Category Archives: Holidays

Changing Seasons

Posted on by
Reply

The last few days have really felt to me like a shift from autumn to winter. Here’s why:

*Saturday morning, Lydia woke up at 6:00am and wouldn’t stop crying, even with me holding and rocking her.  So we went to the doctor as soon as they opened their doors.  She’s got an ear infection, in both ears.  Welcome cold and flu season.

*Once we got home from picking up Lydia’s antibiotic prescription, she zonked out for hours.  Poor baby.  But since Alethea spent the night at Gramma and Poppa’s (thanks John and Denny!) Peter and I were child free for the remainder of the morning and early afternoon.  We got major yard clean-up done.  In fact, I think this is the most prepared for winter our outside spaces have ever been.  Goodbye leaves!

*As you can see from the above picture, we didn’t get our yard clean-up done a second too soon.  While we were moving the last bags to the curb, it started snowing and kept snowing for most of the night.  Alethea was just dying to get out and play in it, so that’s just what we did on Sunday after church.  Welcome snow!

*Sunday night I made Sweet Potato and Red Pepper Soup.  It’s one of our favorites!  Welcome soup weather!

* Yesterday I did some more work on my budget Christmas decorations.  This time it wasn’t painting branches though, it was peeling labels off of wine bottles!  Welcome Christmas decor!

* That afternoon my mom came over and we took the girls to Menard’s to visit their Enchanted Forest.  Alethea and Lydia both thought all the lights and trees were pretty wonderful.  And I actually found a lawn ornament that I would consider putting in my yard.  Yes, really!  Welcome twinkle lights!

Goodbye Autumn!  Welcome Winter!

Christmas Decor Challenge

Posted on by
Reply

I am taking a Christmas Decor Challenge!  Anyone want to try it with me?

Here’s my plan: I am going to try to decorate my front porch, living room, dining room, main floor bath and perhaps some touches in the kitchen while spending as little money as possible.  I will reinvent, reimagine and repurpose items I already own to create something fabulous and festive.

Ready? Set? Go!

Here’s my step number one:

We’re planning on getting a fence next year.  Lucky me, because that means I have a virtually unlimited number of cool branches available to me on the trees all along our property lines!  I chopped some off and laid them out on an old tarp.

Then after a quick coat of white spray paint (that I already had on hand), I put them in our garage to off gas, so they don’t stink up the house.

What’s step number two?

Well, I don’t want to give my whole plan away, but I will tell you that the branches are for our mantle and there will be some Christmas ornaments and objects left over from a friend’s party joining the branches for what I hope will be a crazy cool focal point for our Living Room.

So stay tuned as we all find out together whether I can stick to my own Christmas Decor Challenge!  And if anyone wants to take the Challenge too, let me know so we can share ideas and inspire each other!

Have a happy weekend!

Happy Halloween!

Posted on by
1

Alethea was asking all day when it would be time to go trick or treating, so she was delighted when it was finally time to get her costume on and head out the door:

Before we left the house, we coached her to say ‘trick or treat’ and told her that she needed to say ‘thank you’ when someone put something in her bag.  She followed the rules very carefully.

At one of the first houses we went to, Alethea got a kit-kat bar, but Lydia got a tootsie roll pop, and boy did she think it was cool!

From that point on Alethea was determined to find someone to give her a sucker too!  She took her home-made trick or treat bag door to door in search of someone with cheap candy, but wouldn’t you know it, all of our lovely, generous neighbors seemed to have mini candy bars.

We were down to the last two houses on our street when finally we found someone with suckers.  When I told the nice lady who answered the door that Alethea was in search of a sucker, she gave her not one, or two, but three!

At that, Alethea handed me her bag full of chocolate bars, unwrapped one of the suckers, and shoved it in her mouth.  Then as we walked down the drive way, she looked up at me and said, “I’m cold.”

“Should we go home now?” I asked her.

Despite the dum-dum hanging out of her mouth, she managed a big, “Uh huh!”

Once home, we let the girls enjoy the spoils, although Lydia mainly just had cheese crackers, because she found the sucker a bit hard to eat.

Alethea was mystified by her sister’s apathy towards the tootsie roll pop and proceeded to polish off two suckers and a kit-kat bar before we cut her off for the night.

I may have slightly over-estimated the amount of candy we needed.  I think our numbers were down this year.  Still, by giving out handfuls at the end, we managed to nearly run out by the time we turned the lights out.

So, all things considered, I’d call it a successful Halloween!

Hope yours was great too!

A First and Some Fun

Posted on by
Reply

Today was a crazy busy day.

It started out with Alethea and I going to Cost Cutters for her first haircut.

We only got the back cut, because I’d still like the front to keep growing and I don’t want Alethea to have bangs.  Still, I’m glad I went to a salon, because Alethea was pretty cooperative, but I think that was mostly the result of getting to wear a cool surfing penguins cape.

After her haircut, we went to Wendy’s for a mother/daughter lunch.  Getting to have a meal together (just the two of us) isn’t something that happens all that often.  We bonded over chicken nuggets and an apple chicken salad.

With tummy’s running on full, we hopped into the car and did some more errands, including the dry cleaners, which isn’t something I’d normally bother to share, but I’m super impressed with this one I found near us because they have a drive up window.  LOVE IT!

Our last errand of the morning was Kohl’s where we used our 20 percent off coupon to procure a black hat for Alethea’s Halloween costume and new sunglasses for me, who foolishly let Lydia play with my last pair while she was sitting on our concrete sidewalk.  SCRAAAAATCH!

I found a really cute new pair and so did Alethea:

After we put her selection back on the rack, we bought the hat and my sunglasses and then headed home for nap time.  Or at least Alethea took a nap.  I, however, took off again and picked up a pumpkin at the grocery store, take n’ bake pizzas for dinner and a paint sample for our main floor bathroom.

Then home again, home again, jiggidy jig, I tossed the pizzas in the fridge and grabbed a paint brush, determined to test a small square of the color before our dinner guests arrived.  I’m wasn’t sure exactly when I’d get around to actually painting the bathroom, but I just love to see what paint colors look like up on a wall.  So yeah, dinner guests coming and no plans to paint the bathroom soon.  Should I have waited to try the color out?  Oh probably, but I had a brilliant plan.  Just paint a small square behind the picture frame on the wall and hang the picture back up when finished.  Fool proof…

Unless one fails to realize that the screw in the wall only marks the top of the picture frame when the hanger for the picture frame is actually at the top.  Not closer to a third of the way down the back, like mine is…

Oh well.  Looks like I’ve got new motivation to move ‘paint main floor bathroom’ up on my to do list.

Our dinner guests arrived on schedule, but since it was my parents and Peter’s parents who came over, they were very understanding about the painting mishap and the tool box sitting on the kitchen counter.  Besides, we were about to create an even bigger mess since they had all come over for our annual pumpkin carving.  It’s quickly becoming a family tradition for the men to watch football and drink beer while the women-folk do the carving, but that’s okay.  We all probably enjoy it more that way anyhow.

Naturally, step one of carving is to pop the top off the gourds and clean out the guts.  The girls both helped with this.  Lydia very willingly stuck her hand right into the pumpkin, but then had a hard time grabbing seeds, since they were so slippery.

And when she did finally get a seed out of her large orange friend, it went straight into her mouth.  I was about to dive in after it when she swallowed it in one easy gulp.

And with that, her pumpkin gutting time quickly ended.

Alethea was definitely more squeamish than her sister, but eventually got into the seed finding fun.

With the guts cleaned out, we began the carving process.  I worked on a puppy pumpkin as per Alethea’s request (yes, she had a puppy pumpkin last year too) and Peter’s mom Denny worked on Lydia’s pumpkin eating pumpkin, which was based on a photo I found online (I wish it had been my design idea, but it wasn’t).  I’m super happy with how they turned out!

Small pumpkins and gourds of the world, beware!

We also took some time during the evening to have the girls model their Halloween costumes for their grandparents, who won’t be around on Monday to see them all dressed up.  I just can’t get over how cute they both look!

The bumble bee costume was actually mine when I was about Alethea’s age, so I’ll have to dig up a picture so we can do a side by side comparison.

Alethea was disappointed it wasn’t actually time to go trick-or-treating, and honestly, I was too.  It’s going to be a really delightful Halloween!

My little flower and bumble bee are snug in their beds now, and I think I’m going to join them and put an end to this very busy day.

Happy 4th of July!

Posted on by
1

We had a really nice weekend that included going to the beach/sprinkler park on Saturday.

Alethea really enjoyed the sprinkler portion of the morning:

However, after taking two steps onto the sand of the beachfront, Alethea began to cry.  She didn’t like the feel of the sand squishing between her toes.  And getting into the water didn’t improve matters any:

The only way she liked the beach was sitting in her beach chair with her toes safely curled back from the sand:

After a short period of trying to coax her into the water or get her to build a sand castle, we decided to head back up to the sprinklers and try the beach again another day.  Next time we’ll come prepared with a pair of water shoes.

Sunday was a pretty chill day, just church, naps and hanging out.

Today was a visit to the local park in the morning.  After we got home I made Banana Puddin’ (I’ll share the recipe sometime, it’s awesome!) and then after the girls got up from their naps, we formed a mini parade and headed down the street to my brother’s house for dinner:

All the neighbors shooting off fireworks was keeping Alethea up after we got home, so we let her get out of bed and finish off the evening by watching some of the Boston fireworks on TV.  She was mesmerized!

Now it’s off to bed, because Tuesday morning is right around the corner.  Long weekends are fabulous, but sometimes reentry into real life can be a little rough, so I’d better go get my Zs.

I Was Going to…

Posted on by
3

Last Thursday, I was going to write a post about how Alethea picked one of my childhood dresses from her closet when she got dressed in the morning and how she looked so cute in it.

I was also going to mention that her favorite book right now is Bats at the Library and whenever she ‘reads’ another book outloud, she quotes from Bats.  Thus, instead of being about a mother’s undying love for her little one, The Runaway Bunny ends up sounding like this, “We’ve feasted, fluttered, swooped and soared, and yet we’re still a little bored.”

It was going to be a very amusing post.  I’m sure you would have enjoyed it.

On Friday (and then again on Saturday) I was going to write a post about how I was working on Alethea’s “Year 2” photobook and in the process I rediscovered some photographic gems that never made it onto the blog.  Pics like this one of Alethea at the zoo for example:

And this one of the girls right after Lydia was born:

It was going to be a really fun post and I’m guessing you would have been so inspired by the pictures that you’d have gone out and made a photobook of your own.

Sunday was Father’s Day, so naturally I was going to write a post about Peter, saying how I think he’s the best Dad in the whole world and how the girls and I are so blessed to have him in our lives.

I was thinking that I would also wish a Happy Father’s Day to my Father, Father-in-Law and Grandfather who are all such loving and supportive people.

I have no doubt that it would have been a very touching post.  Most likely you would have been moved to tears while you were reading it.

However, as you know, I wrote none of those posts.  Maybe this week I’ll find the time to be amusing, inspiring and moving.  Or at the very least, maybe I’ll find the time to write a couple posts, even if they are nothing more than random thoughts floating out in cyber space.  We’ll see how it goes.

Christmas, Oh Baby!

Posted on by
1

Today is Alethea’s 20 month birthday, but because I haven’t done any blogging about our Christmas celebrations, I thought maybe we’d save the Alethea update for later and instead let you know that A) we haven’t had a baby yet, and B) we had a very nice Christmas!

First the baby part… I think we’re officially ready.  Sure, there is more I could do, but I think we’ve got the main things covered – car seat pulled out of storage, hospital bag packed, baby book purchased.  Now we just need the kid to take some initiative.  I did do a purposely long ‘wondering the aisles’ trip to Target Sunday to see if I could get things moving, but no dice.  Plan for tomorrow: clean the house from top to bottom and see if that does anything.

The good part about not giving birth is that we were able to enjoy all of our various Christmas celebrations.  Christmas Eve we went to the service at church, which was just fantastic this year.  I can’t tell you how much it means to me to really feel like we have a whole ‘family’ in our church, people who love and support us and would do just about anything for us.  We are blessed to be a part of this church and celebrating Christmas together is just icing on the cake, so to speak.

After the service we enjoyed Chinese take-out (a long-standing tradition) with Peter’s family.  There is a story behind the tradition, but even if there weren’t, it’s an easy tradition to embrace because take-out means NO COOKING!

Christmas morning came around and Alethea headed down the stairs in her Christmas jammies:

First up, the stocking:

Alethea was most pleased with the Clifford DVD and the bubble bath:

Next thing was opening presents.  Alethea wasn’t very interested in the unwrapping process, but once she saw what was inside, she enjoyed her gifts.  Her favorite by far was the doll:

Alethea has been a very attentive and affectionate new mother.  We’re only just hoping that after months of telling her that a baby is going to come live with us, she doesn’t think this is it:

After our little family Christmas, we headed over to Peter’s parents’ house for more celebrating.  We had a delicious breakfast and a fabulous dinner with present opening and family time sandwiched in between.  Then today was Christmas with my family, also delightful and filled with good food and fantastic gifts.

We hope you enjoyed all of your Christmas festivities too!  And thanks in advance for your thoughts and prayers over the coming days.  This baby has got to come soon!  (Right??!?!)

Busy, Not Giving Birth

Posted on by
1

It’s been four days since I last posted.  Things around here have been a little crazy, but I haven’t gone into labor, so I thought I’d better post before people started wondering.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

1) Monday & Tuesday – Making Christmas Treats

We managed to crank out some sugar cookies, cyclops cookies (aka peanut butter blossoms), cupcakes (from a box), caramel corn, puppy chow, as well as coated pretzels, which Alethea particularly enjoyed helping mommy make:

Taste testing counts as helping, right?

2) Tuesday – Party Prep

Tuesday night was my annual piano student Christmas party and mini-recital.  Basically I have all my students over to our house and they play Christmas songs for each other and then we eat junk food and play music themed games.  This year I tried something new – a build your own favor station:

It was a big hit with the kids, even with a strictly enforced limit on the number of pieces of candy they could take.

3) Wednesday – Errands, Check-Up and Lessons

I was fortunate to have lots of help from Alethea’s grandmothers on Wednesday, and thus was able to get to Target, go to my 38 week check-up, buy some more of Peter’s Christmas presents, and still make it home in time to teach several piano lessons.

Bad news is that my midwife said I’m dilated “one to two” centimeters.  Basically, I think she just wanted to make me feel better that I’m not any further along, despite having so many contractions on Saturday that I briefly debated whether I ought to head to the hospital.

Good news though is that the lessons I taught were my last for December, so I am officially free to have this baby without having to do any make-up lessons or refunds.  Woo hoo!

4) Today – Mommy and Alethea’s Fun Day

I’ve been feeling guilty that I’ve been so busy this week that Alethea has been forced to do a whole lot of self-entertaining, so today I planned to spend the whole morning doing Alethea’s favorite activities.  We didn’t get as much time together as I anticipated though, because Alethea slept in ’till 10am (hope she’s not getting sick).  However, Alethea did have fun taking a long bath with her tub toys and we also squeezed in some ‘art’ time.  Our project – decorating paper gift bags with markers:

So that’s our week thus far.

On the docket for tomorrow: a little more shopping, then cleaning the house, followed by the Christmas Eve service at church, then hosting Peter’s family’s traditional Chinese take-out Christmas Eve dinner, and rounded off with a bit of gift wrapping and stocking stuffing before bed.  Should be a delightful day!

A Trip to the Mall

Posted on by
3

Tonight Peter and I took the plunge and made our one and only trip to a shopping mall during the month of December.  Given the nature of our errands, not just any mall would do, we needed one with stores no other mall has.  Thus, after dropping Alethea off with Grandma and Grandpa, we headed to the Mall of America.

Neither one of us had been inside the MOA for years, so we were pleasantly surprised to be able to get a parking spot right near one of Bloomingdale’s front doors and find that the inside of the mall wasn’t too crowded.

After a trip to the LEGO store, we hit up a few other shops and then headed to the American Girl Store:

We walked in…

My reaction: “Oh wow, I would have loved this when I was a kid!  They have everything here!  It’s so different to see this stuff in person rather than just in the well-worn pages of the American girl catalogs we used to have at our house.  I’d spend hours drooling over all the doll accessories!”

Peter’s reaction: “Every surface in here is pink.”

Fortunately Peter was able to hold the bright yellow bag with the big LEGO logo in front of himself like a shield to ward off all of the estrogen and we made it out of the store with only our intended purchase, a Bitty Baby doll for Alethea’s Christmas present:

Someday I’ll have to go back with Alethea.  It’d be nice to spend a little time browsing through the displays with someone who has a little appreciation for the magic of it all!