pajama day

Amelia's class had a pajama party yesterday.  She wanted to wear her new penguin pj's.  She legally brought lovey to school (on Monday I found out she had smuggled lovey into school under her dress).  They had pancakes and bananas for snack.  Then last night, Seth's school had movie night in the gym.  The kids put on their pj's (Amelia wore a different pair), packed their sleeping bags, and enjoyed popcorn and lemonade while watching Cars 2 with a hundred (or more) of their closest friends.  I was smart this year and brought a lawn chair, my iphone, and a book!  The only other thing worth mentioning this week is that I have switched my work schedule a bit...the first week was really nice, I hope it stays that way!

Princess Tea Party

Last Saturday, we had wanted to go as a family to a play at the children's theater, but it was sold out when I called to get tickets.  After a quick trip to the Y and an even quicker shower/outfit change, Amelia and I went to a Princess Tea party at the children's museum.  (The boys stayed home to play Wii and had a manly lunch at IHOP.)  The girls made tiaras and wands while listening to the Disney Princesses soundtrack, 

ate mini cupcakes, mini marshmallows, pink applesauce, and pretzels for snack, learned how to wave and curtsy, and made fans because princesses "don't get sweaty".

Afterwards they paraded through the museum for all the other patrons to see.

It was a rainy day...my girl is a practical princess (or she is obsessed with her rain boots this week, take your pick).  She doesn't know who Kate Middleton is, but that's who she wants to be when she grows up!

so far so good

I haven't started over-committing myself to school projects yet.  I made a deal with myself that if there wasn't something important on the calendar, I was going to the Y.  The week before Christmas I went three times.  The week after, four.  These last two weeks, I've gone five times each week.  I've been going to Pilates, BodyStep, and a day or two on the cardio machines.   Last Saturday Nathan and I did RPM, the Les Mills version of a spin class.  It was so much fun; we're doing it again this Saturday!  The only excitement of the past week is that Seth got to have a sleepover in Hickory last Saturday for Ryan's birthday, and he had big fun.  We hear he is a natural playing the guitar...hmm.  On Sunday we met in Statesville to pick him up.  Zaxby's has fried dill pickles, yum!

5 months later...

You know that to-do list I was talking about?  In December I finally developed the water camera we took to the beach.  Today I finally got around to scanning the keepers.

Man, we were tan!

raising readers

Last fall, I read a book called The Reading Promise.  It was a memoir written by a recent college graduate about a reading streak she and her father had that lasted over nine years.  If you want to be inspired to raise your children to read, I recommend reading the foreword written by her father and the author's closing thoughts.  I didn't need the inspiration, but their words rung very true to me.  

I love books.  I always have.  I loved Scholastic book orders and book fairs and summer reading logs and the bookmobile in Rochester.  I loved getting free pizzas from Pizza Hut for Book-It.  I loved to read in the car on long trips and curling up with a good book at night.  When we moved to NC, I quickly found the two warmest spots in the house to cuddle up with a good book.  I would tear through books on Christmas and spring break during college.  I cannot think of one single day of my post-college life that there hasn't been a book on my nightstand, ready to go.  I even took a book to the hospital with me when I had both kids.

I am raising readers.  It wasn't something I sought out to do, but over the last year, has evolved from quick bedtime stories to longer and longer nightly reading sessions.  This is what Seth's nightstand looks like on any given day, our bedtime book, plus a stack of stuff he's reading to get his fifteen minutes in every day for school.  He has recently made a big jump into the Magic Tree House series, and he loves them.

This is Amelia's bookshelf.  She will come listen to whatever I read to Seth at night, and then wants her own book.  Whew!

I recently went through their bookshelves, thinking there would be a bunch I would consign this spring.  I moved some preschool books from Seth's shelf to Amelia's, threw out a couple that had seen better days, and maybe had a handful I could bear to part with.  We still read them all!

I am not the only good example in this house.  Nathan tends to read in waves that tend to coincide with the end of sports seasons, but now that he's home more, there's a whole lot of reading going on.  We are headed to B&N this afternoon so he can pick up the next book in the John Jakes series.

We both come by it naturally.  We were raised by readers.  Almost all our siblings and their spouses are big readers, and books get passed back and forth at almost every family event.  Here is a picture, circa 1981, of me holding my dad hostage with a book.  I'm sure if we only had 12 tv channels, no Wii, and no internet, there would be even more reading going on it this house!

meeting baby James

After a year of losing more special people than just those I mentioned on the blog, 2012 is going to bring a lot of special babies (None here, don't be starting any rumors!).  On the 3rd, we happily welcomed sweet baby James, our fifth nephew, into the world.  Saturday morning we drove down to meet the little guy.  It was love at first sight:

 Seth was so excited that he and James matched!

 Big brother Brian doing binky duty:

We stayed at a SpringHill Suites and had adjoining rooms with the rest of the cousins.  It was great because the kids watched a movie on one TV while the grown ups watched football on the other.  The hotel had the world's smallest indoor pool, but it was big enough for the kids to go burn some energy each day.  After checking out Sunday morning, we went back to see the little guys one more time.  Here is a picture of all seven kiddos at the playground:

Congratulations, Elise and Chad!  He's wonderful!

resolutions

In case you haven't been counting, this is my 900th post.  :)

I don't have any grand resolutions for this year, just trying to hack away at the little projects that never seem to make it to the top of the list.  I do resolve to continue to save money, and try not to bore Nathan with the fab deals I find every day.  In 2011 I kept a tally of how much money I made consigning, and let me tell you, it was impressive, even to Nathan.  Definitely time well spent.  

Nathan's lungs can't take a real Christmas tree anymore.  Seth's allergies adjusted after a few days, but Nathan had a really rough month.  We will have our first artificial tree next year.  After much debate about whether to buy now or wait until after Thanksgiving, on the 2nd the kids and I went on a hunt for our new tree. We struck out at several places, and then hit the jackpot at Home Depot:

I don't know if you can read the fine print, but that's $37.25 for a $149.99 tree.  Only problem?  No box.  So we load it into the van and drive over to BB&B, who luckily had one tree bag left in stock.  If only I had brought a 20% off coupon with me, it would have been a perfect trip!

ringing in the new year

Our last week of the year was a quiet one.  With Nathan splitting his time at work and home, our week really wasn't much different than usual, other than that Seth was home with us.  Our mornings were spent at the Y and running errands, the boys played Kirby on the Wii every afternoon, and the kids would play the evenings away.  On New Year's Eve, we decided to run into town to buy Nathan two more books in the series he likes.  We had dinner at Five Guys, went to Target, and on a whim decided to see how busy the bowling alley was.  We were able to start bumper bowling right away, and they had the black lights on at 7pm.  It is so cool that we can now do these kinds of things together.  Unfortunately, no good pictures, because all we had were our cell phones!   

When we got home, the kids put on pj's and we popped in a movie.  Seth started getting sleepy, so Nathan instituted hourly sparkler time on the deck.

By 11:30, Seth was REALLY sleepy, so we started watching silly videos to pass the last half hour.  Then it was time for the countdown...

 ...they made it!

They were upstairs and in their beds before the ticker tape finished falling in Times Square.  They slept until 7:30, but still, it was a quiet Sunday at our house.

enough with the Christmas karma-grams!

Back when Seth was three, he told me what he'd gotten me for Christmas the minute he got home from the mall.  I thought I'd gotten my karma-gram then.  Evidently not.  A couple weeks before Christmas, mom called and asked if I had gotten a wine cork trivet the year before.  No, I think you gave it to Bryan.  "Okay, forget I just asked you that."  Hmm.  Then, Nathan calls me one day to ask me which lamp I wanted, because I had put a natural light lamp on my list, and Seth decided that's what he wanted to get me.  "Act surprised when you open it."  No problem.  Flying home from Minnesota, my pen leaked on the side of my purse.  So, Amelia wanted to give me a new purse, and told me I was getting it many times the week before Christmas.  On the 23rd, at Costco, I commented that I should have told Santa that I wanted a recipe book I saw there.  Seth said, "I don't think you should tell Santa that because then you might get two of them."  Hmm.  Bryan gave me two books as my present, and told me the second part would be coming in the mail.  I assumed it was the next book in the series.  Later Christmas day, mom asks me if we should boil extra potatoes to make lefse.  I say, "I don't have a ricer, remember?"  My dad says, "I thought someone was taking care of that?"  In my head, I'm thinking, "I said I'd buy one after Christmas" as Bryan is saying, "I told you, it's in the mail!"  Ha!  It was pretty funny by the end of the holidays!

one spoiled dog

I think Colette received her favorite gift of all time this Christmas.  I found an Angry Birds frisbee at Walmart.  She loves it!  She acts like a puppy when she plays with it.

But Colette is getting to be an old (11+) dog.  She is still in excellent health, but you can tell her eyes are starting to get a little hazy and her joints are getting a little stiff.  Not that either has effected her squirrel-chasing habit at all.  Due to allergies, Colette isn't allowed in our room anymore, and we don't let her hang out on the couches when we're on them (although I'm sure she makes up for it during the night and when we're not home).  She used the holiday as an opportunity to bend the rules a little bit.  She'd jump right up with Bryan to get belly rubs or hop up on the couch next to my mom to take a nap.

No cats allowed

Someone, who sometimes goes by the name Santa, gave the kids Build-A-Bear gift cards for Christmas.  I thought that someone would like to see the kids redeem their gift cards, so I took the kids and my parents to  the mall the day after Christmas.  Gram and Pops got to experience the process from start to finish...the animal selection, the stuffing...

 ...the cleaning...

...the selection of accessories...

...the dressing of the animals...

...the creation of birth certificates, and the check out process.  They also got to see two very excited kids bring home Kit the Kitty and Spark the dog.

The smiles didn't last long, though.  Seth chose a dog house for Spark, and not long after we got home, this sign showed up on his door:

...which of course resulted in a big fight.  It's now eight days later, and poor Kit has yet been allowed to visit in Seth's room...

Christmas!

Santa's definition of "good" must be different than mine.  Although Amelia did get a lump of coal in her stocking as a warning, there was no shortage of gifts on Christmas morning.  Seth slept until 6:15, which was a minor miracle.  He waited patiently (along with his parents and grandparents) until his sister woke up at 6:55, and they both waited rather impatiently until 7, when we let them go wake up Uncle B.  We opened presents round-robin style in age order, and it took over an hour.

Seth had "Angry Birds everything" on his list.  Santa brought him this game, a card game, a stocking hat, and a gaggle of soft Angry Bird toys to play with.

You can't go wrong with Disney princesses.  Amelia has had her eye on this Ariel for a long time.

We ate breakfast, cleaned up the first round of paper and boxes, and started in on the family gifts, which took at least another hour.  By the time we were done, it was time to make lunch!  The rest of the day was spent testing out all our new stuff, oh, and cooking our turkey dinner.  We were too full to eat much of anything on Monday!

Book List 2011

Bear with me, we'll get back to Christmas soon.  It's time for my annual book recap, if for no other reason than that's it's really easy for me to find when it's the last post each year.  Fifty-one books this year, although I must admit there was a lot of young adult, easy fiction read during this lap around the sun.

• Sweet Potato Queens' Guide to Raising Children for Fun and Profit
• Lakeshore Christmas by Susan Wiggs
• Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon
• Blue Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews
• In This Mountain by Jan Karon
• The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma
• Key of Valor by Nora Roberts
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Key of Knowledge by Nora Roberts
• Key of Light by Nora Roberts
• Twisted by Sara Shepard
• The Island by Elin Hilderbrand
• Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy
• A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
• Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella
• A Common Life by Jan Karon
• The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen
• Dune Road by Jane Green
• Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo
• Princess: A true story about life behind the veil in Saudi Arabia
• A New Song by Jan Karon
• Summer by the sea by Susan Wiggs
• Amazing Gracie by Sherryl Woods
• Rising Tides by Emilie Richards
• Iron Lace by Emilie Richards
• Deja Vu by Fern Michaels
• Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
• Out to Canaan by Jan Karon
• The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil
• The Mitford Series Books 1-3
• The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
• Home Free by Fern Michaels
• Can't Wait to get to Heaven
• The Thirteeth Tale
• Living Dead in Dallas
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
• Three Fates by Nora Roberts
• Pretty Little Liars 1-8 by Sara Shepard
• Angels Fall by Nora Roberts
• ...plus 3 I can't remember the titles of...

However, besides the countless children's books I read to Amelia each day, Seth and I have knocked out a bunch of chapter books this year, and I since I was the one doing the reading, they count, right?

Charlotte's Web (for the second time)

Stuart Little

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Mr. Popper's Penguins

Pinocchio

Winnie the Pooh

The BFG

I think in 2012, I will keep a list of our bedtime books as well.  Might be fun to see what strikes our fancy in the year ahead!

Christmas Eve

Last week, it was confirmed that we would do Blackorby Christmas here, and not in Cary.  So I spent Friday evening and Saturday morning cleaning.  After one last quick trip to the grocery store, I spent the afternoon making sausage balls, homemade Chex mix, chili to put in the crock pot, corn dip, and fudge.  Once all that was done, it was time to go to church.  We took a family picture when we got home:

You can't tell it in the picture, but Amelia is wearing the same skirt (2T) from last year.  We had to safety pin it up last year, and this year it still fit.  I only spent $5 on the skirt to begin with.  Nice!  (Although the shirt and tights I got 50% off at Hartstrings, so I guess that makes is a $25 outfit...)

I had just cleaned up the kitchen post-chili dinner when my parents and Bryan arrived, loaded with gifts.  Perhaps the tree in the dining room wasn't such a great idea after all...

The kids stayed up until about 9, tracking Santa online, and left out reindeer food and cookies for Santa before they went to sleep:

The grown-ups stayed up way past my bedtime.  I was one tired girl the next day!

you know what they say about idle hands...

Which is exactly why, as it got closer to the holidays, we spent our evenings being crafty.  The kids made candy cane mice to give to their classmates and neighborhood friends:

Then they made snowmen out of milk jugs:

They also made reindeer root beer for part of Uncle B's present:

And finally, our tree topper.  We have had a pretty star since we got married.  Last year, our unreliable strings of lights burnt out, and we replaced them with LED lights.  The star and the lights didn't look right together.  The plan was to replace it this year.  I didn't see anything I really liked, and honestly, I didn't have a lot of time to make a grand search for one.  Last week, we decided to make our own!  We used a piece from an empty wrapping paper roll and cut the star out of whatever shipping box had arrived that day.  We bought silver (washable) paint, and the kids put two coats on each piece.  Then we sprinkled on the glitter and let it dry overnight.  The next morning, it was ready to top our tree!  

our Christmas card picture

Merry Christmas, from our house to yours!

school pictures

Amelia:  MWF 3's
Seth:  First Grade

dressed up with Santa

On Monday, Seth's class did a theatrical reading of "Arthur's Christmas".  Seth had the speaking parts of the father and Santa (along with the two boys on either side of him).  

 He didn't get to practice as much as the rest of the class, but he didn't let him nerves get the best of him.

Once he realized I was taking pictures, he covered his face.:

Silly boy!  Afterwards, the class did a craft and then had their holiday party.  Fun times in first grade!

hope he's not claustrophobic...

Cricket is back this year.  He is not a naughty elf, like some people have visiting in their homes, but he has been getting into some predicaments this year!  In fact, before I go to bed, I need to see if the poor guy is still hanging on for dear life to the closet door knob, or if he's already made his nightly trip to the North Pole to report in to Santa....