Is It Naptime Yet

My friend Anna recently did a posts on Christmas memories and I made a little comment because she asked us to comment on our favorite Christmas memories. Here’s my comment:

My favorite has always been sneaking out to see the tree at night after Santa had come and eating one or two treats from my stocking. I loved sitting and looking at the lit tree with all the lights out.

I may actually not put the child’s gate up this year and maybe my girls will enjoy this too, though in some ways they are so good it might take a year or two.

So this year I’m going to relinquish some power and not put up the child’s gate. Jon doesn’t like them sneaking and poking around, so he’s thinking of maybe putting up a curtain, so they can peak out the curtain, but hopefully not go past it. This is a tradition his family has and as a child he never actually went past the curtain, just peeked. I find this somewhat amazing, but I think my girls would take after him since they do have a tendency to really respect what we ask them to do.

Taking Anna’s lead I want to share some of my favorite Christmas memories.:

Staying up late waiting for Santa to come.

Exchanging gifts with my siblings.

My dad driving us around to go look at Christmas lights so Mom could wrap presents. I think of my Dad whenever we look at lights with my girls. Their enthusiasm reminds me of my own.

Picking out Christmas tree’s with my dad each year. I always went with him and got the last say. I don’t know if he taught me well or just made it feel like I picked the perfect one each year. Every once-in-a-while another sister got to come along, which I didn’t like too much, but I still got the last say.

Making decorated sugar cookies for my friends.

Our Christmas Tree Angel. My parents have the perfect angel for their tree, just simple, not extravagant with big wings. I wish I could find one just like it.

Our house on Base decorated with lights and a manger scene.

Silent Night, and not knowing if my sister’s catholic boyfriend knew the song. I can  be a bit air-heady at times.

The one Christmas I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night and had gotten a new bike.

Turning out all the lights and watching the Christmas tree glimmer with it’s lights on.

One year my dad set up the camera to record for 2 or so seconds every 10 or so seconds and we watched as we peeked in the presents and our bodies appeared at different places in the room.

Wrapping presents that my dad bought my mom.

5 years or so of plain red and green wrapping paper my dad had gotten somewhere. We wrapped the new computer in it the first year and it lasted f.o.r.e.v.e.r. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was still some hanging around or if my mom just tossed it.

My dad being able to return things, but us having to keep things we didn’t like unless they didn’t fit or were broken.

Peeking around for where the Christmas gifts were hid.

Unwrapping gifts once in a while and re-wrapping them.

Learning mom’s secret code on how to tell what gift belonged to who since it had no name tag. Lets just say each of our names start with different letters and D was for Dad, since our names both start with L.

What are some of your favorite Christmas memories?

Each year we try to have Thanksgiving with both of our families. It’s nice because we don’t have to prepare a huge feast, but we also get to see both our families.

This year we headed over to my parents first and helped to set up. It was a rather small bunch this year, with only 8 of us total. My parents, Glenn, Carolyn and my family of four. Since we only had two children and we could all fit at one table, the girls got to sit with the adults and eat off of my parents china, though they didn’t get the glass steam ware. I’ll have to take a picture of my parents China, but it’s from Germany and about 35 years old. Since I grew up on this china, it’s exactly what I envision my China to look like, but the problem being it’s from Germany and it’s 35 years old.

My mom fixed a wonderful meal and it was fun to sit and be with family.

We left about 3:30 to head over to Annie’s house for the Blake family dinner. I had baked two pies that morning so we stopped and picked them up on our way there. I made the pumpkin from scratch, as in a baked and mashed the pumpkin I used in the pie, though it was a store bought crust since pie crust intimidates me still. Then I baked an apple pie just like the one I made last year from the apple pie filling Sam and I canned last year. Both were pretty good, though I’m not a big pumpkin pie fan I’ve decided. I like banana cream.

My mother-in-law’s sister and husband were in town for the Blake Thanksgiving and needed somewhere to stay for the night so we offered our small home. We stayed up and talked with them for a bit. I think they thought our girls were a little odd since they both wanted some vegetable before they went to bed. Eden had grabbed some mushrooms and Lilah some carrots and you just can’t say no it’s too late to eat vegetables, so I let them eat ’em.

They had asked what time the sun came up so they could be off and running early, but we thought we’d still be able to make them a nice breakfast before the left. When Jon woke up at 6:40 am they had already packed up and left! I don’t know if we were terrible host or if they were the best house guests, but we were a little sad to see they had left so early and we hadn’t even noticed. ( We now know we can fit a queen size air mattress in our living room if anyone wants to stay here, though  it’s very “cozy”.)

I then enjoyed the weekend with Carolyn, so as to stay out of Jon’s hair so he could study.

Last year Carolyn and I hit some stores on Black Friday together. This year Jon’s aunt and uncle were staying with us just for the night, so I was unable to go out with her.

The only thing I really wanted to buy was coats for the girls and Old Navy was having a killer deal, $15 for any coat, adults included, too bad I didn’t need one. Since I couldn’t go and I didn’t know when I’d be able to leave the house since we had guest, Carolyn went for me and for herself. She was at Old Navy at 3 am and waited two hours before she even got into the store. She was able to get exactly what I wanted for Lilah, but they didn’t have the coat I wanted in Eden’s size, in any color even, so she grabbed a couple other options. She did do shopping for herself, and I’m not sure if her plan was to be there so early before I asked her to look for coats for me, but I think it’s so super sweet that she did.

I went to a different Old Navy later and found a coat for Eden, though I could not find one for Lilah, so it was totally worth her hard work, or at least perseverance.

I also bought tons of chocolate to make truffles and popcorn, which I’m looking at taking orders on if you would like to buy some, and nearly bought a Cricket just because it was so. dang. cheap. The Michael’s on Russel is not well traveled and even though it was $69.99 and you could use a 25% off coupon, they had like 10 left at 8 am, and I know they’re a hot item. I just didn’t need one, though I was tempted to buy one and see if I could make money on E-bay.

So if you want something from Michael’s on Black Friday, visit the one on Russel and Pecos. It is never busy and they always have what I’m looking for.

Also, isn’t my sister so sweet?
I don’t even know if I’d have been willing to go at 3 am. Though I stay up till 2 am lately and what’s another few hours. The young lady who checked me out at Old Navy had been awake for 33 hours. Crazy.

So I’m a slacker mom. I blame it on a few things. First Linux, second Facebook, third trying to earn money by sewing, and fourth my procrastinating self.

I’m just a lame blogger lately, but I will record Halloween this year, finally, like three weeks later. Pictures to come once I reboot into Windows or figure out Linux.

Our Halloween this year was pretty low key. We had only one party to go to, though there were a couple others we could have gone to, and the girls used costumes that had been previously made, so I had no sewing whatsoever to do. Since I had no sewing to do I took on a job for a friend and made this cape for her business. I know, impressive, especially since I had to draft a pattern for the hood. It was a pain and but it gave me some money to put into my Sew Lacey account.

Our only Halloween party was for my sister’s work. We go ever year, or at least the past three years, and have a ball. Lilah was a fairy and Eden was Glinda, she decided not to be Jasmine, and I know this post isn’t nearly as cute without pictures. So I’ll try hard to get some up before the end of this week, maybe month…OK year. (I do have to order the Costco calendars and our holiday cards and I have all the pictures in Windows, so I may get them up within the month.)

The girls had a blast at the work party. I think it was because they were able to eat a doughnut before they ate their super healthy dinner consisting of a hot dog and bun, with ketchup. Luckily Lilah had gone bobbing for apples, so she had that wonderful germ covered apple to eat with her hot dog dinner. Eden later also bobbed for apples and ate half of her apple two, even more willingly than she ate the hot dog.

The girls also participated in the cake walk. Eden won after four or so dances, then when they wanted to end it Lilah simply won by being on a number! She was still really happy, though I’m sure it’s because she was able to eat a cupcake and a doughnut all in the same night.

After the trick or treating we headed home and the girls had fun sorting their stash of candy.

Saturday, on Halloween Day, we carved our pumpkin. I had the girls draw pictures, then I transferred them onto the pumpkin. I had to modify Eden’s a little because I don’t know how to carve a pupil in the middle of the pumpkin’s eyes or illustrate pink cheeks on an orange pumpkin, but I think they were both pretty pleased once all was done. After carving we got ready and visited the Blake’s so they could see the girls in their costumes.

Once dark we headed out on our street and hit up the four houses on our block. Then we visited my friend Beth and then onto the parents to trick or treat with Zarina! The girls were so happy to go with her, and she was adorable, even if she stole a little of my girls thunder since she was so. dang. cute. Right after we headed out Howard showed up with his three and we all trick or treated together. (Jon stayed home and handed out candy. He ran out a little early, at 8, and said next year we need to buy 12 bags, because the 7 I bought this year was not enough and we want those who trick or treat in our candy barren neighborhood to get some good candy, or at least two pieces from us.)

There was a street that goes all out in my parents neighborhood so we decided to go visit it. We took a wrong turn to visit a cool house, but we were able to see a fire truck and the firemen handled out candy to the kids. Eden by this time had decided to stop trick or treating, but I had her go get candy from the firemen anyways.

After being pointed in the right direction, or the direction I thought we needed to go, we saw hoards of people on the street where the decked out cul-de-sac was. I was also spotted by a high school friend, and we later figured out her mother happens to visit teach my mom. Small world since we both lived in a different area of town when we went to school.

On the crazy Halloween street there was a haunted house, but we opted to just walk the street and visit the houses handing out candy. They had barricaded it off so no cars were driving down it, and there were plenty of spooky costumes and houses. Lilah liked one where it looked like a head was on a table, but it was really a guy who was alive and just coming out of the table, or had his body under the table. (I’m trying to describe it like she did.)

After the major street Brien still had a lot of energy and he and Andrea finished trick or treating with Zarina and the older cousins, Howie, Kaitlyn, and Lilah and I took Adrienne and Eden home. As we passed one house some candy givers asked if we had been there, but I declined and said  we were headed home ’cause they were tired. I figure Eden wasn’t going to take it anyways and Adrienne was to little to care, and I wanted to just get home.

The kids went through the candy and I let the girls choose two things they wanted to eat. (They had already enjoyed candy throughout the day a little.) Before Eden had a chance to eat her Milk Duds she had to go to the bathroom. We used the upstairs one and I ended up staying upstairs to talk to Andrea. Around fifteen minutes later Eden comes up and asks if she can eat her Milk Duds. Since I wasn’t there to ask, she had patiently waited even though the other kids were enjoying their candies.

That night I decided that my kids are going to be highly successful because they can delay gratification. (There was a famous marshmallow study on delayed gratification and it predicting which kids would be more successful in life in the 1960’s.) Both Lilah and Eden are really good at delaying gratification, though not always. Like this week when we let them choose seven pieces of candy and we tossed the rest, and told them they could eat them whenever they wanted or just one a day to have them last, but they wouldn’t get any special treats again till at least neat Wednesday, or a week later. Both have only one or two pieces left and once I had to tell them they could not eat candy before breakfast, even if they were told they could have it whenever they wanted.

So that in a long nutshell was our Halloween. Candy, cousins, family fun and the possibility of highly successful adults, unless you give them no boundaries, which makes sense to me. They’re not getting more candy after seven days, they just can’t have other sweets until seven days, which may or may not happen anyways since I’d have to buy something sweet or make something sweet.

Now I’m slightly more prepared for Thanksgiving, but only because I don’t have to make anything except rolls.

It’s that time of year again when we get our family pictures! Here’s last years if you want to see how the girls have changed, though Eden has the same haircut practically.

This year was interesting. When the girl asked if we preferred light or dark for our backdrop I was saying light, but I though Jon said dark because of the girl’s cream shirts, and I was like “Dark, I’m going to fade into the backdrop.” So the girl checked both light and dark and said we would do both. Well, she didn’t do both, and then when we caught on that she wasn’t going to do both I asked Jon about it once more and he said that he was trying to say the light would go better, and I wanted the light backdrop, but she did dark the whole time and we had to ask her to do a white backdrop for one last picture, when she said she would do both. Ugh.

Also the girls weren’t the most smiley things, and I know it was hard getting pictures, but most of the time she would only take one picture per pose, so some poses are cute, but not all the participants are.

I kinda like the dark, but I also like the one white picture.

Here are the ones I will let you choose from. Leave a comment listing what ones you like and you will receive a lovely 4×6  after they are developed either the next time we see you or in your Christmas card. If you’re a parent you may request a larger size, say 5×7 or 8×10.

The names to list them by will appear under the photo. Some are close-ups of a picture, so you could have the farther image, or the close-up.

Family 01

–

Family 01 B

–

Family02

–

Family 03

–

Family 04

–

Dad and girls

–

Mom and girls

–

Girls 01

–

Girls 01 B

–

Girls 02

–

Girls 03

–

Girls 04

–

girls 05

–

Eden 01

–

Eden 02

–

Eden 03

–

Eden 04

–

Eden 05

–

Lilah 01

–

Lilah 01 B

–

Lilah 02

–

Lilah 02 B

–

Lilah 03

–

Couple 01

–

Couple 02

–

This pose she called “prom”, but I think it’s more appropriately called “engagement” and I thought I’d share it’s cheesiness with you.

So there are our pictures. I can’t believe how beautiful our girls are.

When we went to Subway later that day, a gentleman who watched us come out of Subway asked if the girls were twins, they were still in the same shirt, and today a woman mentioned how similar they looked even though she knew they were different ages.

Also, you probably noticed the red mole on Lilah’s face. It appeared about a month ago and we’ll be seeing a doctor in November about it. I have them, but they slowly become bigger where this one was just there and has gotten a little bigger than what it was.

I’m just not good at doing things for myself. I take time away to relax, but it’s the easy relax, watch TV, go on Facebook, try to find blogs to read. I occasionally find time to go out with girlfriends, but most of the time it’s because they’ve planned it. I really like these things, but they’re not completely fulfilling. I want more. I think that’s the story of my life right now.

Wanting more but feeling to blah to do anything because of all the other things I have to do.

I’m not all self sacrificing. I feel that I’m a pretty selfish mom and wife in some ways.  For one I have the girls eat the heels to the bread because I don’t like them. I know I’m terrible. We always made my mom eat the heels of the bread, so I blame her. She allowed us to be picky. I do occasion eat the heels, and Jon dislikes me making the girls eat something I won’t. Sometimes if my brown sugar is really hard I use the bread heel to soften it, but I’m just too selfish and picky to eat heels of bread and now the girls don’t even whine when I give them a sandwich with a heel. I figure it’s only a matter of time before the get older  and start leaving the heel for me, like we did for our mother, once they start making their own sandwiches and realize they have a choice.

I know I’m a selfish wife in some ways. I can’t think of a particular habit right now, but I’m sure there’s something I do to benefit me in my relationship with Jon. I just feel like I’m doing a lot right now with him in school that I can’t think of something.

I’m sewing an apron today for a friend of mine. She has a sewing business on the side, and has passed some of her work my way. I find it funny that I’ll be sewing an apron for someone else, when the one I want to sew for me has been just waiting. I will say I’ve misplaced the instructions, and it’s a little different, so I need to find them before I can actually sew the pattern, but I find myself to be pretty silly when it comes to doing things for me. I love to shop and buy clothes, but make something for me even when I’m excited, doesn’t happen? Sometimes I wonder why I’m so strange.

On an up note, I’ve organized my food cupboards. I think it was for me, and it’s satisfying to know what I have and where it is. I’ve realized that I’ve become obsessed with canned beans. I have a few recipes that use them and have needed to buy them to make them, so in the last two months I’ve stocked up on them just because. So now I have 5 cans of garbanzo and kidney beans, each, and 6  cans of black beans. I think I need to make some hummus, black bean enchiladas and Tuscan Bean stew.

What do you do or not do for yourself and is there a food you don’t like so you pawn it onto your children or spouse?

Yesterday I was busy from the moment I woke up till the moment I crashed on the couch. Well really just till we got home, but I was so tired I crashed on the couch at like 10:30 pm and Jon stayed up late watching a movie. Total role reversal.

My day went as following:

7:20- Get up and shower for hair appointment.
8:35- Show up at hair appointment.
10:00- Get home from hair appointment (My hair dresser is pretty far from me.)
10:15- Get girls into bath.
10:35-Get girls out of bath and ready for Science Saturday.
11:05- Show up in time for Critter Time. The girls got to pet some cool lizards, snakes, a lizard with no feet, Lilah petted the tarantula, Eden and Mommy passed, a hedgehog and a Chinchilla.
11:35- Science Saturday finally starts, 20 minutes late but it was short.
12:00- Get home, fix girls lunch and get ready for family pictures.
1:50- Show up ten minutes late for family pictures and have to wait.
2:15- Take family pictures and have extra hot hair since I had my hair cut and styled that morning. The girl was nice and we have some cute poses, but the girls were not responding and smiling as well as they have.
3:15ish– Leave and head to the Springs Preserve to get a 15% discount on the family pass, which in the end they just lowered the price and charged us the same as with the discount. I wanted to argue, but didn’t have the heart since we thought we’d be paying the price we paid anyways.
3:45ish to 5:45- Hang out at The Springs Preserve.
6:00- Convince Jon to have Subway for dinner. Go with the intent to just spend $10 on two $5 foot longs but spend $20 because he saw a drink he wanted to try, so we all got drinks. The nice clerk let us know that the cost of the combo was the same as just buying a drink with the sandwich so we actually bought 2 $5 foot long combos and two drinks.
7:10ish- Do a jellybean experiment where for eat color there were two flavors. Once being a gross flavor and the other being a normal flavor. ( It was what they did last week in Science Saturday and Monica gave us some beans to try at home since she likes our girls. It’s a take on Harry Potter and the jelly beans that have different flavors and you never know what you’re going to get.) Yeah, some were really gross and most of the jelly beans we had were the nasty flavor. I’d post pictures or part of the video, but I’m in Linux and have yet learned what to do.
9:00- Get the girls into bed.
10:30 Fall asleep  on the couch.

It was a fun filled day.

I’ve been sitting at the computer a lot lately, hoping there was something interesting to read, but mostly the blogs trickle in and Facebook only amuses for so long. Then I thought, hey why don’t I write something since I haven’t really written about what’s going on in our life lately. Not that it will be super interesting, but at least it’s then documented.

The top priority is homeschooling. It encompasses so much, but at the same time it does not fill a lot of our time. I’ve been mostly good about homeschooling on the days I’ve had planned, but I have had hang ups when we’ve been sick, or when I get the drive to do something other than home school. Like Friday I had to make strawberries as a thank you to the family who let us use their house for Eden’s party. I had yet to do something for them because they were out of town the Friday I made them for Jon’s co-workers. So instead of home school we gave thanks to someone for their kindness, even if the girls may not have gotten that’s what we were doing with all the running around to buy strawberries, toothpicks and boxes to put the berries in. Then they each got $1 while there just for the heck of it from Carolyn’s boss.  I saw it as an off day, but I just shrug it off. I’m still getting into formally homeschooling a few days a week and baby steps is all I have planned. I know that I’m still doing better than what I did last year and I know I’m seeing progress. (Eden’s read the first 5 Bob books of the first set and Lilah is trying to improve her spelling skills all on her own, even if she doesn’t like the actual act of writing too much.)

I admit I’m still easing into the fact that four out of the five days of my week I’m devoted to school. I can run errands or make appointments for the mornings, but overall I try to just stay home ’cause it’s easier that way.

I’m also having a hard time with being home and not wanting to clean more than I have to. I’m hitting a wall in a few areas of my life. I want a clean organized home, but I don’t want to put forth the effort. I want to lose just a little bit of weight but I don’t want to work out or stop eating sweets. I want things to occupy my time, but I find little that interests me.

I’m just in one of my slumps, but it’s not a complete slump. I still feel good about homeschooling the girls and I still want to do things, I just don’t want to do everything and for some reason I just want to veg at night and not sew even if a really cute apron is just waiting to be cut out and sewn and a couple of bags.

I suppose home school is seen more as a necessity to me right now, kinda like the dishes. I have to have something to eat off of or cook with and I have to home school my children. It’s what I’m suppose to do to have my house run on the bare minimum.

It’s strange how you don’t realize you have a problem or are feeling a little less yourself until your write about it or talk to someone. I suppose I knew I was avoiding things, but at the same time, my avoidance is so second nature that it seems normal. I’m either too busy to do something or I’m avoiding it. The too busy times makes the things I’m neglecting normal to avoid, if that makes sense.

I wish there was some answer for continual motivation, or maybe a pill. I’d definitely buy that.

We spent the Fourth of July at my parents house. I guess it’s just tradition since we celebrate my nieces birthday, have a BBQ, and enjoy fireworks that my dad buys, though this year I actually bought fireworks for the first time since the young woman in our church had a fireworks booth.

After we ate, I’m sure something delicious that my father barbecued, we entertained ourselves by having the kids practice baseball, only with a wiffle ball. Jon and I have a t-ball bat his parents gave us and wiffle balls, so we supplied the materials while we made Carolyn’s husband Derek do the work of pitching. It was for quality bonding time since the kids mostly play with one another and the adults just chat when we get together. We also brought the bat because the last time we were at my parents house Derek was playing “baseball” with Lilah but they were using a hand rake as a bat and I was worried that she might swing it too hard and impale herself. That would have been a terrible memory for all.  The hand rake looked like this, and lets face it, any way you hold it is dangerous if you’re swinging it around.

The kids had lots of fun and the wiffle ball only went over the back fence twice, and luckily the neighbors were swimming and pretty good sports about getting it for us, and telling us when Eden was climbing on a chair and nearly about to climb over the balcony railing, or was it Lilah that almost went over?

–

Lilah was able to hit the ball about half the time.

–

Carolyn helping Addrienne. Notice Carolyn’s blue shirt? She was also wearing khaki pants like me and Jon joked that when looking at the camera screen if our heads weren’t in the picture he wasn’t sure which sister he was looking at.  For a while there we were constantly wearing the same colored shirts whenever we saw one another.  In fact we both wore green the day we drove up to Ely and I could have worn the same colored shirt another day we were there.

–

Kaitlyn up to bat.

–

Howie waiting for the pitch.

–

Lilah on the balcony.

–

After some time playing we went inside and celebrated both Kaitlyn’s and Lilah’s birthday, since we had yet to celebrate it with my family.

Kristi made the birthday cake while I just brought cupcakes.

–

We forgot candles so we did what we could with what my mom had. 5+2= 7 and Lilah still likes Dora.

–

Lilah likes to read the cards. Also, that’s a picture of her as a baby on the far left.

–

Then it was time for fireworks. Lilah and Howie were the only kids outside, Eden was OK, but a really loud one was set off at the beginning and ruined her for the night. Lilah held out but only by plugging her ears the whole time.

A little unsure of the sparkler, but she wanted to try it.

–

Liking it a little more.

–

Having fun with the sparkler, though this might have been the second one.

–

Jon and Lilah enjoying the fireworks, though enjoying is relative term in this case.

While in June we visited The Old Mormon Fort. I believe it was Friday June 19th that we went. Jon had taken time off for part of the play and since he needed to, and that Friday we didn’t perform due to the library the theater was in being closed.

The Mormon Fort was our first official stop on our State Parks tour. After we were at Cathedral Gorge Jon and I decided that it would be fun to visit all/ as many as we get to, Nevada State Parks. I think it’ll be fun and hopefully we can accomplish most of them over time.

We mostly just walked around and then we sat and ate our lunch. The workers started turning up soil in the stream so it started to smell terrible around there. We did get to enjoy the pond a little bit before we finally headed over to the  Natural History Museum for just a quick visit.

One worker asked if he could take a family picture and we said we were OK. Then a little bit later another one offered, though his hands were covered with the smelly soil, so we opted out of that one too.

–

–

–

–