Zoo birthday

Since we were all in recovery mode on Greg's birthday, it wasn't exactly the most festive day ever.  (I didn't even bake a cake--we had a Trader Joe's panettone and leftover brownies.)  But Mary was mindful of her daddy's big day, and proudly made him signs and pictures.

We celebrated Greg's birthday with a trip to the zoo.  (Because what else would you do when it's 27 degrees outside?)

It turned out to be a great time to visit the zoo.  The animals were all as busy as animals in a zoo can be.  So it sure beat visiting on a hot summer afternoon when the animals are hiding in the shade.  We even saw the whole lion family out and scampering about--and that daddy lion sure has a mighty roar.

Pictures from our outing...

Look!  That grizzly looks just like my kids.  David and Mary like to have really big claws too!  From now on when they refuse to have their fingernails trimmed, we get to call them "Grizzly."

The highlight of the our trip was visiting the red pandas.  I've been to our little zoo a million times, but I've never bothered to wander over to the red pandas.  Little did I know what I've been missing:  They are so cute!  So cute, so cute, so cute!  I'm not one to get caught up in cuteness like watching YouTube videos of kittens, but these little guys had me squealing like a ten-year-old in love with Mr. Bieber.

And now, because every blog needs a dozen pictures of red pandas taken by a 6-year-old (really! every blog does--it will increase its cuteness factor by 3000), I present to you a dozen pictures of red pandas taken by a 6-year-old:

Okay, so that wasn't quite a dozen.  But you get the idea, right?  And are you not dying from the cuteness or what?!!  (We all agreed that they look like some cute Pokemon. Can you tell we have Pokemon on the brain in our house?  Yikes.)

It was a happy trip to the zoo on a happy birthday!

Happy Birthday, Greg!


P.S.  Okay, so if it weren't for the red pandas (Red Panda to the rescue!), it probably would have been a pretty lame birthday.  BUT the day after Greg's birthday, we did drag the kids to The Muppets. Hooray!  Oh, and Greg is getting a NEW CAR.  So he's not complaining about anything.

How you know you really love your kid

When the whole family spends winter break trying to figure out how to play with Pokemon cards for real.

Christmas Day 2011

Christmas morning!

Christmas with kids is the best!  (Christmas morning makes up for the years of dirty diapers, the sleepless nights, the bickering, the excruciating first grade homework assignments, the stress, the worry, and all the stuff that keeps Parenting magazine in business.  Had I known how important Christmas morning was to parents, I would have put on a better show for my mom and dad when I was a kid.  But that's the point.  That your kids have no idea how much joy their joy brings to you.  It's pure, unconditional, spontaneous joy.)

After the big reveal, we ate the sugary cereal Santa brought, gorged ourselves on cinnamon rolls, enjoyed the contents of our stockings, battled the AT-AT, cared for the new baby Katie in our family, and watched this.

Finally, we dressed for church.  (And took these pictures.)  With it being Christmas Day and all, we thought it might be nice to get a family picture.  You can see how well that turned out--

Oh well.  You get what you get and you don't throw a fit.  Especially on Christmas.

All of the children at church performed "Christmas Bells" and "Star Were Gleaming."  Mary was right up front, peachy proud and super serious as she sang.  (She sang!!)  David was somewhat distracted by his tongue during the first song (it was like he'd just discovered it for the first time), but he did sing the second song.  (He sang!!)  The service was a beautiful and brief one hour, and the whole congregation got to sing lots of Christmas carols, which I love.  Our kids survived the excruciating wait to open the rest of their presents, and they weren't any more poorly behaved than any other Sunday.

(Incidentally, in the car on the way home from church, David, in that innocent and matter-of-fact way of his, announced, "It's hard for me to believe in things I can't see.  Like Santa Claus and Baby Jesus.  I think they're both not real."  Just what you want to hear on Christmas--that your kid doesn't believe in Jesus.  I am perfectly happy to be perfectly honest with my kids about Santa Claus--but at that particular moment Mary was listening intently.  And Mary wants to believe.  She needs to--it's one of the ways she's been organizing and controlling the universe this year.  I am also perfectly happy to let my kids believe in Santa if they want to.  So I wasn't about to put a crack in Mary's Christmas.  In response to David's announcement that Santa Claus and Baby Jesus are both not real, I said, "David, one is real and one is just for fun."  I thought this was obvious, but he asked, "Which one?"  Seriously?! "Which one?  I don't know which one is just for fun!"  Let's see, one motivates your parents to drag to three hours of church every Sunday and one just brought you a giant AT-AT walker.  Which one do you think is just for fun?!?  I told him his heart would tell him which one was real, and then I did what any parent would do--I blew him off and said we'd talk about it later.)

After church we opened the gifts under the tree.  Hooray!

First, David and Daddy got to work passing out the presents.

Then the fun began!

The last present under the tree was a big, huge box for our whole family from my grandma and Aunt Janell.  It was something I was in cahoots with my aunt on.  The kids were super excited to open it.

Inside was a Sunday movie night box!  A box filled with fun DVDs and all kinds of yummy treats.  Our kids are old enough that we can really enjoy sitting down to watch a whole movie as a family.  (This will be perfect, since we're going to start attending church at an earlier time this year.  So having something to fill the long Sunday afternoon and evening will be great!)

Thank you, Aunt Janell!

The rest of the afternoon was filled with those typical Christmas afternoon activities--like assembling toys and sporting new scarves.

Also, David played with the At-At Walker like he's never played before.  (It is seriously a super cool toy.)

We had our traditional Christmas dinner--finger foods in front of Rudolph.  The kids LOVE this.  You would think we took them to Disneyland or something.

Just before bedtime, we finished the advent calendar.  The contents revealed a puzzle scavenger hunt for one final present (this one from Grandpa Mike and Grandma Evie).  The search was on!

Success!  Two toy airplanes and tickets for a flight to Texas on a REAL airplane!

See you soon, Grandma Evie!

And Happy Holidays to the rest of ya'll!



P.S.  And happy birthday to Greg--TODAY!  May we celebrate with 24-hours of vomit-free bliss.

Post-Christmas surprise

So I guess we weren't finishing up with that stomach bug business after all.  It was still just the beginning.  David and I were the barf brigade last night.  (We both felt great yesterday!)  Poor happy, energetic Mary is the only one who hasn't wanted to spend the whole of today in bed.

Ugh.

When I feel like I can sit upright for more than 3 minutes, perhaps I will blog about Christmas Day.

Christmas Eve 2011

I'm not really a fan of Skype.  Or any kind of video chatting thing.  I will save writing about my rational/irrational Skype anxieties for another day.  But I just thought you should know that no grandparents watched my children open up Christmas presents via a couple of laptops.  Which is why I will now show you way too many pictures of our Christmas.  It's for the grandparents, people.

On with the show!

Like last year, our Christmas celebration officially began Christmas Eve morning with a visit to the Holiday Express exhibit at Olbrich Botanical Gardens.  There are a few trains, the most luscious and vivid poinsettias ever, fresh-smelling conifers, and amazingly creative birdhouses.  This year there were also beautiful stained glass panels of birds.  It's not a big display--but it's tasteful and beautiful and fun enough for kids.

After checking out the toys trains, we walked over to the conservatory. They had a scavenger hunt for plants with practical uses in daily life.  Mary felt very proud to find the banana tree.  (We also found a chicle tree, a rubber tree, a cacao tree, a kola tree, a coffee tree, and many others.  It's a really interesting exhibit!  And they finally got rid of that weird fake sloth.)

We took the long way back to our town (so the little ones could doze off if they needed to), and in the process we hit all the Madison hot spots--Willy Street, State Street, Capitol Square, campus, Monroe Street.  Madison is such a great place to live!

We stopped for lunch at McDonald's.  Greg's grandparents had sent a McDonald's gift card, so we splurged and got the works!  Happy meals and ice cream shakes.  (And, happily, everyone's tummies were feeling a-okay at that moment, except maybe mine.)

Then it was home to prepare our feast.  While the boys watched T.V. downstairs, we girls put on our aprons.  Mary helped me make chocolate balls.  She was a great helper!

In years past, we've always enjoyed a big Italian feast on Christmas Eve.  Greg makes some good Italian dishes (he did live in Rome!), and he's taught me pretty well.  So going Italian was a safe bet for something yummy.  But now that I'm getting more comfortable with more traditional fare--like turkey, ham, and roasts--I thought we'd go more American traditional this year.

So in honor of my meat-eating boys (Mary and I couldn't care less about meat), I cooked up a yummy sirloin roast, using that super slow method I'd heard about on NPR.

And everyone enjoyed the meal!  (Perhaps the boys a little more so than the girls.)  It was a miracle!  Our entire Christmas weekend was punctuated with Mary's throw up on Thursday night and Greg's on Sunday night.  And in between it was a roller coaster of tummy aches and recovery and tummy aches again for everybody.  The stomach flu didn't totally waste all of us.  But it did make us all think twice about food.  (Never before did I realize how many holiday traditions revolve around food!!)  At Christmas Eve dinner everyone felt great.  A much-appreciate little miracle.

After dinner we prepared for our play.  (See here for a glimpse of how we passed the time while Daddy did the dishes.)  Once again, Mary was Mary.  (She loves it!)  Mary picked Daddy to be her "boyfriend," as she put it.  David wanted to be the donkey, the innkeeper, the angel, and all three wise men--as long as he didn't have to wear a costume.  I filled in as the shepherd.  David took charge and bossed everyone around (which, quite frankly, was a relief, since it's usually Mary doing all the bossing), and Mary glowed with pride as Baby Jesus' mommy.


Mary and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem:

Would you like to see the birth of Baby Jesus?   You can't see him in the manger--he's not born...

But then, Ta-dah!!  There he is!

What a proud mama.

And here we have the three wisemen (David), taking a break with their camel.

 But finally the wise men arrive, with gifts, of course.

The end!  (Oh so adorable.  As usual:  See here and here and here for other Christmas Eve Nativity Cuteness.)

Next we opened our Christmas Eve presents.  The kids each get a book and new pajamas from Mom and Dad to enjoy on Christmas Eve.  (This year they also got cuddly new robes.)  David and Mary also get to exchange gifts with one another, as well as give their present to Mom and Dad.  (This way gift-giving amongst ourselves stays intimate.)  David loved the Ninja Spinners from Mary, and Mary went nuts over the Build-a-Bear ballet outfit David picked out for Hello Kitty (Mary's bear).  David gave me the latest Wimpy Kid book (hooray!) and Mary presented me with a bunch of cute new spiral notebooks (because she's used up all mine).  David gave Greg a tie, and Mary gave him two packages of new highlighter markers (because she's stolen all his).  It was a fun and happy gift exchange.

Just look at these adorable kids!  Don't you want to squeeze them?  I love Christmas Eve.

Afterwards, we enjoyed dessert (cookies and chocolate balls) and prepared the house for Santa.  The kids colored him pictures, put out cookies for him, and found celery for his reindeer.

Then we settled down to finish up our Christmas Eve business.  We opened the next to the last door on the advent calendar.  Behind the door, among other things, was the Baby Jesus for the presepe.  The animals were already on their way to the stable--

It was time to place Baby Jesus, and bring the animals to him.  (This year it was a badger who led the way.)

A presepe usually has all different kinds of people who come worship the Christ child.  But we obviously do things a little differently around here . . .

We lit the candles and sang Christmas carols.  This year's favorites were "Christmas Bells" and "Stars Were Gleaming."  Also, Mary was quite obsessed with "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."

Then I cuddled on the sofa with my sweeties and read their favorite Christmas books...until at last we heard the unmistakable tinkling of sleigh bells outside the window.  David rushed to his bedroom, wondering if any moment he would hear Santa's ho-ho-ho in the living room.  Meanwhile, Mary was hiding under her blanket bawling.  She had been so cute and excited about Santa Claus this year--but I think she likes him better when he's at the North Pole than creeping around her house.

I kissed them goodnight, and Greg did too.  And they fell fast asleep.

Then Santa's elves got to work. We were happy with the results...

(How classic is that?  A super cool Star Wars toy and a super sweet baby doll?!  Our kids are at such fun ages for Christmas!)

Then Santa's elves went to bed, with visions of a happy Christmas morning dancing in their heads.