I heard the wee babes on Christmas Day.

Although, my wee babes aren’t really all that wee-ish anymore.  Or babe-ish for that matter.  Well, Roz is still babe-ish.  Roz needs to find Neverland so she’ll never grow up.  Anyway, I ramble…

Christmas morning the kids found their stockings first.  Everett was excited:

But, I quickly realized that next year it might be better to keep the stockings out of sight until presents have been opened.  The three could care less about opening packages.  They just wanted to eat ALL THE CANDY.  How do you tell Santa to lay off the chocolate? 

You don’t tell Santa to lay off the chocolate.  He did have toothbrushes in there, sooo…

At some point we got them to move on to opening gifts. 

Oh, Roz didn’t know it then, but she LOVED that food cutting gift.  Pictures to come later.

Yes, Yes, Yaul and Huggly Books. 

This is Rosalyn opening a little wooden tote that my Dad made for her to carry all her toys around in.  My Dad is a cool guy.

My mom is a cool gal.  She’s also a festive gal, and sports that jingle bell necklace you see around her neck there every Christmas morning.  I don’t think there is a holiday that goes by that she doesn’t dress to represent. 

She and dad used to don matching union suits every Christmas morning, so when Target was selling these pajamas (I’m wearing in the picture below) a couple of years ago I knew I had to cash in.  That was a fun morning busting down the stairs in that to my parent’s surprise.  So, what I’m saying here is that I get all my festiveness from my mom.  I’ll wear that union suit every year until it falls apart.  I tired to get Nick a green pair that year as well.  Thing is, women’s pajamas don’t fit men like men’s pajamas.  It didn’t work out.  Someday I’ll find him a manly union suit.  I’m sure he’ll just love it.

Later that day, while everyone was off playing with their new Christmas toys,  I found Rosalyn raiding everyone’s stocking stashes.

She tried to cover by acting like she had been opening it for me.  Here she is offering some in goodwill.

But as I left I noticed she kept right on eating.  I did not have the heart to stop this.   I think I remember someone else did shortly thereafter.  But how can you deny this face anything? 

Like chocolate cake?  Here’s Grandpa later that evening helping Roz out as she feasts on chocolate cake with her cousins:

I didn’t get the greatest pictures of the cake eating, but the cake eating itself was great. 

And here is Roz madly chopping away at that wooden fruit when it really is bedtime.  She had snuck away from us and the boys while we were doing the bedtime routine and found her little wooden knife and was happy as could be. 

Look at that orange go flying.  Really, it’s impressive.

Chapel Hill Christmas Parade

Though I’m sure it’s not called that.  It’s probably called a Holiday Parade.  But I’ma call it what I’ma call it.  This happened a good while ago, but I’m going to blog about it when I’m going to blog about it.

Nick stealing a lick.

This float got my vote.

The boys learned what a marching band was at this parade.  I apologize to any marching-band-friends that I may have who are offended by that. 

Blue truck.

Red truck.                            Truck, truck, truck.

Santa.  I think the boys were pointing at the street sweepers that were following.  Ah, well.  Nick thought it interesting that Santa was sponsored by a pawn shop. 

This is what our spot looked like.  It’s very important to see that too.  Roz worked on that lollipop the whole parade through. 

Note:  If you stand at the beginning of the parade route you get all the candy.   I thought this picture was going to look more impressive, but you can’t tell that my pockets are bulging full of sweet lucre.  Everyone is really enthusiastic about handing out the goods right there at the beginning.  A nice man near us told us that last year he was at the end of the parade, and didn’t get any candy.  So, depending on what you’re after, place yourself accordingly.

So, for all my adoring fans, I’m in a blogging mood, and I’ll be writing up a bunch of entries tonight and setting them to post each day, so, get excited.  All our Christmas fun is on its way.      … Okay? Mom?  Will that be sufficient?    ;)

JUMP!

Thanksbegiving

This year we had the lucky treat of hosting Nick’s parents for the Thanksgiving holiday.  They were recently released from their 3 year service in the Accra, Ghana temple presidency. 

I am going to go ahead and start with the blog bragging.   Get ready.  This year I made cranberry sauce from scratch for the very first time in my 29 years of life.  I was amazed at how simple it is to make, and then was left wondering why in the world they sell it in a can!  (Though I do love a good ribbed cranberry mold)  I mean, if it were hard to make I could see it, but ah well.  So I found the recipe in this cool vintage Thanksgiving children’s book that was sitting out at the public library.  You can see that it is mouse approved, and that’s important.

The biggest challenge in making the meal was keeping the kids entertained and keeping their chubby little hands off all the stuff on the counter.  First I thought, ‘ah, just let them help’: It was about as helpful as I imagine a bunch of cats helping would be. 

I tried to distract them with food like my parents did with me back in the day:

Isn’t that a handsome cutting board?  My dad made it all by himself.  This was also the first time that I’ve ever seen Nick get excited about buying cheese.  Yes, Nick bought fancy cheese.  The kids were unimpressed with the fancy cheese.

So, I then gave them some of the cookies we had made the night before and the frosting container.  ‘Here, leave me be,’ I said, as I set the whole thing on the table. 

This worked for ten minutes.

In a desperate move I finally locked them outside.  They loved it:

Well, unlike the kids, at least the leaves I strung up around the door looked happy.

Then Nick got home from work and immediately got to work being helpful in the kitchen:

Oh wait, here he is being helpful:

While I wondered around our yard and jarbled this together for the table:

So, I’ll admit it, we put the kids down for a nap and we ate without them.  Perhaps I shouldn’t record that for posterity or the public, but as a result we had a lovely and relaxing meal where I actually got to chew my food.  Later, when presented with their own traditional thanksgiving food feast, they asked for coco puffs, so I just didn’t feel bad.

We had great fun with Grandma and Grandpa.  Rosalyn especially liked to boss Grandma around, making sure she knew where we were going and what we were doing next and all that. 

Here we are making the aforementioned sugar cookies with Grandma.

The boys enjoyed holding Grandpa’s hand instead of mom’s whenever we crossed a road, and all of them kept Grandpa with a steady supply of books to read while he was here:

Oh, and I like this picture of the Grandmas on Skype.

The end.  Happy Thanksgiving.

The spoils of Halloween

Surprisingly the spoils were generously shared with all.

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Everett: Q
Brookston: T
(Nick made these costumes! I’m so proud)


Roz: Pie  (I made this one, and it was the first time I sewed without wanting to defenestrate my machine in a long, long time.)
Cutie Pies.  Perhaps not as cool as last year’s.

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Unfortunately these little sugar pumpkins weren’t healthy enough to enjoy Halloween on the porch tonight.  We carved them a few weeks ago and they happily decomposed on the steps, but alas, were pretty much sludge by tonight.
So instead we lit up these pumpakins, which I think I made when I was 12 years old or so.