Christmas & Eve

It was a very Merry Christmas here this year and it all started off Christmas Eve morning with pancakes which were so happy to be eaten by three little boys.

The big excitement Christmas Eve was dinner and fun at Oma and Opa's house.  But that wasn't slated to start until the evening, so the boys had a lot of excitement and energy to burn off during the day.  Jason took one for the team and engaged them in an epic wrestling match.

Sadly, I have no pictures of that evening with all the fun and food.  Suffice it to say that the food was delicious.  And the evening's entertainment (a nativity play put on by Aunt Audrey and most of the kids) was hilarious.  Josh cast himself as the "wise chicken" and did a disturbingly excellent impersonation of a chicken (can I use the term impersonation here?).

Being a little tired with all the Christmas prep, I had threatened to sneak into the boys' room that night and change their clock back an hour.  They are under strict instructions not to leave the room until 7:00am and I figured the adults in the house could use an extra hour (although I must boast that this is the first year that all the gifts were wrapped before Christmas Eve night!).  However, this idea appalled my mother so I agreed not to do it.

So here they are at 7-0-0!

Much paper ripping later, we had three happy boys with lots of new loot and very warm hats.

Don't let this picture fool you - this is a very happy Hulk boy.

And the best part of Christmas day: they get so involved with their new toys that it's hours before they start begging to playing on electronics.  Hooray!

Santa Update

Well, dang it.

The boys had all heard the truth about Santa.  We can it the trickle-down effect.  Once the oldest knows, there is very little we can do to prevent that kind of information from being leaked.

Plus, we figured once they were old enough to ask if Santa was real or not AND could not be put off by the question of "What do you think?", we should tell them the truth.

(And as a side note, this knowledge took down the whole fictional holiday pantheon: Easter Bunny, Leprechauns, Tooth Fairy, etc)

So, the myth of Santa was gone.  But, we still like Santa.  We still watch movies with Santa.  Santa is still fun.

And we have tried very, very, very hard to keep this information contained so as not to incur the wrath of other parents.

But now Christmas is less work for us.

Until this week.

Apparently, and oh-my-gosh-whose-idea-was-this?, last week Michael's teacher had the kids write emails to Santa using a website where Santa sends an email back.

Uh oh.

Michael came busting in the door yelling, "I BELIEVE IN SANTA!" and proceeded to show me his email proof.

Alrighty.

This is super unfortunate as he is not going to be getting the sled, boomerang or new bed he asked Santa for the week before Christmas.  The odds weren't good on any of those items to begin with.  But even though I am a bit of a procrastinator, the boys' presents were all purchased/ordered and even wrapped a while back.

What to do?  Resurrect the myth?  Relabel the gifts?  Have Santa deliver for just Michael the believer, but not for his unbelieving brothers?  Convince Josh and Ben to play along?  Or ignore it and hope it is all forgotten in the excitement of new toys?

So, although, recent events notwithstanding, I am very happy with Michael's teacher, if this turns into Christmasaggedon on Wednesday, I think I am going to ask Santa to put some coal in her stocking next year.

Concert Week

This week ended up being Concert Week for us.  

First up: Josh's recorder concert.  

Picture this: 60+ fourth graders with plastic recorders.  

I half expected them to be handing out ibuprofen prophylactically with the program.  But, no. 

Josh has been very diligently practicing his recorder this year.  And we, bad parents that we are, make him practice either outside or in the basement.  Giving a plastic tube with holes to a child can be just so very, very painful for the listeners.  Our half-hearted support notwithstanding, he has made a lot of progress and the concert was really not nearly as bad as I had feared.  I am so proud of him for his dedication and even more proud of him for getting up on the stage in front of a bunch of people and performing.

Second concert:  Festival of Lights at the DC LDS temple.

Choosing to attend this the Saturday before Christmas was probably not the smartest decision we've made.  Especially for two introverts who find crowds to be stifling and draining.  We saw a men's quartet that did a lovely job.  And then we wandered around the Visitors' Center and the temple grounds looking at the lights.

Santa

When the boys were little, they wanted nothing to do with Santa.  One year we even got tickets to ride the Santa train and Michael hid under the seat on the train when Santa came by.  Another year I searched far and wide to find a good Santa who wouldn't make Josh cry.  

Now, the cat is out of the bag on Santa and no one has a problem sitting on his lap and telling him what they want.

Go figure. 

Someone asked me the other day if the boys were upset about Santa not being real.    No, they aren't.  I think they deal with it like they deal with superheroes - they know they aren't real, but it is fun to play and pretend.  So, we watch lots of Christmas movies with Santa and we have Santa toys.  And I finally get my Santa pictures without anyone crying.  

However, I did hear Jason whispering urgently to the boys not to tell anyone while they were waiting in line to see Santa at our church Christmas party last night.

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

We got the first snow of the year this week!  Ben mistook it for a sign that it must be Christmas.  Poor boy has been watching too many Christmas movies - we don't do a white Christmas in Virginia.  We do a gross and muddy one, sure, but not white.  Even after we cleared up his confusion, he still seemed to enjoy playing out in the snow.

Snow meant two "snow days" (even for Jason WAHOO), so we tried doing some Christmas crafts.  I encouraged the kids to do some Christmas-themed paintings.  Michael painted Santa Claus.  Ben painted something highly abstract.  Josh painted WWII planes bombing submarines.  (At least they weren't zombie planes bombing submarines.) Merry Christmas!

We also tried making ornaments out of dough.  We used our Star Wars cookie cutters so the boys had a blast.  But, I didn't know very much about the dough and we rolled it too thin so they all curled up and died on our table over the next two days.  We'll have to try that again.

Eventually, everyone went back to school.  ::insert Irene's huge sigh of relief here::  I was able to get back into finals mode and finish all my tests.  Hooray!

On Friday, Ben and I bundled ourselves up and went into DC with some friends to go to the Botanic Gardens.  They have a Christmas display every year with structures made out of plant materials with trains zooming around.  

The boys loved seeing Thomas and Percy race around their tracks and then they wanted to pose in front of the "big pencil" for a picture.

 Rare photographic proof that I was along on this adventure.

Part way through we got an early Christmas visitor.  AUNT RACHEL!!!  And Ben was nice enough to let us all take a picture together.

I do have to say, that my life is considerably easier just carting one child around on adventures.  I enjoy taking all the boys to do things I think they will enjoy, but I definitely appear and am more sane with just my littlest buddy around.

Bipedal

Poor lizard is surrounded by creatures that walk on only two measly feet.  Some days I think he thinks he is one of us.

Real Plastic Tree

'Twas 23 days before Christmas when Jason climbed into the freezing abyss that is the attic and dragged out the Christmas decorations.  And that is when the crazy broke loose.  It might have been the peppermint oreo cookies they had for dessert, but I am pretty sure it was the opening of boxes filled with stuff we hadn't seen in 11 months that made the boys lose control.  They were so excited we could barely get them to stop damaging things.  

Ever seen the movie Up?

SQUIRREL!!!

That was them pretty much every few seconds.  But, we did manage to unpack everything without permanently destroying anything except the manger Josh made for a pink rubber eraser wrapped as Jesus.  And that was a loss I was prepared to accept.

It took a lot of "encouragement", but we got the tree up and then the fun part began - DECORATING!  Jason and his OCD usually supervise this part to make sure that the blue and silver balls are evenly distributed.  Then the boys get to add their handmade ornaments and then argue over who gets to hang the Millennium Falcon.  Finally, Ben received the honor of putting on star and then we had ourselves a Christmas tree!

Let the Christmas countdown begin!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a lovely Thanksgiving filled with ham, rainbow jello, cousins, Imaginiff, and (based on where the boys are looking while I am taking this picture) bunny ears.

Fun Run

The place:  FHS

The time: 5:30pm on a misty, rainy night

The event:  Fun Run including 3 races: 800m/1 mile, 400m/800m relay and 800m.

The cast: Michael and 2 of his friends and a cousin; Josh and 2 of his friends and a stranger

The medals:  Gold and bronze, respectively

A Veteran

It is Veterans Day weekend and we were lucky to find ourselves a Veteran for about 24 hours.  It was too quick of a visit, but it did involve Outback Steakhouse and the boys jumping on Uncle Doug so it was good. We are so proud of the two veterans in our family - we just wish they lived closer.  Or maybe we wish that we all lived in Colorado.

Bull Run Mountain Conservancy

I apparently just cannot get enough of taking pictures of these cute kids while I am dragging them on hikes through the fall foliage.  They only seem to mind as they complain the entire time, but afterwards they all report that they had a great time.  Again, it was a little bit chilly and therefore perfect for hiking.  And there was no school (someone save me), so we had to get out of the house.  Although I have the utmost respect for people who choose to homeschool, every parent-teacher conference or teacher work day reinforces the decision to send my kids to school.  

Now that I got that off my chest, back to the cute kids.

The Leaves

We tried.  Really, we did.  We tried, once again, to miss the changing of the leaves.

But gosh darn it if we didn't manage to actually see some Fall foliage today!  Now, just to make sure we didn't get too excited, there were many parts of the park that looked practically dead.  However, we did drive through some lovely areas today.

This time around we started at the most northern edge of the park and stopped off at the Visitor Center for a few minutes and so Ben could squeeze "Marshmallow" the bear's nose.  This was also where Nana purchased a book called Who Pooped in the Park? and a couple of others - more about those later.

Then the boys just sat down to admire the beautiful vista.  No, this picture is not at all staged - why do you ask?

It was lovely.

Enjoying the lovely.

Somewhere along the drive we discovered something interesting.  We discovered that winding roads, reading books and too much sugar from Halloween can all add up to carsickness.  Poor boys.  Josh and Michael weren't doing so hot.  Luckily, we were pretty close to the restaurant so we could get out and eat something not made from high fructose corn syrup or any type of corn syrup.  Some noodles/grilled cheese sandwich/mac and cheese did the trick and everyone was feeling up to scampering around the rocks before we headed home.

Halloween Pics

Pumpkin Time!

Nothing says celebration like gutting a gourd.  Which we actually haven't done for several years.  But the trip to Great Country Farms included pie pumpkins (which Michael actually wanted to make into a pie instead of carve), so we decided to do the traditional thing and carve them.

 

First, the boys made their designs.

 Then Jason cut off the tops and the boys got their first look at the ooey-gooey insides.

Next I would like to show you pictures of the boys cleaning the seeds and stuff out of their pumpkins.  But, strangely enough, I don't have any such pictures.  Perhaps it is because no such pictures exist.  Perhaps it is because it never happened.

Perhaps.

Last, Jason carved their designs.  

Fun night!