(Ghosts of) Christmas Present

We had a nice, quiet little Christmas. Just the six of us. The kids got most of what they wanted, except for the real puppy Madison asked Santa for. Christopher was very happy to finally be able to "play Christmas."

Ghosts of Christmas past

I debated posting this last picture, but I figure after posting all those stinking cute pictures of myself, I need a good dose of humility. Ü

Happy 14th Birthday, Nick!

I think Nick is learning it can be tough to have a birthday on Christmas Eve. You never get to celebrate with friends, and your day tends to be overshadowed by the celebration of the birth of another baby born half a world away a couple thousand years ago.

But we try to make his day special, and he's still basically the same little boy who would say "I like having my birthday next to Jesus's".

So who was I to say no when all he wanted for his birthday were my homemade chicken enchiladas for dinner, strawberry dessert instead of a cake, and to go see the Christmas lights at the temple? (Okay, four. He also wanted a Kindle.)

The strawberry dessert was the hardest, apparently there was some strawberry blight and 2 out of 3 of the stores I went to were out of strawberries, and the third charged me an arm and a leg for barely adequate berries.

I did have one little surprise up my sleeve. The Sunday before his birthday I sat next to my friend Scarlett. Her family owns a Cold Stone Creamery and she was saying how on Christmas Eve, they were going to send the employees home early, then hand out free ice-cream in their pajamas.

I thought Nick would get a kick out of that. In fact, I knew it would make his day- free ice-cream, served by friends in their pj's, what's not to love? So we hatched a plan...

We had to time it right, and eat dinner early, so we could head off to "see the lights" by 5 pm. Of course the sun wasn't quite yet down and the kids were starting to worry that we'd get there too early to actually see the lights. And then they were pretty confused when we pulled into a random parking lot because I "felt like ice-cream".

The best part had to have been when Scarlett dished him up a huge bowl of ice-cream and said "Happy Birthday, Nick!"

To which he responded, "Hey! How did you know it was my birthday?"

And she pointed to the back wall and said "Cause it says so right there!"

That's when he noticed for the first time the birthday balloons, and the "Happy Birthday Nick" sign, and the streamers.... (To be fair, the whole place was decked out in red and green streamers, and so to the casual observer it just looked very Christmasy)

I think for the first time, he was totally speechless.

Then while we ate our ice-cream we were entertained with Mason's (Scarlett's son) wicked Tom Cruise in the movie Cocktail impersonation, only with ice-cream and caramel sauce. Scarlett was also pretty impressive as she caught several of his flying balls of ice-cream.

Then it was finally time to be off to the temple to see the lights. It was crowded, but a beautiful evening to be there. Nick enjoyed chatting it up with the missionaries and commented how happy and friendly they are and how he can't wait to go on his mission.

And my first thought was that he's already got the happy and friendly part down, he should make a pretty great missionary....

and then I wanted to scream "No!" because it hit me- I have just 5 short years left. 6 months and he'll be in high school. 4 1/2 years until he graduates. Just two more until he will be driving. And time seems to be speeding up and as proud as I am of the young man he is turning into, I found myself a little sad too...

Happy Birthday, Nick! (Stop growing okay? Please?)

Gems

My dad retired about a year ago. He was a chemist/rocket scientist. (for reals)

He's kept pretty busy since then.

He bought a season ski pass to Alta where he promptly messed up his thumb and had to have surgery. (it didn't slow him down one iota)

He's built furniture, worked on his restored 69 Camaro, and has worked on fixing up the house. He's gone on all sorts of backpacking/rafting/biking/canyoneering trips...

But what I am most excited about are the 1800 pictures he spent days converting to digital from negatives and slides.

Well, One thousand Eight hundred and Twenty Five to be exact.

My parents just arrived this evening and he handed me a thumb drive so I could have a copy of all these gems from my childhood. I've spent several hours since then pouring over them.

Some I had seen. Many I had not. (Including some of my own kids) There's a bunch that don't interest me terribly- boy scout trips and such. A few of the pictures are blurry or under or over exposed, but there are many, many gems to be found. Cute, funny, ridiculous, memory loaded, and even the cringe-worthy. I'm sure I could spend the next year (and I might) posting a retro-pic a day. Here's just a couple to get started. (I plan on doing a whole retro-Christmas themed post soon Ü)

This is the first one that made me bust up laughing. Would you believe this kid grew up to get his PhD in bio-chemistry or something like that? (I can never remember- I try to pay attention, but it is way over my head, and all I hear is "blah, blah, blah....discovered a new protein strand...blah, blah, blah" Or something to that effect.) Oh, and that was the first computer our family owned. My dad built it. To be fair he also grew up to be captain of the swim team and got his name on the school records board more than a few times. (I now have the photos of the records board to prove it)

This was the first of quite a few "What was I wearing?" pictures. It took me a few minutes to realize that was my grandmother's funeral I was wearing combat boots to. FYI, I think they were the only shoes I owned, and I'm not wearing make-up because I cried it off. John and I are engaged in this picture, but seriously, I think if he turned sideways he'd disappear. I forgot how skinny he was. Good thing he has had all these years of my good cooking to put some meat on his bones.

Speaking of good cooking- This picture is like a little time capsule. Those must be my favorite chocolate chip cookies Rich and I are helping my mom make. Notice the cookie sheet on top of the black and white TV? Rich and I used to watch shows like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers, and Polka Dot Door while eating cereal every morning. (one picture- a flood of memories) And see my dad's ginormous lunch box I had forgotten all about? And speaking of ginormous, I am guessing the reason why the cookie sheet is on the TV must be because that freaking huge zucchini is too heavy to move.

Seriously- I am considering making 2011 a "picture a day" kind of year, and if I can't find one (or more) new ones to take, I'll just pick one from the file my dad so graciously supplied me with. (unless there are any objections? seriously- speak now or forever hold your peace)

Golden

Better late than never.

Over two weeks ago Maddie celebrated her 11th birthday. Her golden birthday. You know, eleven on the eleventh. I bought gold candles for her cake.

Which of course also means that I celebrated my golden anniversary of being 24. The eleventh time I turned 24 on the 11th.

Yes, I realize I totally just made that last bit up, and as at least one of my kids likes to point out, I'm not really 24, also, clearly the day is all about the little girl -as it should be.

Since her (our) birthday fell on a Saturday, I took her donuts to share with her class on Friday, and also brought her In-n-Out and ate lunch with her at school.

Throughout the next week I was treated to lunch a couple of times with friends Ü.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning when we woke up. John and Nick were off at a boy scout campout, so the rest of us rode our scooters to Einsteins for breakfast. I only fell once. All in all, a good morning.

The rest of the day was spent seeing A Christmas Carol at the local Hale Center Theater, then off to Benihana for dinner. Naturally, we got a babysitter for Christopher.

One interesting item of note- Zach ate and enjoyed 4 pieces of shrimp before he figured out they weren't chicken. I don't know how he didn't know they were shrimp. He watched the little buggars get cooked, and their little tails get chopped off and tossed in the chef's hat. He still refuses to accept the fact that he likes shrimp. I wish I had video to prove it.

I thought it was a really good day. I think Maddie did too. Of course nothing could top my birthday eleven years ago when I got the best birthday present ever.

I'm not dead.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

Like most people this time of year, I've just been busy.

And so now of course, I have a little bit of blogging to catch up on- 3 birthdays + Christmas + and a few other little odds and ends, and I'm procrastinating because the more I have to do, and the longer it's been, the less I am inclined to do so.

But I guess I'll start with some of the odds and ends.

I did manage to take a couple pictures this month, and so I'll share those.

For all those who asked- yes Madison and I got an A. 100%. 50 out of 50.

Christopher likes to pick out my clothes. His favorites are the "name shirts". He's learning his letters, so he likes shirts with letters on them. I wore this particular shirt one day when I had no other exciting plans than making caramels. (Naturally I was seen by someone who is the kind of person to wear heels and lipstick to do her grocery shopping and she did laugh at me when she came to the house to pick up their order of caramels- in a good natured, non offensive kind of way...)

Of course, that was nothing compared to the outfit I wore to drop Nick off at his jr. high. He had a super-early morning church activity one day and they were supposed to drop the kids off at school. But they were running late and Nick landed on my doorstep needing a ride to school. I fished my keys out of the jeans pocket that were lying on my bedroom floor, and rushed him to school. As I pulled in to the parking lot, it occurred to me that I needed to phyiscally walk him into the building and sign him in. Did I mention I was wearing a dirty blue t-shirt, no bra, purple and white striped capri pajama pants, black and white knee high socks, and brown Mary Jane Crocs? I personally think the only thing that would have made the outfit better would have been pink curlers, and some kind of green mud facial mask. I don't own any curlers, but I am seriously considering it in the event I totally want to embarrass any of my future teenagers. (to my offspring- consider this a warning) "Why on Earth did you let me leave the house looking like this?!?! You could have mentioned that I might want to put on the jeans as I was fishing the keys out of the pocket!!!! You realize you have to walk into your jr. high and be seen with me?!?!?" And just to add insult to injury, as he was walking off to class, I yelled across the courtyard, "Byyyyyeee, Niiiiiiiick! I LLLOOOOOOOOVVVVEEEE YOOOOUU!!!!" He swore he'd get me back for that last bit, and my response was something in the neighborhood of "No, please, anything but that! Moms just hate it when their children tell them how much they love them in public!"

Our ginormous safe was finally delivered. 2-3 weeks late. They lost the paperwork, which was fine by me because we had to clean out our closet to make space for it anyway, and then they ended up refunding us $120 for "our inconvenience". The box still resides in my living room. ALL the kids play with it. Right now I am thinking "A Kindle? Legos? Wii games? American Girl Dolls? Forget buying Christmas presents. All I needed to do was go to Lowe's or Home Depot and see if I couldn't score a couple giant refrigerator boxes."

This last month between the 4 kids we had 3 musical concerts, 2 recitals, and 1 pre-school Christmas program. Christopher loves music time. I've been told by a few teachers, he's most attentive when they are singing. He was singing Christmas songs all month. Of course when he had his little Christmas program, I don't know if he sung a note. He was too busy playing around, or lying down, or jumping off the stairs on the stage...

I think that's about it- oh and I'd like to send a little shout out to three of my newly discovered blog stalkers- Kaitlyn, Morgan, and Emily. Hi! :)

Number One

John is #1 in his company in terms of traveling. The guy in the #2 spot didn't even come close.

He went on 49 trips this year

Gone a total of 249 days

69 different cities

7 different countries

231,453 miles traveled.

His boss is making him the poster boy for too much traveling.