random christmasness

Can you believe I still have to write a bunch about Christmas?  Ya, I can believe it too.  I'm still going to though - for posterity sake.  If I don't do it now, I'm still going to need to do it when it comes time to print it all out for the book, so I may as well get at it one month later rather than several.  I won't be sad or hurt if you just skip right over this nonsense.  In fact, I won't even know....

The first gift under our tree this past Christmas was actually a birthday gift for Maddy, from Lucy.  She's sweet and thoughtful like that. 

One of the most entertaining and smile-worthy moments this December was watching Lucy watch videos that her and her friend Sierra made with photobooth back in Ecuador.  Lucy was just cracking up over and over as she watched herself and her best buddy being goofy.  It was so sweet too seeing her miss her friend.  It was actually pretty telling as well.... partly about her personality and partly about her life experience thus-far.  While Lucy has missed her friends, she doesn't really lament them as the rest of us might.  I think she is so used to having friends leave or her leaving friends that this is just part of how life is.

A common sight that we are trying to overcome.  It may look like the rapture, but no, it is just Lucy's usual method of removing her ski pants.

Common sights in our home.  Lots of "selfies" (I'm cool like that - I know the lingo!).

 

I just finished telling my boss at work today that I have no problem posting ugly pictures of myself (was a conversation about the fantasy land we put ourselves and others in when we only post the best of ourselves on all the social media).

Shortly after Christmas we received a very wonderful Trader-Joes delight of a package from Oma and Opa.  Oh, the wonderful things that package contained.  We were all beyond delighted!!

 

 

 

And some more new Christmas ornaments that I haven't shown yet.  This one Lucy bought for me.

This is Lucy's thrift store ornament that I talked about earlier.  She has no love for it.  I do.

And a little art work that hung out at our house over the holidays.

The fireplace giant coloring page from caravanshoppe.com (I think I mentioned them earlier).

A little more Christmas to come and then we'll move on to a little more current affairs.  Patience.

fargo and this guy

This past weekend I got to have the rare privilege of a night away with just my boy (and Glenda and Cole).  As sort of a birthday-ish celebration for this guy, we took the boys to Fargo for a night and even had them skip school as we went from Sunday to Monday.  I thought I was brilliant in that plan because the hotel, etc. wouldn't be crowded on a Sun./Mon.  Unfortunately I forgot to consider that we were going to the US and there are different holidays there…. we encountered Martin Luther King Jr. day.  We still had a fabulous time regardless.

One of the highlights was a trip to Toys 'R' Us.  Cade treated himself to a Perplexis ball.  And that perplexes ball kept him occupied a good long time.  Instead of nose in an electronic device of some variety, the boy had his nose buried in this gizmo.  Walking through stores, in the restaurant, in the car. Pretty cool.

 After a bit of shopping, we headed to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner.  Well, we headed there but took a while to find it.  A long while….. even though it was only about 3 minutes from the hotel.  Finally we got smart and used Glenda's gps. (Cade's idea) (and he just wrote that….).

 Cade's dinner.  Grilled cheese and "fresh" green beans.  The fresh green beans were actually cooked.  He thought they'd be raw.  Actually, I think he thought they would be Debbie Douce's cooked green beans, but he was thoroughly disappointed.  He misses Debbie's green beans.

 I was a little less healthy and went for a ginormous hamburger with bacon, cheese, onion rings and bbq sauce.  It looked and sounds better than it was.  And a side of fries.  Not quite as fresh as the green bean choice, but much tastier.

 The hotel had a great pool - which is why Glenda smartly chose it.  The boys had an great time crawling on the floaty pad things, roughing up their hands on the rope ladder and being dumped on by the water buckets.  The big event was throwing balls into the buckets and then jumping through the dumped out water and balls when the bucket tipped over.  Several minutes of video footage were shot.

 Sunday was a beautiful day.  Mild and gorgeous.  Monday, on the other hand, got stinking cold.  Crazy the difference a few hours can make.

It is not often that a mother gets away with just her son.  But let me tell you, it needs to happen more often.  Time with a son is much different than time with a daughter.  Both great - but very different.  And this stuff needs priority in my mind.  I loved loved loved my time with my boy!

sk8ing - 'cause we're cool like that

 The kids have been dying to go skating and finally, finally, the weather has been nice enough.  And they had a ball.  Before we went (this is way back on Jan. 11th), Lucy built a "fort" by digging a tunnel in the snow bank in our front yard.  She decorated it with evergreen branches and other lovelies like that.  Then she carved chunks of hard snow into hearts and things.

Then off we went to the outdoor rink by the library. Naturally, the cousins needed to come along - it would be difficult to have any fun without them!

The kids have not had much experience skating so they were mostly learning.  They all did amazingly well, though.  Even though you would find them often on their booties, they would get back up again and keep trying.  We were so impressed by their good attitudes and tenacity.  Even when their were a few tears (see above), they kept going.

Mia in particular was often on the ice - flailing around.... all it did was make her laugh, which was great.  Eric told Lucy at one point that if you weren't falling, you weren't trying hard enough.  In her good attitude, she kept smiling and saying that every time she fell.

Cade the skating photo-bomber.....

Skating just might be the new favorite family activity.  Its a good one.