Christmastide and the end of another year

Happy Christmastide! I decided a few years ago to celebrate the twelve days of Christmas beginning on Christmas Day and ending on Epiphany. This, to me, gives more time to emphasize the story of Jesus' birth than it all ending when the presents are unwrapped. Never-the-less, the presents are unwrapped (except for the small one I give each girl on Epiphany), the carols have stopped playing in the house, and the mood is not quite the same. I was talking with family about life and it was remarked,"I never knew! You're blog is always so upbeat!" So I guess I'm more melancholy in person than on the blog. But then again, the blog's purpose is half diary, half catharsis for me. Writing things down in the best possible light helps me to focus more on the good than whatever temporary worry is happening at the time. All this to say, who wants to read a blog of me complaining? I'll save that for real life. (jk).

Bieber Creeper followed us to Mississippi. He wasn't very creative in his mischief, but he did try to steal a present from us that was tucked in the tree.

The girls and I went to the Childrens's Museum in Jackson on Friday. They had such a good time! They found areas to play in that they hadn't done before, like the giant juke box and stage where they busted out some moves. After we picked up Jason from the airport on, (the day the world did not end) we went to the Bass ProShop in Jackson. They had lots of free activities for kids like shooting targets with guns and cross-bows and playing with remote controlled cars. They did have a free picture with Santa, but as Lyla still has an irrational fear of people in costumes, we didn't wait in line for that. She has actually never had her picture with Santa.

We had a great time in Decatur. We got to see lots of family. I got some really cute videos of Pete teaching the girls how to foxtrot and rumba. The girls got to play with chickens and paddle around in a boat on our Uncle Roberts' farm. We got to hang out with the Chamblees, many of whom we hadn't seen in a while. I love my kids playing with the kids of my cousins who I played with growing up! We also got to go play with 3 week old Shih Tzu puppies at Mrs. Karen's house. As the girls kept saying, "They are sooooo cute!" Jason and the girls also built hut in the woods out if sticks, bark, and pine straw. They wanted to build a fire in it but we nixed that. We all drove over to Brandon on Christmas Eve to spend time at Chris and Jerry's. We got to go to their church's Christmas Eve service and then had a super yummy dinner at their house. Jason and I had gorged ourselves on deer sausage prior to dinner so we were pretty miserable after the meal. It was all too good to pass up! We all got to hang out and catch up. The kids got to play. We opened some gifts and then it was all over too quick. We do have a Christmas tradition of driving from either Decatur or Brandon Christmas Eve night down to Hattiesburg. We listen to Christmas music and look at lights all the way down 49. We even stay on the lookout for random fireworks along the way.

We arrived at Jason's parents' house that night and after the Toots calmed down we all got into bed. I woke up Christmas morning and panicked because I could hear people awake downstairs and no child had woken us up! They hadn't even gotten into their stockings yet! So we gave them the ok and everyone started unwrapping. The girls each got a few things that they especially wanted. Wii Just Dance 4 has been quite the hit with everyone. I finally got my record player which promptly got used to play Teresa's old Christmas LPs. (Later I got to play old Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings ones!). Jason got more Legos than he can put together. Then we all laid around in our pjs playing and eating all day. Casey and his wife Brandy came over later and Lyla has a new cousin to love. Watch out Jeffrey! TJ is the moving in! Just kidding - Lyla is quick to point out that she loves Jeffrey and TJ, but not in a "kissy" way because they're her cousins. It is nice for all of them to get to play - all five of the kids played office and school and Wii for most of the evening.

We're in that weird week now in between Christmas and New Years. I think all of us are feeling a little strained after the Fall we've had. We all, even the Toots, kinda want to go "home" but we want to stay with our family too. Gwyn mentioned she wants to go home but she doesn't really know which home she wants to go to. Is the apartment home yet? Is our house not home anymore? Hopefully it will be bought soon by some lucky family and that can be removed from the equation. Either way, moving in the late Fall has had it's particular challenges. I am looking forward to what this new year will bring. We have so many possibilities! And so many more things to explore in Baltimore. I'm already thinking what kind of good habits I need to try to form this year. Not exactly resolutions, but commitments to do certain things more intentionally. I keep thinking about a guy on the radio I heard who recommended saying "make it a good day!" to your kids instead of "have a good day," to emphasize the role of attitude and intentionality in how our day goes. I keep thinking about that in regards to the new year. It's not that 2012 was a bad year, I just want to be more thoughtful and intentional this year. So Happy New Year! Make it a great one!

I'll be home for Christmas

We are getting in the Christmas spirit around here!  Bieber Creeper has been busy.  He showed up at the door the day the girls and I left for Illinois with a bag packed, so we took him with us.  He hasn't been up to too much mischief on the trip, but who knows what he will do once he settles in?!  We did catch him narfing down one of Ms. Sarah's robot chocolates this morning.....

All three of the girls' Girl Scout troops had a holiday party together.  This is especially convenient for us for it all to be done together!  They did a lot of cool stuff!  They played, made cards for nursing home residents, made ornaments, ate, played games, and had a blast with new friends.  One of the games happened to be bobbing for donuts in which Gwyn and Celee were pitted against each other.  For some reason Lyla was afraid to play that game, but she did get into the holiday clothes relay.  It was really neat for them to be somewhere together but also with their own individual set of friends.  And I got to pop in and out of each group and spend time with all of them.  I even got to have conversations with other adults, so it was a win-win.

Monday the girls and I headed out to Illinois.  The plan was to go to the house and clean anything that needed to be cleaned, paint the front door, rake the yard, and pick up some things we left.  And of course we had to see some friends!  We got to stop in Indianapolis and have dinner with the Cortez's, whom we hadn't seen since they moved in the summer.  Lyla was especially excited to play with her bud Teagan.  They always seem to pick up right where they left off.
We finally got to be house at 10pm and crashed into our sleeping bags.  Tuesday was not as productive as I had planned, but we did drop off Christmas gifts to people, got the oil changed in the van, had lunch with our Aardsma friends, painted the front door, had a super play date with 5 kids including the Davidsons after school, and went to have dinner and watch bad 80s Christmas specials with the Arnold's and the soon-to-be Meilike's.  Oh, and I did laundry and cleaned the house.  I guess I was pretty productive, I just didn't get to rake the yard.  So Wednesday morning we packed everyone and everything that would fit into the van and headed south.  Did I mention that we've got the cat and the dog with us?
For the 5 years we lived in Champaign I always wanted to visit Coahokia Mounds outside of St.Louis.  The girls even had a lesson about be Mississippian Culture in North America in their history book last week, so I decided it was now or never.  I doubt we'll be driving south from Champaign any time soon, so we took the detour.  It was really awesome!  It's so weird to me that historical sites like Coahokia aren't a bigger deal to people.  It was really amazing to the girls and I that such a huge and complicated city stood there 1000 years ago.  It's almost surreal that there's this ancient city there with normal roads cutting through the main plaza.  But the interpretive center was very nice and we learned a lot.  We got to see a short film about the mounds and then we trekked over to the Temple Mound - to climb it of course.  It's incredible that it took almost 300 years to construct and the city stood dominating the Mississippians for over 500 years!  The girls also got to see the Arch in the distance from the top, so that was cool.  That's another St.Louis thing we never went to see.  And the City Museum.  One day...

So that added quite a bit of time to our trip to my parents' house.  (Also Lyla woke up with silly putty smashed in her hair.  At least I did have some hair shine jell to get it out with, but that did take a while and we left Champaign much later than planned). We rolled in to Decatur a little after 10.  Since then the girls have gotten to "bungee jump" at the mall and have a fancy tea party complete with dancing in the "ballroom."  I did get some really sweet videos of Papaw Pete teaching each girl to foxtrot and mambo.

Today since the world didn't end, we get to pick up Jason from the airport!  Who knows what mischief we may get into in Jackson.  I still have some last minute gifts to find.  And we might take advantage of our free membership to the children's museum.  We're home and we're about to all be back together and it Christmas and we get to sleep late (if the cat will let us) and the fun is just beginning.  I am so very thankful for my family and a van that can take us on long trips and money for Jason to fly and that we get to come home for Christmas no matter where we actually live.

Christmas Countdown!

While organizing my thoughts to write this I realized that while I orient my week Sunday to Sunday, I generally write about them from the middle of the week, which kind of throws off my "what has happened this past week" thoughts.  I suppose that will have to do for 2012 though as I do not see myself being more disciplined to write on Sunday evenings.  I may put that on my possible New Year's resolutions list.  Maybe.
So the Bieber Creeper has been busy.  He only forgot to move one morning, and instead miraculously moved while the girls were watching TV.  (Right in front of them I might add, without them noticing)  I must say it takes some imagination, even with the oodles of pinterest pictures of Elf on the Shelf ideas, to find something interesting for Bieber to do each night.  We got lazy one night and decided that he must have been climbing the cabinets for some reason unknown to us and fell, getting hung on the door in the process.  Most of the other nights, his movements are a little more purposeful.  I did forget to take a picture the morning he hid in the lampshade with a sock on his head.  Oh, well.  We've got him rolling the tree, reading "Everyone Poops" to the manger characters, etc.  I'll give myself koodos that he even got cookie icing smeared on his mouth after he stole one of Lyla's Christmas cookies for a late-night snack.  I don't think the girls think this is all as funny as Jason and I do, but I have noticed that they do look for him each morning.  Of course Lyla is the funniest about it all, but I think Gwyn and Celee are just playing "too cool for Sunday school."  We all know they enjoy it too.

 We got to play outside a lot last week because the weather was super nice.  We played at the park with some new friends.  We discovered a fox hole.  The fox that Gwyn and Celee saw outside our window was confirmed by the maintenance man and the discovery of his den.

 We went down to the Monument Lighting Festival in the city on Wednesday night.  The Walter's Art Museum had cider and cookies and caroling for everyone and then after the monument was lit up, there was a fireworks show.  We all had a super fun time and next year we plan to go down and enjoy the music in the park ahead of the show as well.

This weekend was Dollar Days in Baltimore, which meant that most of the museums and attractions in the city were $1 on Saturday and Sunday.  So Saturday morning we went down to the Inner Harbor to see the historical ships.  We got to explore the USS Constellation, a naval sloop that not only fought slave traders but also fought the Confederacy during the Civil War.  I must say that in addition to the coolness of being aboard an amazing ship like that, it's interesting to see Civil War history from the North side of the war.  Growing up as you can imagine, I usually got the other side.

We also got to explore the USS Torsk, a diesel submarine that fought in WWII, which had two submariners on board who told us their stories and answered lots of our questions.   The girls all agreed that their bunk room has a lot more room than where 80 guys slept aboard the Torsk.  And we bathe every few days as opposed to weeks on end, so I can imagine that the girls' room smells better.

 We also got to go up into the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse.  This lighthouse used to occupy the shallows at the bend in the Chesapeake where ships would turn to enter Baltimore's harbor.  After electricity made the gas lamp obsolete the lighthouse was moved into the Inner Harbor to preserve it for history.  Because the gas lamp had to be checked on every few hours and the lighthouse was 6 mi. out from land, people lived in this lighthouse.  Once a family with 4 children lived there!

Sunday we went to the National Aquarium.  It is a very nice aquarium.  They have all the usual stuff aquariums have but it was all very nicely done and the dolphin exhibit is very large.  Lyla even got picked to be a dolphin during the dolphin talk.  She got to go with one of the trainers and pretend to be a dolphin who was rewarded with "strawberries."  Gwyn and Celee were a little miffed when the trainer asked Lyla ahead of time if she'd like to be part of the show.  But after they saw that Lyla got to be "trained," they were happier that they didn't get picked as well.  Lyla on the other hand loved it because she got picked out of the hundreds of other kids that were there.

 So we all had a super fun week and we are all super excited about Christmas coming up so soon.  The girls have been more into Advent this year than usual.  Of course they love the little chocolate Advent calendar they get to open each morning, but they've been excited about lighting the candles each night at dinner and who gets to do the readings on Sundays. I think that they get it that what we're waiting for isn't presents.  The presents will be there and that's definitely a bonus to be thankful for, but it's not the end-all. Gwyn even wrote a report on what Advent means without a fuss.  We've all been having fun making some special gifts for people.  Gwyn even remarked to me that the best thing about giving someone a gift if their face when they open it.  I'm so happy that our Christmas is starting off simple and purposeful this year.  Of course they have things they want to receive for Christmas, but it seems like this year - even to the girls - Christmas means more than that.

Bieber Creeper (on the shelf)

Let me begin by saying that I think the Elf of the Shelf thing is neat.  I like how creative people can get with what the elf gets into at night.  I love how some kids really get into it.  I even think it's pretty witty how various people have dealt with the situation when their child touched or messed with the elf all the while keeping the "magic" alive and the story going.  I get it.  It really does look like fun family thing to do.  Now, given Jason's and my particular sense of humor, and that our sense of humor has probably rubbed off on my kids, Elf of the Shelf just seems a little creepy to us.  The store-bought elf is cute, but he reminds me of the kind of old doll whose eyes follow you around the room and the head may or may not do a 360 in the corner of your vision.  Couple all that with the fact that Gwyn and Celee were never interested in it and we just never got one.  So this year in one of our nonsensical discussion about the creepy elf, we decided that it would be hilarious if it wasn't the elf, but Justin Bieber.  There in was born Bieber Creeper, our personal version of Elf on the Shelf.

The official story is that so many people are doing Elf on the Shelf that Santa ran out and Justin Bieber had to step in and help.  I'm pretty sure that Gwyn and Celee are just going along for the fun of it, but I think Lyla truly thinks Bieber Creeper is watching her.  She's deathly afraid that he will turn up in her room one morning.  We have promised her that we asked him to stay out of her room, and that he will.  So barring the girls' room, there is no telling where Bieber Creeper will end up.  So far he's drawn silly mustaches on our family picture. He has rolled our Christmas tree.   He's also used a votive candle for a potty, but I'll spare people the picture of that one.  Needless to say that one was all Jason's idea, complete with raisin poop.  I don't know if he'll make the trip with us to Champaign later in the month or not.  Maybe he's just an Apartment Model Bieber Creeper.  We'll have to see.  Did I mention that he also sings?  What better way to be woken up in the morning that finding where the "If I was you boyfriend..." is coming from?

Other than creepy pop-star dolls, the girls have been pleasantly busy this past week.  Celee got to sell Girl Scout cookies with her troop.  Gwyn got to go to a Tween Art Class with some friends here.  That's just weird to me.  10 just doesn't seem old enough to be an official "tween."  But I guess she really is.  I'm sure glad she still enjoys Littlest Pet Shop toys and American Girl Dolls.  She may be "tween" but she's definately not teen yet. (even if she is tall enough to be)  Lyla got to go to a friends' birthday party Saturday.  It was a butterfly party and very fun. They even set up a zipline for the butterflies to "fly" across the yard!   It's really nice too that the girls are making friends and being invited to parties and things.  It helps them (and me) feel like we're getting to be part of a community.

Sunday all three girls got to go to Girl Scout meetings.  Gwyn's wasn't a regular meeting, just her badge group getting together to plan how to do the geocaching badge with the troop.  I didn't realize that the other two girls had never actually geocached so of course we had to go!  They found their first two caches with us that evening.  And they're all three siked to do it with the whole troop so it should be fun!  It was dark and my phone was dying so unfortunately I didn't get any pictures. :(
In other news, Jason and I got to go out Saturday night!  Yippee!  One of Jason's co-workers threw a "formal" party, and a wonderful girl was recommended to us as a babysitter so Walah!  We got to get all prettied up and go out!  With other adults!  With no kids around!  We didn't know very many people there, but we still had fun.  They had a photo session set up, lots of hor'doeuvers, a tree full of recipes for various mixed drinks with a bar to make your own, and lots of people.  I think mixed drinks are kind of neat, but I usually just end up with something ginger-ale-y, or pineapple juice-y, mix those with grenadine and it looks like I'm enjoying a lovely adult beverage.  Just like when I was a teenager at the fair though, my drinks are deceiving.  I really do prefer the non-alcoholic kind.  But it was fun trying to figure out what everything on the bar was.  :)


On another note, attempt #2 at the MVA was not a total loss.  We all got up early again and road through morning beltway traffic to get to the MVA in the city proper where you have to go if you have out-of-state licenses.  We got there when it opened. There was a line all the way down the sidewalk already, but I must say that the lines moved fast.  Contrary to some internet reviews, all the ladies inside were very nice and helpful.  The problem came when my 2nd piece of mail to prove residency only had my name on it and not Jason's.  After our first failed MVA attempt, I was under the impression that if we came in together we were to be considered as a household, not individually, but alas no.  I even tried in vain to find a pdf on my phone of a bank statement that had Jason's name on it.  (We don't actually receive paper bills anymore, so I have none of these in my physical possession).  A pdf didn't count though.  They told me if I went home and printed it that it would count, but they have no printers or copiers on site to do that.  Arg.  So I got my driver's license, but Jason didn't and we didn't get tags either.  So a 3rd attempt will be made.  At least next time we don't have to take all the kiddoes b/c I don't actually have to be there to get the tags.  But Jason will still have to miss work b/c they don't do tags on the weekends.  I will say thank you to the very nice lady who did my license for me.  She tried to help me think of a way to get Jason's license, but we were thwarted.  So I'm the only official Marylander in the house for now.  And that's kinda funny to me.