It's Still the Holidays! Somewhere.

Ever since the day after Christmas, I've been thinking to myself, "I should really write a Christmas post on the blog."

But then other thoughts would come and I'd forget all about the post.

Thoughts like:

"What should I make for dinner? We should be eating in 11 minutes and I've done nothing to prepare for this daily event."

"What's up with all the GoFundMe accounts? Medical ones I understand, crappy healthcare is the tie that binds most of it. But to give people money for their vacations? To purchase their hearing aids? Come on now. To put someone through college? To fund their wedding? Suffer through cheap young adulthood like everyone else."

"Where are my sweatpants?"

So you can see how I've just been swamped the past couple weeks. Hence, the late post. 

Our holiday season began with a trip to St. Augustine and their annual Nights of Lights (which is on the top 10 list of best city holiday light displays IN THE WORLD). Matt doesn't have much holiday spirit so I went with my mom. We went to the cool, big, wooden playground near the Visitors Center for awhile and then got on the trolleys to take the Holly Jolly Tour around the city. 

Doesn't that sound like fun?

They even give you these special 3D glasses that make all the lights look like snowflakes or ornaments.

I know the pictures are terrible but my phone froze halfway through so I borrowed my mom's phone and struggled with the settings. 

But really, by now, mediocre pictures are what you've come to expect from my blog.

We rode on the trolley and sang Christmas songs over the PA system and enjoyed that most beautiful city lit up for the holidays. During one song, possibly 'Santa Baby,' Noah starts loudly singing "We will, we will, ROCK YOU!" 

It really made the song.

Then we walked around the old Spanish area, which is one of my favorite places. One of the little shops had a "snow" machine, which was actually soap but these southern kids loved it.

We also ate at a Jacques Cousteau/Nautically themed eatery which serves only specialty waffles and milkshakes.

I know what you're thinking: It's about time all those things came together in one magical setting. It's only natural.

We also had a picture with Santa (in which Jack refused to participate or talk to Santa) and a picture with the world's tallest elf.

In carrying on the tradition, there were several photo sessions where I made everyone dress up in holiday attire and pose.

Everyone loves it.

Eventually, it gets so frustrating that I say "That's it! Everyone inside for dinner. Take off your antlers."

This year I even considered mailing out Christmas cards, which is a big step from years past when, if the idea of Christmas photos entered my head, I would immediately think "Screw it."

Christmas letters don't make much sense to me anymore after the advent of social media. Everyone sees pictures of my kids all the time and knows what we're doing.

Plus, I just didn't want to.


Our actual holiday was very nice. We hosted the traditional Christmas Eve dinner/ Aunt Becky's birthday/adult White Elephant gift exchange (as I type it, I realize that doesn't sound quite right.).

I try to take a picture on Christmas Eve but not this year. You'll have to wait a whole year to see my blurry cell phone picture. Sorry about your luck.

Everyone differs on this but I tend to not take a ton of pictures. First of all, most of the time nothing happens with them. They just sit on your cell phone or on your Facebook page or Instagram or whatever. Second, it tends to take over your experience. Rosie and I were at a party a couple weeks ago and we remarked that the people there weren't even really there, talking and laughing and enjoying each other. It was a couple hours of just selfies. Selfies of you, selfies of you and a friend, selfies of the whole group at the table, etc. One or two pictures, yes. But when people have 136 pictures in an album chronicling one average event, it seems to have become a problem.

Suffice it to say, I took three pictures on Christmas Day, two during the quiet afternoon at my parents house.

Christmas morning Matt and I woke up early and sat and drank hot things and had a moment to ourselves before the rabid anarchy of the morning begins. We did presents and had breakfast with Matt's parents. Noah got this construction worker set from Matt's parents and he is all about it.

We hung out and watched a movie and enjoyed the presents for awhile before we headed to my parents for lunch. It was around 80 degrees here on Christmas so my parents had a fire going ON THE TV. 

This is a picture of Christmas afternoon at my parents house. We spent some time out there sitting on the porch and listening to Kate's rendition of "Let It Go." Noah entertained us with another rousing chorus of "We Will Rock You." 

Which led to us googling the verses, while sipping our adult root beers.

Holiday Cheer.

We played games, we ate lots of food, we were together.

After Christmas, Matt took a couple days off. We considered renting a cabin in North Georgia but the weather up there was rainy. We looked into camping but lots of good sites were taken. So we stayed home. We went out to eat everyday with giftcards, we played in the yard with the kids, we played game after game of Monopoly. The trash talk, oh the trash talk. 

One day we went to Joe's Crab Shack and let the kids play on the beach. 

Tali and I spent some good time being chased by the waves and laughing.

Jack also overcame his fear and went on a (non-highway) ride around town on Matt's motorcycle. He said he might even let Papa take him on the jetski and go over 15 miles an hour. My dad, who is a safety-conscious engineer, says it's too cautious even for him.

Jack told us after the ride that he thought he was going to die the entire time. He told us "I said to myself, "Jack, this is it. Your last day on Earth.""

So that was our holiday. Consider this your Christmas newsletter/picture. And since it's already 2016, I'm just going to mark this one down as the 2016 holiday picture and letter. I'll let you know if anything changes.

Holiday Recap

Christmas 2014 came and went, as I'm sure you are aware. I don't want to presume anything but neither do I want to insult your intelligence. At least not in print.

I don't know about all the rest of the parents here, but it's always tricky for me not to overdo presents. It's not that I want to, quite the contrary; it's just that it's so much fun picking things out for kids. Especially my kids. They have hardly any standards when it comes to presents. One of Jack's most persistent gift requests over the past couple months has been a planner.

A planner.

Like, the portable calendars adults use to write in their appointments.

Katie decided she wanted a planner too. The excitement in their faces from a $1 Target planner says it all. Consequently, Jack spent the rest of the day (and many of the days after) writing down people's contact info in his planner. My grandma tried not to laugh when Jack asked her, in very serious tones, for her fax and office numbers.

We had the great fortune this Christmas to have two of Matt's brothers (and their lovely wives) join us. His brothers and their families live in New York, Alaska, and Oregon so it's rare that we see them and even rarer to have a few families together at the same time. As a group we decided to meet every couple years and enjoy a week in a rental house somewhere so that all of us can have some time together.

Mark and Emily came for Christmas Eve and Matt and I hosted the traditional Christmas Eve dinner and white elephant gift exchange. One of the gifts was (and here I am not making this item up) a selfie stick. As in a stick you can put your camera on, set the timer, and hold it away from you to take a selfie. 

We tried.

In the end we had Jack take a picture. Sure it's a little blurry but my Grandma and I look like we're beginning a conga line so that's festive.

Every Christmas Eve night, when we put the presents around the tree, Matt always says the same thing: "Are you sure this is enough presents? I remember a ton around our tree as a kid."

And then I assure him that it's plenty and he needs to take into account the fact that he was much shorter as a child so his perception was skewed.

We had a lovely, low key Christmas morning with our apparently mediocre amount of presents. Matt's parents and Mark and Emily came over for breakfast and then we all headed to my parents house.

Matt's oldest (eldest?) brother Andrew flew in that evening with his wife Taryn and their absurdly adorable daughter Eva. We only get to see them about once a year so it was really nice to spend some time with them. One of the great things about Taryn is that she has many talents. One of them is photography. She took some great pictures of all of us and has graciously allowed me to share them here - I promised her I would do my best to give her credit for them. Taryn's also a speech pathologist and I asked her to work with Jack on some speech issues. It's wonderful to be surrounded by talented people. My talents are more in the vein of singing the lines to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song and doing the running man. Sure, it's a little insulting that I'm never asked to share my talents but I try to overlook that in the spirit of Christmas cheer.

Eva is pulling on Jack's glasses and he's just pretending that nothing unusual is happening.

Mom and the daughters-in-law. We group together by hair color, apparently (and volume, as Emily pointed out).

Eva loved nothing more than to poke Tali's face. Tali was not amused. This picture sums it up.

We played games, ate food, traded insults. It was glorious.

Andrew spent a long time playing with Tali, hiding a light up ball behind his back and then throwing it while she squealed with laughter and ran to get it. Cheap entertainment.

Biking is a thing for the males in Matt's family. Matt competed in bike races when he was a teen and even biked across the country at 19. Matt's dad bikes and so does his brother Andrew. Matt's now taking Jack along for shorter rides. They went out a couple times and Andrew taught Jack all about drafting. When I saw these pictures, I wondered if we own stock in spandex. Because if not, we definitely should.

Like most holiday seasons, this one ended with a slight feeling of sadness that all the fun was over. Well, that and stomach flu. Katie got sick at 3 am on New Year's Day at my parents' house. Both the older kids had spent the night eating ungodly amounts of food and staying up to watch the midnight fireworks from my parents' dock. My mom told me that the first thing Kate said after she threw up, in typical Katie fashion, was "Oh no! What treats can I have today now?" She was super concerned she would miss all the good food. After a couple days on the couch, eating saltines and watching movies, Kate recovered and then Noah got sick. I'm not going to go into all the details because if there's anything worse than taking care of children with the stomach flu it's reading blog posts about it.

The odd thing about being a blogger is that you begin to want strange and/or humorous things to happen so you can write about it.

"So nobody is going to flip out at a holiday gathering? I'm not going to find out I'm allergic to something in a humorous way? Come on, people."

I'm sad to say that this holiday was a calm, enjoyable time with family and nothing unusual happened at all. Fingers crossed for Easter!

How to Wrap a Present in 26 Easy Steps

Step 1: Assemble all the items you need.

Step 2: Start rolling out the wrapping paper.

Step 3: Realize you forgot the scissors. And the tape (repeat step 1 as needed).

Step 4: Wrestle the scissors away from toddler.

Step 5: Ignore the screaming.

Step 6: Choose a box from your assortment of Amazon boxes on the garage freezer. Don't worry about taking the shipping label off. Too much work.

Step 7: Eat an Oreo. It says 'limited edition' on the box so you really don't want to procrastinate on eating these. This is a time-sensitive endeavor.

Step 8: Use your amazing sense of measurement for the wrapping paper. You're a college educated individual - surely you can correctly eyeball how much wrapping paper you'll need.

Step 9: Struggle with folding the paper on the ends. Realize that this is fancy wrapping paper (which was given to you by your mom). Cheap wrapping paper folds easily and tears if you use too strong of a grip folding it. This stuff doesn't - it's real wrapping paper, the type sold at fancy department stores where people buy silver baby rattles. Not the sort of stores where your wrapping paper usually comes from - the sort of stores where people buy Slim Jims and Charmin along with their wrapping paper.

Step 10: Ok, so maybe you didn't eyeball the wrapping paper that well. You're just a simple person, for goodness' sakes!

Step 11: Eat an Oreo. 

Step 12: Cut off the excess paper from both ends. You should've moved the box over so you only had one end to cut but you didn't think of that at the time. This has only happened every single time you've wrapped a present in your life, how is a person to know these things? You're not a flippin' magician.

Step 13: Sides trimmed, you now fold up the paper around the main part of the box.

Step 14: Apparently there's not enough paper width-wise.

                                    

Step 15: Stare at the box, wondering how you could have made such colossal errors of measurement with the wrapping paper.

Step 16: Ponder not only measurement skills, but also powers of reasoning and logic and possibly existence.

Step 17: Put "The Office" on for background noise. Drink milk.

Step 18: Take one of the strips of paper trimmed off the ends (Strips of Shame) and tape it to the side of the box to cover your other mistake.

Step 19: Realize you forgot to buy present labels. For the 3rd year in a row. Write the name inside one of the reindeer with Sharpie so it almost looks like you completely planned on the Sharpie route. 

Step 20: Slap a bow on the box. Now tape the bow to the box because the bows are, like, 4 years old and the adhesive has dried up.

Step 21: Repeat for every present. 

Step 22: Enjoy a job well done! 

Step 23: Reward self with Oreos.

Step 24: Feel bad about self, drink lots of water to compensate.

Step 25: Clutch stomach, which now hurts from too much water and too many Oreos.

Step 26: Lay on couch. Watch Netflix.

To Pee or Not to Pee?

Last week my bestie and I took our kids to a local corn maze. We quickly ushered the kids to the hayride as we watched the school buses descend on the parking lot like a horde of bees. After the hayride we decided to eat our packed lunch before said school groups took over the picnic area. The eating area at this farm is a long, covered but open on the sides building filled with picnic tables and plastic swimming pools of raw corn kernels for the kids to swim in, throw at each other, and shove up their noses before eating lunch. The floor is covered with hay, which is really where this story begins.

Rosie took the older boys to the car to get our food while I stayed behind with the younger kids. The trip to the car takes maybe 4 minutes so I didn't see a problem with 6 young kids and pools of corn. Surely that would keep them occupied for 4 minutes. 20 seconds after Rosie and the boys left, the little kids got bored. Suddenly I had 4 toddlers to keep an eye on, making sure no one ran out to the adjacent playground or grabbed one of the chickens pecking around in the hay.

I hear an innocent little voice behind me - "Mama, I can pee here?"

As I turn to answer, I see that Noah has pulled down his shorts and underwear and is already peeing onto the hay/floor, right by a picnic table.

"No!" I tell him but he's not at an age where he can stop once started. He stares at me with crystal blue eyes and continues to soak the floor around us. Really, I can hardly blame the little guy. If there's one thing he loves, it's peeing outside. Anywhere he can make his mark on the earth while feeling the cool breeze on his behind is a happy place. Also, there are chickens. And as the saying goes "Where there are chickens, there is chicken pee." Once you realize the chickens are peeing, you begin to think to yourself "Am I all that different from a chicken? They're allowed to pee here, I should be too. What makes them so special?"

I feel myself prickle with sweat as voices of school group move closer, the excited din that accompanies children about to dine on lunchables and juice boxes. Noah is not stopping no matter how much I order him to stop, nor does he seem fazed - indeed, he has the slack look of relief that accompanies emptying one's bladder.

I pick him up and try to figure out which direction I could go where we won't draw attention to ourselves but still allows me to keep an eye on the 5 other children. I'm turning in different directions, slightly panicked while he pees on -  like a ghastly helicopter of pee. Finally I set him down next to the building, facing the playground. He is still peeing (Moons of Jupiter - how much liquid has this kid consumed today?), the front of his shorts now damp from our relocation. I stand in front of him, trying desperately to mop my glistening brow and look as nonchalant as I can. Trying not to look like I'm shielding a person urinating by the picnic tables.

It seems to be more of a boy thing (although Tali tries her darnedest to pee outside with Noah), this desire to pee outside. I have friends who nod their heads when I tell them about these incidences - their sons love nothing more than a good tree, waiting to be christened.

With trick-or-treat approaching, I just want to conclude by asking parents to be extra vigilant. Kids, especially boys, will be bombarded with nicely trimmed hedges and inviting lawns. Tomorrow night, ask yourself - It's Halloween, do I know where my toddler is peeing?

Glad Tidings and Stuff

Christmas is over and I am feeling a little sad about it. In the last couple days, I heard a few adults make comments to the tune of "Thank Goodness it's over" but I love the season. The hot chocolate, the wrapping, the movies, the anticipation. It's funny how we experience the same thing year after year and know what's coming but it's still exciting. This year we all got to watch Talitha enjoy her first Christmas. Unwrapping her birthday presents was a befuddling experience for her but by Christmas, she quickly realized the happiness that was awaiting her just beyond the wrapping paper. I watched her with joy with past month, knowing that the Author of her life was being introduced to her: that her Great Hope was being born in a manger.

Christmas Eve party - Soup and bread, chicken wings and crab legs, my sister's birthday, cake, and White Elephant presents. Oh and sock monkey hats.

This train table with a box of trains and tracks and bridges and stuff? $15 at a garage sale. It was Noah's gift but we seriously could've gotten it as a family gift and been set.  It is loved.

On the way to my parents' house. Toddlers out.

She is not amused.

We enjoyed Christmas morning at our house with Matt's parents. Matt and I got up early and made a fire and sat and drank warm things waiting for the kids. We opened presents and lit the Advent candles and had breakfast. Around noon we headed over to my parents' house for round 2.

One thing that makes me all squealy happy is that my parents and Matt's parents are friends. They've been friends since I was 6 and Matt was 9 and we lived on the same street in NY. I like the fact that holidays are happily shared now.

The couple days after Christmas the kids and I recovered. By that, of course, I mean that we watched movies and ate truffles.

Yesterday we went to my best friend's parents' party. It was, and I say this in all sincerity, a square dance. The barn was festively lit up and there was a chili cook-off and hay bales. Kate and I did the chicken dance and the electric slide. Matt, as per his usual, sat on the sidelines and tried to pretend the dancing wasn't happening. Jack got roped into the hokey pokey by his friend Will but by the time I ran back with my camera, he had figured out that he was about to be involved in a dance and walked off, disgustedly shaking his head. We had to leave early due to the fact that we brought both 2 year olds to an outside party in the dark with a bonfire and we are stupid. I told Matt that next year we'll get a sitter for the younger two, put on our cowboy boots and dance the night away. He nodded his assent but I'm pretty sure he wasn't really listening and this will be an issue next year.