happy birthday, Jesus!

waking up at our house on christmas morning was fun and not too overwhelming. we started off the morning with cinnamon rolls for breakfast. as is our tradition on the kids' birthdays, we lit birthday candles and sang "happy birthday" to Jesus. the kids thought this was so cool, especially because they remember doing it for caroline not too long ago. ethan was really ready to open presents after breakfast, so we headed into the living room to open the last few presents under our tree. (these are the ones he'd been eyeing for the last several days!) there was one to each of them from each other, one to each of them from daddy & mommy, and one to each of them from amelia (complete with "special delivery" to/from tags! oh the little details no one notices...especially 2 & 3 year olds!).

ethan and i had gone shopping earlier for a present for caroline, and it was interesting to hear his ideas of what he thought he should buy for her. his list included a police car, a bulldozer, and some other things that he just so happened to like. :) i really emphasized the point that we were thinking about caroline and not himself. in the end, he agreed on a camera that i knew she would enjoy. he was SO excited to come right home and give it to her, so when i told him that we had to wait until christmas for her to open it, he was incredibly disappointed. after a few minutes of pitching a good ole' fit, i came to understand that it was not out of brotherly love that he wanted to give his gift to her right away... it was because he wanted to play with the camera. so this was a good lesson in unselfishness and delayed gratification for ethan. (i didn't actually take caroline shopping for ethan this year... i guess we'll begin that at 3 years old. sounds good, huh? he did unwrap a present "from her", and mommy's choice of the veggietales dvd was a winner.) below, you can see ethan wrapping caroline's present. he loved helping with this, and i am actually shocked that he never told her what he picked out for her.


on christmas morning, ethan was so cute as he anticipated caroline opening the present from him. he was in "big brother" mode and was just simply adorable. as you can see, caroline was so excited about the camera!


ethan was pleasantly surprised to find a camera for him in his goodies from amelia! look at my budding photographers...


and ethan's still snapping away as caroline unwraps her wooden zoo train from mommy & daddy. yes, we needed one more train, didn't we? but this one is so cute with cars for the animals, and it makes a cute little train noise... and it's a good thing that ethan's present from us was more wooden track for all these trains!


so after we opened up these presents, the kids thought that was it. they played for awhile, and then we told them it was time to get ready to go to nana & pappy's. brian snuck in the backyard with the camera, and i got the kids' shoes on. then i pretended to look for brian. we couldn't find him in the house, but the kids found our back door propped open. they peeked outside to find brian standing there with the camera, and they didn't even notice the surprise behind him. (they just love their daddy that much!)

"there's daddy! we found him!"

"yes, now look behind daddy!"

and then they saw their brand new swing set! oh happy day! finally something other than one baby swing to share! and a slide longer than ethan's body length! the kids were so excited. there is plenty on this set to keep them busy as they grow, and i love that it has room for us to hang our baby swing as well. this was one of those things that i researched to death and had a very hard time finding this time of year. (apparently, swing sets are a "summer item"... um, do you see my kids in t-shirts on christmas morning?!?! it's swing set weather all year round here, people!) the reviews for all of the ones we looked at were pretty horrible, mostly people just saying that the directions might as well have been in chinese and that you had to buy longer bolts to make them actually stay together, blah blah blah. well, being the positive thinker that i am, i knew brian could overcome bad directions and cheap hardware! he usually likes to buy higher quality hardware anyway, especially where the safety of our children is concerned. i read all the reviews and wrote down all the complaints that people had so that he would know what to watch out for. and i think that helped. i wouldn't say we ran in to major problems, but there were a few times that things could have gone a little smoother. :) plus i am pretty tool-stupid, and i was his trusty assistant, so i don't really know if i was much help! ha! but it was fun to sneak out in the backyard during a few of the kids' naps and work on our secretive project together. (yes, i skipped my naps. this was a true labor of love!) for a while, if we were talking about it in front of the kids, we'd just spell it, like "when do you want to work on the s-w-i-n-g-s-e-t?" it got pretty comical after a while because we were talking about it all the time. finally, brian decided to call it "project s" to save us some breath. :) i told you he was smart! so "project s" was a success. the kids had no idea that there was any big christmas surprise from mommy and daddy in the backyard. and i loved it that way. they were truly surprised! we still need to concrete it in the ground (once i decide once and for all where i want it!), but for now, they're not going high enough to do any damage. as long as mommy & amelia don't try to sit on anything, everything is sturdy as can be! :) i accidentally deleted the pictures of the whole swing set from christmas morning, but here are a couple of close up shots of the kids (and daddy) enjoying some fresh air on their new swing set. thank you, brian, for all of your hard work putting this together! i'm so proud that we weren't out there at midnight on christmas eve with flashlights trying to finish up! that's a christmas miracle, huh!?



so there is a peek into christmas morning at our house. after we peeled the kids off the swing set, we headed over to nana & pappy's for the final round of christmas! and boy was it a good one!! that's comin' up next!

'twas the night before christmas...

christmas eve was a busy and wonderful night for us! brian spent most of the day in the backyard finishing up the kids' big christmas surprise while i kept the kids busy inside as they asked about daddy all day long. that evening, we took part in our church's beautiful christmas eve service. i was so happy to have my mom and grandmother join us as we celebrated the incarnation of Jesus Christ through lessons and carols. after the wonderful candlelight ending, we headed back to our house for a late dinner and the opening of presents from my mom and grandmother.


as you can see, ethan was very happy to help caroline open her big present from gram. caroline actually opened up a little van first, and we told her there were people inside the big box. as ethan pulled out the big dollhouse, caroline kept asking for the people. forget the really cool dollhouse with all the cute sounds! just give the girl some people for her CAR! (she finally got one of her own!) she did think the house was pretty neat, too, but she especially loved the van.


after all the presents were opened, the kids were content playing with their new toys. caroline was busy figuring out the workings of her little van's doors, and i looked over to find her jamming members of her little people nativity set into the van. the daddy and the mommy that came with the dollhouse were already taking up 2 of the 3 seats, and i watched her put joseph in the last seat. as she picked up mary, i joked, "i'm sure mary would have loved to have ridden to bethlehem in a van instead of a donkey!" caroline tried so hard to make a place for mary in the van, but she got frustrated and looked up at me. playing on the nativity story, i told her, "there's no room in the van!" well, without hesitation, she grabbed joseph and mary and chunked them out of the van. ha! it was probably funnier in person, but we got a good laugh out of her reaction.


ethan was so excited to get another train! it's actually an auto carrier for his lionel train set, and as you can see below, he and daddy got right to work loading the cars onto his new train car.



ethan's favorite present from gram was not the train, though. it was a cook book! ever since caroline got her kitchen for her birthday (which i keep meaning to blog about...), ethan has been asking for a cook book. he uses various little books as "cookbooks", and every time he sees me following a recipe in the kitchen, he says sadly, "i don't have one of those..." (oh, son, you are so deprived!) so my sweet mom made a little cookbook for him with very basic "recipes" based on the food the kids have in their kitchen. we're talkin' hot dogs, pbjs, salad, and cookies. it really is so cute, and ethan was thrilled beyond words! look at this picture of him hugging the cookbook! oh, the simple joys! :) i'll have to get some pictures of him cooking one of these days... the kids have been making us cookies every morning, and i had to laugh the other day because ethan just brought me icing... no cookies. :) that boy knows what his momma likes! :)

we enjoyed having my grandmother in town from before thanksgiving until after christmas! during that month, i planned on having her over all the time and taking tons of pictures of her with the kids. well, being sick for the first two weeks of her visit was not on the ideal hospitality agenda, but it happened... so after spending the next week catching up on life, i realized that her time here was passing by quickly!! we did get to see her fairly often, and i even cooked for her twice. then on christmas eve, i realized that i had not taken one single picture of her with the kids. in a month! you know that is really not like me at all. so i tried to make up for it on christmas eve. mind you, by the time we got home from christmas eve service, ate dinner, and opened presents, it was getting to be near 10:00. not the ideal time to subject your weary, toy-crazed children to pictures on the couch. but of course i tried.

i first attempted a four generation girl picture. no really, caroline was happy. she just looks like she was screaming her head off... oh wait, she really was screaming her head off. man, she was so much more cooperative the last time we tried this shot! but we'll have a good laugh at this when she's 13 or so.


so i thought i could get ethan to sit with grandmother for some pictures. but it was too late to bribe with chocolate. well, it was really just altogether too late. so this was really a losing battle. below, you can see the progression of ethan's insistence to sit away from grandmother to his pathetic excuse for a hug. oh well, grandmother got a big kick out of it, and at least we were all laughing by the end of it.


i did manage to get one picture of grandmother and the kids being perfectly still... because they were printed out on paper for her photo clock. i'm telling you, i'm so glad i found those clocks months ago!


we loved spending time with grandmother, and i hope she enjoyed getting to know the kids a little more. they have been asking about her so much since she left, so i am hoping she'll want to visit again (or just come and STAY!) after amelia is born!

more christmas pictures to share... i'm getting close to the end...

'twas the week before christmas...

happy new year!!! i am really ready to write about the new year and the last (few??) weeks before amelia's birth, but i must finish up my christmas posting first. so this is my attempt to consolidate our various christmas celebrations with family into two posts.... we'll see how i do!

the week or so before christmas, the kids awoke from their nap one day to find a package delivered from my uncle lloyd and aunt susan. though we rarely get to see them, they love to send the kids presents... and their gifts are always great! caroline loved her sandwich making set and other food for her kitchen! my favorite was the very realistic-looking peanut butter and jelly slabs for the bread! :) i tried to get our little cook to look at the camera, but she was too busy slicing that bread just right! ethan was overjoyed by the set of wooden trains he opened. i honestly was a little worried that he wouldn't care about them after grandma's amazing gift the week before, but ethan immediately asked me to set up his wooden track, and this was where he could be found for the next few days...


my boy is definitely a lover of all things train! thank you, uncle lloyd and aunt susan, for all the fun things you sent the kids!

*******

the saturday before christmas, we celebrated with my dad, joy, and grandma since my dad & joy would be out of town on christmas. as soon as we arrived at their house, caroline became enamored with joy's "hallmark happy tappers", these cute little snow globe-like things connect together and dance to various christmas songs. i can't believe she didn't run the batteries down! joy sent us home with our very own set of happy tappers, and ethan has since figured out that you can press all four buttons at the same time, and they all sing their own songs simultanously.... not sure if that counts as a joyful noise, but it is definitely noise!

we enjoyed some wonderful time with my family, and joy experimented with a bison roast for lunch. have you ever tried bison? it had a great flavor! (sorry, fellow harding alums!!!) after lunch, we began the avalanche of presents. ethan enjoyed handing out our presents, as you can see below.


caroline loved her baby doll from my grandma that came with 4,000 outfits, a baby carrier, and backpack. and grandma attests to the fact that she didn't know the baby was electronic... it's nifty alright. when you feed her the bottle, she shakes her head and cries... then you put her teddy bear on her chest, and she laughs. THEN she will take the bottle. brian's reaction was, "great! something else in our house that cries!" :) my strategy would be to give her the teddy bear first and then give her the bottle, but sweet mommy caroline really insists on giving her that bottle (with no teddy bear) over and over and over. so we hear crying over and over and over. and if the doll doesn't have clearance to move her head back and forth, her neck makes this horribly painful-sounding clicking noise. poor doll. she's gonna need physical therapy soon. i know, i should have never put in the batteries. but it was christmas! so when the batteries die, i think we'll just be out of batteries. and then my sweet step-mom made the innocent comment, "that baby needs a pocket for her bottle!" because caroline was looking for a place to put her bottle. well, caroline just figured out that the bottle fits perfectly down the baby's pants, pocket or no pocket. so i have yet to see that doll with its pants pulled up. and as you can see to the right, a clicking neck is the least of this doll's worries... don't worry. we will practice how you hold a baby before she gets her hands on real baby amelia. i think we'll start that tomorrow! the baby doll really is a cute one, and caroline loves it. unfortunately, we have somehow already misplaced the bottle. oops! :)

the kids' big surprise of the day were their BIKES! ethan has been talking about wanting a bike for so long, and we have never even had a tricycle for him to ride. so you can imagine how excited he was to see the garage door open and to find a bike with a big red bow on it! i was really expecting some shrieks and squeals, and maybe even some jumping up and down, but he actually just stared at the garage until we said, "look, ethan! someone left a bike for you in papa's garage!" and in the persona of a 78 year old man who just heard the news that his neighbor was moving to alaska, ethan said, "hmm!" i was shocked. :) don't get me wrong, he was excited. brian's take on it is that he was really intrigued by the garage door opening automatically. (ours doesn't do that, nor do we really open the door much in the first place.) so the garage door kind of momentarily stole the show from the big unveiling of the bikes. but he still was excited and thankful. as we expected, it's going to take some time for him to get used to riding a "big boy bike". he can do pretty well on caroline's (adorable!!) tricycle, but he has a hard time getting started with his pedals. he will try it for a few minutes and has really shown improvement on doing it himself, but he gets frustrated pretty easily with it. any tips on teaching a child to pedal the right way?? caroline's little tricycle is just the cutest thing. she likes to ride it fred flintstone style, but i think she'll eventually get the hang of the pedals too. you can see her sporting the extra helmet in papa's garage. i think it's 55 sizes too big, and she was pretty top heavy with it on (even with her big noggin!), but since ethan had on a helmet, she needed one too. and she was so funny this day. everytime ethan got off his bike, she got off hers. and everytime he got back on, she started riding again too. ethan has no idea how much she watches his every move. and here are papa and grandma joy with the happy bikers! (sorry for the funky flash effects... i just loved the kids' faces on this one and had to include it.)


we had a wonderful christmas before christmas with my dad. we are thankful to live in the same town with them. we always say that we need to get together more, so i really hope that happens in 2009!!

*******
three days later, we all loaded in the van for a day trip to see brian's aunts, uncles, & grandparents. we began doing a day trip last year vs. spending christmas with them due to a few reasons, one being that we were growing out of places to stay with all the kids! so it was a quick but wonderful visit with all the crazy family. the kids were wonderful despite the busyness of the day, and all three cousins took a nice long nap while we were there!!! (which meant that kristie and i got to have some sister-time shopping!!) karina gave all the dogs a run for their money, and ethan was content to play with his cars the majority of the time (thank you, hot wheels!!!). i don't really know what caroline was up to during a lot of our visit, but she wasn't fussing or getting into things, so that's enough for me. :) here's a "girl picture" minus grandmommy (affectionately known as "queenie"!). brian's aunts are so precious and hilarious. we all find ourselves laughing the entire time we're there, and i am so thankful to have married into this family.


though we don't see them too often, ethan warms up quickly to everyone each time we visit. he especially loves uncle tom's teasing (which is a good thing because it's what uncle tom does best!).


i love this picture of brian with his aunt pam.


when i took that picture, i remembered a picture from our wedding slideshow of a very much younger brian and pam... and i just have to throw it in here for nostalgia's sake...


ok... i think caroline's ready to open some more presents! (she's gettin' the hang of this, don'tcha think?)


the aunts and uncles had way too much fun shopping for the kids this year!! ethan loved his new guitar & police car, and caroline knew just what to do with her aquadoodle and cash register. the kids also got a HUGE playhouse that you build and then color! we are saving that one for a cold, rainy, post-amelia's birth, daddy's home kind of day. brian was so wonderful to be down on the floor with the kids, opening up all the crazy packages, while i sat comfortably on the couch snapping pictures.



our kids usually end up LOVING each others' presents, which is a plus to having children close together! ethan has had just as much fun scanning items and ringing up groceries on caroline's cash register as she has had jamming with his guitar. you'd think this would mean that we could cut down on toys at our house since they can share them all........... but ummmmm, we haven't even made it to christmas morning yet!

here is brian's grandmommy with her photo clock that i put together. i found these clocks back in october and snatched them up for all the great-grandparents. they were all so thrilled to see those cute little faces in place of all the numbers! :) i think the clocks were a hit!


and i have to include this picture... brian's grandmother has suffered a few falls from bending over, so her daughters have placed signs around her house to remind her to not bend over. this one especially made me smile, considering that i do everything i can to avoid bending over these days!


it was a huge blessing to spend the day with brian's family. i'm guessing we'll be making another trip over there sometime in february, Lord-willing, so they can meet baby amelia.

alrighty, more christmas fun to come!!

cookies, cookies, cookies!

a couple of weeks before christmas, the ladies' Bible study that i'm a part of hosted a cookie exchange for the women in our church. if you know me, you know that this is right down my alley! i'd been wanting to help plan one of these, so i mentioned it to one of the ladies... and she said she'd been wanting to have one too. so the next thing ya know, this cookie exchange was in the works! we ended up making it a salad luncheon, too, which i guess helped take away a little of the guilt from all the cookies! :)

we had fun decorating the tables for christmas with china and beautiful centerpieces! each table ended up looking very different, and they all looked so festive... here's a picture of the table that kristie and i decorated.


and here's what the other beautiful tables looked like! didn't the ladies do a great job?!


before we exchanged cookies, we played a couple of christmas games. first, each table was given a list of christmas song titles that have been reworded. the object of the game was to figure out the actual titles of the songs. for example, "Removed In A Bovine Feeding Trough" would be what christmas carol??? and how about "Are You Experiencing Parallel Auditory Input?" one of my favorites was "Female Ancestor Collides with Rangifer Tarandus"... i think everybody had a lot of fun laughing over these. and the winning table got to be first in line for lunch!

for the other game, each table chose one representative for the christmas carol trivia game. they sound easy till you start to think about it... and poor mrs. post kept getting the really hard ones! there was much audience participation/helping, though, so i think everybody had fun. ashley from my table ended up winning, and the prize was for the winning table to be first in line for the cookie exchange! woohoo! way to go, ashley! :) you can see me grilling the contestants below...


and then it was time for the cookie exchange! there were so many different kinds of treats to choose from...




here's my tin full of goodies to take home! those peppermint swirls were my favorite... so delicious and cute too!


the kids were soooo excited when i came home with a box full of cookies!


here's ethan enforcing mommy's "just one cookie" rule! ha! i'd put the tin near them to snap a few pictures, and caroline was ready to take full advantage of me being distracted for the moment. thanks for protecting mommy's cookies, ethan! way to go, son!


i had a great time helping host this cookie exchange, and i hope we'll do it again next year. we also had little cookie recipe books printed that included most of the recipes for the cookies that we took home... i can't wait to detox from christmas goodies so that i can experiment with some of my favorites from the cookie tin!

o, christmas tree

there's just something about a christmas tree that makes me smile. i love switching on the lights as soon as i get up, and i love the smell of a real tree in our little house. i grew up with only artificial trees, so i have especially enjoyed having real trees in our home each year. one of my most favorite memories of our christmas tree is from christmas 2006, when caroline was a newborn. she and i spent her middle-of-the-night feedings cozied up under a blanket in the living room with only the christmas lights shining. boy, that sure made 2 AM a much more pleasant time to be awake!

i'm not very good at branching out and doing different things with the tree. our tree pictures from year to year look pretty much the same, as i am addicted to the old-fashioned look with red being the dominating color (shocker for those of you that really know me!). i did experiment with stringing up garland for the first time this year, which i hope to get better at in the years to come!! after three re-adjustments of the garland, brian and i decided it was a skill to be mastered and that this year was not the year to master it. :)

the kids' ornaments for this year don't really carry with them a story of significance, but they sure are cute, and the kids loved them. since ethan is into all things transportation, the little wooden airplane was a very fitting choice for him this year. during the past month, he could be found standing by the tree, spinning the little propeller on his airplane. :)


for caroline's ornament, we chose a small snowglobe that is a cookie on the bottom and has a little gingerbread girl inside. she is into baking and cooking in her little kitchen, and who doesn't love snowglobes?! she was allowed to shake the snowglobe as long as it stayed on the tree, so i was accustomed to seeing the whole tree shake as caroline obediently played with her ornament. :)


our family ornament for this year was indeed a special one. the sonogram frame ornament was a little bigger than i'd expected, but it still made me smile every time i passed by it. amelia's little face just lit up the tree even more... we surely are praying, dreaming, and waiting for her!


we usually enjoy our christmas tree until around new year's, but we had to abruptly take down our tree this past weekend. after noticing a few mosquitoes lying around our living room floor and on furniture, brian took a closer look at the base of our tree to find hundreds and hundreds of baby bugs feasting on the trunk of our beautiful christmas tree. our tree skirt had become the final resting place for hundreds of dead mosquitoes...or they were babies who had not yet woken up (sorry, i'm not gil grissom... i'm sure there's more technical terms for this stuff!). whatever stage they were in, we did NOT want them in our living room! especially if they were babies about to turn into adults!!!! i didn't even want to think about how many bugs were in the tree base. so much for our relaxing saturday evening... we had to carefully remove all of the ornaments without disturbing the tree too much, and then we had to figure out how to get the tree out the door without spilling the bug-infested water all over the place. it was quite a scene, i am sure. oh to have been a fly (or mosquito!) on the wall... we finally got the tree out the door, after pathetically attempting to cover it to contain the bug masses. we had to laugh at the sight in our driveway. our poor tree... once decorated with excitement and joy now looked as if it was ready for execution. we successfully got rid of all the bugs, and we're still pondering how we can prevent this next year. we've had real trees every year, but we've never had this problem. of course, it was a very humid 75 degrees on christmas morning, and the whole week was pretty much just as warm. combine that with a bowl of standing water, and you've got a five star resort for bugs. we also discovered that the mosquitoes brought some friends... there were also tons of aphids and some other type of bug that we have yet to identify. anyway, we're assuming that when we bought our tree, some bug larvae or egg sacs or something were thrown in for free. since it never really got that cold here, the bugs thrived instead of died. YUCK. as we were cleaning up the mess, i was trying to decide if i'd rather be doing that or shoveling 2 feet of snow...

anyway, sorry if that grosses you out. i'm itching like crazy as i write this. i'm curious to hear if anyone else has had that problem, especially those of you who had the same warm december that we did. my love for real trees has not wavered, despite the many warm thoughts i had on saturday night toward artificial trees... i'm sure we'll still get a real tree next year, and we'll shake it like crazy before bringing it inside!