I know you all thought I forgot about this blog. I’m sorry! I’m suffering from a severe case of post-holiday hangover! We have slowly, slowly been putting the house back together, unburying the living room, finding gifts tucked here and there. I had a massive pile by the curb for the recycling truck yesterday. Today I busted out the vacuum cleaner (twice!) and swept the floors. I feel like I can breath again. The family is gone, the chocolate is gone (sent to work with Alan!) and we are starting to find places for things. Alan is back at work and the kids and I are home, trying to clean and not be too crabby with each other as we all suffer through sugar detox together. Good times! :)

I know what you’re all waiting for is the photos, so without further ado…

If this fancy slideshow thing doesn’t work for you, click on the photo below and you’ll be taken to the Picasa album.

1112 – Christmas 2011

We finally got snow! I guess mother nature was waiting for the “official” start of winter on December 22nd. Yesterday was beautiful. Warm, sunny, birds chirping, kids on bikes…

Riding bikes on Dec 22nd.

Today, SNOW! Not a ton, but enough for now. :) Enough to get out the boots and shovels, enough to build a (small) snowman, enough to look like a white Christmas. Hopefully enough to survive the high 30’s and mixed sunshine day!

I let the kids open a few presents today. We had a pile from Greg and Kathy, and a pile from Jim and Julie. I was waiting for Christmas but decided they would have more fun with, an appreciate more, the presents if they weren’t all piled up on Christmas morning. I let them pick a few today and the rest tomorrow. Actually, I let them open a few presents IF they behaved well at the grocery store this morning. Can you believe, it was an excellent trip to the store?!? I had two perfect little helpers, sweet and nice in every way. Maybe I should bribe them with Christmas presents more often ;)

Presents, presents, presents!

Lex is VERY excited! He hasn't stopped working on this since he opened the present. He keeps saying "Awesome! This is so cool!" :)

Eve loves her portable easel. She went right to work drawing me pictures and we discussed all the different places she could use it.

"This is the most awesome Lego piece I've ever seen!" he declared.

Eve doesn't smile for the camera much these days, but I sneak pictures of her. She packed up her easel to try taking it with her.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

A few years ago I started an ongoing note to myself about Christmas for next year. I store it as a draft in Gmail, ’cause I’m slick like that! (or too lazy to figure out a better way) It’s now December 21st and I’ve already started my “reminders for 2012” list. Item #1 is “Put Christmas tree in back corner so people don’t bump into it constantly.” I swear I warn the kids a hundred times a day not to bump into the tree (and I bump into it constantly myself!) and not to play immediately under it. The problem is the tree is right in their normal play area!

Is this the most boring blog post ever? :)

I realize it’s been almost a week since my last update. Gasp! :) Just kidding. Life goes on. What have we been up to? This and that, laced with sugar and spice. I’ll give you a tour from my camera…

I put them to work this year. Check your mailbox.

Signing Christmas cards

We made these super easy treats I found on Pinterest. The kids did 95% of the work.

He's so good at smiling for me!

It's like heaven for them, surrounded by chocolate. See that orange M&M in Eve's hand? Guess where it's going? Not on the pretzels!

Eve, hard at work.

Lex decorated his in a very organized fashion. We had 3 different varieties of M&Ms, so he sorted them by color and then alternated type (dark, milk, pb). After awhile I had to hurry him along because the Kisses were hardening, so he settled for just arranging by color. (the unorderly ones in the front left corner were my attempt to speed things along.)

These have been relegated to the outside freezer because they were jut too quick and easy to eat when stored in the inside freezer. I’ll get them out again next week. They won’t last long.

Hugo Cabret, all 515 pages…

Lex's teacher thought he might like this book. We almost bought it at his school book fair, but it's HUGE and pricey and we worried it would be indimidating for him. By chance I saw it on display at the library later in the week, so I grabbed it. Lex was a bit put off at first but then he and I read the first few chapters together and he loved it. He powered through the rest of the book on his own. I'm going to have to finish it on my own now, I guess. I wish I had as much time to read as he does! :)

The kids “built” a masking tape race track on the floor this week. Complete with pit stops, a Nascar logo, and ads! They have been having fun racing their cars. I discovered I can run the vacuum right over it too. Fun for all! :)

This is the early version of the race track. Ove the past few days additional pit stops have been added, plus random tape patterns (Eve's contributions) decorate the area.

Mema and Grandpa Tom, I hope you're proud of your influence in this house! :)

All pit stops are labled by color. The masking tape is also colored to match. BP = black pit, WP = white pit, etc.

Lex came home with a Venn Diagram from school. In first grade! I was impressed.

A Jan Brett Venn Diagram :)

There is also an adorable letter to Santa, written by Lex, hanging on the 1st Grade bulletin board at school. I wanted to take a phone pic of it on Friday, but sadly my technology curse has struck again and things are failing all around me. Hopefully I can post a picture of it on Monday. I’m sure it will come home with him after Christmas too, but it’s so cute I want to share it now!

Eve, however, decided to bring her letter (well, list anyway) directly to the big man himself. Her school hosted a Breakfast With Santa this weekend and we all went. We enjoyed pancakes and donuts and arts & crafts projects and lots of running around with friends. (Or standing around for the over 15 crowd!) Lex wanted nothing to do with Santa, other than a peek from afar, but Eve shyly waited her turn (luckily the line was short!) and handed Santa her list. She wouldn’t sit on his lap, but that’s ok by me. She told him what she wanted and then let him keep the list! Good think I took pictures of it last week!

Eve with Santa. Silly us did breakfast first, so she has a nice wet mark on her shirt from spilling. Oh well.

Last night Alan and I went to his company’s holiday party at a somewhat local Inn. It was great! I didn’t take any pictures, but again wished the camera on my phone worked because they had a display of gingerbread houses that was just beautiful, including one of the Inn itself. His company spared no expenses on a beautiful dinner, 5 courses!, including a Passionfruit Kiwi Sorbet course. And the wine was flowing. I finished the evening off with a Godivia Peppermint Hot Chocolate while others had coffee. Soooooo goood……. His colleagues are all very nice, the babysitter got the kids to sleep, and we all had a nice evening!

One more week…

I was hoping to get this up first thing Saturday evening, while it was all still fresh in my mind, but alas, life takes priority and now it’s Tuesday afternoon and I’m trying to cram it in to the 15 minutes I have before leaving to pick up the kids and hit the swimming pool. Sooo… here goes!

We had a festive weekend. I signed the kids up for an Elves Workshop held at Lex’s school. I see ads for it every year but this is the first year they were both old enough. The program is run by a local high school youth-in-action group (or something like that!) and they have craft projects and snacks for the kids. They had a blast! They decorated cookies and candles and ornaments. Eve was pleased to find a friend from her class there as well. When I picked the kids up two hours later they were jacked up on holiday sugar and happy as… well, as children at Christmas!! :)

They headed straight for the cookie decorating station!

I took five pictures of these two silly girls and this was the best one I got. For some reason I could not get two sugared up four year olds to stand still for me! Imagine that! :)

We came home for lunch (I was hungry anyway!) and then piled into the car to get a Christmas tree. I had the kids all bundled appropriately, but I forgot one tiny thing. Boots!! We tromped through slushy, muddy fields to pick the perfect tree. Actually, Eve led us right to the slushy side, promptly stepped in a not-quite-frozen puddle and spent the rest of the time walking around in soaking wet “party shoes.” Opps! I carried her to the other side of the field which was much drier and we were quick about picking a tree. Luckily it was a great field and finding a good one wasn’t that hard.

Should we get this tree?

Or this one?

There's our tree! And our very handsome lumberjack!

Back home we had some much needed quiet time (in which Alan put up tree and I put on the lights) and then we cracked open the big box of ornaments and went to town! It was fun, fun, fun! The kids were enthralled and Lex kept declaring the tree “all done!” because he was in a huge hurry to turn on the lights. When it really was all done we plugged in the tree lights, turned off the living room lights, and properly admired our tree. Then I wrangled them all for a family photo :)

Eve insisted on unwrapping and carrying several fragile ornaments at a time. Then she would get frustrated because she couldn't hold them all while hanging them one at a time. Logic eventually caught up to her enthusiasm.

Lex was very careful and gentle in his decorating efforts this year.

Just one final tweak to the star...

Ohhhh..... ahhhh..... rejoice!

Merry Christmas!!

The magical view from under the tree.

After dinner Lex put his feelings into dry-erase artwork.

Lex drawing a holiday masterpiece

1... 2... 3... Christmas tree!

Just for fun, here’s last year’s tree decorating post… by the same name. Creative, I am not. Apparently I like the tree better back in the corner. Something I should probably remember for next year. So far I’m happy with it by the closet this year.

This week the kids decide to write Christmas lists for Santa. I love this time of year because whenever they ask for anything I just say “put it on your list.”

I LOVE that he smiles when he sees the camera. That makes me so happy! (Ignore his crazy hair. I don't know what's going on with it these days.)

Can you guess what Eve wants?

The next day Eve wanted to add more to her list and Lex helped her. They are so sweet when they work together.

The lists

Eve's drawing (well, her coloring in my very rough drawing) and her name written in very small letters. She has been practicing that.

Enjoy! Let me know if you need help deciphering. On Lex’s list the first two items he saw in stores and the rest came from an SI Kids magazine special feature on Gift Giving. I wonder who they think their child readers are going to be GIVING these gifts to… hmmmm….