What Holiday is this, again?

So tonight I finished the family Christmas photos- they'll go out tomorrow, mostly sans cards.  Sorry!  The entire season got away for me.  Maybe I'll start planning for Valentine's Day on Monday :)  I did spend a lot of time creating (on Picasa) a little DVD of our Christmas photos, but can't figure out how to burn it to a DVD.  So today, I officially give up.  We do enjoy and appreciate all your thoughts and cards... hope you'll forgive our extreme tardiness!

Today I finally cut up Kaden's fingerpaintings into the Christmas Thank You cards... and we finished his "hand turkey shirt" by painting his hand outline on it.  So we've one shirt with 3 years of handprints, but it won't fit him next year.  Unless I sew it onto a NEW t-shirt.  Which, given my track record for completing projects, I should start in about 3.5 hours.

I keep forgetting we have Monday off for MLK day.  I like the idea of doing a service project... and then again I like the idea of hanging on in PJs in the backyard.  Hey, does completing your own unfinished house/kid projects count as service?  Just kidding.  (Mostly.)

Anyway, we also packed up the tree and Christmas stuff earlier in the week, but left the boxes on the porch because there's always random ornaments or PJs that show up a few days later.  But tomorrow they go into the attic!   Well, after we get the wreath off the door (I got used to seeing it there).  

Speaking of getting used to things... we have 3 pumpkins still in the front door area.  Not carved, but glitter painted.  I ignored my neighbor's suggestion to paint them red, but maybe now we will.  For Valentine's Day, of course!  I was officially tired of them at New Year's, but now it's kinda like Kramer test-driving that car with the fuel gauge on E:  how long will they make it?

My Heart is His

and his dads too :)





Well, no matter what these photos show, today was clearly Kaden's First Valentines Day. They had a party at his daycare, and he came home with a paper lunch bag full of cards, candy, stickers and tattoos, and other fun stuff a pencil and playdoh and fun Annie's organic bunny snacks! He was so excited, and that was BEFORE he ate any candy. I think we should be able to stretch this out all week. Then we can use the dollars Grandma gave him to go buy more candy 75% off :)

Happy New Year (and Merry Christmas too)

Happy New Year!! Last night was very low key for us (and I loved every minute of it!). We again streamed LIVE from Edinburgh for the Scottish Hogmany party. Fireworks over the castle, bagpipes, Auld Lang Syne with a brogue, great music and accents in general. The best part? Their midnight is our 7pm ;)


Why yes, we ARE still celebrating Christmas here. Well, sort of. Normally we plan fun stuff all the way through Epiphany, but for the sake of sanity Jim has packed up the tree and most decorations as I type. We still have a few crafts and, ah, cards to finish-- plus we'll do something on Jan 6th, like dinner at the park and a small gift ;)

Our genius packing idea this year? We marked one box "early" to hold the DVDs, candles, music, advent books and nativity toys for kaden... so we can get that one after Turkey day but leave the full decorating for later. Which is what we'd like to do, but have never separated the stuff out before :)

At Kaden's preschool, the Christmas season is synonymous with "send home a craft every single day." Seriously. Some are keepers (like the photo and frame above) and others are very temporary (like the paper angel he insisted on playing with until it was shredded). I think his preK crafts are a lot like childhood in general- meant to be fully played with now, and maybe a few things will carry over as mementos. But the stuff is for the experience now, not a museum later.

Our Christmas celebrations were nice. Also low key. We've been more focused on house and immediate (local) family than journeying out to visit friends or parties. We also skipped the Visit with Santa and other holiday-ish events because Kaden's been battling a cold the last few weeks. Today was his first morning out- gorgeous day too- where we went to Mass and then the playground with some other families. He was totally tuckered out, poor guy. We did visit the doc and are currently in day 4 of the 10 day Medicine War. But that's a whole other post.

so Happy New Year, folks! We'll enjoy the weather, the football, the black bean and pork loin dinner, and our family :) Hope you will too... may your year be filled with many blessings !

Christmas Prep- Cards & Cookies

After posting every. single. day. in November, I feel like a serious slacker going back to 1-2 times a week. Oh well, we'll all adjust.

Keeping with the holiday-preparation theme, since a few cards have already arrived (congrats Alicia and Patty, you're the first two!) I thought we'd talk about them. Jane was just saying she finally ORDERED her photo cards, and I bust out laughing (quietly, since Kaden is still sleeping) (long nite, we were up at 5am!). I haven't yet decided to TAKE the holiday photo. Er, it seems to me I may have talked about this already, but I'm too lazy to double check my post history. Hey, this makes the blog JUST like talking to me in person, when I often repeat myself! Lucky you!

Anyway, I like to send out Florida style photos. Oooh, I should find past years and post them. But the tree-at-the-beach, or Merry-Christmas-written-in-the-sand, can only be done so many times. I have 3 great ideas for this year, but one of them involved finding a white, short sleeve 2t oxford shirt. Apparently that doesn't exist. The other one involves aa BIG prop, also which I cannot find. Or did find a medium one that might have worked, but couldn't talk my hubby into buying it (a rare grinch moment, lol). And of course, there's finding the time to get to the beach, which we had planned for the sunday after thanksgiving, but sickness postponed it and now... well who knows when we'll get there.

But, honestly, part of the FUN of writing cards for me is to have it happen in that week before Christmas, when everything slows down a bit and the Spirit is high. Or even the day after Christmas. I operate on the theory that the Church celebrates for another 2-3 weeks, so I can too. (Liturgically correct in terms of timing, haha).

Anyway, Kaden is stirring so we'll leave the cookies for another time. Enjoy the holiday madness!

Farky, Farky, Farky!

For the last week, we were at my inlaws in Pennsylvania. You can tell by the mountains and lack of green in this photo:



You can also see some of the many wonderful cousins, just one branch of our family tree. Kaden is the little guy in the (can't you tell) black Steelers hoodie, kicking a football in a physics-impossible kind of way. The cute dog in the middle? That is Sparky.

He belongs to Jim's parents, and is about 9 years old. He's darn cute, and a really good dog. He puts up with all the grandkids (up to at least 16 of 'em now). He barks a lot too. He is a superstar, according to Kaden. Whenever we call Grandma and Pop, he wants to talk to Sparky.

To prep for our trip, I made Kaden a little photo book, Monday-Friday, with photos of what we'd do (airplane ride, Hershey's Chocolate World) as well as people he'd see (relatives). We "read" his book over and over, practicing names of people and letting him know what to expect from vacation. I was pretty impressed how quickly he got names, and how often he said them correctly.

Then we arrived. He must've been overwhelmed by all the excitement, because he started mixing up people. And, my favorite part, SParky became Farky. As is, "Farky goes to work" which was really "Sparky's going to bark". or "Shh! Farky sleeping" which is what we said to calm Kaden down as Sparky hid in his happy place behind the chair. Oh, Farky, Farky, Farky.

I'm lucky, or blessed depending on your point of view, because both my birth family and the inlaws are all pretty wonderful people. We have a pretty good time when we're together. My pre-travel worries hinge mostly on us getting sick. It seems to happen every fall trip. Two years ago, my MIL and I ate turkey off paper plates, with a 3 month old Kade balanced on my knee. Everyone else was throwing up. This year, we got off easy. It was only a 12 hour stomach bug, and only 6 of us were hit (as of Saturday am!). We've slept a whole lot since arriving home, and are all getting back to feeling normal now.

What? You missed that we were on vacation all week? Of course! I figured out how to schedule posts ahead of time, thereby limited by screen time at my relatives' house (sometimes a sign of rudeness!). You didn't think I'd tell you, my internet stalkers, that we'd be gone, did you? LOL!

Here's two of the coolest moms in the universe. My opinion might be slightly colored by the fact that I didn't have to clean up much, since they did the lioness' share of the work. That's reason #4503 I love 'em both!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm grateful for...

Apples, Books, Coffee, Dads, Elephants, Farms, God,
my Home, Ice cream, the Jenkins clan, Kaden, Lime trees,
Moms, the Neumayers, being Outside, Playtime, the Queen,
Relatives, Schools, the Thanksgiving holiday, Underwear, the Vollmars,
Western wear, Xrays, Yellowstone National Park and Zoos.

Enjoy your holiday, everyone!

Thanksgiving Cooking

Holilday Series- part 3. or maybe part 4- I think I forgot to label that last one ;)

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I enjoy a bit of experimental cooking. A few years ago, we discovered a recipe for stuffed pumpkin- mmmm. It's got apples and raisins, pineapple chunks and nuts, plus you scrape some of the pumpkin off and add fall spices, sometimes a tbsp of cider, then bake it up for an hour or so. Good stuff, I tell ya. But definately a side dish. We keep experimenting with it. The first year it was so sweet, like a fruit compote, so we added it to vanilla ice cream. Since then, we tweak it a bit each year. It's like an exotic cranberry relish- totally optional but really delicious.

We have a turkey potluck lunch at work - maybe this is the 2nd or 3rd year? It's a lot of fun, since it's potluck. We try to make it healthier, but the "traditional" carb dishes always win out. So we have 1 or 2 or 3 healthy things and 101 carbs and sugar dishes!



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Actual Thanksgiving Day is rarely hosted at my home. Maybe 2 times in the 11 years we've been married? So I get out of cooking that mess. I mean to help clean up, but you know what they say about good intentions. The place we go has fantastic food, though, so the biggest challenge is to stop eating when I'm full. Especially when the pumpkin pie comes out, again. Every year I say I'm going to "detox" the week before... and it never happens. And then afterwards, we're flung right into the Christmas Sweets Extravaganza... Hmm, but maybe this year I have a week between Thanksgiving and the Start of Christmas Parties. I think I'll start Saturday :)

Oh! Holiday Group Activity Time!

I almost forgot.. in the Holiday prep theme goes the Planning of Group Activities. We (loosely) organize a turkey potluck at work, we have some sort of Christmas-cookie-decorating party. At some point, we get together with extended family, and that involves lots of kiddos. This year, I'm returning to (my personal) tradition of thinking up a Group Activity.


Past classics include creating handprint Tshirts for Grandma and the cousins (harder now because of so! many! cousins!) (and half of them are older with big hands, lol)...

...kids making english muffin pizzas for the family while wearing personalized "kitchen cousin" aprons (very messy but also fun)...

... a group trip to McD for happy meals and then to the movie, meal toy matched of course! This was probably one of our most expensive days, but we were both working with no kids at the time and happy to splurge. Though I think every sibling/family involved offered us money- hey, we could've made money on that day!

... the make-your-own bird feeder with pinecones and birdseed. Much fun, because we first went on a walk to find the pine cones, then came back inside to assemble. Not so much fun was the two year old who decided to eat the peanut butter and seed mix !!!

I'm sure there were others, but this is all I can think of for now. Are you wondering what THIS year's activity will be? Oh, I'm so sorry but I can't tell you! Part of the fun is that the kids never knew what was going to happen. And since I haven't done it in a few years, I bet it'll be a big suprise this time too!!

Holiday "Making Stuff"

Part 2 of the Holiday Prep series...

Painting wrapping paper for Christmas.

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I really enjoy making stuff, all sorts of stuff. I prefer if it has a practical use and not just a decorative one, but for the holidays the decorative stuff is good too. I really enjoy making gifts, but rarely set aside time to do it anymore. Used to be, I/we would pick a "new" project and learn how to do that during the summer/fall so we could create gifts for Christmas. But now with Kaden, there's more of a "making-holiday-card" vibe going!

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This is supposed to be his foot as the turkey body with the hands arranged behind it as the feathers. But he wanted to stick them down himself, so...

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So over the last few days, we've been "creating" all sorts of handprint turkeys. Paint, crayon, marker, scissors, foam, sticker-- basically, whatever we could get our "hands" on! It's fun for me and- in small doses- fun for him. We even had fun doing some with our neighbor twins, who were delighted with their "Craft Day"- and even more so when we hung a few on the fridge. The rest of the morning, one of the kids would randomly point at the kitchen and say "hey! those are my hands!"

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Now comes the hard part- getting them into envelopes and mailed out in time for Thanksgiving!!

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Happy Hearts, Everyone!