The Eagle has landed.

Nick finally, FINALLY, got his Boy Scout Eagle Award.

It took forever to do the project, and then like another year for him to finish the paperwork.  It's a good thing we were kind of on a deadline as 2012 was the 100th anniversary of the Eagle, and if you earn it during that  year, you get a special badge. 

And then because my parents were going to be in town for Christmas, we hurriedly put together a Court of Honor so that they could be there. 

I was kindof dreading that, because all the other moms had put together a slide show showcasing their boys and all their scouting adventures and endeavors, and in the 8 years since he's been in Cub scouts, let alone the 4 years that he's been in Boy Scouts, I had less than a dozen pictures to work with. 

Of course, I didn't have to do a slide show, but I think it's the best part.   It's so fun to see how they've grown, and all the awesome stuff they've done.

Fortunately, his current and former leaders rallied for me, and I received lots of great pictures. 

I even got an awesome video that I was able to show.  It featured Nick as a little baby faced 12 year old boy scout at his first attempt at a "trust fall."  He was so little and scared, and trying not to cry, and there were his leaders and friends encouraging him and cheering him on.  It kinda summed up scouting, learning that with the help of his friends and leaders, he can do hard things.

We had one of Nick's leaders present him with his award, at which point he chose to also present me with an award for my service to the scouting program over the last few years.  Needless to say, I was a little shocked and humbled. (notice John and Nick laughing in the back ground?)

So that happened with the support of the friends and family and church members that were able to take time out of their busy lives at short notice during the holiday season to support and honor Nick with this accomplishment.

 We ate cake and cookies.  I made the cookies. (with the help of my mom)

Christmas

December flies by so fast and I am usually suffering from a lack of sleep, so remembering the details is proving to be difficult for me.  I have pictures to prove Christmas happened, so there's that, but it sorta feels like looking at the pictures taken in the first few months after you had a baby.  Maybe it's just me, but I look at pictures from the first few months of my kids' lives and all I can think of is "Good thing I got a picture of that, because I don't remember it."

So, Christmas happened.

The house was decorated.

A bazillion caramels were made and sold or gifted.

Santa came.

Presents were opened.

Children were delighted.

Christmas music played in the air.

Grandparents visited.

Lots of yummy food was eaten,  (sorry no pictures)
 
And amidst all the joyous festivities that come with this time of year, we did our best to remember why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

Nick's birthday

Nick turned 16. Sixteen. Yikes.

Fortunately the silver lining of having a kid whose grades aren't up to snuff, is that he doesn't get to drive. And it's hard to date when you can't drive, and I don't have to stay up late wondering which is worse, that he's behind the wheel of a car, with hardly any experience, and he's out there on the road where other drivers who might be under the influence of something, or texting, or whatever.  Or that he's out with a girl. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but casual, fun dating leads to serious dating, which leads to kissing, and getting too serious too young, and broken hearts and all those things parents just don't want to have to deal with and I start to get all panicky thinking about it.

Anyway, Nick had a birthday on Christmas Eve.

Poor kid, Christmas Eve is a tough day to be born, but he deals with it with his usual cheerful disposition.

I made him his favorite dinner and dessert, he opened some presents, and we spent the day together as a family.

We usually end up going to the temple to see the lights on his birthday, partly because one year he said that's what he wanted to do, so it has become a tradition, and partly because the month just gets away from us and pretty soon Christmas is practically here, and that is just one of the things we haven't checked off our Christmas season to-do list.

We really celebrated his birthday a few days later.  He invited some friends to go see Les Mis, and then they went to a stake dance afterwards. 

I also made his favorite Butterbeer cupcakes. Aren't they pretty? I'm super proud of the way they turned out.

I love how he loves to dress up.  The dance was a casual affair, but Nick is rarely seen without suspenders and a bow tie.  In fact, one dance, he was wearing his black bow tie, which he rarely does, and some girl came up to him and proceeded to tell him how every month she looks for the guy in the black bow tie because apparently one time he was wearing that particular one and he totally made the dance for her.  Like he was the only guy to ask her to dance all night.  Nick says that most guys run for the doors when a slow dance comes on, and many girls will tell Nick he was the only guy they danced with all night long.

I like to tell him he's like the nerd prince. 

He's an orch dork (orchestra) and a drama geek, who loves sci-fi and bow-ties and dressing up for school for no reason whatsoever.  He's awkward and goofy, and has been known to trip over walls, and will probably never be a star player on any field or court, and I don't think he even knows what a comb is for.  Many people don't give him the time of day, girls think he's weird, and guys think he's gay (really), but it never fails, that as soon as people look past all that, and give him a real chance, and get to know the man he is becoming, they love him.  He's smart, and funny, and kind, and sincere.  He has a big heart and is quick to volunteer to help out with no thoughts of what's in it for him. 

He loves school, and loves being involved in everything, in fact he just dropped lunch so he could take choir too, so now he will have an early morning class, an on-line class, and no lunch just to fit in everything.  His grades still mostly leave a lot to be desired, but one of his teachers told me she wishes she could give him an A based on his participation in class. He's there, he participates, he's eager to learn, but unfortunately he still has to turn in assignments.  With his name on it.  Some day he'll get that figured out and then I think there will be no stopping him. 

Anyway, I guess what I am trying to say, is that I am proud and grateful to be his mom.  And I am having seriously conflicting feelings about all this growing up business.  It terrifies me, and yet at the same time I feel I am starting to get a glimpse of the man he will become, and I love what I see.

Big helper

I have never put out Christmas presents before Christmas eve.  In fact, I wait for the kids to be in bed, asleep, before I put presents out.  The reason for this is that I have always had little kids.  Little kids who can't leave well enough alone and are prone to ruining any surprises that were laying under the tree waiting for Christmas morning. 

Not only could I not put them under the tree, the wrapped presents usually had to be hidden or held under lock and key lest any little children get their hands on the presents.

Christopher has always been the worst.

Another thing you should know about Christopher is that he likes to take matters into his own hands.  If you are too slow or unavailable, he will do his best to take care of matters that he thinks need attention.

So this year, early in December, he decided that the tree needed presents under it.  He got tired of me taking my sweet time, so he set about remedying that situation.

Mostly items from my closet.

My school supply stash was raided,

As were several of my books. 

yes, that's a hair stuck in the yard of tape he used.

 He's a go getter, that one.

Some of the "presents" we opened Christmas morning.

 



NYC with Min

Ok, you know how when you are hanging out with your friends and somehow the idea of a "girls trip" comes up, and everybody is excited and saying things like "that would be so fun, we should totally do that!" and then for whatever reason, nothing ever comes of it?

yes? no? just me?

Anyway, last summer, I was sitting in my friend Mindy's kitchen and talking about our recent family trip to New York City.  (She asked) Anyway, that same old subject came up about how it would be so fun to take a girls trip to NYC sometime, and I made some comment like "That would be awesome!" and "I'll take care of the hotel!" (love those frequent flyer perks) and John heard all this and as he opened up his laptop said, "Sounds like a great idea, you girls deserve it, what weekend works best for you?"  And proceeded to make it happen. (He's awesome like that.)

And that is how it came to be that I went to NYC with Mindy for my birthday.

New York City is awesome.  I love it.  Mindy had never been, so she had me play tour guide and we spent a couple days running around the city. 

First, we ate dinner at Ellen's Stardust Diner. (It's kindof a tradition and highly entertaining)

Then we went to the Empire State Building.  I loved how even the Christmas decor was art deco.

We even paid the extra bucks (totally not worth it) to go to the highest observation deck.  However, standing up there about as close to the heavens as you can get, right before our very eyes we saw a shooting star.  I took it as a good sign that we were going to have a great trip.  (And we did)

We traveled mostly by subway as it's the fastest and cheapest.  I love this picture, but funny story, as I heard the train coming I thought, "This would be a great picture!" so I quickly tried to move Mindy into position to get "the shot", but she thought I was trying to push her into the oncoming train. I freaked her out a little bit. (She wasn't in any danger.)

That night we hit the midnight showing of the premier of The Hobbit.  Unfortunately jet lag and lack of sleep the night before caught up to us both and we both had a hard time remaining conscious during the movie.

As a runner, Mindy really wanted to go running in Central Park.  She planned on getting up early the next morning and go before we started our day.  Somehow we had alarm clock failure and didn't wake up until noon when the maids came in to clean.  We must have been very tired.

The first item on our agenda the next day was to visit the Statue of Liberty.  Unfortunately hurricane Sandy had taken it's toll on Liberty and Ellis Islands, and visitors were not allowed.  The best we could do was take a harbor cruise.  That was still pretty cool. 

 

We did some shopping and checked out Rockefeller Center.  We both wanted to ice skate, but it was crazy crowded, and the line was ridiculously long.  It must be a pretty popular thing to go ice-skating at Rockefeller center, especially at Christmas time.

One of the things Mindy wanted to do was see Wicked.  She never had, but she felt bad that I had, and kept arguing that we could "see something else".   I argued that Wicked is worth seeing again and again, and while there were other shows I would like to see, there wasn't anything I wanted to see more. 

She loved it.  She even agreed that if the roles were reversed, she would feel the exact same way, so by the end of the night she didn't feel guilty about "making" me see it again.

The next day after Mindy's run through Central Park, which she loved and felt totally safe doing so,  (despite her friend's warnings that she was going to be murdered "Haven't you seen CSI?!?") we headed up to The Met. If I had to pick just one museum in New York to visit, this would be it.

After The Met, we walked through Central Park to see the famous Bethesda fountain.  It's featured in a number of movies, but I texted a picture of it to Nick with the caution to "Don't Blink!".   The fountain is featured in a particularly scary episode of Doctor Who. Like as in the angels come alive and kill you when you're not looking. (Even blinking)

Since we were practically in the neighborhood, we headed over to see the LDS temple,

which by the way, is right across the street from Juilliard. 

I found this tree pretty amusing. 

After spending my childhood visiting the lights at Christmas time at temple square in Salt Lake, and taking my kids to see the Christmas lights at the Mesa temple, I laughed to see that despite the lack of space, they still wanted to get in on the Holiday festivities as well.

Dinner that night was spent in Little Italy where we ate until we were sick.

Funny story, all day long we were seeing people dressed as Santa Claus everywhere we went.  (And more than a few scantily clad Mrs. Claus'.) We even saw a couple Buddy the Elfs, a snow man, and even someone dressed up as a letter to Santa.  I finally got up the nerve to ask this couple what was up.  It was a "Santa Crawl" I'm not sure of the exact details, but the gist of it is dressing like Santa and visiting various bars that are participating.  We had been seeing people ALL DAY.  Since breakfast. This couple was getting a "late start".  I think the most disturbing part though, was that we had seen little kids, in strollers, dressed up as well.

After exploring the nine floors of the flagship store of Macy's, we both waved the white flag and headed home early to our hotel to put up our aching feet and watch TV.  (party animals)  It took awhile for us to each admit that that was all we wanted to do, each of us worrying that we would be a lame ol' party pooper.  Such is life.  Besides, good friends can still have fun whether they are out painting the town red, or just simply "hanging out."

One last thing, the craziest thing happened on the way home.  We were at the airport, on the plane, and the plane was was loaded and ready to take off, and as it was taxiing towards the runway, a birthday balloon got sucked into one of the engines and broke it.  For reals.  In the pilot's over 30 years experience, he had never even heard of that happening.  I'm just glad it happened on the ground.  The ensuing never ending wait in what has got to be the ghetto-est airport in the country was the one dark spot on what was otherwise a fantastic weekend.