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.