Christmas 2010

And so another Christmas has come and gone.

The hype. The excitement. The headache. The stress. The glitter. The glow. The eating. The anticipation. The cookies for Santa. The lights for me. The wish of a White Christmas from my lovely children (which did not come to be, sadly for them).

It came and went and now the wind down. I always wish the feeling of Christmas were always 10 days away. 10 days seems short enough for it to be here and long enough to still plan and shop and enjoy the loveliness of the season.

I wasn't always this way. In my past life, I would have preferred to go away for the entire month of December. I do believe my children have helped me enjoy the excitement of Christmas again. And I thank them for that. Even if I was a tad stressed and yelled a couple of times at the end since I got nothing done until the last week except for the tree and the lights.

Since my camera is sacked (read past posts regarding the demise of my camera) I didn't get a lot of pics this year. A few with my phone. I stole a few as well from other posts.

Here is a small sampling of how the day went:

Lovely Lighted Linc, the tree.

One of the best presents EVER: Ivy's tent. I actually fit in it as well (especially after all the cookies I consumed; as Jen said, if it was there, we ate it). Ivy invited me many times to sit in her tent with her. No small feat if you knew Ivy.

Steve opening yet another TERRIFIC present. We were looking for the kids and I saw this wooden alligator push thing for babies and we both said, "Have to buy that for Evan." He loved it and since he's just beginning to walk, perfect.

Robee with his Uncle Traveling Matt ... or is it Traveling Uncle Matt? Whatever. It's a Fraggle and he loves it and the show and this was the next best present.

THIS is always a great present; holding snugly Ivy.

Oh yeah. The cookie thing. I ate about .... wow. Lost count actually. I did manage to save enough to put on Santa's plate. Of course, it depends on what your definition of "enough" is.

This is Leavenworth Washington. It's the Scandinavian hamlet located east of us over the Cascades that is famous for Wiener Schnitzel and Bavarian Deserts. It has a lovely quilt of snow during most of the winter and it's where Thomas and I are going for three days as a gift from the kids. This was top present. Thank you kids.

We've started sort of a tradition with Felix and Robee by going to Leavenworth on New Year's Day. The crowds have slowed and it's fun to go tubing and wander the cobble streets AND it's something to look forward to after the hoopla of Christmas.

The trip for Thomas and I is at the end of January however and it's SANS children. I love them but I love spending alone time with my spouse.

I once was an active x-country skier; Leah and I used to ski quite a bit in Ogden and I always skied when Brooke and I took our winter trips to Island Park.

After I had Felix, I tried to ski again but found that "mom time" was all-encompassing and there was no more "me time" so I sold my skis and gave up on the idea of ever skiing again.

I, of course, didn't realize that children grow up and older and there comes a time where a mom can have some "me time" without being selfish about it.

I'm getting myself some cross country skis from our new Play Again Sports and I'm going to ski once again. We don't get a lot of snow here but when we do, I always think how fun it would be to ski around our five acres or up the street or in the local fields.

This year is the first year the older kids decided to draw names for gift giving. Money is always tight and they all have their own families to buy for as well. I remember when our family started doing this same thing; it just makes sense. Thomas and I didn't get in the drawing this year but it might happen next year to help narrow the gift buying!

We did get some nice gifts for the big kids but it's hard when they can go out and buy what they need during the year. However, Angie really wanted a tree for her yard so we got a gift card to this wonderful nursery in Shoreline. We found out that Jen would like a Kindle so I went to stores and he went to stores but they were out out out. So online to have it sent to her. Ben has a concert in San Fransisco in March so we bought air tickets for them to attend. Emilee has just re-finished her basement and wanted a Costco card for the purchase of a TV.

Goodbye Christmas 2010. It was a fun time and next year, I'm going to be better prepared.

Linc, The Live Christmas Tree 2010

Introducing our 2010 Christmas Tree, named Linc (it was Robee's turn to name the tree). Hopefully, I'll get around to planting this one unlike last year. It's now goat feed. :(

Linc is a Japanese White Ash Pine.

These are taken with my phone which look like crap.

The kids (and I for that matter) still like to use our old ornaments on the tree. I haven't changed most of them for at least 10 years. I doubt I'll ever change them since I like old ornaments that are used year after year.

Last Band Concert of the year 2010

So as we end this year, we end with a middle school band concert. Robee has joined for his sixth grade year (since our education a**hole administrators decided to eliminate 5th grade band) and wanted to go into percussion. However, the 'rule' is that you have to do bells first.

And here he is, with his bell set that weighs five tons to carry, hard to play, and is done only because he has to, not because he really wants to play the bells.

Sometimes ya gotta jump thru the hoops.

He looks so old and lanky and ..... old. And he needs a haircut - even tho I like long hair on boys, his is actually getting a smidgen longer than I even like.

Felix, just before the concert began. She is playing the alto clarinet this year; the only one in fact which is cool. She has a sparkly, silver shirt on for this concert. We saw in a consignment store window and both of us KNEW that she had to have that shirt for performances!

I was just about to take a picture and Robee dropped his bell case on his foot. Captured the moment!

He recovered quickly for the next photo.

Here is the motley crew of band members:

Robee in a headlock by Caroline, Felix, Jacey, Leah.

(Caroline and Leah are no longer in band but are with the yearbook photo staff)

And another.



And one more. Mom likes to take lots of pics, eh?

Fun job

This is what I do on Mondays and Thursdays:

Sometimes it's stickers. Sometimes markers (not on my face but on paper; if one is trying to instruct the proper use of markers - coloring on Kiki's face does not count).

Sometimes building with Legos. Sometimes reading books. Sometimes cooking food. Sometimes climbing in the oven while the food is cooking.

I know I'll get called on this so, technically, Ivy is in the sink portion of the kitchen but it's hooked to the oven AND she did get into the oven later but that pic wasn't nearly as great as this one.

Do I get payment for this? Nope.

I get BETTER.

Today while we were sitting on the couch, Ivy picked up my hand and kissed it.

Lights, camera ..........

The house is done. I've actually added a giant 9 foot penguin and lights on the large pine tree in the front. "Tacky" the Penguin (no pun intended) replaced a snowman that would not stay standing when inflated so he's going out.

Sadly, I took this pic with a small sad camera since I killed my lovely one in Puerto Rico. *sigh* It was the best I could do.

I was trying to get lights up on the tallest part of the roof, where our picture windows sit. However, after straining with a 20 foot ladder plus an 11 foot light helper I made, I finally gave up. I know it would look great but I'm just not willing to become a quadriplegic for Christmas lights.

I'm a supremely lazy person. So lazy that almost EVERY light in the house is on a timer. It comes on when I want and goes off when I want.

Ditto for the lights. THIS year I'm thrilled because we finally got power to the other panel of the front fence (left of the pic) so I can have lights running all the way down our property. Spectacular! Also on timers. I'm hoping for next year to get an outlet on the other side so I don't have to run an extension cord all the way to the house.

I put lights around the front windows (to make up for not putting any on the roof) and it was on a timer too.

But what to my wondering eyes should appear???? Clyde, ripping the timer from the wall of the house with the lights still attached and then chewing into small pieces. Oh that he could have been zapped, just a tad. Grrrr.

So now I'm waiting for Thomas to help me install a metal box that covers the outlet. By that time, it will be March.

I was growling to myself as I was trying to gently place lights on the pine tree, that this was ridiculous and too hard and I'm going to quit. But then I thought "If it were easy, everyone would do it" and I look around my neighborhood. Out of 149 homes, only 10 or so have decorations. I drive into town ... same thing. I miss the days when all the houses would be happily lit. I remember my mom and dad would say on weekends "Okay! Let's go for a ride and look at lights!" and we would pile in the station wagon and go to a different neighborhood each time to see what everyone else had put on their homes.

I've been doing the lights on our house since I married Thomas. I remember putting lights up with Angie while Felix was napping at six months. I started doing the lights at my parents' house when my dad got sick; I couldn't stand not having lights for Christmas. My favorite are blue lights at night; they have such a glow about them.

So hopefully if the d*** back holds out (massage therapy starting again in January) and I don't actually die taking them down, I'll be doing this for a long time.

Maybe even ... the high roof. If I tie myself off on the chimney with a rope, I might be able ....

Did I miss Halloween??? My favorite holiday??!!

Wow. It was a busy fall. That is SO not like me, not to even mention Halloween or our costumes.

So here we go backtracking.

Halloween. Felix and Robee had their costumes planned out long ago. Felix wanted to be Cruella deVille from "101 Dalmatians" and Robee wanted to be a mummy.

Both would have to be made since I am starting to hate the store bought ones. I did it when they were little but now we enjoy piecing costumes together from either the thrift store or actually sewing them. Which is what I did for all three of us.

I was a cave woman. It was a choice between a cave woman and .......... I forget it's been so long. But I like how mine turned out.

JoAnn fabric was having a close out sale because they were moving their store so they were liquidating everything. Their fur was so cheap!

Felix was insistent that her coat have: some kind of fur on it (and being the dog-skinning woman she was portraying, it was logical) and we were lucky to find enough to make the front and back; sleeves were done in spotted (like Dalmatian puppies); AND had to be lined in red. Crikey. Did this girl think I was Leah Arkush or something? (my most FAV seamstress)

Robee's was easy to buy; sheets from the thrift store, soaked in black tea for two days, torn into strips and sewn onto thrift store sweats so it looked like he was wrapped.

Mine was just your basic fur toga with wrist and ankle bands and bone accessories. However, the piece de resistance of my costume was the cro-magnon uni brow. Honestly. Everyone loved it.

And their costumes turned out exactly as planned. (the person with the kids is Felix's friend, Jayce)

Luckily, I have every makeup available for every sort of look.






This was taken after three Halloween parties and the kids were just a tad tired of dressing up.

Halloween will always be my favorite 'holiday.'

Thanksgiving 2010

So another Thanksgiving in the Beautiful State of Washington has come and gone. It is our 6th here in the State of Washington but 5th in our home. I will say that it does not seem like five years at all. I always have to count back to when I graduated from UNLV and then when we moved to Long Beach WA and then up here. Unbelievable. But I wouldn't change it for the world.

Our Thanksgiving this year had all our kids together except for Em and her family who stayed in Utah after being gone 9 days in Puerto Rico; I cannot blame them one bit. Besides, last time they came, we had a snow storm that shut down the Northwest for about a week; we were snow-bound for days. I do believe it was their fault. :)

We also welcomed our favorite transplants, Bob and Kathi (Angie's in-laws) as well.

Everyone brought food which is so wonderful since I'm not one who really likes to cook. Cleaning up, fine. Cooking? Not so much. Green beans and carrots (Ivy adored the carrots) from Kathi and Bob; a million rolls from Jen & Greg (and there were almost no leftovers of those!); collard greens from Ben & Kelsey (yeah for some green in the meal!); yummy appetizers from Angie and Steve and then of course the famous what-diverse-and-out-of-this-world-recipe-can-we-use Turkey from Ben's constant research for the perfect turkey. Luckily, since I have the world's smallest oven, they cooked it at Jen's house, let it nap and then brought it over. This freed up the scrawny oven for the rolls. It was incredible. I think the best ever really.

For my contribution, I made pies. I have no background for this at all; my mom was not one to be a from-scratch kind of cook. She cooked but it was basics. She abhorred all home canning, bottling, bread making, pie making from the day she got married. She said it's all they did while growing up with nine siblings and she was not about to spend her days doing it again - she cleaned the house instead.

So this is a new venture for me. I made pumpkin for Robee, Oreo cheesecake for the boys (Steve, Greg), banana creme for Ben, chocolate creme for the others and apple for me.

I told everyone rather than being nice, to please be honest in their review of the pies. Nothing is worse than someone who makes something, thinking that this is their "speciality" when in reality, it tastes like poo but no one wants to hurt their feelings and so never says "You know, your chocolate creme pie tastes like poo. You should not make it anymore." This is far nicer than letting the person make the poo pie for 10 years not ever knowing it's gross, right?

Food ready to be eaten.



Lining up at the trough, Ben and then next is Steve with Thomas close at his heels.

Raising for a toast for good health and being thankful. (missing is Jen and me and Thomas)




Looks a little like Hannibal the Cannibal, eh?

Miles and miles and miles of rolls. Mmmmmmm!!!





Evan's first Thanksgiving.

Kathi, Bob, Evan, Angie's head.

We had a snowstorm on Monday night, part of Tuesday and a little more on Thanksgiving day. This is what Robee and Owen put together after dinner. His name is Harold.

Me with my sweetie babies, Ivy and Evan.






Steve and Bob discussing politics...sports.....weather ... I'm not really sure. It's hard to tell with men.





Owen eating our favorite potato chips, Ruffles.

Here is my apple pie. Granted I did not make my own crust BUT I did do the lattice work thingy on the top AS IF it were homemade crust. And before you scoff, I did make the crust for the pumpkin pie but I was too exhausted after five pies to make the apple pie crust. BTW, I thought the apple was yummy. So yummy I think I ate four pieces.

Me peeling potatoes. I put Robee in charge of taking pictures.


Side note: during our Puerto Rico trip, I put my lovely Nikon D3000 in my backpack to take pictures of Old San Juan. Two things happened: we were in a downpour most of the time and my water bottle lid sprung a leak. Both of these combined put water in the bottom of my pack where my camera was sitting. This killed my camera. So I'm back to using my orange mini camera which takes good pics but I really miss my zoom lenses for GREAT pics. Oh well.

I have to explain this pic. This is an apron of my mom's. She made it around 1968-70 in her Homemaking class in church. It's incredibly politically incorrect. Please note the "black face" native cooking a buxom, blonde woman. I still have a hard time believing that it was okay to paint something like this to wear in public. Very interesting.

The kitchen after dinner.

The kitchen after clean up. Ahhhh!!

Before ...............

After.

As much as I hate to admit it, there are a few things where I take after my mom; cleaning is one of those. I mentioned that cooking is not my forte'.

So I've sort of made a deal with my big kids; they do most of the cooking and I'll do the clean up. So far, no one has complained! I'm just lucky my big kids like to do the cooking!! Thanks to all who came and ate and laughed and did the weigh-in and brought food.

Thanks to Jen and Greg for a wonderful game of CatchPhrase (me: something yellow you spread on toast. Robee: Mustard? Jen: something that Greg is. Greg: Ass?).

And so we say goodbye to another Thanksgiving. And hopefully goodbye to the freaking five pounds I gained whilst enjoying my apple pie. Ugh.

Latest TKD pics of the family

Some recent pics of the TaeKwonDo family. They scanned a bit blurry but not bad.

Only in Puerto Rico ...........

............ and probably anywhere else that doesn't care how you drive (sometimes includes crazy Utah drivers).

During our stay, we traveled in a 500 person van when we wanted to go exploring. Please remember that we now have 19 people in our immediate family (10 adults, 6 kids, 3 babies). If we all travel together, we need MAJOR transportation.

Okay, maybe it was only 15 person van but it seemed HUGE. Luckily we had a great local-type driver that got us wherever in one piece. Jeffe (aka: Greg) was amazing in the craziest traffic I've seen since Thailand. He even learned how to honk at his displeasure of other drivers (it's a courtesy thing; they all do it).

However, this is how ALL the babies traveled whilst screaming thru said traffic:

This is Evan being held by his dad, Steve. Please note the look of complete and utter satisfaction on Evan's face. He knows that this position is completely wrong and is enjoying his moment in the sun with absolute bliss.

I didn't get pics of Lyla or Ivy in the same position but trust me, they enjoyed it too. So much in fact, that the mothers (as well as myself) wondered how much pain they would be in when real life slapped them upside the head (figuratively of course) once they returned home to binding, uncomfortable, backwards-facing (really??) car seats.

I, of course, wouldn't be able to experience their final discomfort on arrival because I'm an old woman with baby-making way behind me. All I can do is cluck my tongue, offer a few words of sympathy and then waddle (yeah, waddle: did you see me on the beach?) off to my car that had two giant children in regular seat belts and go to sleep even before the car left the airport.

A few more pictures. What a great time.

The little kids, Thomas and me.

Historic fort in Old San Juan - 500 years old.

Leaning out of the tower in the rainforest.

Jennifer and Ivy, making their way up.

My exceptionally handsome boy Robee.

The boys checking out the scope. (l to r: Maxito, Owen, Ryan)

Looks like well planned baby making.

(l to r: Jen/Ivy-17 mo, Ang/Evan-10 mo, Em/Lyla-6 mo)

Ben, in a moment of vacation happiness, twisted his ankle trying to catch a football at the beach.

Rainforest waterfall.

Maxito, Eric, Greg under the freezing cold waterfall.

Miss Biss (Alysa) in the hotel.

Em at breakfast.

Ben showing his breakfast that was $22 as opposed to Kelsey's that was $14. That's when we decided to go buy a few food items to cut down some of the cost.

Owen being Owen. My friend.

Steve and Evan. I love his shirt "I still live with my parents"

My kids have never seen a gecko before. I rememer them from Thailand.

Felix on our balcony.