Pre-Christmas

It's a week into the new year, so I better get busy and finishing writing about the end of 2011.

*I recall some years when my kids saw Santa no less than five times.  This year they only caught a brief glimpse of the Jolly Fat Man at our Ward Christmas Party. We did manage to get the obligatory Santa-lap-photos of Aubree and Thane (who, surprisingly, didn't cry), but Bryce refused to get closer than two feet.  I'm not bothered.  I decided it's just not worth the trauma to make my kids sit on a stranger's lap for a photo op.

As we stood in the short line to meet with Santa, I remembered that Santa would ask the kids, "what do you want for Christmas?"  I knew what Aubree would answer (an American Girl doll), but it occurred to me that Bryce was totally unprepared for the question.  I bent down to explain to him what he could expect, but the line moved quickly and too soon it was our turn.  Sure enough, after speaking to Aubree, Santa turned and asked the obvious question to Bryce, "what do you want for Christmas?"  Bryce was stymied.  First, he looked at me confused, then repeated Aubree's answer, "a doll?"  Finally, he stated, "I'll be happy with whatever I get."  

*Another favorite Christmas tradition is decorating gingerbread graham cracker houses.  Truth is, I don't like gingerbread and am too lazy to bake it, so we've always just used graham crackers with moderate to minimal success.  This year, thanks to Pinterest (amazing), we learned the Secret to using graham crackers to make fabulous, sturdy (lazy-mom approved) houses.  Want to know the secret (this could seriously change your life)?  

Forget frosting or royal icing, the trick is white chocolate.  Oh yes! Melt up a little white chocolate, pipe it onto your crackers (I used a plastic baggie with a small hole cut in one corner), stick the crackers together (I even found a graham cracker house pattern!), wait a couple minutes, and (Tada!!) perfectly solid structures.  Genius.  

We waited until Grandma and Grandpa Winters came to town to make our houses so we'd have a better adult to kid ratio.  They made houses with us last year as well and were thrilled with the improvements this year.  

Aubree and Bryce probably didn't notice too much of a difference, because they were too interested in eating the candy carefully decorating their structures.  Is there a better way to use excess Halloween candy?

Thane was asleep again  (poor kid) during our decorating, but don't feel too bad, because he certainly didn't get left out of the demolishing eating of said houses.

* We started another new tradition this year - the Minivan Express.  I got the idea from my spectacular friend, Holly, and have been wanting to try it for years.  One night we put the kids in their pajamas and got ready for bed as usual. 

However, once they got to their beds, they each found a ticket good for passage on the Minivan Express.  We loaded into the van and each kid (and the grandparents) got a cup of hot chocolate (sippy cups for the kids, we're not totally insane), and we drove around nearby neighborhoods admiring Christmas lights.  The kids were thrilled.  Definitely a keeper.

* I already wrote about our plans for Christmas Eve, and I'm glad to report that the scavenger hunt went well.  We invited the Missionaries over for a big dinner and to share in the festivities, and tried hard to spoil them in honor of my brother, Ian, who's serving a mission in Africa (hoping that someone was likewise spoiling him).  

Post Preview

Wowsers!  It's been a whirlwind the last couple months.  I realized yesterday that since we left our Florida home two months ago, we've stayed at seven different places - most of them 5 days or longer.  So, it shouldn't be a surprise that I still wake up every morning wondering, "where am I?"  I can only imagine what my kids wake up thinking.

Clearly, I have a lot of catch-up blogging/journaling to do.  But here is a quick synopsis of our adventures:

Dec. 14 - Grandma and Grandpa Winters arrive

Dec. 15 - Household goods are delivered to our new rental home (kids rejoice to see their favorite toys).

Dec. 17 - Move into new home and out of temporary housing.

Dec. 18 (wee hours of the morning) - Power goes out.  All freeze.  We rejoice that we still have one remaining day in temporary housing and pack ourselves back to the apartment to have warm showers and watch the BYU bowl game.

Dec. 19 - Mark and Erin give talks in church (Thane doesn't believe Mom needs time to prepare and spends the previous week nights crying and crying and crying despite her best attempts to console him).  

Dec. 23 - Pre-Christmas

Dec. 24 - Drive to Hoffman's home (Mark's sister's family) in Richland, WA.  Christmas Eve festivities.

Dec. 25 - Real Christmas (and party the rest of the week)

Dec. 29 - Drive over to Royal City, WA to visit some of our most favorite friends, Ashlee and Tyler Frank and all of Ashlee's fabulous family.

Dec. 30 - Tour a dairy, lament that a visit with the Franks is never long enough, and head back to Richland.

Jan. 1 - Drive back "home" and think how ironic it is to tell the kids "we're going home," when at that point we'd spend more time at their aunt's home than our new home.

Jan. 4 - Mark drops the kids and me and Grandma and Grandpa off at Sea-Tac airport.  Grandma and Grandpa head back to Pennsylvania and the kids and I jet off to California (okay, technically we flew into Nevada, but don't tell Bryce) for a week at Tahoe with my family.

Jan. 5 - California Christmas

Jan. 9 - Fly "home" to Washington

Jan. 10 - Wonder "what do I do now?" (I mean, besides catch up on my blog?)

More details (and pictures - lots and lots of pictures) coming soon.

Holiday Happenings

Yeah, yeah, I know this is quite belated, but "c'est la vie."

We officially started our Holiday season shortly before Thanksgiving with a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Winters. As is typical, they brought down a Suburban full of treasures and goodies, which led me to question whether we actually needed Christmas.
Their visit consisted primarily of game playing, bike riding (well, adults walked, kids rode bikes), book reading (lots and LOTS of book reading - I was afraid Grandpa might lose his voice reading to Aubree so much), and hanging out around the house. The kids were thrilled to have extra attention and even Bryce warmed up quickly.
One beautiful Florida day we ventured out to Magic Kingdom.
Grandma is very adventurous and particularly enjoys the fastest, craziest rides. Since Aubree isn't nearly so daring, Bryce isn't big enough, and I'm pregnant, sometimes we'd stick to the more mild attractions while the others went off thrill-seeking. Strangely enough, my most fond memory of the day was seeing the Country Bears Jamboree show. Now, to be honest, the show is pretty lame, but you wouldn't know it to see Bryce's reaction. I don't know that I've ever seen him get so excited. He was literally spinning around in circles in his glee and kept grabbing Mark's face saying, "look, Dad, LOOK!" He was five times as entertaining as the show.

I love that Grandpa is the only one really smiling in this picture!

When Grandma and Grandpa left to go back to Pennsylvania, the kids were pretty bored with just me to entertain them. Thankfully the holiday events and activities kept us plenty busy!
**One Christmas tradition we've had for the past few years is to go to the local hospital for Breakfast with Santa. It's fun to get a picture with Santa and the kids always leave with a little bag full of little gifts, too. I figured Aubree wouldn't have any problems with Santa, but wasn't sure how Bryce would react. He ended up doing pretty well. You can see in his picture below, he mostly just seemed confused as to why his mom dropped him on the lap of a funny looking stranger.
The funniest part of our morning came when we got Aubree's picture back and noticed something strange (look below and see if you can figure it out)...
Did you notice how her shirt and one of her bows exactly match the background? Pretty good planning on my part, right? No. Aubree was wearing a green shirt and a green bow, which, when paired with the green screen behind Santa resulted in her unusual coordination with the background.
**This year we decided it was Mark's turn to run in the Reindeer Run 5K. Despite great intentions, he didn't train as much as he'd hoped prior to the run (translation - he didn't train at all). Thus, he was disappointed in his finishing time and I had to roll eyes because even without any preparation he still did WAY better than anything I've ever done.

Mark and Larry, pre-race

After Mark finished running, the kids had a chance to run mini-races. Aubree and her best pal, Ella, signed up to run the 1/4 mile race. Bryce stayed and cheered with Dad (he can run next year...)
I got to "run" with the girls, yet no matter what I said, I couldn't convince them not to hold hands the entire race.
**Another fun Christmas tradition is decorating Gingerbread houses. Bryce was way more interested in eating the decorations than using them, so house decorating duties fell mainly to Aubree. Soon after she started her work, Ella came over and the two girls conspired to decorate the house together. In their final masterpiece displayed below you can find two gingerbread girls (Aubree and Ella, of course) standing at the door of their "real house" welcoming visitors inside. They worked together amazingly well and it's obvious they were thrilled with their final results.
I know we did a trillion other fun things around Christmas (like parades, work parties, ward parties, nativity scenes, preschool parties, visits with friends, etc.), but these are the things of which I have pictures, so it will have to suffice.
As a side note, I LOVE the Christmas season. I love all the activities and the hustle and bustle. My only complaint is that it goes by too quickly and there's just not enough time to enjoy each individual activity. So, here's my idea...how about we move Thanksgiving forward two weeks and have it on the second Thursday in November instead of the fourth Thursday? That gives us two extra weeks for Christmas fun! Whad'ya think??

Too Much Fun?

When I was in fourth grade we had an assignment to write a story called, "Fortunately, Unfortunately." As you might imagine, the plot went back and forth between fortunate events and unfortunate events. I think my mom kept the book in my "special school papers" folder and I loved to reread it whenever I had the chance. Although that folder and the story are now probably long lost, I sometimes find myself thinking about the events of my life in like manner:

Fortunately, I have great friends who encourage and inspire me. Two of my friends, Juliana and Amy, have daughters the same age as Aubree and we all try to do "preschool" with our girls. They usually do a much better job, but I do what I can to keep up. The theme for April was "Birds" and Juliana arranged a field trip to the local Wildlife refuge. We had our own private tour guide. Our guide prepared a perfect presentation talking about the birds around us and then gave each kid a pair of binoculars and took us on a 1/4 mile bird-hunting adventure. In addition to seeing a great variety of birds (including Ospreys in their nest!), we also saw four large alligators (which made me slightly nervous since we were traipsing through their territory with a bunch of little people).
Unfortunately, somehow in the process of loading up the kids to go home, I lost my camera. :(
Fortunately, Mark's parents came to visit a couple days later and we used his Mom's camera to take pictures of the many, many activities in which we participated over the course of the following week.
Unfortunately, my kids never let me take good pictures of them in their fancy Easter clothes. It's a running theme. The picture on the left is the best we got from our photo shoot Easter morning. This was Bryce's first Easter; doesn't he look handsome in his suit?!
Fortunately, we were able to go to the beach, the zoo, and on numerous Wildlife Drives with Grandma and Grandpa. Bryce spent the majority of his time at the beach fast asleep in my arms. Aubree played in the sand with her friend and with Grandpa. Grandpa's primary job was to fetch bucket after bucket of water for the girls to dump sand in, or dump on each other, or stick their feet in. When Bryce woke up, we joined in the sand playing and built a great sand cake. The wildlife drives were somewhat disappointing - we didn't see any alligators (except for a piece of one being eaten by vultures), but did see a ton of neat birds and an armadillo. The zoo was fantastic! I loved seeing Bryce get so excited when he saw the animals and the Brevard Zoo has some great exhibits where you can get very, very close to the animals. Aubree remembered quite a bit from when we had a membership the year she was one. I think we'll enjoy our membership this year.
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the kids at those fun events (edit: I swiped a beach picture from my friend's blog - thanks, Amy! That's the sand "cake." Notice Bryce eating the sand...yum!).
Fortunately, I had a meeting get rescheduled that allowed us to go on another super bird-related field trip with Juliana and Amy - and Grandma & Grandpa got to come too! We made an hour trek to Orlando to visit the Audubon Society's Birds of Prey facility. They host a kid's program once a month and this time our little ones were the only participants. Again, it turned out to be a really amazing experience. The theme was "eggs" and the kids all got to hold models of different bird eggs and learn about the different parts of the eggs and how the babies grow. Did you know that the baby birds eat the yolk and drink the egg white as they grow? I didn't. The kids got to go on a little egg hunt, they read stories, colored, and even got out hula hoops and pretended to be little birds breaking out of their shells. The highlight, however, was when the leader brought out birds for the kids to see. Basically she asked, "what do you want to see." The kids asked to see an owl, so she brought out an owl. Then they asked for a Bald Eagle, so she brought one out! That was Aubree's favorite part of the trip. She still talks about "Trouble" (the eagle's name, because he was a lot of trouble to take care of when they first got him). After the program we had time to look around the facility and see hawks, ospreys, owls, vultures, more eagles, falcons...all kinds of amazing birds. The kids even pretended to be baby birds in a scale model of a bald eagle's nest. Thanks for organizing the trip, Juliana!
Unfortunately, all those fun things meant we spent a lot of time away from the house and resulted in lots of missed naps for Bryce. Overall he was a trooper, but by the end of the week I could tell both he and Aubree were suffering from Too-Much-Fun-And-Not-Enough-Sleep Syndrome.
Fortunately, the kids were able to handle one more long day so we could attend Family Day at Kennedy Space Center (one of the main reasons Grandma & Grandpa Winters came down). On Family Day, each KSC employee can take a carload of people on to the normally restricted grounds. This is only the second such day since 9/11, so it's a fairly big deal. We arrived early and made our first stop at the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) where Space Shuttle Discovery is currently housed. This was the first time I was able to see the Shuttle close-up (Mark deals with the shuttles every day at work - he's even been in the crew compartment several times), and it was really interesting to see all the tiles, engines, etc. The picture on the left is a view from the back of the shuttle. The engines are currently all pulled out. The most surprising thing was to see how delicate the tiles are; they are extremely light and you can easily break one by pushing against it with your fingernail! After seeing the shuttle, we walked through the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), which is the largest one story building in the world. The flag you see on the right is the size of a football field! I'd been in the VAB previously, but this time we were able to see a little bit of the Ares 1-X project, which is the next-phase in space exploration and Mark has been doing a lot of work with it. Finally, we hopped in the car to drive out to see the launch pads. There was a lot of very slow traffic, but it was worth it because there were shuttles at both pads. On the left is a picture of Space Shuttle Atlantis which is getting ready to be launched in a couple weeks for a mission to the Hubble Telescope. Atlantis is the shuttle Mark works with the most.
Unfortunately, Mark had church responsibilities in the afternoon so we had to leave the Space Center early and didn't get to see anything else or go to the Astronaut Hall of Fame or the Visitor's Center.
Fortunately, having grandparents around means more people with whom the kids can play. I can't even guess how many hours Grandpa spent reading books to Aubree. Every morning when Aubree woke up she would sneak into the living room where Grandma and Grandpa were sleeping. If they were awake, she would ask them to read her a story or play with her. If they were still sleeping, she would curl up on the couch or the rocking chair and watch intently to see the moment they would open their eyes. She was very sad when they left.
Unfortunately, Bryce showed no such enthusiasm for the "strangers" in his home. The first afternoon they arrived, I left Bryce with them for 15 minutes to take a meal to some friends who just had a baby. Mistake! When I returned Bryce was quite upset and knew that he'd been left behind. It was downhill from there. He decided that when Grandma was near, that meant he might be kept away from Mom, so he'd immediately start crying and beeline to my side.
Fortunately, shortly before she left, Grandma found my camera!!! Hurray! She found it under the seat in my car. I promise I'd looked there at least 2 times previously, but she has a very special gift for finding lost things.

Thanks for visiting, Grandma and Grandpa Winters! Sorry I don't have any pictures with you in them...but next time I'll have my own camera, so watch out!