New Year's Eve

Just in case you're at home watching NBC and Carson Daly (no substitute for Dick Clark, I might add) at Times Square and hearing John Lennon's Imagine in the background, well, that was just what it was like in Wilmington too.   Except, that instead of John Lennon it was BeatleMania, and instead of 200,000 people it was more like 200.  And, it wasn't snowing, it was raining. And the fireworks....I guess someone decided that they can't go off in the rain. 

But there was a "train", if you count a couple of golf carts tethered together circling around Rodney Square.  And there was "ice" skating, if you count a big plastic sheet as ice.  And there was a "Date with a Tramp" if you count a big trampoline where you can jump while attached to bungee cords.

See, Wilmington knows how to party.  Too bad my camera jammed up after only a couple of pics.

Happy New Year.  And maybe next month I'll finally finish posting all of the pictures I have from Christmas.  And then maybe I'll get ambitious and post all of the pictures I have been meaning to put up from last summer.   But maybe not. 

For now I should go wake up Adam who fell asleep during another Rhianna song and give him a New Year's smooch and tell him thanks for being the best part of the last decade. Wow. 2010 here we come.

Happy Holidays

Just before the holiday season officially ends, we finally got our picture of the kids in front of the tree. 

I hope that everyone had a fabulous holiday season.

The rest of December, Part I

Here I am on the last day of December and only moments before we are going to take off for the very exciting First Night Celebration in downtown Wilmington. Remember, Wilmington: A place to Be Someone. Or maybe it was, Be Someone In Wilmington (get it... Wilm IN gton!). Kindof like Utah when it was "Utah: A Pretty Great State" if you like that sort of thing, I guess. But I digress....and I should be clear that actually I love Utah and actually think that it is a pretty and (comma) great state! And, truth be told, Wilmington is a place where you can be someone too. Nothing like a small pond to make for some big fish, eh Joe Biden!

Ok, ok, ..... So, for Part I of the rest of December, I cannot leave out the massive snow storm that rolled in a couple of weekends ago.  And it was awesome.  The storm came late Friday night, so I spent the earlier part of that evening with the rest of the city running out to the grocery store and stocking up on milk and eggs, and finishing all of my Christmas errands.  It made for a lovely weekend of  nothing left on the plate but to play in the snow because by Saturday morning we woke to several inches, and by Saturday night, we had 18 inches and had already shoveled out the driveway three times.  And thanks, Church, for being canceled--that helped too since I wasn't so caught up on that RS lesson I was supposed to teach! 

The first time I ever saw our house, I came to tour it on a wacky day in March when there happened to be snow storm.  I remember looking at the snow covered hills in the back yard and thinking that this house had some amazing sledding.  What I didn't know was that the snow was also covering up a multitudes of other sins committed on the yard by years and years of neglect, and that's a topic that I try and avoid blogging about for fear that it would take up 75% of my blogging topics, but as for when it snows, yes, the back yard does indeed have some pretty incredible sledding.  And it makes for a great time to invite over the neighbor kids.  Here's a picture I took from the safety and warmth of the kitchen (while making up some cocoa and popcorn, mind you!) of our back yard with 14 people in it.  The kids filtered in and out a couple of times on the tour of all the back yards near by.  Max and our neighbor Charlie were out there together for at least 3 hours, if not more.

 But it was Adam who probably took the most advantage of the snow.  He got out his cross country skiis and did a couple of laps around the neighborhood on the unplowed streets.  Then he had his snowboard and his telemark skiis out for the hills in the back yard.  By the end of the afternoon when the kids were all snowed out and finally inside, he went back out to pack in more snow time before he lost daylight. 

And then, they canceled school on Monday and Tuesday.  It was  a good start to the holiday break.

December so far

December has been going on as usual.  We've been doing all of the things that you just do during December, like spending way more time at the post office than I should be, and going to Costco and Target and (surprisingly enough), JoAnn's at least four or five times so far.  I've spent enough time online that now I just call Amazon.com  "Santa's Little Helper."  We've bought mulitple boxes of peppermint Joe Joes and I've consumed nearly a gallon of egg nog on my own (so maybe Adam has figured out that I don't don't like it any more).  We've done crafts for cub scout parties, school parties, and baked a ham for the ward party, where it may have been the first year that no child was screaming on Santa's lap and of course my camera runs out of batteries after I get only one blurry shot.  No wait, I forgot, there was the one other year when somebody (and I wish I could blame it on them being drunk, but that won't work) asked Adam to be the Santa for the ward party.  There probably wasn't a kid in the whole place who was fooled by Adam's Jolly Old Elf--I guess he's got the jolly and elf-like down, but not so much on the old.  And the black eyebrows are kind of a give away too, I think.  How my kids still believe in Santa is kind of a mystery after that one. 

Anyway, I bought a big puffy tree this year and we got it up just in time to host a fondue party for my neighborhood book group--that's how I roll: last minute.  We also prepared for piano and dance recitals, had haircuts, listened to hours of both bad and good Christmas music, watched the First Presidency Devotional, The Nutcracker, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Boris Karloff version!), and Mr Kruegar's Christmas.  We've faithfully lit our weekly Advent candle with an accompanying Christmas devotional, baked batches of sugar cookies, ginger cookies, and peanut butter cookies (you know, the Christmas kind! The ones with the Hershey's kiss on top!), and even managed to throw together an 11th-hour Christmas card, with a picture where all of the kids have their eyes closed or severly squinted, but I look awesome!  And now we're preparing for my sister Jayne to come tonight and spend the whole break with us, which should be great fun, as long as she doesn't mind babysitting tomorrow afternoon while I make another trip to Costco. 

p.s.  I love lists and parentheses and exclamation points (in case you hadn't noticed!)!!

The kids also got to sing at the mall with all of the other primary kids in our ward.  If only I had brought the video camera to get Max's actions while he was counting the correct amount of "oh's" sung during the "gloria's" in the refrain in "Angels We Have Heard on High."  But I did have my camera and it wasn't until I looked at the pictures later that I realized that Olivia had brought her black cat Webkinz and had it up "singing" with her the entire time.  Great. 

Also, I never got around to buying Saul any "Christmas" clothes--so it's navy blue and green for him this year!  I'll blame it on that for not getting any Christmas-y pictures sent out.

So far, it's all been pretty swell.

Happy Thanks!

Happy Thanks is...

a perfectly roasted, brine-soaked, Amish-raised, fresh turkey

....and done completely (including all the gravy made from giblets) by these two gentlmen. 

adorable little feasters

an 18" stalk of brussel sprouts

(actually one of the most delicious vegetables ever when roasted and salted)

making place cards with assistance from a (published) artist/illustrator

two cute little muffins

pumpkin pie made from the fresh pumpkin they grew in the backyard

stuffing with fresh chestnuts

two peas in a pod

(and thanks to legos--and the occasional Wii time--we didn't hear from them for basically the entire day)

post-dinner entertainment

and....

getting to spend the entire day in food preparation

and great conversation with some of our favorite friends.

amazing food for dinner

game time, once the littles are sleeping

(with seconds on pie)

the next day joined by the Eskelsens for even more good times,

kids playing w/o incident,

 a field trip to the Army Education center to check out what a WWI trench was like

and thoroughly enjoying all the leftovers.

Interpretation

I had to ask Olivia who the subjects were in this picture she recently brought home from school.

"Mom, it's you and Daddy!"

So, apparently I'm going through a Michelle Obama-phase, what with those fabulously sculpted upper-arms and a gown worthy of a State Dinner.  And Adam must be in his Sammy Davis Jr.-phase, with that sharp blue suit and his signature wide smile.

She even remembered my green eyes.

Hello 8 months.

I sort of skipped over Saul's turning seven months (as I have with most of everything else that happened in October--ouch), and here it is that he's now eight months. 

As far as I can tell, he is enjoying being eight months way more than he enjoyed being 7 months.  Seven months was a lot of I'm-super-sick-of-this-bouncy-chair-and-am-totally-bored-with-every-regular-baby-toy-you-are-giving-me.  So, now I just let him play with plastic bags and suck on my cell phone (which is what he's been wanting all along anyway) and he's been much happier.  Also, he can (basically) sit up on his own now (I tell you, my guys are little slugs for the first year--don't expect any crawling for another 3 months at least--and you don't hear any complaining from me about it).  He is rolling over quite a bit more now and can eventually get to something out of reach.  He's also discovered that he has a voice.  His favorite (and most effective) sounds are a loud squawking, that make me pretty sure that he's part pteradactyl, and a closed-mouth growl, that makes me think that he must be part leaf-blower.  In any case, he got us both ejected from observing Max's piano lesson this week. 

He's also become really interested in actual food.  Too bad that I'm not getting around to feeding him very much of it.  I'll admit, I'm so slow when it comes to introducing solids.  For one thing, there's part of me that feels like something's wrong about feeing a baby from a spoon when they can't even sit up.  But mostly there's the part of me that's just too stinkin' lazy.  Really, it's a huge hassle to get out the cereal, mix it with formula, get everything the right temperature, put on the bib, take 10 minutes to feed them two tablespoons of cereal and fight every bite with their trying to grab the spoon or pushing the food out of their mouth, then clean up the whole mess and wash the dish, wiping down not only the tray, but the baby, bib and everyone's hands....and then I still have to nurse him when we're all done. 

So I figure I might as well just go straight to the nursing....but don't worry, he's completely vitamin fortified as I'm supplementing with Cheerios.  I am taking full advantage of his now having mastered the pincer grip and the fact that he can be occupied for great lengths of time with a tray full of Cheerios.  It's no Gerber-baby-approved plan to skip straight over the rice cereal and all the pureed veggies and go straight to the Cheerios, but I say, three cheers for Cheerios!

While I'm in the mood for making up my own parenting rules about introducing food, maybe this week we'll go straight for the turkey with cranberry sauce. 

Is it just me, but I think that I see some Smith in this guy....maybe?

Over all, he's still Mr. Fantastic. 

You get what you get, but there's always a fit

Adam just told me that Candyland is on sale at Toys R Us for just $2 (with rebate!) in case we want to replace the copy that I threw out a few months back. Thanks, but no thanks. It's still a big: PASS.

Next on the list for throwing away:  the stinkin' set of plates, cups, and bowls sold at IKEA.  Note to self (or any new parent): never, never, never, never, never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever buy anything that comes in multiple colors when you're planning to use them for more than one child.  Because, no matter how many times we say (blithely, sternly, apathetically, etc..) "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!" still, (and here's the important part), no one is happy unless their cup, plate and bowl at each meal are all

MATCHING!!!

Aaaaaarrrrrgh!!  If my hair is starting to thin or if the bags under my eyes are looking larger and darker than normal, now you know why.   So finally, after all of these years with the buckets and buckets of tears shed over having to eat from a yellow plate with a green cup and a pink spoon, we finally went out and bought  three more sets--that's eighteen (EIGHTEEN!!) stupid plates and bowls and cups so that no one will EVER have to cry over this again.  In fact, now both girls can eat from an all pink place setting--HOORAY!  But, what happens? Irony has invited itself to pull up a chair at our dinner table because now Max is policing the nightly table setting (and then rearranging it) to ensure that no one will have a match. Cue hysterics from Isabel and Olivia. 

Afterall, (he's insisting!) you get what you get and you don't throw a fit!

Tapioca Everybody!

I've been lucky enough to have had the same best friend since third grade.  Well, I guess technically there was a brief period in 4th grade where we must have been pretty thick with Liz S. too, since at the end of the year the three of us recieved the "3 Musketeers" candybar award.  And then there was the time during freshman year at BYU where she lived in the dorms and I still lived at home and it caused a sort of unspoken competition about who was having the better year.  But for most of the rest of our growing up, I think that we were basically known as AnnaandJennette....or was it JennetteandAnna....or was it just ConnectedattheHip.  Whatever. She's been a pretty awesome Buddyol'Pal over all of these years; if you like me, then you'll loooove Anna.

But to go where I want to go with this story I'll have to admit all of our nerdiness now. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ashamed of it; in fact, I hope that my daughters grow up as sweet and square and innocent as we were.  What it means is that we spent plenty of weekend nights not interested in fashion or shopping or magazines, but watching classic musicals or Doris Day movies or Room With a View.  That we listened to CCR or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, or the Mamas and the Papas, or (yes, I'll admit it) Enya, and made dozens of mix tapes.  That we thought we were hysterical to dress up as "F-Chicks" (you'll have to be from Provo), or for making epithets out of "Chang Kai Shek" or "Mao Tse Tung." That we would break curfew for rebellious activities like taking down political campaign signs off of one person's lawn and then putting them on someone elses' (or all of them on our AP English teacher's). That we thought it would be cool to marry twins and then share one big backyard with a joint pool. That we went to plenty of plays and concerts and art exhibits, but that we saw The Cutting Edge at least four times in the theater.  That we worked at Sundance and never once used the free employee season ski passes we had. And that we decorated our shared freshman year locker with pictures of Europe clipped from travel brochures and then spent lots of time planning about how we could get to see Prince Edward Island and Washington, DC and New York City and London together.  Oh, and, that neither of us liked sports.....or dogs.

Well, we did make it to DC and NYC and London together, but we didn't marry twins.  (At least we married from the same genre of guy--the hiking, skiing, biking, not-into-following-major sports, wants to drag us to the WARPed tour, smart science-nerd genre.)

She is still the first person I call when there's trauma in motherhood, or frustration in politics, or a fabulous find in food, or a tidbit to gossip.   And she is stil--far and away--the only person I can unequivocally trust with a movie recommendation.

So tonight, when Max cooked his own fried egg (from start to finish, all by himself) and when eating it said, "This is delish!,"  I knew that he got that phrase from me.  And I knew that I got it from Thoroughly Modern Millie.  And I knew that of the many times I've watched that movie, that most of those times I watched it with Anna.  And I felt lucky once again to have had such a terriff friend.   

Trick or treating has no rain delays

If like me you were excitedly waiting for the World Series game 3 on Saturday night (OK this is Adam posting not Jennette in case you're doing a double take) you will have noticed that the Philadelphia was experiencing a pretty good rainstorm which delayed the start by more than an hour. Well there are no rain delays for trick or treating so Max, Olivia, and Jennette braved the elements for quite a while. Here are the soaked skeleton and flapper girl post diluvial.

Isabel (bunny rabbit) and Saul (little lamb or "the golden fleece") did some local treating before hanging out with Dad at home to dish out the goodies and watch a little "Nightmare Before Christmas."

Here's a picture prediluvial with friends from the neighborhood

and from pre-Halloween festivities. As in previous years it takes some serious coaxing to get Max to don any form of a costume. The face painting is his first face painting ever (really). Olivia and Isabel have taken quite naturally to costumes though, Isabel had a complete list of what she wanted to be for Halloween (dog, zebra, bunny, butterfly). Naturally we steered her to the bunny since we already had the costume:

I know J won't be happy with the missing face of the golden fleece, so here's his cute mug. Eat your heart out Argonauts.

September's Trip to NYC

I've let the blogging lapse again, when really, we had a pretty fantastic month of September.  And now, I've almost let October slip by too.   

We finally made it (as a family) to NYC to see Sha-sha.  It had been months since I'd been up, and this was Saul's first trip, so we were sure to do it right with breakfast at Metro Diner, some takeout Thai, and even a little knock-off shopping in Chinatown (aka in our family as, "Shopolopolis"). 

On Saturday afternoon Max, Isabel, Sha-sha and I all biked up the trail along the Hudson to see the Little Red Lighthouse.  We hadn't been there since Max was something like 6 weeks old.  Lucky us, it was the Little Red Lighthouse Festival that day.  So there were plenty of crafts and games and people wearing sequins walking on stilts waving large windsocks that made it so we ended up spending the entire afternoon there.  The kids even got to decorate red-colored sugar cookies in the shape of a lighthouse.  We had to come home and read our copy of the Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge all over again, it was so fab.

While we were on our bike ride and at the festival, Adam had taken Olivia and Saul to the carousel in Central Park (and then to find something in a yummy and chocolatey and buttery and sugary--with plenty of pink frosting, no doubt).  When we got back to the apartment and told them about our fun day, they decided that they couldn't miss that either.  So they cruised up with Olivia in the back of the bike seat to hit the rest of the festival and see the lighthouse.

Every time we're there, I think, "Yeah, I want to live in NYC."  And I totally do--I love it--but then I come home and park in my own garage and haul my stuff only a few feet from car to door and then I think, "Yeah, this is good too."  I'll just enjoy how nice it is to have such a swell mother-in-law to visit, and that we get to go and pretend that we're New Yorkers.