Christmas

Our Christmas festivities mostly went off without a hitch. Our Christmas day with my family was postponed until New Year's day due to the snow and difficult driving conditions. My Grandma would be coming from The Dalles and the freeway was closed for most of the week, so nobody was even able to get up and get her down here.
But we still had our Christmas eve with my mom here at our house. Then we went over to my husband's folk's house. We had a nice time visiting with family and eating things we should only eat once a year.
Once we got home, we got the kids to bed and set out our cookies for Santa. He was nice enough to come and leave our presents under the tree. The kids were really worried that they wouldn't make it to the "nice list" due to a few incidents over the past month involving snooping and arguing. (long story) But miraculously they DID make it to the nice list after all.
We had an awesome Christmas day opening presents and spending the whole day in our pajamas, eating Christmas sticky buns (a favorite for as long as I can remember). It was really nice.

Plus as always, we got some great pictures.

The insanity finally comes to an end!

So as I may have mentioned a time or two, all of our Christmas gifts this year were handmade. I do enjoy holiday cooking and baking, but this year I took it to 11. Luckily we have been trapped in our house for the past 2 weeks because of the snow, but it still was a lot of planning and long hours in front of the stove.

We put together gift baskets with a stocking for each person cross stitched by yours truly. Then a multitude of baked goods and other stuff to eat. So essentially in the past month we have made enormous batches of the following.....

Peanut butter cookies
cranberry orange cookies
cinnamon chip cookies
penuche (walnut fudge)
baklava
peanut brittle
almond roca
hard candy
chex mix
Kahlua
bailey's Irish cream
incredible pasta sauce
fresh homemade pasta (made by my awesome husband)

It only comes once a year and I do love to do it, but boy I am glad when it is over :)

Now is the winter of my discontent!!

Seriously!! This snow! It warmed up to about 35 today. So all that 12 feet of snow I have out in my front yard....still here. Not going anywhere. I am so sick to death of this. We almost considered canceling our Christmas eve festivities tomorrow night. But decided that we could make it work. Christmas day at my family's house was canceled. We hope to have it on New years day instead. I am beginning to fear where all that snow will melt off and go to. We could have ourselves a pretty gnarly flood on our hands.

I blame Al Gore for all of this. In case you were wondering.

All the Jews in the house say HEYY!!!

I am an equal opportunity blogger over here at Jaxonfive. I am not Jewish, but I did love Fiddler on the roof and secretly wished I was (Jewish) for a long time. You guys have great dancing, music and the best bagels this pasty protestant will ever sink her teeth into.

We are eating our annual Latke dinner tonight and loving every bite of it.

Happy Hanukkah!!

Enough with the snow already!

Ok I am all for snow and all. Don't get me wrong. It is beautiful and fun to play in. That said.......enough is enough!!! It has been snowing for a week straight. All last week of school was canceled. Not that I don't love my kids, but I was in no way prepared for an extra week of kids under my feet. We had made the decision that everyone on our Christmas list (except the kids who are getting gifts from Santa) would be getting homemade presents. We have been pounding away making our gifts for the past several weeks. We were mostly on schedule. Until.....the great white menace came upon us. And when I say menace, I mean snow. And when I say snow, I don't mean just a light dusting like we normally get here in Portland. I mean it has dumped non stop for the past week. Then there is the freezing rain. A pleasant addition to an already annoying situation.
As of right now, we have been completly stuck in the house. The kids have been out and playing in it, but I can't exactly get out and get anything done. I myself have not left the house for 5 days. As I write this, I am looking out at my van. The snow is up to the bottom bumper. I would literally have to dig the car out to even go anywhere. It is a big mess. It wouldn't be so bad if our street got plowed, but no such luck. I am going to attempt to make it out to Costco this afternoon. Mostly because I am in desperate need to see another person outside of my immediate family. Cabin fever is driving me nuts. My kids are driving me nuts. But mostly the pile of wet clothes by my front door and the trail of ice chunks through the house (because nobody seems to understand that you can't walk through the house in your snow boots) are driving me nuts.

In short, it's pretty and all but I'm ready for spring. By the way...welcome to the official 2nd day of winter. This is going to be a long winter.

We did get some cool pictures though.

Sunshine's musical debut

Last night despite the fact that school has been canceled all this week because of snow and ice, the show must go on for her Preschool class. They had their big Christmas program. It was really cute. I love this age because they are so freaked out to be up in front of everybody that most of the kids either forget to sing or spend their time on stage waving to their parents in the audience. For some reason Sunshine felt a little antisocial and kept a good 3 foot distance from her classmates on the risers. Perhaps she felt more like a soloist than part of a group. Although as a proud mother I can safely say that she did outshine all of those other armatures. Maybe star search is in our future.

When the program was over the teachers handed out stockings to each of the kids with a ton of presents in each one. It was just trinketly stuff like crayons and beads, but they really know how to win the heart of a 4 year old. She was so tickled with herself and her performance. It was really her night to shine.

When it was all over she said her goodbyes and she had to run and give her best friend Cora a big "Merry Christmas" hug. Little girls are just so cute at this age. They looked like a couple of little ladies.

The little ladies in their fabulous Christmas dresses.

Blazer game

Last night we went out and saw a Blazer game. I have never been to one and Rockstar has not been to one in years. Bug has some sort of special deal from his school for students and their families so we got tickets for really cheap. As you can tell by the pictures we were way, WAY up in the nose bleed section. We still had fun though. The game itself is almost irrelevant. It's all about the experience of everything else going on. Talk about stimulation overload. Everywhere you looked there was something going on.It sort of threw Bug into an overload at first, but he got into the crowd participation stuff.

We ended up getting home around 10 which was way past his bedtime, but he seemed to recover pretty well today. All in all he had a great time. It was just cool that we found something that we can do special with just him. Something that we have been having a hard time with is doing special stuff with them as individuals. (not just family stuff) Something that I am sure all parents of more than one child struggle with. Truth be told we are just making it up as we go along.

A night at the ballet

Last night we took Bug and Sunshine to see the Nutcracker downtown. We have been looking foreword to this for a long time. The kids are classical music junkies and I don't just mean they like little Einsteins either. I mean that's all they listen to on the radios in their rooms. I have switched stations several times, but they change it back to the classical station. I am thrilled with that, being a former band nerd, I can appreciate classical music too.

Rockstar and I used to go see The Nutcracker every year at Christmas and had stopped when we had kids, mostly because they weren't quite ready to go yet. It's sort of a big kid thing.

We have been preparing for weeks by watching the dvd's of the Nutcracker (to understand the story) and get familiar with the music.

We got all gussied up and had ourselves a nice night out. I don't think they could have enjoyed it any more. They sat spell bound for the 2 1/2 it ran. They each had a pair of binoculars and just had a great time. I could hear Sunshine humming along with the music through a couple of the songs. They really loved it. It just filled me with such warm fuzzy happiness that they loved it as much as I knew they would.

It was a great night.

They kids and I checking out the orchestra pit and seeing all the musicians that make up the orchestra.

Playing in the stairs during intermission.

Only in Portland

Rockstar husband got this cool picture this morning in our front yard.

Snow day!!

We woke up this morning to the snow coming down fast and furious, so we got some breakfast and headed out to play in it before it was gone. The kids had a blast playing in the field across the street. We got some great pictures along the way too.