Christmas: Eve and Day

After our appetizer dinner and a rousing game of QuipLash with Mom and Doug, the boys gathered on couch on Friday night to open their Christmas Eve gifts. "What could it possibly be?" Michael ponders. Josh considers that Isaac is disproportionately excited about pajamas. Ben wonders how long he will have to sit there fake smiling until his mom will stop taking pictures. Isaac thinks, "CAMERA! PRESENTS! WHEEEEE!" 

After the thrill of new jammies wears off, everyone is eventually sent off to bed to sleep or battle with insomnia until the morning.

Christmas day Uncle Doug and Nana arrived at our house at 7:47am to be met by...well, nothing really. All of the boys were still asleep (or, as Ben claims, asleep again). I was busy burning a frittata while keeping an ear open for noises upstairs. Isaac got up a few minutes later and then Jason woke up the rest of the boys.

And this picture sums up their individual attitudes pretty well even if it isn't a lovely group photo. Josh is not even close to being ready to deal with, well, us. Michael hasn't quite transitioned to being awake. Ben is waiting patiently for the photo shoot to end. And Isaac is prolonging the photo shoot with his inability not to express his excitement physically. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Presents were opened. Trash was collected. And then everyone dispersed to their respective spaces to check out their loot. 

With bad weather in the forecast, we had a lovely Christmas meal with Mom and Doug a little after noon. It was delish. 

Side note: This sums up much of Christmas, and every freaking day, with teens:

As the gifts were opened large chunks of snowflakes began to fall. Perfect timing and we headed home laden with enough leftovers to carry us through the impending snowstorm.

The last gift of the day was a Nintendo Switch. We have been telling the boys for years that we would not buy one. We have a WiiU (and now an Xbox of some sort donated by one of Josh's friends who, I assume, felt it was his obligation to save Josh from the horrific reality of only one gaming system) that works fine-ish. BUT, I caved this year and it was supposed to be the gift and a huge surprise.

Due to circumstances completely out of my control Josh figured it out.

And this, my friends, is when I learned a VERY IMPORTANT fact.

Many moons and several kids ago, I read that kids cannot keep secrets until they are about age 8. As in, developmentally, they do not have the ability to keep secrets.  

THIS IS A LIE.

I do not know what age it is at which kids can keep a secret, but I CAN tell you that it is not SEVENTEEN.

::deep breaths::

Both Michael and Ben had heard the news within 24 hours. This is when I got a little petty and decided that we wouldn't give them the Switch Christmas morning and make them question deeply the information Josh had spilled to them. 

None of them said anything Christmas morning (because they are smart kids), but Josh seemed to be in a little bit of funk for most of the day.

All of that to say, that they were actually surprised when I came downstairs after we returned from Mom's and told them I just found a box of gifts in the back of our closet that we "must have forgotten."

While I think they liked all of their gifts this Christmas, they were very appreciative of this one.

Let the gaming begin continue!

Gingerbread House

The interest in this holiday tradition is dwindling in our house. Gone are the days when the boys fight over the icing bag or the candies or who gets to break the arms off of the gingerbread people and cover the gaping holes with red frosting.

Sigh

Isaac was the sole decorator and got to make all of his ideas come to life. Well, within the confines of his mother's ability to intricately pipe sugar sludge out of a wonky tip.

The process took several days because the attention span of a 6/7-year-old is only so long, but the job was finally done and no gingerbread people were harmed in the creation of this holiday masterpiece.

Isaac is SEVEN

December is full of anticipation and gifts for many of us, but more so for our youngest. 10 days before THE big day is HIS big day. This year was an odd year for him (in more than one sense of the word) so no friend party. Also, Jason had a ticket to fly out the morning of Isaac's birthday. The result: two days of celebration.

First: birthday dinner and gifts with all of us and Nana and Uncle Doug. When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday dinner, he said, "chicken nuggets in a bun." An unfortunate choice for those of us who can't eat chicken nuggets (me and Jason) or buns (me) and for those who don't think that actually qualifies as food (Nana) or a meal (pretty much everyone). The upshot was he happily devoured chicken nuggets in a bun while the rest of us dined on make-your-own tacos.

He did, however, make a more conventional choice for his birthday dessert: chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and sprinkles.

Somewhat more unconventionally, I purchased sparkler candles. A surprise for him. And, from Ben's perspective, a fire hazard. 

And as he blew/spit his candles out, I renewed my commitment to cupcakes over any other shape cake for all birthdays.

With bodies buzzing on sugar, we moved to the living room to open cards and gifts.

It was a happy day.

Yet, his actual birthday was a few days off and needed to be special, too. Some late night hyperventilation into latex pouches turned into a fun door decoration. 

No special birthday dinner, but chocolate chip pancakes were served as requested. And 2 bags of mini chocolate donuts were in his backpack for him to share with his class.

And round two of chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and sprinkles.

Isaac remains our intense kid who feels deeply and shares his feelings with the world. He is devoted to all of those whom he loves and easily makes friends wherever he goes. He loves unicorns, Minecraft, chocolate, stuffies, toy weapons, and competition. We're excited to see where this next year takes him,

Working Stiff

 "Welcome to Taco Time, I mean Taco Bell"

I think so far he only made that slip once, but it makes a great story. 

Aunt Rachel counseled Josh once that he should never get a job at a fast food place where he likes to eat because that would ruin it for him. Which was apparently one of the reasons why he applied for a job at Taco Bell. Well, and the fact that it is very close by and he has friends who work there. Okay, maybe the last two more than the first reason. I don't think that there is much on the menu he can eat anyway, except, and this is a BIG EXCEPT Mountain Dew Baja Blast. And we have just decided not to ask him how much of that he consumes. 

The Fall 2021 Semester is DONE

It started exuberantly in August and limped to a finish in December. In between I participated in some phenomenal groups, went toe-to-toe with the APA manual, read enough peer-reviewed articles to last a lifetime, and learned enough to be overwhelmed.
 

Lessons learned:

• 9 graduate credit hours + 4 kids is too much
• Zoom works best when it isn't crucial that I can see and hear what is going on
• Google is great, but Microsoft is better
• My procrastination skills haven't faded with age

Teams Glizzies

Today was the second robotics competition of the year and I got an email from the coach letting us know that the kids were all supposed to wear their robotics club t-shirts. 

So you can probably understand my confusion when we brought lunch for the team and found Josh and the other THS team captain in hot dog costumes. 

In retrospect, I probably would have been confused by the hot dog costumes even if I hadn't been expecting robotics t-shirts.

They are teams Glizzies - a type of hot dog for those in the know or who care to take the time to Google it - and seem to be passionate about both hot dogs and robotics. This shouldn't be surprising since we were asked to bring 13 Costco hot dogs and sodas for the teams' lunch.

It was another challenging day for the teams, but they were more successful than the last competition and ended the day in high spirits.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Nothing screams HOLIDAY SPIRIT like forcing your kids to decorate for Christmas. I say kids, but really only the teens require any sort of coercion. For Isaac, opening up the Christmas decorations bins is almost as exciting as Christmas morning. And Ben tends to be pretty engaged as well.

The teenagers, who also happen to be the ones tall enough to help with the entire tree assembly and lighting process, are less enthusiastic.

Until one of them gets chosen to put the top on the tree. Then they are all ALL IN. We couldn't do a repeat of last year's attempt to trick them all into thinking they put the top on, so we had to pick just one of them. Or rather let a hat pick just one of them. Unfortunately, the Sorting Hat was not available. As a backup, we put all the boys names on pieces of paper and then place the papers in a hat and drew one out. It was Michael's hat so there was some concern about the process being compromised, but Jason and I overrode the objections and Michael proudly finished the tree.

Getting our holiday cheer on!