Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

We've had a busy last several days. We made lots and lots of nuts & bolts, played with family from Portland, welcomed a missionary home, had festivities with my dad and Jim's parents, had Christmas at our house as a whole clan plus friends, enjoyed visiting with more family on Sunday after church, buried a dog, got another dog, played some more with visitors from Arizona (including bone-crunching sledding), shoveled snow, worked, rested and worked some more. I need a nap!! (My family will attest to that as I have been Sra. Grouchita lately.)

We feel very blessed to have abundance and to share some of that with family, friends and strangers this year. We hope you all have had a great holiday season and that 2010 is a fantastic and safe year for you.

Enjoy the pictures and JOY TO THE WORLD!

Many Talents

After a few delays, we (Jim) got the Christmas tree up yesterday. Yeay! Now we can stop joking about getting a Festivus pole.

I came home from work and saw the living room all decked out with garland and other decor, and of course the tree. I noticed that there were a bunch of white decorations up high all clustered together. I suggested that maybe we should spread those out more. Jim replied, "That's the angel choir!" I thought perhaps Becky had come up with that and said as much aloud. Nope. It was Jim's idea. So we have a white angel choir near the top of our tree.

"Angels we have heard up high..."

Also last night, the girls "performed" a special dance number that they worked on for at least 30 minutes before dinner. It was to the tunes of a few Christmas songs they had heard on the radio on FM 100. Unfortunately, those songs were not playing again after dinner, so they used a music CD instead. ha ha After producing our custom-made paper tickets at the "gate," Jim, Kenny, Jon and I took our seats in the family room. Then the lights dimmed and after a series of miscues, we were treated to all kinds of lip-synching, cowboy stepping, round-offs, karate kicks, and more that came dangerously close to split-open skulls. Lots of laughter by the performers and sideways glances by the audience members ensued. My favorite moment of the night took place after a costume change, when two girls in dresses (with pants underneath) joined hands and started twirling slowly... then sped up maniacally and whirled each other onto the floor! I wish I had been filming it.

We have all kinds of talents in our household.

Honesty at the Dinner Table

Last night at dinner , Alicia said she wanted to go weigh herself on our scale. She said that she had been "48 two days ago and only 41 today."

I replied, "I don't think you lost 7 pounds in one day. You would have to go to the bathroom a LOT for that to happen."

She cracked us all up with this straight-faced response: "Well, I was working on it for a very long time."

Girls' Night In

The other night Jim and the boys had meetings, so it was just the girls at home. Becky was sweeping the kitchen floor and had moved all of the chairs into a line or "train." Pretty soon, they discovered how fun it was to slide on the floor underneath the chairs.




























































It looked like so much fun, I decided to try it. I haven't army crawled in years, maybe decades. It was tight, but I managed to make it through twice.


I was going to tell you about our pillow fight too, but I am getting mad about the formatting on this blog, so I'm quitting now. Suffice it to say that Becky and Katie are no match for me.

Costume Time

I went as Swine Flu, complete with pink, curly tail that doesn't show up well here.
























This is my friend and neighbor, Susan, modeling "Baby's First Costume." Note the tiny trick or treat bag. Kinda weirded me out.






















The girls were as cute as ever, except for the monster teeth.

Halloween concessions

Lest anyone worry too much, I am not a total Grinch (see last post). I have actually bought two big bags of candy, and Jim has made sure the girls have costumes for their festivities this year. We actually cannot find the old costumes anywhere, so he bought new ones for the youngest two and a bow-tie for Becky's Cat in the Hat get-up, which is cute.

I plan to go minimalist in my costume this year. I'm getting old and tired. YES! I'm going as a mom! ha ha.

Two of our kids were in a little neighborhood play Saturday all about eating healthy food and taking care of our bodies. It was called My Body Machine. It had some cute songs and clever concepts. So afterwards, I was talking to some of the other parents and I told them, "You know, the kids just finished singing and telling stories about evil King Sugar and Sir Salty and Ms. Grease and all that. I think we should use this against them and cancel trick-or-treating." Lots of laughs and chatter ensued. Then when I presented this concept to some of the children (mine in particular), they looked at me quizzically and said rather nervously, "We can still eat candy. After dinner. A little bit." I ended my bluff, but it was fun for a minute to toy with their little minds.

Boo-hoo-hoo-ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh AHH AHH!!! (My best impression of King Sugar's evil laugh)

The Halloween Grinch

I feel like a Halloween Grinch. I've seen lawn and door decorations for Halloween since early September and it bugs me. Some of these are "cute" and harmless, others are gory and downright spooky...like the ring of floating ghosts holding hands around the tree on Center St. Yeesh! I hate to run past that thing.

I don't want to "celebrate" this "holiday" this year, I want to skip it. I really don't feel like buying or coming up with costumes for the kids (or myself). (Though Jim mentioned that if our little kids go to school without costumes, they will be labeled weirdos. Imagine, a 4-foot vampire or spiderman calling my daughter a weirdo.)

I don't want to buy candy to hand out at home and at work that I REALLY SHOULDN'T eat. I don't like the idea of kids going door to door on a dark, cold night, begging for sugar and forgetting to say thank-you. Then getting sick on it for hours...or days. I can see why my parents didn't let us trick or treat when we were kids. (The begging factor, the safety issue, a candy haul, etc.)

Don't get me wrong. I like bobbing for apples, pumpkins on the porch and suspenseful movies. Just not all the gory yard decorations, giant spiders in grocery stores, candy wrappers all over the lawn, smashed pumpkin bits on the street, etc. I wish the whole thing would just go away. Can we skip it this year? Please?