soup would be welcome.

So yesterday I decided to take out some of the leftover turkey and make a simple soup with it (from a Cooking Light recipe found here). And I got Alex to help. After I did all the chopping he sauteed the veggies in the pan, added the other ingredients, helped set the kitchen timer, stirred whenever I saw he was getting restless, and helped peel clementines and bananas for the accompanying fruit salad.

And don't you know that boy ate every single bit of soup I put in his bowl AND drank every last bit of broth. I was floored.

Guess it's time for me to have Grace help me make my pork chops and gravy.

Holidays with family

We had a wonderful visit from Mom and Dad this past week for Thanksgiving. While I love my little family, an extra dimension is added when other family members are included in holiday celebrations. That is one of the things we miss the most about living so far away from the rest of the relatives - Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc., are all a little bit more fun when you have the traditions of gathering with family.

The first half of their visit had beautiful weather. A little chilly, but nice and sunny so we took advantage of it and everyone went for a walk in the park.


We always need to stop by the little pond to see what animals are out and about that day. Canadian geese (of course) in the background. I think the ducks were out too.


Grandad is the BEST at enticing reluctant hikers into coming along. Alex as usual wanted to stay home. So Grandad pointed out that there is probably some hidden pirate treasure in our park. Sure enough around some select large trees Alex was able to find aluminum foil wrapped coins under the leaves. Sweet Grace even got into the spirit of things by hiding some of her own money for Alex to find once Grandad ran out.


And Gramma got the kids to gather pretty Fall leaves from the trail, which also kept them nice and busy on the hike.


Grace wanted me to take this as proof that she truly is a tree hugger.


And after the hike in that good crisp air even my kids were getting along with each other.


As for the Thanksgiving meal, we certainly hold true to being very laid-back and kid-friendly in our approach.

Grace made her annual decoration of tracing our hands on paper and having us name five things we are thankful for. She then wrote one thing on each finger of the hand and illustrated it. These are Grace and Alex's hands. Don't know if you can see when you enlarge it, but on Alex's thumb he is thankful for the solar system.


Everyone got Thanksgiving hats to wear during the meal. The hands on these are actually turkeys - there is a tiny face drawn on the thumb of each.


Everyone wore them - even Gramma and Grandad.


Grace also made the centerpiece for the table out of our Beanie Baby turkeys and lots of nature found on our walk the day before.


Alex checks out how his hand compares to the one on Grandad's hat.

As always even though it was a nice long visit, it still didn't seem long enough. So just know, grandparents, that you are welcome back again any time!

Look what's in my yard

I know, not real impressive to show leaves when it is Fall. But when you lived your whole life in Texas where there is pretty much one color of Fall leaves (brown, or various shades thereof) it's easy to get excited about the little things. I should have put some perspective in the picture because the yellow ones are almost as big as your hand.

I've decided raking leaves is not that bad of a chore. Due to our economic situation this year, I chose to rake them myself vs using the lawn service. And really, it's a fairly enjoyable bit of light exercise. The leaves themselves aren't heavy. The weather is usually nice and cool. The town comes and picks your leaves up a couple times during the season, so all you have to do is haul them out to the street and make a big pile in front of your house (I'm sure infuriating parents that we have at least one less parking spot in front of my house for school pickup). We had a huge wind storm yesterday - gusts were expected to be up to 45-50 mph - so all those big yellow leaves in the picture above finally fell out of the tree. I had first raked a week or so ago, and I added what I could this morning to the pile out front, cursing my luck that the town trucks came by just about in the middle of my hauling them out. We still have a small pile out back, plus some more still to fall, so if the town doesn't do another pickup we can at least mulch the flower beds with them.


The other thing in my yard that makes raking the leaves NOT always a pleasurable chore. Makes me see I need to get out a little more often with the pooper scooper. But how can you get mad at this cute face?

I choose YOU!

In case you aren't familiar, that is the line from Pokemon cartoons, which is the party we had for Alex this past Sunday.

First off, I had a lot of explaining to do to the boy on how you CAN have your party on a day other than your actual birthday. After a lot of tears on his end ("But I won't be six yet") and a lot of assurances on my end ("If you have your party on a Monday most people can't come") what finally convinced him was the realization that he would get presents from his friends on Sunday and then MORE presents from family on Monday.


The Pikachu cake I made all by myself. I think I did a pretty good job for having never taken any cake decorating classes!


The Drifloons we made for decoration. They are the balloon Pokemon - feel free to google it and you can see what a good job the kids and I did on them.



We played some Pokemon bingo.


Find the Pokeballs in the back yard. Think of Easter egg hunting, but for little styrofoam balls colored like red and white Pokeballs. Thank goodness the weather was perfect.


A little hanging out with friends.


And of course yummy cake.


We didn't get a very good group shot of all the party attendees, but everyone did seem to have a good time. We seemed to get so many shots of Alex with a big grin on his face, so I know at least the birthday boy was happy.

Almost 6

I just thought I'd post a few soccer pics of Alex from last weekend. To me they really show how much the boy has grown, both in size and in maturity. Last year there is no way he would have been participating like this. I know the biggest part of his eagerness to play is the fact that his two best friends are playing on the team with him (and their dads are the two coaches). But I don't think that would have been enough of an incentive for him just one year ago.





This picture I really like because it has Alex (in the light blue), Peter (pointing) and Henry (red hair) - the Three Musketeers.

Growing up

I was informed by my kids today on the first rainy day of the school year that (a) Grace will no longer be using the Littlest Pet Shop umbrella and would like to use my Discovery Channel one with the outerspace photo of the Earth on the inside of it and (b) Alex will no longer be wearing his Spongebob raincoat to class. Of course Jim points out that he would have never purchased those items in the first place to which my rebuttal was (a) the LPS umbrella was enthusiastically used for about 3 years and character umbrellas are all you can find for kids at Target and (b) the Spongebob raincoat was purchased a few years back when I needed to find a raincoat in Dallas in May and cheap $7 character ones at Wal-Mart were the ONLY ones I could find (not having the time to purchase online).

So Grace took off with my umbrella and Alex went coat-free (luckily I could walk him underneath my big umbrella). And surprisingly my raincoat search in New Jersey in September wasn't much easier than my Texas search in May (and Landsend.com was back-ordered on the basic raincoat until January!). But that little Land's End section in the shabby stand-alone Sears near me came through and they had one boy's raincoat in Alex's size in stock. So now instead of bright yellow with a big SB on the back he is just red ("Cool! It's like fire!").

On a side note, as I stopped in my NJ Target while running around today I ran across a UT Austin t-shirt on the "licensed t-shirts" rack in the boys department. So of course I HAD to buy one - what are the odds of that ever happening again?

First day of kindergarten!

A week late in posting this. It is what it is.


Can you believe it??? My little man already in kindergarten. And the spot on his shirt is water from brushing his teeth - I didn't send him to school in a stained t-shirt.

He is loving his new kindergarten class. His two best buddies are in there with him. And he's going a full day every day. Made for a tired boy last Monday when you combine the first day of school with first day of resuming gymnastics in the afternoon (teariness by about 7pm). But he is so happy when I drop him off every day that I have to remind him to stop and give me a kiss goodbye (sob!). He's a great little boy.

First day of third grade!

Here's my big girl on her first day of 3rd grade today.


And here she is with her new teacher Miss Coltrera, who is apparently the BEST third grade teacher to get.

With the holidays this year Grace will be going to school two days this week (Thurs & Fri), two days next week (Tues & Wed) and then start regular on Monday September 13. Craziness.

New blog to read

I was going to post some more Texas pictures, but Grace was looking at my blog and asked me why I didn't have a link to hers on here. So I will add that now. I was wondering whether or not to link it (fears of strangers lurking in cyber-space and all), but ultimately I think it's safe because I'm pretty sure only about a handful of people read my blog, all of them people I know. So check out What's Up Gwacie? She really likes it when people leave her comments.

Cousin Camp 2010

How about a few Cousin Camp pictures? Down in Port Aransas again. The house we have stayed at for a couple years now isn't beautiful, but it's just about perfect for 8 adults and 9 kids to stay in.

Alex had a great time this year. He and Cole really seemed to get along. It helps when you find someone as interested in digging moats in the sand as you are.


Grace and Joey with their blobby sand creature they made.


As always the dominoes games were in full swing, though some teams were more obnoxious to play than others.


We were treated to a concert one day.


Annual picture of kids in the shark mouth.


Got some good pictures of all the grandkids with Mom and Dad. A little hard to get everyone smiling at once - this one was about the best one I could get out of the bunch on our camera.


I have to post this one because beautiful Emma wouldn't let me take her picture all week.


The three blondie cousins.

Hopefully some more Texas trip pictures soon.