Christmas in Ohio

So every now and then (well...regularly), I get a crazy idea and run with it. My latest madcap idea was spending Christmas in Ohio, something we haven't done since we moved to North Carolina over six years ago. This year seemed perfect - Ree finished with school and I finished with work on December 20th, leaving plenty of travel time before Christmas plus both of my brothers would be in town.

I am happy to report that the trip went really well. We did very little - Jeff and I laughed on the way home as we realized our outings (aside from restaurants, which are mandatory Cincinnati stops, and church on Christmas Eve) had been limited to trips to Target and Jungle Jim's, a gigantic specialty grocery store. Now don't get me wrong, the kids weren't great. "Really well" just implies we miraculously escaped with no serious injuries or ailments. Imagine all of the excitement of Christmas AND all of the excitement of vacation AND all of the excitement of grandparents all rolled into one week. Wheeee! Thank goodness there were lots of adults around to help.

I took surprisingly few pictures on the trip. I think I was mostly just enjoying myself and couldn't be bothered with a camera. I did manage to capture a few moments.

Cookie baking with everyone in their new Christmas jammies.

Decorating a miniature Christmas tree with Obaachan.

Ahhh. A quiet moment. Our three stooges are busy playing Legos, Ree was building with Grandpa Jim, and Jeff and his brother are busy watching ESPN. On a side note, I think I have decided that Legos are my favorite toy for kids ever. They are durable, you can use them creatively, and there is no setup assembly required. And for the actual playing assembly, there are wonderful pictorial directions.

Racing upstairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought. I love that Mike (on the left) is holding Turtle and Leon is holding Percy, his penguin. Christmas presents must be shared with "friends." Natalia struggled with sleeping in a new place (not that she sleeps that well at home to begin with), and her siblings had to shake her awake at 7am. I was carrying her behind the rest of the group.

Staring in awe. Santa brought the Barbie Dream House, in all three stories of its glory. Which we had to transport back to North Carolina. This may or may not have been another one of my hair-brained ideas. Santa works in mysterious ways. Oh, and you know what I said about Legos? The Barbie Dream House is the EXACT OPPOSITE. Except for encouraging creative play. That part is good. I will forever be grateful that I was warned that it takes three nights to put together. I shudder to think what would've happen if Santa and the elves had waited until after the kids went to bed on Christmas Eve to start on that bad boy.

The Disney Princess Klip-Klop castle. Natalia was very specific with her request for Santa. Thankfully, he listened.

Gifts! The kids were awesome and waited until after everyone ate a real breakfast before tearing into their stash.

Video games! Super Mario Brothers (2?) lives on thanks to Uncle Alex.

Kramer, Alex and Reiko's dog, looking like he owns the place. And illegally sitting on the couch.

It would be a sad day if my brothers ever acted serious around each other.

We were out in the evening several times. And every time we got back to my parents' house, Natalia had to run over and say hi to the neighbors' Yoda and Darth Vader Christmas decorations. A true highlight of the trip.

Hope everyone else had a safe and enjoyable Christmas, too!

Leon and Michael's Birthday and Other Fun

Last night as I was making dinner, I felt totally relaxed. I love just puttering around in the kitchen, and I realized I was so ready for the weekend to start so I could enjoy some downtime. And then it hit me that it was Sunday night. Doh! Thank goodness this is a short week with a long weekend. As a bonus, the boys only had school today and Ree only has school through Tuesday, so I have fewer lunches and snacks to make and fewer kids to get out the door. I love my morning time with them, and I generally enjoy the lunch making, but I will give thanks for the break.

The reason I was looking for some downtime was it was another crazy week. It was a really fun week, but it was busy. In addition to the usual chaos that is our household, my parents were visiting and all three big kids had field trips last Wednesday. Ree went to a plantation as part of her class's study of pioneer life, and the boys went to fire station. It should be noted that the boys asked many questions on the field trip, including Leon asking dispatch if they had games on their computers. Somehow it seems fitting that the only pic I have to share on here of the boys' field trip is Leon stopping, dropping, and rolling.

The boys' birthday was Friday. It's hard to believe they are five. (On a side note, it's just about as cold as it was when they were born. Although I am a four seasons girl, I did really enjoyed the random 70 degree days last week! I was not a fan of walking to the rec center on campus this afternoon when it was 39 degrees at 1pm)

The boys had a great birthday complete with lots of celebrating. First, they got to celebrate at school. Their school celebration is simple, yet meaningful. They each took a turn holding a globe and walking around a candle to show the Earth going around the sun for each year they've been alive. (For visuals, check out last year's celebration, and yes, a lot of it looks remarkably similar to this year.)

 Friday night went to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner with my parents. It was the first time we've gone since their birthday last year, and everyone had a lot of fun.

Michael playing a fishing video game.

Leon convinced a boy who was about eight-year-old to play air hockey with him.

Grown ups can play too.

After that, we came home and opened presents from family and had ice cream sundaes, which are a tradition for the family party.

The birthday celebration continued on Sunday with a party with friends from preschool. I know all the other kids get to have cool parties and have bouncy castles and go roller skating, but we kept it low-key and had an old-fashioned at-home party at my parents' house. (And we had fun. Dang it!)

I may have had a little too much fun making swirly frosting with sprinkles on their cupcakes. We eventually also added Angry Birds cupcake toppers.

My kids believe all you need for a party is streamers and balloons. I can so work with that.

Playing some Angry Birds while they waited for guests.

Pin the tail on the Angry Bird.

One of my favorite party games as a kid was Find the Treasure in a Box. You take the prize and wrap it in a series of boxes. You play music, and when it stops, that kid gets to open the box, hoping to find something other than another box. I busted out that game and managed to keep eight preschoolers entertained for 10 minutes. Success!

There is a much bigger table behind them, but the kids opted to squeeze in together at the little table to eat cupcakes. Also, every boy at the party was in a striped shirt. Impressive.

All together, it was a very, very good birthday. And a very good week.

I Miss Sleep

It's been eight or nine months since I really slept, and it's starting to get to me. Okay, that's a serious understatement. I've been pretty evil for awhile now, and I'm not a fan of the new me. I miss sleep. I was never really a sleep devotee, but never sleeping five or six hours and constantly getting woken up at night? Yikes.

The problem seems to be the kids won't go to bed at night. And they pop up all night, one after the other, like a house full of whack-a-moles. Then they get up early. Reaalllly early.  A couple of Sundays ago Mike said to me, "We've already been up for two hours, and the sun is still sleeping. That's funny!" Yes. Haha, Mike. Haha.

We managed to hit a new low this weekend. On Saturday, we didn't even sleep until 5:00. Natalia decided to get up for the day at 4:49 a.m. And, of course, she had to wake up her brothers at that hour, too, so they wouldn't miss out on any "fun." So Saturday we had to get a little creative just to keep everyone awake and in one piece. It ended up being creative-use-of-toys in the backyard day. Thankfully, Wednesday morning's snow

(earliest snow on record for Wilmington!) was long gone.

I started by dragging out the kiddie pool, and filling it with plastic balls. A super ghetto DIY ball pit. The three stooges had lots of fun.

And, yes, they were playing outside in their pajamas. I'd blame it on sleep deprivation, but if they are going in the backyard and we know they will get messy, they usually play in their p.j.s and get dressed for the day when they come back inside the house. Less laundry that way.

Leon then took over in the creativity department. First he went into the garage and got into the infant kick-and-crawl tunnel. He put it at the top of the slide to make an obstacle course.

Then we got out a bucket of water to play with in the sandbox. (It was in the 70s!) Leon found some chairs and decided it would make a great place to soak his feet. (And, of course, he and Natalia fought over who got to sit and their makeshift pedicure stand.)

They actually played outside for over an hour, and miraculously, no one was seriously injured. Not bad for operating on (seemingly) no sleep.

Home!

We took a day off today. Well, not "off" in the sipping margaritas on the beach way but "off" as in I didn't go anywhere today. And it was SO nice. We used to have one car-less day almost every weekend, but we haven't been able to stay home all day in a long time.

Today's non-adventure happened due to a variety of factors. First, and most importantly, the Bengals had a Thursday night game this week. I had been toying with the idea of a pajama day today all week, but then yesterday morning, after spotting the insane prices of vegetables at Harris Teeter, I decided I would make a run to Trader Joe's this morning (there was definitely not time to go yesterday) to get more affordable veggies. Then I decided I really didn't want to to do that, but I still needed some ingredients for dinner tonight. So Ree and I bravely stopped at a grocery store last night, on our way home from a costume party. You get some funny looks when you are shopping for bell peppers  at 9pm on a Saturday night dressed as a gypsy two days after Halloween. This morning I realized I forgot to return two DVDs to the library that were due yesterday. I realized I had two options. I could quick run them to the library before it opened today (hence avoiding fines) or I could suck it up and pay. Suck it up I did, even though it killed my inner child who long ago learned the importance of always following the rules. I wasn't going anywhere.

Being my annoying Type A self, I had a long list of what I planned to accomplish today. I got through, eh, maybe a third of the list. But I also got to do lots of things not on the list. I sat on the floor with the kids looking at toy catalogs while they made their Christmas and birthday wish lists. I got pictures from the last month uploaded to the computer and sorted. And I ate well. Really well. And not just Halloween candy, although there was quite a bit of that consumed. On Thursday, our Produce Box came with the first sweet potatoes of the year, and I knew I had to have some baked sweet potato fries. (This is such a great recipe. The boys and I always end up finishing the entire batch at once. It works well with a half recipe using 1.5 grocery store sweet potatoes or about 3 farmers' market sized sweet potatoes.) We didn't really have anything to go with them, so I made a Mediterranean soup with chickpeas and tomatoes. Amazingly, the kids all ate it. Dinner was good too. Steak fajitas with mushrooms, a rainbow of peppers (my late night grocery shopping was not in vain), red onion, and grape tomatoes. We also ate the last corn on the cob of the season from our Produce Box.

So maybe it wasn't a day off in the traditional sense. But it was still a great day.

Things That Make Me Happy

I don't get make much time to write these days, but I do take random pictures. Here are some things that have made me happy. With a few random thoughts thrown in.

• Natalia telling me, very seriously, "Mom, my favorite color is purple."

• Listening to Mike read. He amazes me.

• Giggling when Mike pronounces words incorrectly in every day conversation. I can always tell when he learned the word from a book and not from hearing it spoken.

• Leon giving me giant hugs and telling me he missed me while I was gone overnight for work.

• This look on Ree's face:

 

 

• My odometer reading 22222. (Don't worry. I was not moving when I took this.)
   
  
  
  • I suppose I should also mention I got a new car with lower mileage. Getting a new car was a bit bittersweet, but thanks to lots of road tripping, we've had bonding time. My new car is named Rocky, short for Rockstar Black, the full name proposed by Mike.

• Getting to leave work to go to Girl Scouts. (Lucky me! And I mean that seriously.) Girl Scout meetings at the beach. (Lucky girls!)

• "Winter" beach. We may not have "four seasons" here, but the beach definitely changes seasonally.

Family Fun Day

Ree got out of school last Friday and is on fall break for the first three weeks in October. In the back of my mind, I've had grand plans for a long weekend off, either as a staycation, or, even better, a mini-getaway during her break. The reality is that's not going to happen. Work is too nuts right out. I was out of town last week, I am out of town again in two weeks, on Monday I was asked to join a committee that meets in Chapel Hill (a little over two hours from here) every two or three weeks, and we are an office of 4.5 employees that's currently working with two employees. And, on a personal note, we have visitors coming for a week during the break. Things are a little nuts.

But I did decide to take time off. I took off today, and I am taking off at least one more day, for Family Fun Days. It turns out, it feels really decadent to take off a random Thursday. And only being off one day, I didn't really feel any pressure to check my email or get stuff done. That was nice. Even better was having a random day to just do fun stuff without any guilt about cleaning the house or getting chores done.

Today we headed to the Children's Museum of Wilmington. We were kind of overdue for a visit. The last time we went I had to stop and nurse baby Leon when he got overstimulated. It was good to go with kids who were big enough to get out of their car seats to play.

Every now and then Almost every time we plan a new outing that seems like it will be fun, it becomes a new form of torture. It does not go well. (I'm still scarred from taking the kids to the Cincinnati Zoo in the summer of 2012. Who knew they could be so miserable???) But, surprisingly, miraculously, we had a great time today. Not only did the kids have fun, we were injury free. Amazing. Some of the highlights of our adventures:

While Ree, Natalia, and Mike painted leaves with cotton swabs...

...Leon made "apple pie."

 Leon and Natalia in their fishing boat.

Ree digging for "gold."

While everyone else was busy, Mike found a quite spot to read.

Natalia was manning the cannon on the pirate ship. Yikes.

A budding scientist???

The picture is blurry, but the space room was awesome, and lit only with black lights. Leon was playing with glowing Legos.

Everyone building.

One of the favorite stops of the day was the "dentist office," complete with sheets the dental assistants had to complete for each patient.

After playing for over three hours, we were all starving, so we headed to Flaming Amy's for lunch. Here's Natalia passed out with a full tummy and a Flaming Amy's bumper sticker proudly displayed on her shirt.

Norfolk, Day 3

I took a walk yesterday afternoon. I saw mermaids!

I finally saw a sign explaining them. 

I'll keep on the lookout for more!

Norfolk, Day 2

Hi guys!

I miss you! I hope you're having lots of fun with Dad.

My room is on the 15th floor of our hotel. Here is the view from my window in the daytime.

And here is the view at night.

I spent all day yesterday in meetings. At night, we went on a boat ride around the harbor. Here we are walking to the boat.

Here's a picture of the boat. It was big. There were almost 500 people on it.

We ate dinner on the boat. We even got dessert. It was delicious!

I hope you are having lots of fun, too!

Love,

Mom