Dear Husband

Dear Husband,

I know and appreciate that you are 6 foot tall with arms of 5'8" (known as Monkey Arms in our family). It has come in very handy many a-times. But I, on the other hand, am 5'2"... Why do you insist on stacking (term used very loosely) sh*t on the top shelves of all the cabinets and closets so precariously that I feel like I'm playing Jenga with my life??

Love, 

Your concussed wife.

Smiley Siley Turns FOUR (and the Tooth Fairy Rides Again)

I don't ever think I've fully appreciated (or felt enough sympathy for) the situation that my parents and family had to deal with trying to make sure that my Christmas birthday was celebrated.  I get it now and I'm crying "uncle!!". 

My Siley babe turned 4 on the 26th and after a long day on Christmas and a 2nd family party on the 26th - that evening we pulled out the party balloons and birthday cake and celebrated my little guy's birthday. 

A few days ago I made a bit of fun at the fact that Dad had a tea candle for his birthday candle.  Well...guess who couldn't find the birthday candles that she had JUST bought that very morning and had to pull out the tea candles? (me).

 

 We sang, blew up balloons and opened some presents.

I did make a homemade cake - though you can tell it's still on a baking sheet (and it's not very pretty).

 

Of all 3 kids, Si seems to be growing up the fastest.  It really seems that just a year ago, I was holding an infant. It's very hard for me to believe he's 4 already. He constantly makes us laugh with the things he says, and he consistently makes our blood pressure rise...he's definitely more accident prone and hardheaded than Mas and Ella!

 

The tooth fairy made another visit to our house that evening too - Ella lost her 5th tooth.  She's been wiggling and pushing and pulling on it since Thanksgiving, and finally it popped out.  You can see below how holey she is.

Christmas '09

Christmas 2009 has come and gone.  Wow. The last few months have been a complete whirlwind of activity and I wasn't feeling 100% prepared this year, but then again I'm usually not 100% prepared for anything!

Christmas Eve was the usual flurry of appetizers, wine, (having Margie, Tim, Sarah and Brian over to help with some) wrapping, reindeer food, cookies for Santa, more wine...

I love after the mess is cleaned up, kids are long asleep (or faking it well) and I get a few minutes of quiet time before heading to bed for a few short hours of sleep.  The time to reflect, to be excited for my kids, to remember that Christ is the reason for the season and to appreciate the many blessings that we have as a family.

The kids all slept in until almost 8 a.m. They were patient enough to wait for us to make coffee before they started digging into the presents.

 

Silas was excited about his Cars racetrack

 

Ella got earrings from Daddy and loved her Nintendo DS the best.

 

Mason had hoped and hoped that he'd get an iPod Touch,

which he did, but we wrapped it in a Pokemon video case.

We spent the afternoon at Mom and Dad's with all the family - whew, there are a lot of us! At the end of the evening, it's about all we can do to get the kids in pj's, teeth brushed, and keep our eyes open for a book or two.  We tend to perk up long enough for a glass of wine before crawling into bed ourselves.  

(I've been liking quotes a lot lately...)

"Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world."
~ Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

Presidential message (December 25, 1927).

 

Did You Know?

That when you turn 75 you graduate to one BIG candle in its own crystal holder?

(because otherwise you might set the house on fire

and collapse a lung trying to blow out 75 candles...)

Who's Brown & Loved & Tres Quarters of a Century Old?

If you said my dad, you are correct!  Today is his 75th Birthday!!!

Why "brown"?   - the kids sometimes call him their "brown pap-pa" (yes, I should probably work on their political correctness...) 

What can happen in 75 years????

 Lots.

You can grow up with good friends...

You can find the love that you will spend your life with...

You can start having some babies...

which turn into some beautiful girls...

(said girls go through some somewhat awkward stages along the way...)

 

 You'll have some grandkids.

And more grandkids and great grandkids

 

 

Until you have so many that you can barely keep count!

 

Along the way in that 75 years you'll grow and nurture 

your family; and our families.

You'll find God.

You'll pray for our bumps and bruises, for our souls,

for our broken hearts and sometimes broken bodies. 

You'll love our spouses almost as much as you love us 

- and our kids even more so.

You'll show what all can be done in a life when you've 

been blessed with 75 years.

Happy Birthday Dad* - and Thank You!

We love you!

(* much of this also applies to Mom - even though she's not 75 yet :-)

First Day of Christmas Break

Saturday was the first day of Christmas break and it was a good one.  The kids woke up to some snow on the ground.  Not a ton, but enough to bundle up and spend a few hours outside.  It was great snowball making snow.

Ella and Silas used me for a target - 

luckily I was safely behind the glass door.

 

Ella showing me her littlest snowball. 

We put it in the freezer.

 

Later in the afternoon, we baked and decorated cookies.  I cheated and bought the GFS cookies - they are really yummy.  Nice, thick cookies that aren't too sweet.  I also cheated and bought the icing - 6 pounds of icing.  I still have 5.89 pounds left so let me know if you need some!

Silas had a very difficult time NOT eating the cookies and sprinkles while decorating.

After I moved the decorated cookies, I let him lick the wax paper with all the sprinkles and crumbs.  He was in Heaven with all that SUGAR!

 

They did a great job and had fun. Messy, but fun!

Ella Art

We're going to have to make room for Ella to have her own studio soon - she's taking over the house with her art work.  A couple holiday favorites...

O Cannon Bomb, O Cannon Bomb

We put our tree up a little earlier than usual this year (several weekends ago). We made the annual trek to Lowe's because that means I get to avoid walking around a tree farm in -8 degree weather.  We are NEVER at Lowe's more than 12 minutes total.  And Silas and I are usually back in the car warming up after 6 minutes.

We got home, turned on the Christmas music, poured the eggnog and got out all the decorations. I noticed that Silas was singing very heartily to "O Tannenbaum" (Nat King Cole version) but Si's words were a little off - "O CANNON BOMB!  O CANNON BOMB!! Mah blah mah bah bu bee bo. O CANNON BOMB!  O CANNON BOMB!  Ba dum ba dee bo moo boo."  I know I'll never hear the words to that song the same again...

Ella decided that she wanted to be the Christmas Lion.

This was her wreath that she made last year in Kindergarten

- it now hangs on her bedroom door.

It's nice to have a (tall) teenage boy in the house for things like helping his dad string the lights on the tree - that is a job that I don't care for!

I like this picture (below) because you can't see who's holding the lights.

Mason was walking with them and I hadn't changed the shutter speed - hence the "ghost" 

Miss Ella Boo is also very helpful in the decorating of the tree - she loves to hang the ornaments and her job is to be the angel topper (at least while she is still small enough for Daddy to lift her up there)

We've been lucky that Cleo has not showed any interest in the tree or batting the ornaments off of it.  She is much more interested in sleeping in the basket of junk on top of Ella's book bag (she sleeps on it everyday if Ella leaves it on the floor or anywhere accessible).  Like I've said, she's a funny cat.

I CANNOT believe that Christmas is a week away.  It totally snuck up on me this year, especially with the events of the last few weeks.  I was out shopping until 11pm tonight (sounds worse than it was - I didn't even go until 9pm).  Target was dead and it was a good time to go (thanks to Margie, otherwise I'd have been in my pj's in bed at 9:05). 

I'm feeling pretty good - starting to bounce back and somewhat ready for the holidays.  I think the kids are going to be happy with Santa this year and I am taking time off between Christmas and New Year's to get some organizing done around the house, recharge myself, do some fun stuff with the kids AND to mourn turning 40.  I think I see some massages, pedicures and wine in my near future...

Time for an Update - caution, a little sad

It's been quite a while since I've posted an update - part lack of motivation, part no time, part not sure how much to update.  So, I'll update briefly on what I wasn't sure I'd share (but decided that it's something that I want to look back on in context to where we are as a family and I want it here).

I found out that I was pregnant a couple days after we returned from our NY Finger Lakes trip in October.  We had a 6 week check and ultrasound on 11/16 and saw the baby bean, a strong heartbeat and all seemed to be going well.  I was feeling pregnant and sick as a dog.  Then sometime the week after Thanksgiving I noticed I wasn't feeling quite as sick.  We had a 9 week check/ultrasound scheduled for that Thursday (12/3) and as soon as I saw the baby on the screen, I could see there was no heartbeat.  If you've ever seen a baby/fetus on ultrasound, as early as 5 or 6 weeks you can see the flicking white beat of the heart. I think my doctor was just as crushed as we were (we had a miscarriage in June too and Dr. G is such a dear and she felt so positive after we saw the 6w heartbeat this time).

My body did not take care of business naturally this time, so I had "the procedure" yesterday afternoon. No complications, everything went smoothly.  I get sad when I think about the baby beaner - but overall doing well.
One of the worst parts about yesterday was having to go ALL day without any food or water (the other worst part was being taxied down the very long hallway to the operating room - I didn't care for that).  The procedure wasn't until 4pm.  By noon I was dying for food.  I was even hallucinating when they rolled me into the OR - the basket full of surgical sponges looked like big chunks of cheddar cheese (the nurses thought that was hysterical so I zonked out with them laughing at me).  Margie and I stopped and got HUGE gyros on the way home and soon after I crawled into bed for the night. I fell asleep last night with Ella snuggled by my side and that was probably the best therapy of all after such a day.

Today I feel kinda like I've been beaten with a stick but overall okay.  I've had some time to cry, to sleep, to eat! and lots of laundry to distract me when needed.  It's an odd mix of grief and profound gratitude for the blessings that we have in our life.

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.

- Bernard Williams

 

You KNOW It's a Good Thanksgiving When...

the phrase "there is a testicle caught in my throat" is used at the dinner table that your mother is also sitting at.  All I can say is that it involved my sister (Lisa) who had recently eaten calamari for the first time and apparently got the words "testicle" and "tentacle" confused. Maybe it was a boy squid...dunno.  Either way, it made for a great laugh. 

We had the Thanksgiving gathering at our house again this year.  It generally consists about about 30 adults and children.  Quite the madhouse but so much fun.  Justin makes a delicious turkey, stuffing and gravy and the rest of us fill in with an array of side dishes (and of course desserts!).  
Oh and we had a new delicacy this year:

We really missed having our NY Youngers (Grandpa Jim and Aunt Amanda) here this year like we usually do.  Hopefully they will get to visit us before or around Christmas.  

There is much to be THANKFUL for this year (as always).   Healthy kids, family and friends topping the list. Job stability in a very uncertain economy is another. I've really seen a lot of folks out there struggling over the last year with the death of loved ones, loss of a job, ailing parents, sick children - and I know every day, not just on Thanksgiving, just how blessed we are.  And it is wonderful to take the day and share it with the family and all be Thankful together.

Ahhh....

Silas was giving me lots of hugs this morning at breakfast.  I hugged him back and asked:

"Why am I getting so many hugs this morning?"

His reply:  "Because I love you so much"  he said while giving me another big hug.

Whatever it is he wants, he's getting it!

Translation?

I hope that Santa has a translator that speaks / reads

1st grader!

I love the top where she says: 

"To santu clos"

And Santa resembles Last of the Mohicans meets Edward Scissorhands 

Because I have so much extra time...

I decided to start a blog specifically for my photos.  I wanted to have some place other than this blog which is really about the kids/family.  You'll find my Foto Babble here (and in the blog roll list along the left).

Early Evenings = More Togetherness

With the onset of early evenings, we are spending more time inside the house. I think I was really meant to be a bear and hibernate all winter.  This early darkness means earlier dinner, earlier bath and pajama time.  

This means we have more together time, which I love.

More time...

  ...for Ella to practice her reading with Silas and Cleo

...for lots of snuggling

and extra giggle time

(I LOVE seeing them laughing and giggling together)

and for being slightly sillier than usual.

I hate to see that Summer is gone and Autumn is flying by, but I like the more routine evenings of colder weather.  It's cozy.

School Pictures

2009 school pictures are in...

Miss Ella - 1st grade

Silas James - preschool

I'm happy with the pictures, though Ella forgot to take her jacket off and Silas appears to have some chocolate or something on his lower lip...and he looks a bit like it's painful to smile.
No picture of Mason yet. They had them taken before school started (at Freshman orientation) and I didn't know and didn't send money so we have to do a reorder...

He looks like this 99% of the time...always wearing the striped jacket and hat on his head.

Mason - 9th grade

A Silas Funny

The phone just rang and I answered:

me: Hello?
telemarketer: Hi, this is John from Yada Yada Chimney sweep company
me: Oh, no thanks, we don't have a chimney...
(hang-up)

Silas: Mama, was that Santa??

99 Piles of Junk...

99 piles of junk in my house, 99 piles of junk...sort one out, throw sh*t out...98 piles of junk in my house...

It is totally a never ending battle around here! Over the weekend I felt compelled to tackle the laundry room. The piles of junk in there had gotten out of control, making it difficult to actually DO laundry in the laundry room. There was an avalanche of junk threatening to fall on my head...



So, I pulled everything out of there, threw it all on the kitchen floor and started sorting and pitching. BAGS of candy left over from Easter and July 4th parade (tossed!), 5 purses from my various purse changes over the last year (or more...), stuff that needed dry cleaned, snacks, juices and pantry overflow, parts of Halloween costumes, on and on...

The problem is...this is the point in organizing projects that I tend to lose steam.
I see ALL this stuff scattered all over and I'm like "UGH, what have I done!?"

But I marched onward and continued sorting, tossing, sorting, tossing...sorting, tossing...

And then!

We now have a beautifully organized laundry room
that we can actually do laundry in!!

Justin worked on the hall closet the same day with similar results - feels good to have some semblance of organization in the house!

Hmmm, what can be next?