Holiday Spirit Runneth Over

I'm feeling very Norman Rockwell-ish with all of the fun holiday activities the town of Parker and our church have put together. Downtown Parker has some really fun little activities for Friday and Saturday evenings in December, and we went down last night to check it out before the arctic cold they've been warning us about arrives tonight. All of the activities are totally free too - bonus! There were carriage rides, visits with Santa,little bonfires up and down the sidewalk, carolers, popcorn and cider...all very high on the quaint scale. And we didn't even see everything, like the coffee shop where librarians were telling holiday stories like The Polar Express because Max wanted to get home and see Frosty on TV. I know. Priorities. It was just fun to see so many people downtown against the beautiful backdrop of all the lights - working to build a sense of community and all that (and yes, I know, drum up business for the downtown merchants).

Then this afternoon we headed over to our church for A Night in Bethlehem, something that I think they started while we lived in Utah and I think we missed last year due to a ski trip. It was a very well-done "Jewish village" with tons of hands-on activities for the kids, like making rope, making sandals, grinding grain with rocks (Max really enjoyed this), petting animals, etc. Here's Max making a mosaic, and here he is making jewelry. Shocker that Ben didn't want to do any of the crafts. He was more interested in collecting the gold coins that the angels were dropping and occasionally having to pay the tax collectors. What a cool idea to bring Bethlehem to life for the kids (and adults too for that matter)! We've always been thankful for our church and all that it has to offer, but especially after our year in Utah, we're just grateful for all of the neat things going on in our church.

And tomorrow morning, Max has his Christmas pageant, The Christmas County Spelling Bee. His line: "And the government will be upon his shoulders" plus all of the songs with the angel choir. So excited!

A totally different subject: Andrew and I reversed the handle on our fridge door today so that it no longer clunks into the counter about a hundred times a day. We figure it is only going to take us about 10 years to get used to grabbing the other side of the door!

Yes, I enjoy the food

Christmas came a little early today. Andrew OK'd me busting out the crockpot from him, Max & Ben. Behold: Today I am cooking a roast and needed the extra room in the 6 qt. crock pot so the roast could cook horizontally instead of vertically in my old 4 qt. cooker. I first saw this crockpot advertised on the Food Network (told ya, I like the food). It's the Hamilton Beach Stay or Go, loaded with cool features, such as a rubber seal around the lid, little latches on the side that clamp the lid on securely, extra large carrying handles, and the handy little spoon rest on top. So now you can take it to whatever gathering you may have to go to without worrying about slopping your food all over the car on the way. Awesome!

And my other recommendation: I checked the book out from the library to preview it and decide if it's worth purchasing. I ran out of sticky-notes for all of the recipes I want to try. So far, I've liked everything I've tried: sauerbraten, cheesy italian tortellini, and we'll see how the caramelized onion pot roast goes over tonight. Mmmm!

Fun in the snow!

We got several inches of snow overnight. The boys got after it right after breakfast this morning: Then inside to warm up with some hot chocolate with marshmallows: Then back out for some more fun: I tell ya, building a snowman with Colorado's "champagne powder" is not an easy task! I thought the snow seemed a little wet this morning when I shoveled so I hoped we could build a big ol' snowman, but it turned out to still be pretty powdery, so this is the best we could do today. And, I have to say, even though it makes for crummy snowmen, I still prefer the powder to the slushy stuff.

And Happy Birthday to my mom!

Gingerbread houses

Here are some pics from yesterday when Grandma Jill came by to make gingerbread houses with the boys. (Why do I keep typing "gingerbreak" instead of "gingerbread"? Annoying.) Both boys, but especially Ben, were big fans of the unfettered access to candy and frosting. In fact, as I typed this post, we have put Ben in time-out twice and hid his gingerbread house because he CANNOT leave it alone.
This morning I filled in for the 3-year-old Sunday school class. I had Maiya, McKenna, Mira, Max (because he wanted to stay with his mama), and Ben, my only non-M. Try running down that roster 5 times quickly. Almost every parent dropped off his/her child with a nervous smile, saying "She's in her big girl undies today. She should be fine." Ahhh, outings with newly potty-trained kids, such a leap of faith. And, for the record, everyone did just fine.

On the drive home, Max said, "You know mama?"

"What buddy?"

"You know, you're pretty good at that teaching."

"Gee thanks, little buddy."

Silver City

Here are some pictures from our Thanksgiving trip to Silver City to visit Andrew's parents. We enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving feast that Sue cooked up. Here is Andrew enjoying a new libation, New Mexico style, prickly pear margarita. Sue juices the prickly pear cacti in her yard and then mixes up the margaritas. They were delicious and such a pretty color!

We stopped into their church Saturday to help decorate since we were leaving early Sunday morning and they wanted us to say "hi" to some of their friends. Both dogs made the journey too; they were excellent travelers. Cedar is convinced he is a lap dog. We had a smooth drive down and almost all the way home. We had horribly slick, snowy roads for the last bit of our trip. It took us 3 hours (usually about 1 hour) to get from Colorado Springs to home! But we made it safely, and for that I am thankful.

Here are the dogs all sacked out tonight at home:Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving too!

Stubborn!

Well it only took Benjamin 2 hours to decide to ask for his breakfast with a "please" this morning.

Good times.

Road-trip ready

Brian & Tiff were nice enough to loan us their Thule so we'll have a little more room in the family roadster for our Thanksgiving travels. And by "we," I mean 2 adults, 2 kids and 2 dogs. Yes, we are a little crazy and my mother-in-law is very generous to tell us to just bring both dogs along to her house. Now we'll just load 'er up tomorrow and hit the road early Wednesday morning.

That time of year

Don't you just want to snuggle 'em in those cute footie jammies?

Party On!

This morning the boys had their very first birthday party that they got to invite friends to. Needless to say, they were very excited. We are blessed to have a great group of friends with kids about the same ages, some from church, some from playgroup and some that we even met in Utah who have since moved to Colorado also! We rented out Party On, a giant inflatable bounce place, for their birthday extravaganza and the kids had a blast! I cannot believe my babies are 5 and (almost) 3.

Bouncing: Moving on into the party room: The birthday throne: Ice cream cake (that Max has had his heart set on since we toured DQ with MOMS Club):
Happy Birthday boys! We love you!

Recap

All right, so I know it's already Wednesday, but here's a catch-up starting with last weekend.

I called Mom on Saturday to see if she and Dad wanted to get together for dinner either Saturday or Sunday night, and by the way, they changed the schedule and Max's little choir wasn't singing in church this weekend after all. Mom said, "Well, since Max doesn't have to be at church tomorrow, how about Dad and I come over tonight for dinner, then take the boys home to spend the night at our house and we'll bring them back Sunday after their naps?"

Done.

So Andrew and I had an unexpected kid-free night. We went out to the Celtic Pub here in Parker just because we could and had a beer together. Andrew and I are so fancy that he wore his Wyoming sweatshirt to the pub and on the way in a guy goes "Go Pokes." This stopped us in our tracks since we'd stopped following the Pokes this season after several games posting a big fat doughnut against various teams. Well, the Pokes actually beat Tennessee this weekend! As in the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for their homecoming game! According to ESPN, the Pokes are 3-1 against SEC teams. Weird. Cool but weird.

So after a beer at the pub, we headed home at the late, late hour of 8:15 with Get Smart in hand, which was a pretty funny movie. Sunday morning we slept until the unheard of hour of 9:30 and then just putsed around, reading the paper, driving around looking at houses with land in Parker (one day...after we sell Utah). We tried a new restaurant, Taste of Philly, for lunch and it was delicious!

A lovely weekend (save for Cedar's body not agreeing with the salsa that he slurped on Thursday, but after fasting him for 24 hours and then just feeding him rice, he is corked up again, thank you very much) and nothing much out of the ordinary this week...just getting ready for birthday season at our house.

Random thing that's cracking me up: Max has taken to calling dry skin "chicken skin." In the mornings after I rub Vaseline on his hands at bedtime, he wakes up and goes, "Mom, my chicken skin is all gone!"

Gotta run...Max has choir practice and then we have "night church" tonight.

President (Elect) Obama!

I can finally exhale.

Passed!

Max passed Guppy swim lessons! Now we have a Minnow!

Mama's Boy

One of the treats Max came home from his preschool Halloween party with was a little ghost stamp. This prompted the boys to drag out the bucket of stamps they have in their art supplies and start stamping away. After finding orange ghost stamps on the walls and sink in the bathroom, I reminded the boys that "stamps are for paper and skin only." They took this to heart and kind of went to town stamping themselves. Ben really took it to the next level though by tatting himself up good. Here's his arm: If you look closely, the stamp says "Jessie." Aww, he already has his mama's name tatted all over his arm. Maybe a future Nugget?

Yeah November!

I confess, I am a Halloween grinch. There doesn't seem to be a point to this holiday other than sugaring kids up so they are maniacs bouncing off the wall and driving adults crazy with incessant whining for more candy. Dressing up in costumes doesn't really appeal to me. It seems to be the only holiday that you sort of expect vandalism, whether in the form of smashed pumpkins or, this year, stealing political signs (a lot of Obama yard signs are mysteriously missing this morning in our neighborhood). And it doesn't really honor anything particularly patriotic or religious (all hallow's eve?). It is also the opening of Lawn Trash Season. Apparently 2 weeks ago was the opening of the season, because our neighbor's lawn devolved into this. Next up will be turkeys and then Christmas lawn trash galore.

I have to say though, the weather has been mid- to upper-seventies this week, so some of my grinch-ness was lessened after taking the boys (and Cedar) trick-or-treating because it was an undeniably nice evening and a walk always makes me feel good. And here they are in their familiar but still cute train costumes:

Resourceful

I had a couple of little things around the house bugging me that I solved this week with very little money spent - love it!

The carpet behind the couch always looks kind of trashed so I wanted a rug to help ease the wear and tear on the carpet. I had a runner in the laundry room that matches the big area rug in the family room. The laundry room is a heavily-trafficked area as we traipse through it everytime we go to or from the garage. But I took the runner and spent some time removing spots and scrubbing and vaccuuming to fluff it up a little and put it down behind the couch. Then I found a rug we had in our donation pile. It had a couple of paint spots but I was able to scrub them out with nail polish remover and put it down in the laundry room. Nothing more exciting than area rugs, I know.

Then I dealt with the gigantic wall behind our front steps. I didn't like the display of family pictures I had up there; they were too tiny for that vast wall. I thought I'd move them to the upstairs hallway and eventually get some big pictures for the wall. I was telling Andrew about this and he said that he really likes the family pictures where they are; they make him smile as he goes up and down the steps. Now if he'd told me how much he liked the beer sign in the family room, I'd say too bad, so sad, but I thought this was actually kind of sweet and so I tried to figure out how to improve the family picture display. So I spent some time going through pictures and frames and whatnot to beef up the display and make it bigger for the wall.

I even went step-by-step to arrange the display because stairs are such a pain. (When you move as much as we have lately, you learn from your past mistakes and get a definite method figured out.) I started with measuring up from the floor at the top and bottom of the steps, putting in a small nail and running a string the length of the steps. Then I traced the frames onto newspaper, cut them out and arranged and rearranged them on the wall until I found one I liked. Then I measured the hooks on the backs of the frames, made corresponding dots on the newspapers, hammered in a little nail, pulled down the newspapers and hung the frames. I finished by putting poster tack on the backs of the frames to keep them level (a great tip I got from a friend) even with dogs thundering up and down the steps.Imagine the newspaper is another collage frame. I'm much happier with this display and there's still lots of room to add on in the future.

Working out the kinks

This week Andrew had a business trip to downtown Denver. Yep, Denver. His regional meeting just happened to be in Denver this time, so he still stayed at the hotel with his colleagues just like if the meeting was in Phoenix or Vegas. So it was just me and the boys and the dogs for 2 nights. Days when the hubby is gone are always a little more tiring, but he travels more with this job, so it is becoming almost second nature as I do it more often. However, add a dog that is still adjusting to our family from time spent in a shelter and a rescue organization, and by Wednesday night, I was at my wit's end. Literally, I felt like I could see the end of my wit.

Wednesday morning I woke up to a big steaming pile of dog poop at the bottom of the steps, which as it turns out, was a perfect metaphor for much of the rest of my day. It was a day of just lots of little things, kids screaming, fighting, cranky, dogs not cooperating, etc. I was having thoughts of "why did I want 2 dogs again?" But before I went to bed I read a lot of info online about helping shelter dogs adjust to a new home and was feeling a lot better. I think Cedar will work out long-term, just some kinks to keep working out. Most of the time when we are home, Cedar is just like this and perfectly awesome.

However, we do have to leave the house sometimes, and Cedar hates going in his crate. But until he's reliably housebroken and trustworthy, he definitely does not get the run of the house. So I got the great idea of using the awesome dog run that came with the house. We even picked up this cool dog house from craiglist (love, love, love craigslist!). When I got home though, Cedar was laying right next to the backdoor, gate to the dog run still locked, no holes to be found...my guess is that the punk jumps out. So not only is he running around the yard doing things like digging and eating wood chips and branches (yes, he likes the taste of wood and it's lovely regurgitated), he's locked himself out of the area we're trying to train him to use as his bathroom. So the dog run is out for now and we're back to forcing him in the crate.

I love the info on crate training that says to NEVER, EVER force your dog to go into the crate. If we did that, our dog would NEVER, EVER go into the crate.

We tried the crate in the kitchen, thinking that he could get used to it on his own. We threw treats in the back. The only problem is Aspen, who has no fear of the crate. As soon as Cedar nears the crate, she runs up, boxes him out, marches in and eats the treat. So the crate is back in the garage, which is working beautifully for now, but it took us some trial and error this week.

Thursday night we tried the crate in the kitchen. That night Max woke up at 3AM crying that he couldn't find Anty. Anty is the stuffed anteater (such a cuddly animal, that anteater) that he sleeps with. So I crankily went through all the blankets on his bed until we found Anty.

Cedar of course heard us and thought that IT! IS! TIME! TO! GET! UP! and the crate tail-thumping and yipping began. Andrew got Cedar settled down and I laid in bed for about an hour, still hearing an occasional weird noise. I tried to ignore the weird noises and go back to sleep, but I kept thinking that maybe Andrew forgot to lock the door when he let Cedar out and some weirdo was stealing my children and I would never forgive myself if I woke up in the morning and they were gone because I was too lazy to check on them.

Totally rational line of thinking, I know.

Finally, I went to check on the kids. I let myself peek at the clock, 4AM. Normally I don't let myself look at the clock because then I start calculating the hours of sleep I'm not getting and just get more worked up. Anyways, I went to check on the kids and Max was still wide awake. (Aha, weird noises = 4 year old playing in bedroom.) He was "so excited for Halloween!" he couldn't sleep. That and since we're almost to the end of daylight savings, it's been dark in the morning when we get up, so in his mind, it very well might have been about 7AM instead of 4AM. I convinced him that he needed to go back to bed and finally, finally got a little bit of sleep.