Christmas Recap

Hopefully everyone had as good a Christmas as we did. We were able to celebrate with family and friends on both Christmas eve and Christmas day and we all had a lot of fun. Here's some pics to show it.

I was greeted on Christmas Eve morning by a sobbing Benjamin because his "mural" had just been detected by daddy. He had taken a pencil (thank goodness only pencil!) and drawn all over the basement walls, doors, and toilet seat while Kelly was in the shower and Bella and I were still asleep. So, our first Christmas activity was to scrub off all the drawings. Things got better after that, though. He later told me, "We only draw on paper, not toilets." Glad that seemingly obvious nugget of knowledge had finally sunk in. Or well, let's hope it has. Only time will tell.


After that we played around until our family and friends came over to eat, read Luke 2, open presents from each other (Santa's presents only came the next morning), and finally set up our much anticipated tree and lights.



I am so glad I didn't put them up any earlier, because 3 ornaments were broken within the first 24 hours. But it sure was fun to set it all up together and admire it. (Until I took it down at 8am on the 26th and heaved a big sigh of relief that I could stop saying, "That's an ornament, not a toy, put it back!") That night Benjamin got a changeable racetrack with battery powered cars and Bella got a doll and stroller. They both got a new bedtime story book and a giant floor puzzle. Their excitement knew no bounds. They were entertained the rest of the night. (And finally left the tree alone for a few hours.)





The next morning Santa did not disappoint. In addition to the usual stocking fare, he brought Benjamin a rocket! All month long whenever anyone asked Benjamin what he wanted for Christmas, he said the exact same thing, namely, "I want a rocket. Not a plastic one, but a real one, that I can get in and fly to the moon!" Every single time. So, naturally, we realized we'd better get this kid a rocket! So Kelly bought $30 worth of insulation board, wood, duct tape, etc. and made him a 6ft tall rocket that fits 3 people inside. It's really quite impressive. It's got windows, control panels, steering wheel, a door that open and shuts, and inside are various pictures made to look like windows showing constellations, planets, etc. so in addition to being able to look out into the room, you can look out into space. Benjamin loved it.



The cutest thing was that he was also nearly equally excited about the banana and oranges that Santa left in his stocking! I love kids at this age. Bella wasn't quite sure what to make of this present deluge (book, Mr Potato Head, etc.), so she sat contentedly aside as Benjamin emptied her stocking and handed her items one by one.



Oh, and of course, you can't forget the new Christmas pajamas!


It was a great couple days. In addition to all the fun at home, we also went to a Christmas party at a friend's home (to which I forgot to bring my camera), ice skating (also forgot the camera), and bowling (remembered the camera!!)



This was really a fabulous Christmas. Now we just wait patiently for some snow so we can use the sled that Santa brought. :) It rained all day on Christmas and washed away everything we had. Something to look forward to!

Merry Christmas

I thought I'd post this now because I know I won't get a chance in the next couple days. I'm very excited about Christmas coming. It's been an incredibly busy December but I've tried very hard to keep focused on what really matters. A friend of mine emailed me this picture yesterday and I think it so aptly portrays what I'm trying to achieve in my home.


Santa is fun, but let us remember what he's really a symbol of (and not the other way around.)

We've been having fun around here, despite the hectic. Benjamin has been taking a swim class and has loved it. We've been playing in our newly fallen snow. And I had the chance to drive a friend to the temple when her car wasn't working, so I took the kids along and took some pictures. Sadly, Isabella has had a cold and was sound asleep by the time we got there. Benjamin enjoyed it, though. My funniest picture (not posted) was when Benjamin, with his face contorted in urgency, grabbed himself, calling, "I have to pee mommy!" How many people have a picture of their son grabbing themselves in front of the temple? I didn't take a picture of the next moment when he prepared to deal with his need right onto their finely manicured lawn. I'm so glad there's a stake center right next door!




So, that's our life right now in a nutshell. Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Squeaky Clean

Bella is addicted to foaming hand sanitizer. They have a dispenser of it beside the door to the child care at my gym. It's a fancy automatic one that dispenses a large glob every time you put your hand under it. Needless to say, Bella manages to grab 7-10 globs at every entrance and every exit. Well, as an unfortunate coincidence, we have a foaming soap dispenser in our bathroom that puts out a substance identical in color and appearance to the sanitizer at the gym. Immediately Bella learned a new word. "Soap!" she'd proudly call, as she squirted large globs onto her hands. I tried repeatedly to explain that sanitizer and soap are very different, but when that failed, I put it away. Until Kelly decided to wash his hands, and forgot about my warning. I came into Benjamin's room to put away some folded laundry and smelled the overwhelmingly strong smell of soap and heard a little rustling noise coming from the closet. I quickly opened the door to find this:


It's hard to tell in the picture, but she'd shampooed her hair with it, rubbed various spots on her clothes with it, and had large handfuls of it, prepped for various new locations. She was not very pleased to see me. Seeing as how she'd sequestered herself in the closet with a closed door, it was obvious she knew she was breaking a rule, but she seemed to have been having a grand ol' time. The carpet was soaked with it too. The room reeked of artificial soap perfume all day long. What a crazy girl. I just took a picture, hosed her off, and thanked my lucky starts it wasn't finger paint again (as we experienced with Benjamin a while back). However, the soap has once again been put away (for good, this time, I hope.)

Quick cute quote from Benjamin: I picked him up from school on Thursday and he asked, "Why did you come back?" "To pick you up, sweetheart, so we could go home," I replied. "But I don't want to go home," he stated matter-of-factly. I'm so glad he likes school so much. I won't take it personally. :)

Why My House Looks Like We're Out of Town All Month

Last year I got really excited to set up our Christmas decorations and the tree and make a whole big fun day of it with Benjamin. That didn't work out. After much screaming and stressing and multiple breakages of formerly precious items, I vowed I'd never do it again. So this year I decided we'd put up all our decorations on Christmas eve and take them down on the 26th and save ourselves a lot of stress. However, as we've been driving around, Benjamin has noticed how festive other houses look compared to ours. We pass house after house with lights, over-sized candy canes, reindeer, and the oh-so-classy blow-up Santa in a hammock between two palm trees, and Benjamin asks, "Why we not have that, mommy?" So I compromised and decided to just put up the lights. How bad could it be, right? It's just some lights? What could go wrong? You would think I would no longer ask such a stupid question.

I got the box of lights out of the basement and the first thing the kids did was start playing tug-of-war with them. Then Bella tried plugging them into various outlets and Benjamin started running around the house with them banging against various walls and items of furniture. When I convinced them to leave the lights alone, they started to attack me while I attempted to put them up. I had kids on my back, kids playing tag around my legs, etc. I was ready to be done right then and there, but I'd committed and I was going to see this through. After an hour of stress and frustration, the lights were up. They looked okay, not great, but good enough. Then later on I started making dinner and the kids played in the living room. They seemed to be happy and were laughing, so all was good, right? Then I noticed Benjamin speaking as if he had something in his mouth. I went into the living room to see what he was eating and discovered the room was noticeably dimmer than it had been before. Then I noticed Benjamin had green color running out of the side of his mouth. "What are you eating?" I asked. "This," he said, as he spit out a bulb from the Christmas lights. He had unscrewed an entire set of bulbs and sucked off the color coating!!! "They didn't work right, so I fixed them," he declared matter-of-factly. After a stern discussion over the danger of playing with an electric string of lights and the danger of putting glass bulbs in your mouth AND the danger of eating synthetic color, I ripped all the lights off the walls and windows and put them back in the storage room. So much for Christmas cheer. Maybe our neighbors will just assume we're out of town. So although I'd love my living room to look like this:


In reality, it feels and looks more like this:

Everything Okay Officer?

Another adventure in Isabella's life - she was rescued by a cop yesterday. We decided to spend the sunny (although cold) afternoon at the playground. Benjamin rushed into the garage to get his bike and then jumped into the car to pop the trunk and get out the stroller for Bella. Bella saw him in the car and followed him in. But then I told him that we weren't taking the stroller that was in the trunk, so he jumped back out and slammed the door. As I took the correct stroller off its hook on the wall, I heard the "click" of the doors locking. Bella was still inside and had just locked the door. Not a terrible thing if I didn't have the bad habit of leaving my key in the console when the car was in the garage. I searched the house for a spare key and called Kelly if he knew of one, but there wasn't one besides the one Kelly had with him at the office, and he was many hours from coming home.

Benjamin and I spent the next 30 minutes trying to coax Bella to unlock the door. She continued to lock it over and over again instead. When she tired of that game she started to take apart my cd case and play with each and every cd, throwing them around inside the car with great delight. I plead and screamed and banged on the window - anything to get her to try unlocking the door again, but she saw it all as a silly game mommy was playing. She banged back on the window, she tried the door handle, and she continued to lock the door again and again. Finally I told Benjamin we needed to pray. So we knelt down in the garage and prayed for help in getting Bella out of the car. Then we tried talking to her again. It didn't help. At this point she'd exhausted her attention span and was asking to be let out of the car. When I couldn't do that, she started to cry. That's when I thought, "God helps those who help themselves." I got out the phone and called 911. They told me they'd send over the next available police car. I didn't know what that meant - 5 minutes? An hour? By this time I had two impatient kids. She was in the car crying and Benjamin had decided to drape himself on the hood of the car and moan, "I want to go on a walk" over and over in a pitiful, whiny tone. But the answer to my prayer came in the form of a very helpful police officer who arrived less than 5 minutes after I called.


The funniest part of the story were my two neighbors who suddenly had mail to check the instant the cop pulled into my driveway. (The mailman hadn't arrived yet.) One stood in her driveway and stared, while the other called out, "Everything alright over there, officer?" I had to laugh. Was she planning on coming and backing him up? "Everything's fine ma'am; thanks," he said with a smirk that showed he was probably wondering the same thing. Then he took a wedge out of his car, smashed it into into the edge of my door, put an inflatable bag next to that and pumped it up, so the door was even further open, and finally took a long, thick wire and flipped up the power lock. Within a few seconds the door was open. Bella had stopped crying the minute the large, uniformed man had appeared in our garage and when the door opened, she burst into a huge grin. I picked her up and told her to thank the nice officer, which she did with a "Danke" and a wave. Before he had even driven away, both kids were on their bike/in their stroller, and we were walking to the playground, another adventure behind us. (While our neighbors stood at their windows suffocating with curiosity as to why he'd come because they're both on our side of the street, so they couldn't see inside our garage.) By the way, I will now always keep my key with me, and not in the car.

On the way to the playground, Benjamin and I discussed what had happened and I emphasized to him how God had answered our prayer and how thankful I am that he sent the cop to help save Bella. Benjamin's answer, "I knew God could do it."