Christmas is Love

Posted on December 24, 2012December 24, 2012 by Amy

Our elf, Christopher Pop-In-Kins, left our house last night, leaving behind a note and the movie, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” I told the girls they could watch their new movie after baths, just before getting ready for Santa and going to bed.

They were anxiously awaiting baths all day!

To kill some time before naps this afternoon, they helped Daddy make sausage, while rocking out to some Christmas music.

Today we avoided Rudolph, but they love to dance to the Charlie Brown theme song (to my chagrin they like my husband’s favorite Christmas music better than my Johnny Mathis Christmas… for now anyway).

They helped their Dad start to make brats before heading up for naps, all the while asking how much longer until baths and movie.

Finally, after naps, after dinner, after baths, they got to settle in with milk and cookies on fancy plates to watch their new movie.

My favorite part of the day came after the movie. We got treats together for Santa and his reindeer.

The girls dictated a precious “Thank you” note and signed their own names.

The very best time tonight was story time. We snuggled in to read many, many of our Christmas books tonight. Of course we started with “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” but followed that with several more favorites.

I think I was as excited as they were when I put them to bed.

And then of course, there was this:

The bane of all parents of little girls on Christmas Eve – The Dollhouse.

Oh, but what a dollhouse!

It will be the perfect home for the “Big Snow Whites” that my girls have been asking for for over a month now. The ladies are in the stockings just waiting to bring joy to my two eldest girls in the morning. Baby Sis’s stocking holds Prince Charming 🙂

I can’t wait for the morning.

I had a hard time thinking of anything I wanted for myself this Christmas. Truly, there isn’t much that is material in nature that I want or need.

I have three beautiful, healthy children and a truly wonderful, amazing husband. Tomorrow I hope to see their faces light with joy when they open their gifts.

More than that, I hope all year to give them my love in such a way that they always know it, can see it, can feel it no matter what. To me, Christmas is about love and family. We’ve got that.

In the morning we will open plenty of presents. We will have gift wrap flying everywhere. We will have little girls oohing and aaahing and probably squealing a bit over their gifts. We will have a traditional breakfast and stay in pajamas all morning. We will play and probably watch a Christmas movie or two. We might listen to Rudolph or other Christmas music.

We will have all of these things. But most of all, we will will have lots of love. Everything else is just gravy.

May you have a Christmas filled with love.

Rudolph on Repeat

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Amy

The holiday spirit is in full swing around here. Last night Daddy (aka Santa) helped me wrap the rest of the presents and get them under the tree. The girls inspected them closely this morning and eagerly asked about each one. They are excited about Santa coming tomorrow night.

Today was a day for playing Christmas music and making treats in the kitchen. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was on repeat, at Lass’s request, and we made cookies for Santa.

As Rudolph played in the background (for quite a while Lass was insistent we listen to nothing but that, but after a while I snuck in some Charlie Brown Christmas and we were all able to move on), the girls got warmed up with the rolling pin.

They had fun spreading out the flour and then got down to business.

After a few rounds they really got into trying to pound the dough flat before rolling it.

Santa is going to be very pleased. Especially since Miss says we need to leave chocolate milk for him to have with his cookies.

And speaking of Santa being pleased, he was very happy, as were we all, with the fresh (and huge) ham he cooked for our dinner tonight. He cooked the other ham from our hog at my parent’s house last week and was a bit disappointed by how it turned out. The flavor was wonderful, but the meat was dry.

Today he nailed it.

The house was filled with mouth-watering smells all day and the finished product did not disappoint.

We’ll be eating ham for Christmas dinner, and I have plans to use the bone to make a yummy ham and vegetable soup later in the week. I’m happy that we won’t need to be in the kitchen all day to make dinner on Christmas. I’ll cook some Brussels sprouts with bacon and sauté some fennel bulb and the meal will be complete.

We can spend Christmas day as it should be spent. Snuggling and laughing and playing sister games (though I will spend a little bit of time in the kitchen in the morning, after opening presents, cooking our traditional Christmas morning breakfast of creamed eggs).

We’ll probably play Rudolph a few more times too.

Merry Christmas.

Daddy’s Birthday

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Amy

Friday was my husband’s birthday.

I love his birthday.

I so enjoy the feeling of doing nice things for the one I love.

We were on vacation, so I got up with the girls and let him sleep in (which he did for me many times during the week). I made him coffee and breakfast.

He went to the archery range to shoot with my Dad and when they came back we sang “Happy Birthday” and had brownies and ice cream.

After I put Sis to bed the older girls watched movies with my Mom and Dad and my hubby and I went out to dinner.

It was delightful.

My favorite part of the day, however, was when he opened his presents.

Just like last year, I took the girls to the Dollar Tree and gave them each $5 to pick five presents for their Daddy.

Last year, Miss didn’t quite get the concept of buying something that someone else would like.

This year, Lass was pretty much at that same place with her shopping.

She chose for him a green vase, a box of tea (the girls love to help him make tea in the evenings after dinner), a package of chip clips, a bottle of gas treatment, and a package of disposable styrofoam bowls. We were cracking up as she pulled each item out of the purple polka-dotted gift bag she also selected specially for her Daddy.

Miss, on the other hand, was very serious this year about getting what she thought her Daddy would like. She was thoughtful as we walked through each aisle of the dollar store. She scanned the shelves looking for just the right things.

She chose a box of tea and vase for him as well, though she picked an orange vase because orange is her Dad’s favorite color. She got a box of crayons because her Daddy likes to color with her. A small sprig of holiday greenery caught her eye, and she got it for him because it had a drum nestled in it. Her Daddy loves music. And finally, she selected an orange flashlight for him.

In the photo below, she is explaining to him that she got the flashlight “in case [he goes] out hunting at night.”

I know my husband loves seeing the things the girls pick out for him.

I think it’s almost as much fun for me to get to go shopping with them and see how they choose their gifts. I just love the way they think.

This is one of my favorite birthday traditions.

Priceless.

A Holiday Movie Tradition

Posted on December 10, 2012December 11, 2012 by Amy

Have I mentioned how much I love holiday traditions?

Yes. Of course I have. I’m a holiday tradition junkie.

One of my favorites is the tradition my Mom and I have of watching the movie “Heidi” every Christmas. I know it’s not a popular holiday movie, but we’ve been doing it every year since I can remember (you can read about the girls’ first exposure to it last year here).

My Mom and I recite the dialog together. “I think there ought to be a Frau Schultz!” and “My word! A gorilla!” and many, many more lines of this adorable movie.

We laugh heartily at the same scenes, every. time.

This year my girls laughed with us.

For the first time, my girls actually paid attention throughout the movie and seemed to get into it (Lass got distracted for a while in the middle, but was pretty attentive for the first 30-40 minutes and the last 15 or so).

They cracked up at the craziness that resulted when Heidi let the monkey in the house. They were distressed with Grandfather was placed in jail and couldn’t find Heidi. They were on pins and needles about “When will Clara walk?”

I can’t even express how happy I am that I could share this tradition with my girls this year. I watched them watching it almost as much as I watched the movie.

What’s your favorite holiday movie?

Joy

Posted on November 26, 2012November 28, 2012 by Amy

This time of year always makes me so sentimental. It makes me think of family. Holidays past. Traditions.

I think tradition is really the key to my nostalgia at this time of year. There are certain traditions that my family followed every year during the holidays that I remember so well and feel so happy to replicate with my kids.

I have wonderful memories of lots of family time at Thanksgiving.

This year, for the first time since my kids were born, we got to spend Thanksgiving with extended family. It was great fun.

The girls had lots of fun with their many, many cousins on my husband’s side of the family (there are so many kids my in-laws put carpet in their garage to make a big space for them to run and play inside).

They were playing some sort of football game. You can see how my girls look up to their older cousins.

Lass had no concept of the game being played. She mostly just wandered through the older kids, who were running and jumping and tackling and yelling all around her, singing and hugging this ball. It’s amazing (and a testament to her cousins’ consideration) that she never once got trampled, or even bumped!

This little one enjoyed hanging out with her Daddy and watching her sisters and cousins.

Thanksgiving dinner was eaten around a table set with my husband’s grandmother’s china and linens. The girls sat at the kid’s table, which is such a memory-laden rite of passage for every childhood in itself, and the adults crammed around the grown up table.

There was much laughter her about the fact that we were so squished around this table we could barely maneuver forks to mouths. Heaven forbid anyone needed to use a knife. It was a great meal in great company. Family.

When I see photos like these I can’t help but fast forward thirty or so years and imagine the memories my girls will have of our holidays and traditions. I want them to remember these feelings, whether they remember the specific instances or not.

Comfort.

Coziness.

Closeness.

I want them to remember time with family. That family was always placed at the top of our list of priorities. That they were always, always valued and loved by many.

I want them to have awesome auntie memories like I have.

I am so thankful we got to be with family for one of my favorite holidays this year.

When we got home, we moved right into one of my favorite traditions – decorating the Christmas tree. With Johnny Mathis Christmas music playing in the background of course.

There are few things more evocative of holiday memories and joy for me than decorating the tree. It’s an exercise in holding history and tradition in my hands with each ornament I put on the tree. Almost every ornament has a story. I have ornaments that belonged to my grandmas, that were made by my grandmas and great-grandmas, that were given to me by my Auntie, that were made by my mom and graced the tree in my house when I was a little girl, and so on. Of course I’m now adding the ornaments that belong to my girls. A new tradition in my little family (which I got from my Auntie) is that I give the girls each a special ornament each Christmas, trying to make it representative of something special that they did or experienced in the past year.

The first ornament put on the tree this year by each of my older girls was their “First Christmas” rocking horse. These are engraved with their names and the year.

They then proceeded with the rest of their individual ornaments and then helped me put all the non-breakable ornaments on the lower section of the tree.

The finished product:

For some reason the tree is leaning a bit this year. I don’t even care. I love our tree. It might even be a bit weird how much I love our tree. This thing is a big green, sparkly monument to my life, my family, and my history. It, and the process of creating it with my girls, bring me joy.

Weekend Family Fest

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Amy

It was cold and rainy here all weekend. But our house was full of warmth and sunshine.

We took full advantage of being home together for a full weekend. We played, and made music, and colored Halloween cookies.

Yes, that’s a tear on her cheek. She had been very upset about something just before climbing in her seat to color her cookies. Probably that I made her take off her sister’s Snow White dress for the activity…

I had shown her how I bit off my ghost’s arms. She laughed and showed me her ghost, “Mama, I bit off his butt!”

We hunkered down for some much needed home time. Lists and agendas went out the window as we spent time just enjoying each other. It. was. awesome.

We did puzzles and played games and watched football. The girls knew the appropriate teams to cheer for (mostly “GO BLUE!” of course, but a little bit of “Yay Hawkeyes!” in there as well so their Daddy wouldn’t feel bad).

We got out paints and went to town. My girls love to paint. I love seeing how they each have their own way of doing it.

Miss decided that finger painting was in order. When I told her I wasn’t going to get out the finger paints (not my fave activity), she improvised. Tricky girl.

So, they made some great handprint art. It was messy. I don’t love messy, but I went with it. It was fun and I survived and they loved it.

It was a lazy jammy weekend. The only reason any of us got dressed all weekend (other than hubby and me when we went on a date Saturday), was that the girls got paint all over their jammies from the finger painting.

Of course we couldn’t get through this weekend family fest without carving our pumpkins. The older girls each had a pumpkin to draw a face on.

Daddy carved them while the girls looked on excitedly.

I forgot to buy one of those little pumpkin carving sets, so he was working hard and having a bit of trouble with my relatively large knives. Then he got smart.

The girls chose to do Mad (Miss’s), Scared (Lass’s), and Sad (Miss’s choice for Sis) faces on their pumpkins. I love how they turned out. It was a fun ending to a wonderful weekend.

Easter Fun

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Amy

We have had a fun Easter weekend. The girls dyed eggs with me last night.

I got the idea to use a whisk to hold the eggs from Pinterest. It worked really well, though the whisk I used for Lass was a little bit small to fit the eggs into. I also had to adjust the level of water in the cups and the position of the eggs in the whisks in order to be able to get the eggs submerged fully. But, this was much easier than the way we did it last year, dropping the eggs into the dye and having Miss try to fish them out with a spoon.

Miss pretty much dyed all the eggs. Lass did one egg and then lost interest.

This morning we hunted eggs and baskets.

It was Lass’s first experience with the Easter egg/basket hunt.

She caught on quite quickly.

I love the dollar section at Target. So much good basket filler!

Baby Sis was still sleeping while we hunted, but the Easter Bunny left her a special basket too.

I finally got a few photos with all three of my girls together.

We went to brunch with the Easter Bunny. The girls were so interested in the bunny when he was across the room, but once he came close, they were much more reserved. Lass wouldn’t even take a toy from his basket, though as soon as we left, she kept asking for him. “Bunny? Bunny?”

Miss was a bit more brave and selected a toy. She even shook his hand.

Baby Sis was an angel at brunch. She is such an easygoing baby. She got all tired out from our adventures of the morning.

Sweet little bunny…

Happy Easter!

Santa Came to Town

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Amy

We were at the Farm over the weekend for Christmas with my husband’s family. The girls got to have tons of fun playing with their cousins.

The grown ups got to have lots of fun visiting. This is a photo of me with my also-pregnant sister-in-law. She is due about two weeks after me. The woman brought O’Doul’s. Gotta love a fake beer on Christmas Eve.

And then of course, the Christmas festivities began. We opened gifts with the family, which is kind of crazy since my husband has five siblings. There were 14 adults and 13 kids opening and slinging wrapping paper all over.

It was fabulous.

One of the biggest gift “hits” was this “Rody” for Miss from my husband’s parents.

Daddy blew it up and away she went.

It caused a bit of friction once Little Sister noticed it.

She was pretty upset at not being able to ride it right away.

But Big Sister is such a sweet girl, she let her sis have a turn,

hovering nearby the entire time, of course.

And, time’s up!

It’s a really cool toy.

Finally, Miss got distracted and Lass got to have a bit of time on it. Oh, the holiday drama!

After family gifts, the kids all went downstairs to wait for Santa. In my husband’s family, Santa arrives on Christmas Eve before the kids go to bed. They have to wait patiently downstairs for him (while the moms put out stockings and all the Santa gifts upstairs).

When he arrives, he makes lots of noise stomping around and “Ho-Ho-Ho-ing.” The kids scream and run up the stairs, hoping to catch a glimpse of him before he gets into his sleigh and rides off.

We all got to see him as he ran out of the house and back to his sleigh waiting in the grass. Unfortunately one of the older cousins may have seen him a little too much. He said to his mom something like, “I wish we got to have the real Santa, not the one with dark hair and eyebrows.” I guess the wig wasn’t quite straight on my brother-in-law!

When we went back inside, of course the girls had a blast with all their presents.

Miss got the two Care Bears she asked Santa for, and they haven’t left her side since. Here she is reading one of her new books to Grumpy Bear.

In my last post I wrote about how Miss has been insistent about wearing her “ballerina costume” of leotard, tights, and ballet shoes. The trip to the Farm was no different. I told her she had to wear some nice clothes for Christmas dinner and family gifts, and we compromised by putting her nice clothes on over the ballerina costume (if you look at some of the pictures above you can see her little ballet shoes). After getting her Santa gifts, the “real” clothes were off and she was back in ballerina mode.

I finally got her out of the ballerina costume when we went on a treasure hunt on Christmas day. I told her she needed to wear warm clothes and that her ballerina costume really needed to be washed while we were out.

The weather was chilly but beautiful, and as always the treasure hunt was memorable.

Lass was a bit like the little brother in “A Christmas Story.” she was so bundled up she could barely move.

Miss found some shells and some acorns for her “treasures.”

She got to check out lots of interesting things, like this deer rub.

She got to examine some mushrooms growing on these trees

And look at these little berries.

Lass fell asleep during our walk in the woods.

Overall, the trip to the farm was a great time for all. And when we came home, the girls found that Santa had been to our house too while we were gone. He left some gymnastics mats, a balance beam, and a baby doll high chair (which so far has only been used to feed pizza to Care Bears).

Oh yeah, Santa left bubble wrap too.

I am still trying to get things back in order here after so much holiday traveling. Yesterday I folded six loads of laundry and I still have more to do! The toys aren’t all put away, but they’ve at least all made it into the house now. The spare room in the basement still has wrapping paper strewn all over the floor. But the traveling was absolutely worth it, and we had a magical Christmas. I hope you did too.

A Great Big Kentucky Post. Y’all.

Posted on December 21, 2011January 11, 2023 by Amy

Last week we went to Kentucky to spend the week with my parents. I have virtually no internet access there, so I couldn’t post while we were gone. Somehow we have been home for three days, and I am just now getting around to posting about our fabulous trip. I would say with all the holiday craziness I haven’t had the time to post. However, I am a firm believer that you have time for what you make time for. So. Sorry, I haven’t made time for this. But if it makes up for it, I’m posting right now during naptime instead of taking a shower…

Anyway. Our trip was really wonderful, though it was unfortunately delayed for a day. Remember how I posted that we had all managed to escape the stomach bug except for Lass’s very brief encounter with it? I typed too soon. Friday night, the night before we were supposed to leave, I was up all night sick and ended up going to the emergency department for fluids around 4am, right about the time Miss woke up crying and asking for “new jammies,” meaning of course that she had thrown up all over the ones she was wearing. So, needless to say, she and I were under the weather for the day that was supposed to be our travel day, and we didn’t make it to Kentucky until Sunday. But the visit was so worth the trip. My parents rock. They are so awesome with my girls and give them so much love and attention it just makes my heart melt to watch them together. I love that my girls are the center of attention with my parents for a whole week. And they eat it up. Miss just glows with happiness when playing with my Mom, and Lass got there too, though it took her a bit longer to warm up. Little girls can just never have too much love and attention from their grandparents. I only wish my parents lived close, so my girls could have the experience of spending time with them more often.

Here’s a big, huge photo tour of our week in the south:

We went to story time at the library where my Mom is the children’s librarian. I was so proud of my girls. Both of them sat nicely and listened to the story, even though there was a good bit of chaos going on around them.

Then Santa showed up…

Miss got all shy and scrambled for my lap

where she clung to me for dear life

until Santa called her name to come up for her present.

She was so shy!

But my shy girl braved giving the big guy a hug.

Lass was surprisingly calm about the process of seeing Santa too.

Probably because I didn’t even attempt to get her any closer than this.

The story time was great. We colored and had a snack and crafted a paper chain.

All the kids got in a circle with my mom at the end to sing a song, which was very cute.

Then it was time to go.

We did stop upstairs to check out some books, which Miss had fun reading to her baby doll when we got back to my parents’ house.

The day of the story time was also my husband’s birthday. This year I let Miss pick out a few presents for him in addition to what I got for him. A couple of weeks ago I took her to the dollar store (the real one where everything costs $1), gave her a $5 bill and told her she could pick five things that she thought her Daddy would like for his birthday. She walked around the store clutching the $5 bill in her hand, selecting things at her eye level. It was so fun to watch her make her choices and then to pack them up when we got them home. In addition to the five presents, she was also allowed to pick a card and a gift bag for him.

And all on her own, she also picked this hat as a must-have for her Daddy.

So what were the gifts? A Winnie the Pooh chalkboard set,

a pink jumprope, blue safety scissors, and a pen with a bobbling dog on top, set into a suction cup base (not pictured here, but shown above).

My personal favorite? Floral foam.

Miss had no idea what it was when she saw it at the store, but she thought it was awesome and knew her Daddy would just love it. It was great to watch her getting so excited about her Daddy’s presents.

We also got to visit with my brother and his family for an afternoon. We went to their house to do our Christmas with them.

A good time was had by all, I think.

And a great holiday tradition was passed to the next generation during this visit. Every year my mom and I watch the movie “Heidi” with Shirley Temple. Some people watch, “Miracle on 34th Street,” maybe even “A Christmas Story” or some other traditional holiday movie. Our movie is “Heidi.” We know the dialog by heart. This year, my girls watched it for the first time.

Okay, so the above photos are a little misleading. They really only paid attention to the movie for about the first 10 minutes. But I didn’t expect much more for the first viewing. This movie takes time to appreciate. My husband and brother, even my Dad, still don’t quite appreciate it yet. The girls will get there. Of that I am sure.

One other movie experience we had while in Kentucky, that Miss did greatly appreciate (to the point that we watched the movie 3 times in 24 hours), was her first viewing of “Snow White.” I hadn’t seen the movie in many, many years, so I probably enjoyed watching it with her almost as much as she did.

The still photos don’t quite do justice to our enjoyment of the movie.

I’m glad to be home, though I miss my family. I can’t believe Christmas is already almost here. Tomorrow is Miss’s school party. I have way too much gift-wrapping left to do. This weekend we’ll go to the Farm to “do Christmas” with my husband’s family. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Oh Christmas Tree

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Amy

It’s tradition in our family to put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving if at all possible. Yesterday, we got it done. The girls took great naps, which allowed me to get the tree up and put all my breakable ornaments on the top half. I left the bottom bare so the girls could help me with the non-breakable ornaments after waking from their naps. They were really excited when they saw the tree!

They dug in to the box of ornaments and random other decorations like it was a treasure chest. Notice that old box. It’s probably at least as old as I am. It’s what we kept many of these same ornaments in when I was a kid. I just kept them in the same box when I inherited them from my mom.

Miss found and loved these little elves. There are two of them that sit back to back in a boot. Again, these guys are almost as old (if not as old) as I am. They were one of my favorites when I was little too. One of them has a problems with his head falling off from time to time, but I love them and could never part with them.

These ornaments were made by my mom back in the 70s I think. Styrofoam balls (and a few other shapes) with beads and sequins pinned into them. Miss loved this bell, which she called a “Christmas tree.” It makes me happy that my girls are putting some of my childhood memories on our tree each year.

Lass mostly just dug through the box and checked everything out.

But Miss was very into helping me by handing me all the ornaments, telling me where to put them, and even putting a few on herself.

It was so fun to decorate our tree with my girls. I love holiday traditions like these. We listened to Johnny Mathis Christmas music. The girls shook their booties to “Jingle Bell Rock” and bobbed and swayed beautifully to the less bop-worthy songs, like “Give Me Your Love For Christmas” and “White Christmas.” Our tree is full of the perfect balance of old and new. The garland and many of the ornaments, as noted above, are the same ones that we put on our tree when I was a little girl. We have some ornaments made by my great-grandmother. Plenty of the ornaments are ones I have collected over the years, both vintage and new. And of course, each of the girls has her own little collection of her own ornaments that will grow each year.

I love our tree. Some might think it too cluttered. Some might prefer a more coordinated look. I think this tree is perfect. It speaks of family and history and love and, of course, tradition. To me, that seems the whole purpose of a Christmas tree. Most of all, I love the process of putting it together as a family.