Christmas 2015

Our Christmas was pretty quiet. After having guests for 9 days, we enjoyed a few days at home by ourselves. And with obscenely warm temperatures, we were able to enjoy our usual late summer/early fall activities. 

The kids asked to go to church on Christmas Eve. Apparently they were going to drag their heathen parents whether we liked it or not! The kids were amazingly good and did a nice job of participating.

Christmas Eve Jeff and I had hoped to go to bed early. However, Ree couldn't sleep and I think her last time to come out for cuddles was at 10:37. Yawn. Poor Santa thought he would never be able to visit our house. It's funny. We thought Ree was on the fence about Santa 2 years ago. So I cooked up a scheme for Santa to bring her a ridiculous gift. Santa brought her a Barbie dream house. It was expensive and enormous. And we had to bring it back from Ohio. That did the trick. 

I sensed some doubt creeping in again this year  (her best friends are all oldest children, so we are sheltered on that front ), but on Christmas Eve it became apparent that any doubt was just due to the mathematical impossibility of it all. We had been watching the Google Santa tracker before bed. Well, technically most of the family was checking it. Leon actually stood there and watched it until we closed the browser window and dragged him away from the computer. Around the time the kids went to bed, Santa had visited over 5 billion households.

Ree was pondering this as she lay awake in bed. So when she asked me about it, I started by saying the magic involved was probably a lot more complicated than they ever show on TV or in books. Then I pulled in math. I argued that Santa has a window from 11pm to 5am to visit each house, and there are 24 time zones in the world so that gives Santa a roughly 30 hour window to make deliveries. That made sense to her and we agreed we probably should've left Santa some strong coffee. Finally, I joked that maybe Santa has a time turner. She laughed and relaxed. Harry Potter for the win!

The kids were given strict orders to stay in their rooms until we got them on Christmas morning. When we weren't quite prompt enough for him, Leon decided to be the human alarm clock. At exactly 7am he opened his door, shouted, "Beep, beep, beep!" and shut the door again. We got the message and were in the kids' rooms by 7:03.

Santa did come (phew!) and the kids loved their gifts. The big kids got Legos and were so busy playing with them that at 9:30 we had to tell them that their little sister might explode if we didn't open gifts soon so they had to stop playing at 10. Then when we did open presents, they wanted to open them one at a time so they could all see what everyone got. Who are these children???

Over the past few days the kids have spent a lot of time playing with their new things. They received several games and a circuit set, so there have even been group activities. We've managed to spend some time outside every day including a Christmas day trip to the park and a beach trip on Sunday.

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas! 

Thanksgiving

We had a quiet weekend over Thanksgiving. It was just our family, at home. It was both relaxing and a time to catch up on things. It was nice to feel refreshed before jumping head first into the crazy again. At some point over the weekend, it occurred to me that this was our 10th Thanksgiving with kids. How on earth did that happen? Then I decided to look back on our Thanksgivings.

2006 - In 2006 Ree/The Repo Monster/Enemy Garlic was 3 months old at Thanksgiving. We took her to Cincinnati for the first time. (The dogs rode with us too!) Ree cried and then passed out while we ate Thanksgiving dinner with Jeff's family.

2007 - We had just moved to Wilmington that week. Jeff had gone back to Athens to get the dogs, and he and the dogs arrived in Wilmington in time for a late dinner.

2008 - This year was a little odd. The boys were 5 days old and I was home from the hospital but they weren't. The NICU nurses did decorate for Thanksgiving and I think we even got cards "signed" by the boys. Ree, the cutie, had just learned how to fold her hands to pray.

2009 -We had a big crew here for the boys' first birthday and Thanksgiving. The crew was so big, in fact, that there was a kiddie table.

2010 - I have no recollection of this Thanksgiving (hey, I was 8 months pregnant and had 2-year-old twins. And a 4-year-old!) But apparently it was a low key affair with just our family.

2011 - We had a whirlwind week. We were in Orlando for my cousin Michele's wedding. We also went to the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner. And we went to the Magic Kingdom two days that week. And we celebrated the boys' 3rd birthday. Phew.

2012 - It was another quiet Thanksgiving at home. With some really interesting faces from Leon.

2013 - Our friend Jenna and her daughters joined us for dinner. After dinner we successfully distracted the kiddos with Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

2014 - The 2014-2015 school year is the "lost" year. I have no idea what we did! For Thanksgiving or any other day. But apparently we attended lots of school-related Thanksgiving events.

2015 - Jammie Day! Does it get any better than that?

Hope you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving this year (and in prior years too)!

Halloween

Back when we lived in Athens, and way before we had children, we used to host an annual New Year's party. It was the one time of year one group of our friends all got together. Most of our guests came from out of town and stayed at our house, and the party usually lasted until at least January 2nd. These days things are much tamer and kiddo centered. Yet, despite that, there are many aspects of our annual trick or treat party that are rather similar to the old New Year's parties.

We start by just inviting a few good friends. There are many great things about good friends, and one of them is they never care that our house looks like real life.These are the kind of friends who will step over the giant dog fur balls that pile up and who will happily cart the huge pile of clean laundry from the couch to our bedroom so they have a place to sit. So we could completely get away with not cleaning. But the irony is this is the one group of friends that we actually want to clean the house for. For our old New Year's parties, we were often in the middle of a last minute power-clean when the guests started arriving, and I have distinct memories of the vacuum being the focal point of our living room for the first hour of our party one year. This year's Halloween gathering was no different. Despite having to leave for the boys' soccer game at 10:00, I still managed to sweep and mop most of the house on Saturday morning before we went. (And I folded and put away the several loads of laundry that were on the couch and even cleaned up the dishes in the kitchen from dinner the night before and from breakfast. Who said nothing good came out of the kids getting me up at 5:30 every day?)

We were always at the store at the last minute buying food and drinks for our New Year's parties. This year was no different, and after the soccer game the whole family made a trip to Costco to stock up on food. We came home, I put that away, and then I headed back to Walmart to get a few more things. And oddly, the food is about the same. For the trick-or-treat party, I served a fancy menu of chicken nuggets and french fries. I usually prepared about the same for drunk people.

On New Year's Eve we would stay at our house until midnight and then head uptown to the bars. Because of this, the women, at least, would dress up for the occasion. (No comments on the male attire!) Of course, Halloween is no different. You gotta dress up! Even the grown ups dress up to take the kids out. This year Ree was a girl from the 80s, Leon was Luigi from Super Mario Brothers, Michael was Michelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Natalia was Anna from Frozen.

Finally, on New Year's Eve, after all that fun, somewhat always passed out in a crazy place. This year Halloween was no different.