Merry Christmas!

I hope you are all enjoying your holidays. I love Christmas. This year was a little tough, as San Antonio doesn't have snow, or evergreens, or mountains, or any family. But we do have holiday craziness which appears to be a rampant epidemic throughout the US. Try as I might to get Christmas cards out, presents bought, goodies sent to friends, packages mailed on time, and a slew of other Christmas "to-do"s, it didn't happen this year. I did get presents bought, but that was about it. The BK and I were put in charge of our Church Christmas Party, and combined with trying to work part-time and wrangle my kids, not much else got done.

That said, it ended up being a very nice and quiet Christmas at our house (as quiet as things ever are around here - in part because the LG ended up sick which means he actually laid around with us on the couch for a few hours ; ). A couple of images of our Christmas celebration follow.

Here is the LG playing with the nativity that Grandma sent in response to my complaining about the kids not leaving my nice nativity alone. When she said she was sending a nativity the kids could play with, I was thinking plastic, not clay so the heads and other body parts could pop/shatter/break. That's okay though, the kids still had a great time. As you can see, the LG set up shop in his fire station, while the TP just carried around baby Jesus in his manger sqwuaking, "baby, baby". She seemed content with this unfair division of assets (there were about 10 pieces), and so did the LG, so who am I to point out the inequity of their sharing arrangement?


This should give you a good idea of the weather around here in December. It also demonstrates the havoc 2 children and a negligent BK (he failed to water anything when I was on vacation with the kids in UT) can wreak on a beautiful patio garden (okay, so it was never that beautiful). Where once grew a few legitimate plants, we now have a "dirt" box, a garden hat, and 2 race cars. Not a bad trade from the kids' perspective. Or the BK's apparently as he was amused enough to take pictures rather than send them both to time out in the tub.


Before I say anything about the Church Christmas Party, just let me say, "Please, Lord, please, never again!" Seriously, not my cup of tea. That said, I think it went pretty well. It was sort of an out of body experience. The kind where you know you were there, but don't really remember much of what was going on. You can catch a glimpse of what it looked like, as well as my children having the time of their lives running with free reign in a large gym. I'm pretty sure the experience rivaled that of Christmas morning. As for me, I was just glad it was all over.




The LG got to be Rudolph for the Christmas festivities at preschool. His nose was red for 3 days as he wouldn't let me wash it off.


An example of why it was time the TP got some "girl toys" as the LG put it when he saw her toys at Christmas. Poor thing is often dressed in the LG's hand-me-downs like his red airplane jammies and green hoodie, and daddies shoes. She even makes flying airplane noises, and calls all little people "guys". Yup, time for some girl toys around here.


Christmas Eve preview: pajamas and books to make sure the kids slept well while Santa was at work.


Shock-and-Awe of Christmas morning.


Little momma in her new little kitchen.


MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! We love you all (you know who you are ; )

Happy Birthday Baby

The LG turned 4 this year, just before Thanksgiving, and just after Grandma and Grandpa arrived for the festivities. Nothing to age you like your children growing older. I can't believe he is 4. He often looks much older, acts much younger and definitely keeps us on our toes! He is amazing, smart, funny, very sensitive to others, kind, happy, and very energetic. He is a great older brother, loves his sister, loves his brother-to-be, and loves anyone and everyone around him. We are so lucky to have him in our family. Happy Birthday LG!

Here he is with his birthday pancakes. The party sort of continued through the week with a family party on the actual date with Grandma and Grandpa, and a friend party after Thanksgiving.


A few side stories that illustrate his personality, both of which have occurred in church over the course of 2 weeks:

2 Weeks Ago:
The woman speaking was talking about marriage and maintaining good relationships. As one point she was making the point that we all feel, when it comes to our spouses, that, "I hope you can understand me."

From 4 rows away, in the brief silence that followed the statement, the LG comments, "I don't understand you." It was loud enough that she (and everyone else) chuckled and she wittingly replied that that is exactly how we often feel. At least he was listening, right?

Last Week:
For those of you who haven't read this already on Facebook, last week was our Christmas program in church. I had to play the piano for the choir and was therefore sitting on the stand, and had left both kids with the BK, surrounded by others willing to help with the kids as necessary. At one point in the program, the primary children were asked to come up and sing a couple of songs. The LG straggled up as the first song had already begun, but did sing his little heart out. Unfortunately, after all the other kids had gone back to their seats, the LG was still hamming it up in front of the congregation. He tried to sit with the narrators (also on the stand), and then wiggled away to get back to the wall facing the congregation. He then scaled the wall, and was standing on it as his little friend on the front row was yelling for him to "Jump"! You can imagine my horror at this point, and the eye contact I was trying to make with the BK who had yet to intervene in any way. Fortunately, before he could jump (it was pretty imminent), one of the narrators grabbed him off the wall and turned to walk him back to the BK who was finally coming to retrieve his child. Just as it appeared someone finally had the LG under control, he kicked off the wall and knocked the poor narrator (and himself) flat on her back in front of the whole congregation who collectively changed their chuckles to an "oooooohhhhhh". Fortunately the narrator was fine, and graciously stood, bowed, and let everyone know she was alright.

Needless to say, he can be a handful. That said, he's hard not to like (fortunately), a little like curious George, and as beautiful on the inside and outside as any mother could hope for. We love you little guy.

Homecoming

Ahhh, DC. We love you. We miss you. We often think we should never have left you.


We went to DC so the BK could run another Marine Corp marathon, we could visit Grandma and Grandpa, catch up with old friends, and remember what fall is supposed to look like.

Some of the highlights:

The TP fell in love with a Superman doll at Grandma's house. At least she has high standards.


We took the kids to a corn maze. Great idea. The LG kept hiding in the corn (off the path of course), and would then start screaming while strangers would think there was a lost child without parental guidance. We all got lost because the BK never thinks that looking at a map is worth his time, and Grandma and prego mama got pretty cranky wandering around. Like I said, great idea. Maybe next year.



After visiting the National History Museum and the Air and Space Museum, the LG had finally had enough sight seeing, and lay down in the middle of the mall to "take a rest" and make dirt angels.



I can never get enough of my kids holding hands, especially when it occurs spontaneously. Somehow it makes everything in the world seem right.

Happy Holidays

You may think I am referring to Christmas, which would make sense except for the fact that my last post had to do with cockroaches, not Halloween, Thanksgiving or even the LGs birthday so I have a wee bit to catch up on before we get to Christmas. Here goes.

I was never that into Halloween, so I figured that my kids would have the same natural aversion to the holiday. Not so. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the LG prefers Halloween to Christmas. He loves the ghosts, ghouls, monsters, etc. Plus, he gets to dress up as a superhero and play with his friends who are also dressed up as superheroes (yes, he does have friends who weren't superheroes but he wasn't interested in playing with them).

His preschool had a parade and then the kids did a dance choreographed in Spanish class (if you can call 20 minutes of Spanish once a week "class"). It was no surprise that the LG was out in front of his class prancing as Batman for the parade. I have been trying for weeks to upload the video to no avail, so I figure I better get on with my posts before more holidays come and go.

I have to confess that I never really dressed up the poor TP in a legitimate costume. We were in DC for Halloween and went trick or treating with some family. A combination of the cold weather for which we were underdressed, and my constant state of pregnancy are to blame for a failure to even adequately document the event with my own camera. The TP ended up wearing a princess tiara with a wand, cowgirl boots, and an oversized red christmas tree coat to keep her warm.

Jimminy Cricket.. I Mean Cockroach

Okay, I started this new job a couple months ago, and I love it. Love the people I work with, love that I am only at work a couple of hours a couple days a week, but DON'T love my bathroom experiences there. The bathroom looks nice enough, smells nice enough, and generally speaking, meets all my lavatory needs. That said a couple weeks back I open the stall to see a gleaming white toilet with a Texas-sized cockroach floating belly up in the can. Close the door and move on to the next stall. I also warned the next person who wandered in to use another stall. After I finished up my business, and realized that I should just flush it. So I did.

The story should end there, I mean how common is a lone, Texas-sized cockroach in an otherwise clean bathroom? Apparently more common than I would like. Today, I walked in, sat down, and attended to my business (which is very frequent these days what with a baby sitting on my bladder), only to get up, turn around to flush, and see ANOTHER ENORMOUS TEXAS-SIZE COCKROACH crawl out from under the seat and do a little dance for me. If I weren't morally opposed to high pitched shrieking, today would have been the day.

I don't even know who to complain to, so I'm complaining to you. YUCK. A big, Texas-sized YUCK.

To brighten my day, the LG was working on an art project this afternoon for his cousin. While tracing his hand, he exclaimed, "Mom, she's going to be really impressed with this. Really impressed." I'm really impressed LG that somewhere you learned that word. Thanks for making me laugh. I really needed that.

Happy Days

The BK read my last post and glumly said, "You seem pretty down." I figure I better post some good stuff before I have my mother calling worried about me. The most exciting thing that happened this week was that I received an amazing piece of mail that has filled my heart with joy. You may remember a few posts back that my sister-in-law held an art auction. My artwork arrived and honestly, I can't really explain the difference it makes to the room it now hangs in. I can explain that it just makes my heart happy.



Also this week, one of the LG's friends had a birthday party at this wild west place. It was a costume party, so I am warning that there are spoilers in the following picture as to what the LG plans to be for Halloween (still not sure if I'm sold on the TP's costume). I know you have all been waiting with anticipation. Buzz Lightyear is one of his other best friends. The party was thrown by a group of Spanish-speaking ladies we get together with occasionally (nope, we still don't speak any spanish), and man was it a party! We had a fantastic lunch, the kids had a great time, and there was even trick or treating, plus my kids took a 3 hour nap afterward. That is definitely my kind of party.







The BK and I had a date night with some friends of ours last night and went to see Wall Street, which was actually better than I expected. I forget how nice it is to get out of the house, and am so grateful to people willing to watch my kids for a few hours! That said, it took me 5 hours to clean my house before the babysitter arrived. I was so pooped by the time we left I could have taken a nap and been just as happy as heading to the show. Kids. Sheesh.

We are really looking forward to our vacation to DC next week! We will be doing some Trick or Treating in Georgetown, hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa, checking out all the dinosaur bones and airplanes we can handle on the Mall, visiting good friends and probably renewing our feelings of doubt as to why we ever left in the first place. Ahhhh DC.

See mom, I'm fine ; )

Blue Skies

Not really sure what the title has to do with anything, but it's a BOY! We are very excited that the LG will have a little brother. He was particularly excited to see the ultrasound picture of the penis. He couldn't stop laughing then, still can't stop laughing now anytime he thinks about it. His laughter is contagious and now we all laugh anytime we think of it.

Sunday the LG was laying around, clearly very bored as he said, "Mom, this house is too small, there isn't anywhere to run around." Yeah well, tell that to the powers that be I think to myself. Maybe the lottery could rain down from the blue skies directly into my chimney.

I hate cheerful pregnant people. They make me more cranky. Just to confirm my crankiness, here's a list of all the things I have NO interest in doing while I'm pregnant:

1 -Cooking
2 - Getting out of bed
3 - Cleaning
4 - Eating (I'm still hoping this passes soon, but so far I'm outta luck)
5 - Changing diapers
6 - Going anywhere
7 - Doing anything
8 - Talking to anyone

Seriously, it would just be better for everyone, including all of you - who by now may think I need professional help, if I just went into confinement for 9 months.

I would show pictures of something, but using my camera is on the list under "doing anything". If you can't stand grumpy pregnant people, you probably shouldn't check back until late March.

Laundry

It's a 5 or 6 load of laundry day. I hate laundry. I'd rather clean the toilets. My kids love to jump in my tidy piles of clean clothes, they love to climb in the laundry baskets and throw all the nicely sorted piles of dirty laundry on the floor. And the BK doesn't like to let me touch his clothes (okay, so I shrunk a few things, and washed some colors with some whites), which just means that when I'm done with the laundry, the laundry is still never done and his dirty clothes are still lingering around the house (plus, he exercises which means super stinky clothes laying around, hanging on the towel racks, on the shower rod, etc). I figure while I'm grumpy and in between loads I should catch up on my blogging.

So, like 6 months ago (okay only 2) we went to Utah. For me, the only place I feel like I can go and relax (unless I have pawned my children off on some unknowing fool) is back to mommy and daddy. My mom takes care of me, my kids, and still keeps the house clean and food on the table and in the cupboard. Plus, it's not humid there and you can actually go outside.

We decided to take the kids to a new park out in Providence that has water sprinklers (or whatever those things are that shoot water out of the cement). To enjoy the water you know. Hence the swimming suits. Not interested. Standing there staring at them was about as interested as either of them got. Swings and slides are apparently much more exciting.




Dressing up is always on the daily agenda. Often followed by some version of chase and terrorize your little sister. Watching the TP figure out how to avoid, manipulate, and literally claw her way out of some precarious and mildly dangerous situations has given me a new appreciation for what my poor brothers endured. Eh, you know what they say, if it doesn't kill you....




Speaking of not killing you. The BK took the LG up to the mountain to go hiking. When I tell you that allowing the LG to scale this rock probably came close to killing the BK (yes, the BK not the LG), you might think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. So proud of you BK. As a side note at this point, my internet isn't working well enough to upload pictures at a rate faster than 1 every hour. One picture for each load of laundry. It's just gonna be that kind of day.



There was more handholding with cousins, hiking, and it was so nice to have the BK join us for a couple of days.




Finally, no trip to Logan would be complete without a trip to Willow Park. I love this place. It is the perfect size zoo (if you can even call it that). The kids love it. It doesn't take very long, and the kids can run around without the fear of getting lost among hundreds of other people. Plus, it gives them the opportunity to feed the ducks, have their fingers eaten by the ducks, get screeched at by peacocks, and play with the grandparents.



I'm lucky I got this far with this post so I'm going to call it quits. Back to the piles of laundry.

Starting Places

Trying to figure out where to start when I haven't posted in so long is always a dilemma. That said, the biggest thing that has happened to us over the past couple of months is definitely:

PRESCHOOL!!!
The LG started preschool 2 days a week, and everyone is much happier. He loves it. I love it. And he seems to be doing well. At least he hasn't been sent home yet ; ) And for those of you who would notice, I did comb his hair before we left, but it sort of has a life of its own. His teacher is amazing, and as usual, I feel incredibly blessed by the people that come into the LG's life who make me feel like I can turn off mom mode for a few minutes and just watch and appreciate this amazing little man.




RAIN (& COLD)!!!
We have finally seen some reprieve from the weather. And true to Texas form, the storms were big and wild, and so much fun. Plus the sun disappeared for a couple of days. Ahhhh. Did I mention ahhhhhhh? Below shows you a before and after shot of our backyard.




BEGINNING OF THE END!!!
It's official, with amphibian-like pictures to prove, that #3 is on the way. You may think that this is more exciting news than preschool. You would be mistaken. Without preschool, I would not have been able to consider a #3 at all, and might have thought seriously about jumping into the river above. So there you have it. What we have planned as our third and final master creation is currently cooking.

We are looking forward to more of the following shenanigans:





As a final story, the LG set up a carnival in his room the other night. The BK and I were invited separately to present our tickets and enter. The BK went first and was greeted with, "Welcome to the Carnival". I followed shortly thereafter and was greeted by a sweeping hand gesture and, "Welcome to Hell!" Like I said, I'm just glad he hasn't been sent home from preschool yet....

Art Auction

Glory days, don't worry, it's not my artwork. My sister-in-law, however, is extremely talented and is auctioning off her amazing artwork to help support my brother in architecture school (the last days, fortunately). Regardless of whether you want to support the cause or not, it is definitely a great chance to pick up some great original artwork at very reasonable prices. Anyway, while you are pining away for my next blog post, please check it out at
Jordandainesart.blogspot.com.

Below is just one of the many pics available:

Lotteries and Dreaming Big

I'm not gonna lie or pretend that I will happily live out my life in gracious humility if I never become rich and famous (anonymously famous, that is). Call me vain, I don't care. I like nice things and I don't think I need to apologize for that since I diligently avoid stores when times are tight. The BK and I, often on long walks when we run out of things to say to each other, and when the kids are so tired that we don't have to scream at them, often talk about what we will do with the $42 million we win playing the Texas MegaMillions. First we siphon off half to pay taxes (which I would almost be happy to pay - okay, I take that back). That leaves us with $20 million. Here's my list of the top 10 things I would do with the cash, in the order I would do them.

1 - Buy my food storage. This would also include replenishing my fridge which always seems to be in need of a fresh infusion of food. I might not even care if it all went bad. Just to have it brimming with beautiful, bright fruits and vegetables and lots of delicious choices would be a worthy luxury - at least once. I might even hire someone to organize my fridge, just this once, so that it could actually look like this:


2 - Pay off all the student loans for me and my siblings. Don't worry, I get a bit more frivilous once the bills are all paid. I know what you're thinking:


3 - Fund college for my kids (I will not be leaving millions to them in a will to ruin them, they will have to play the lottery on their own). Again, I know what you're thinking:


4 - Hire a personal trainer so that I have a good excuse to splurge on #5. He could look something like this, but he would absolutely have to have a British accent. Sorry Trainer Momma, you are neither male nor have a British accent.


5 - Buy a new wardrobe. With kids and bills I rarely buy clothes for myself anymore. And when I do, it's usually from Old Navy or Target. Barf. I would head straight to Ann Taylor, and then ask my friends with some taste where I should head next.


6 - Buy one of these. Not that I don't love driving a minivan. Love you BK.


7 - Hire a personal assistant willing to scrub toilets, do laundry, clean up the dishes (I don't mind the cooking), go to the grocery store, occasionally babysit, make phone calls, provide intellectually stimulating conversation, and write interesting blog posts for me. It would also help if she was well dressed in order to encourage me to shower and wear some of my nice new clothes.


8 - Adopt a few more kids. Probably only 2. Probably from China. We plan to have one more of our own. So 3 + 2 + 2 (me and BK) = just the right number to fit in #6. (Don't ask me about this picture, but putting up pictures of actual kids from China just didn't seem right).


9 - Build a big house on a ranch, designed by my brother, with lots of wood, concrete, stainless steel, etc.; inhabited by a few more children (see above), horses, and a few other animals that would require my kids to learn how to work and do real chores. Some of the incidentals that are included in this tall order include: grand piano, gorgeous library filled with gorgeous books (so I can read while the kids are out milking the cows), a master bedroom far away from the kids' rooms, and an amazing kitchen that cleans up after itself. Oh yeah, and an amazing garden. And really great landscaping. You're all invited to come and stay at the guest house.


10 - Really I could just end here, and tell you that I would put the rest away, start some charitable foundations, and figure out a way to sneak some of the money into my tithing. But, it wouldn't be entirely honest as I think that a large portion of the money (let's be honest that all of the above probably wouldn't even go over $2m and that's pushing it), would go to TRAVELING. We would love to pull our kids out of school and sail around the world for a year of homeschooling, doing crazy service projects in crazy places, and learning about the world.


I should also note that I would work doing something I love (I haven't figured out what that is just yet). I just wouldn't worry about whether I make money doing it. What's on your list?