The Holidays are over!!

So finally I have had a second to get my act together and put up our holiday pictures. I have been putting them together when I thought I may as well just do it after the New year's eve pictures could go into the mix.

To those of you that were playing the home game, we went to my in-laws for Christmas eve and had a great time as usual. It was just our family pounding down beer dogs and fondue as is our traditional Christmas eve meal in our family.

We then spent Christmas day here at home playing with our new toys. The kids got webkins and spent the day playing online with their new friends as this is a world we have managed to avoid until now. It seems to have quickly turned into an addiction with them.

Then the day after Christmas, we packed it up and went down to the southern Oregon coast to spend Christmas with my mom who is working as a state park camp host down there. So we braved it and went camping in a yurt on the coast in late December. It was something that we could honestly say that we have never done :) It was actually a lot of fun and the yurts were nice and heated. The weather was nice (nice for the coast anyway) and my Mom, Peanut and I were even able to go out for a walk on the beach. It was chilly, but bearable. Rockstar took the older kids over to a skate park in Reedsport which was the closest town. We really did have a great time.

New Year's eve sort of crept up on us. We aren't really big party folk anymore and finding babysitting on a night like New years is near impossible. Luckily most of our friends are in the same boat so we all just got together and let the kids run wild together. We had 3 families and a total of 11 kids running wild. We all had a lot of fun playing video games and just hanging out.

So there you have it. I compiled all of our Holiday adventures into one slide show and threw in my favorite version of my favorite Christmas song of all time and voila, the Holidays are finally over!!

So let me bring you up to speed.

Alright I am aware that the past several months I have gotten behind on all my blogs. I am a bad blogger. My life the past couple months has been crazy to say the least. I know a lot of you follow me on Facebook so you are aware of the drama, but for those of you that don't, I will give you a play by play of the past several months and get you up to speed.

September....

I realize I have blogged since then, but I know I left out a lot of things that we did.

Such as...fruit harvest. This fall we harvested a ton of apples that were juiced and made into applesauce. Sunshine loved climbing up the tree to pick the apples out of Grandma's tree.

We also ended up with lots of plums that ended up as plum sauce, jam , dried plums and fruit leather (which I documented here) . Then I had a friend of mine get hold of 3 boxes of concord grapes that were made into juice and now reside in my freezer. Also we got a hold of a box of figs from a friend's tree and made several things.
Also with fall comes all sorts of activities starting up. Bug has been busy with twice a week swimming lessons and Sunshine started ballet. They both love doing these and have really been thriving.
Then in October we had Halloween. I had every intention to post pictures of the kids carving pumpkins and in their costumes, but time just got away from me. So better late than never.They were not nearly as enthusiastic about pumpkin guts as we were.Then came the costumes. Bug was Batman, Peanut was the boy wonder sidekick Robin and Sunshine was a cat. NOT CAT WOMAN!!! She yelled at more than one person on Halloween for making that mistake. We went over to my in laws house to go trick or treating but not before stopping off at my aunt Donna's house. Also my mom was able to go with us this year so that was cool.


Then believe it or not, the majority of the month of November was mostly quiet. Hard to imagine I know. But the weekend before Thanksgiving is when my side of the family does Thanksgiving. So we all met the Saturday before and had a nice Thanksgiving with family and also celebrated my Grandma's 90th birthday.
As soon as we got done with our Thanksgiving dinner we came home to find that Bug was not feeling so chipper. He started running a fever and had an upset stomach that soon came to be known in our family as "flupocalypse '09" in our house. After 5 days of fever I took him in to be seen and he was diagnosed with the H1N1 virus or the swine flu. He sort of got better, but then Sunshine got it. She had it worse with more unpleasant symptoms. She soon got over it after about a week, then Peanut got it. his was the worse of all. Just when it seemed that Peanut was getting over it, Bug got it again.....then Sunshine got it again.....then Peanut got it again. It cycled through our house relentlessly keeping us quarantined for a full month. It was horrible. We were advised to stay home at all costs and if we did leave we had to wear these dumb masks by request from the health department. We were like social lepers. So we just stayed home. For a long , long month.
But once it passed, we were able to get back out in the real world.

In December we had ballet recitals.....

My perfect ballerina was the one closest to the teacher that actually followed her. She is the oldest in the class and you can really tell by her attention span and the fact that she is so much taller than everyone else. Did did great though.Then we were desperately trying to get into the Christmas spirit. We put a tree up for the kids and decorated the house.
And I did my usual holiday bake-a-thon. This year Sunshine helped as much as she could.
Then we rounded out the holiday season with the magnificent zoo lights. For those of you that are not in the Portland area and have no idea what the zoo lights are, it is the Oregon Zoo, but much like the Disneyland's electrical light parade but not moving. It is hard to explain so Rockstar made a cool video to give you a glimpse. You do see some of the animals at the zoo, but it is mostly about the thousands of twinkling lights.


I am still trying to compile our pictures from Christmas eve and our day after Christmas camping trip. But this about brings you up to speed from the past couple months.

So there you go.

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 :)

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!!

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.

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.

Pure aewsome

I'm sure you CAN have Christmas without this little ditty, but why would you?

Beauty eh?

12 days of Christmas

This is pretty much how I spent my year too. Funny how that is works :)

Oh wow do I wish I could have thought of this, but that's why she is a professional blogger and I am,... well,...me. This video came from Dawn over at BecauseIsaidso.com. If you ever get a chance I highly recommend you check out her blog. She is awesome.

Volume 3 ...candy making

My family has this tradition of making hard candy at Christmas time. It started with my Grandma making it years ago and has been a tradition that we are trying to resurrect. We have been doing it the past 7 or 8 years traditionally. It's just something that is so much more fun with a big mess (figuratively and literally) of people to help with all the jobs involved. It even has jobs that the littlest kids can help with. It is very messy though.

We all got together on Sunday afternoon to make some up. A good time was had by all. Of course with all the nutty activities this weekend, we sort of spent our time and dashed out of there with a cloud of powdered sugar in our wake. We got some great pictures though. I love that my kids will have the same fun memories of this that I had growing up.

weekend marathon ...volume 2

So Rockstar and I went out to lunch Saturday afternoon at the place that we always go if we have an afternoon off. Someplace romantic you may ask,....not really. We always go to Ikea. ....Because we are big dorks. We look at furniture and cabinets and dream of what we could do with our house if money were no object. Plus Ikea has a fantastic cafeteria with really good food. Call it what you will, but hey, we know what we like.

So we finish up with Ikea and we need to get back because my in laws were going to be dropping off the kids soon. So we start heading in that direction, when my husband starts taking a little detour.

Me- "ok where are you going? Have you forgotten how to get home?"
Rockstar- "I have always wanted to see what kind of neighborhoods are over in this area."
Me- "It's right next to the airport, nobody lives over here voluntarily. Sightseeing over, we need to get home so your parents don't think we ditched the kids on them"
Rockstar- "Oh they can wait, I just want to see what is over here......"
Me- (starting to get antsy) "We can do this another time, c'mon we need to get home"

Meanwhile we pull into a hotel parking lot and he turns off the van.

At this point I begin to panic and worry if I should call his parents and let them know that we are going to be late.

Then he says "we aren't going to pick up the kids, they are staying the night at my parents house."

???!!!

What?

"I couldn't wrap up your Christmas present and put it under the tree, but I can give it to you now."

He got me (us) a night at a really nice hotel here in town. Not just a nice room, the Presidential suite.

Oh heck yes!!

That little fart planned this whole elaborate plan with setting up child care, packing all of our clothes, toiletries and sneeking it out of the house right under my nose. Not an easy undertaking. I see all. But this one slid right past me. He even got all the kids clothes packed and got them all church clothes and remembered pajamas. Not that I have ever doubted his ability to do this, but it's just something that I have always taken care of. But he did it all. Not only did he do it all, but he did it all under the radar.

The room was awesome. It had a jacuzzi in the living room and an enormous television. We did absolutly nothing. It was fantastic! We had pizza delivered and sat in the hot tub most of the night while watching TV. It was so nice not to have to worry about dishes, or working on craft projects that I am doing for Christmas presents. I didn't have to constantly be in ear shot of a baby monitor or sleep with one ear open for the kids. I didn't have to let dogs out in the middle of the night to go potty or break up arguments over toys at 5 AM. It seems so simple, but it was the best Christmas present anyone could have given me.

Here are a few pictures of our room.

We came back down to reality sometime Sunday afternoon when we had to go get the kids. For real I mean.

But because it was a marathon weekend, it was only half done. There is still more to come.......

It should be noted also, what an awesome husband I really do have. Not that anyone has ever doubted this. But I thought I should point out here, because I know he would never disclose this.

His band parted ways a couple months ago. All on good terms, but it was still hard to do so for him. He knew he didn't want to do the whole band thing anymore, so he went out and sold all of his equipment. All but one of his basses. He had a lot of equipment. I say this now, because he had this present for me in mind while he was selling his stuff off. This is not something we could normally afford. He used that money he got to pay for Christmas presents. I can't even begin to express my love and gratitude for such an expression. He so rocks!!

Weekend marathon volume 1...Cutting down our tree

I know I have been behind on putting up pictures here. But I have been so busy lately, that I have barely had time to even get the pictures off the camera . Let alone write a little something about them.

This past weekend we had a marathon of events, one after the other. On Saturday morning we went out and cut down our Christmas tree. Our friends from church, The Austins, have some property that they have been growing Christmas trees on. They let us come up and pick ourselves out a tree. I have decided that I was going to put the tree in the middle of our living room that has 14 foot vaulted ceilings, so I wanted to do a tall one. The dang thing took 3 men and a boy to take down. (Not really, but it IS big) Rockstar just sort of rolled his eyes but cut it down anyways. He thinks it's a little too "Griswald" and that there may be a family of squirrels living in it.

The kids had a blast running around and weaving in and out of the trees. As you can see, the older kids barely stood still long enough to get a picture that wasn't blurry.

We got it cut down and loaded up in my father in laws truck. My in laws asked if they could take the kids for the afternoon so they got the kids loaded up and off they went.

We then had the afternoon to ourselves and off we went to have lunch all by ourselves.

Or so I though......


to be continued....

A White Christmas?!!!

So I have lived in Oregon the majority of my life. Save for a whole lot of time spent in Alaska with my other family. And in my 32 years I have never once had a white Christmas here. Until now.

So we are at my Aunt and Uncle's house opening more presents when Sunshine looks out the window and says..."it's snowing!!!" We all stop and look and sure enough it was coming down really hard and in great big flakes! This is the first real snow of the winter and we get it on Christmas day! How great is that!?

Of course the kids are freaking out to get out and play in it, but I make them finish what we were doing and then get home to put on the proper "playing in the snow" clothes. Of course by then it had mostly melted and the magic moment had passed. But it was a total "Bing Crosby moment" even though it lasted only a couple minutes.