Some December doings...

So it's been a month since I posted.  Sorry!  It was the holidays, ya'll, plus I was working on a new venture: becoming a partner/co-owner with my pal/colleague Jenny at Studio Z!  So I am now a small business co-owner!  So I'll be making even less money!!  Ha!  But I am thrilled to join Jenny and so glad she agreed to have me join her.  We've kinda been partners anyway, so now it's official.  I think we are a good pair...she is the creative ideas woman, and I take care of details.  Whee!!

I already posted about M4's bday, but we also had M3's choir and band concert in December.  None of my photos turned out, so here is one a friend took with M3 in full voice:

I also took terrible pictures at Christmas, and I succeeded in taking none of Nana and Boppa who made the trek here to spend the holidays with us.  What is up with me and photography?  Ugh!  It was a muted Christmas, because M4 developed an extremely high fever and was fighting it for days.  Not much fun.  But he recovered in time to back to school, poor kid.  We did manage an afternoon of ice skating in Iowa City, but that was about it for the fun stuffs.  Here is a bad Christmas photo:

 And here is a cute photo of M3 in her gift from cousin V.  Stylin'!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Because we are going to Indiana for Thanksgiving, we hosted three of our four international "kids" last Sunday for a Thanksgiving meal. I was pretty excited about cooking, despite the fact that I spent ALL WEEKEND IN THE KITCHEN!!!! It was worth it, though. Chinami (Japan) is only here for one year, and she had never had a Thanksgiving meal. Shirlie (China) hadn't had a Thanksgiving meal before either. (We didn't get to it before we went to KC last year, what with Chris's funeral. Last fall wasn't a good one.) And it was Inwook's (Korea) last Thanksgiving in the U.S. Next year he will return to South Korea to fulfill his two year military requirement. So as we went around the table to say what we were thankful for, they were all very happy to be experiencing this bit of American culture. It was nice to share what we were all thankful for...family, friends, the extreme good fortune of a stable job, the luxury of being able to put on a Thanksgiving feast, and of course, the cat. The turkey was a bit dry, in my opinion. But it's only my third-ish turkey.

No sweet potatoes, because I don't like the traditional Thanksgiving prep (marshmallows??!! more sugar? gross!!). One of these years, I will work up some good, spicy sweet potato dish. Mark's stuffing, of course...my personal favorite. The best part...we'll have leftovers!!!

Snow day number III...

Another snow day! The kids are happily building a fort in the living room, so I'll take this opportunity to post a few more Christmas pics:

Christmas morning. The kids only got up about 5 a.m.

Retro Christmas.

Chef Mark.

M4 and his buddy S sledding in Indy.

All tuckered out!

Thanksgiving

November was a rough month, so it was lovely to end it on a happy note: spending time with my whole family in KC. Thanksgiving dinner was awesome. Really, what's not to love about Thanksgiving? No gift pressure, just good food and hangin' with the ones you love (OK, sometimes there is turkey pressure involved). Friday I scratched the yoga itch with a great class at The Yoga Gallery. It's so fun to have people to go to class with! And a little post-yoga coffee klatch? Sigh...I wish we could do that regularly, girls! Jenn and I have do our coffee klatches (yay!), but they aren't generally after a juicy yoga class that neither of us had to teach! We also took the kids to see Fantastic Mr. Fox (a Wes Anderson movie for kids?! Suh-weet!).

We took advantage of the kick-a** 70 degree weather on Saturday to take some family pictures. And they came out pretty well!! Not too many closed eyes! (Whoops, I guess Mark's eyes are closed in this one...but you can't really tell, can you?)
Carmelle double-fisting it. Party on, Carmelle!
All four cousins. Their personalities are so evident already. Four amazing little people.
I'm thankful every day for these four and for the rest of my family. I am so very lucky.

Zombies are sweeping the nation!

Originally, they were supposed to be simply a gypsy and a pirate. Somewhere along the way they became a zombie gypsy and a zombie pirate.


We had an absolute blast Friday night putting on a haunted house in our basement. Without Grandma and Grandpa's expertise and labor for the setup, it would not have been nearly as good. We had the requisite brains (spaghetti) and eyeballs (peeled grapes) in bowls and a real strobe light! Mark was a headless knife-wielder; Grandma a witch; Grandpa emerged from a dark lump on the floor and made scary faces in a flashlight; Max was a silent hooded figure holding a skull, and I was the freaky pumpkin-faced usher. I think we were successful in our scaring! I did hear a report from one of M4's friends that it was "totally awesome!" And the kids wanted to walk through repeatedly. That is success to me. We're just going to have to do it again!

Growing up...

**spoiler alert for young children!!**

Well, M3 officially no longer believes in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The other night she asked me if the Tooth Fairy was real (not that either my children has ever given up their teeth to the TF), and I asked her what she thought. She thought no. Part of this is because she left a NOTE under her pillow for the TF. Well, HOW is the TF supposed to KNOW there is a note under the pillow when there is NO TOOTH involved?? So the TF didn't write back; hence, the confirmation of M3's suspicion. The question about Santa followed. I explained that the spirit if Santa is a real part of Christmas, but the presents and stuff...well, yeah, that's your parents.

But then she asked if she could still "do" the Tooth Fairy, meaning exchange notes, I guessed. So the TF finally retrieved the note from under M3's pillow and dutifully replied.

Sniff...

Happy (late) Easter!

Egg production!

M3 and M4 worked very hard at decorating the table, although they used jelly beans from their own baskets and were concerned that our guests might *mistakenly* eat those!
They found all the eggs!

Nana and Boppa treated us to Boppa's famous pizza on Saturday!

Pics from Christmastime

We have a picture somewhere of my dad with M4 in almost exactly the same position as this: A pretty cute pic of this trio:

M4 and some new Playmobile dinosaurs that like to eat Wampas:

M3 enjoying her big present (of course, I'm already worrying about her damaging her hearing. Thanks, Santa!!):

Said Wampa and a happy boy:

Happy New Year!

Sorry to have been lax for a while...celebrating the holidays you know! Hope everyone had a great holiday! We went ice skating in KC. Here are the kids with Aunt Noelle. M4 did really well his first time out on a single blade! It was over 50 degrees out...it's nice not to skate in a parka.

And here is our sweetest, cutest baby cousin V! She was the source of much entertainment, whether she was sleeping, burping, filling her pants, kicking her legs like a marathoner, or (the best part) smiling and laughing at us. She was definitely the feature attraction this holiday!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

A bit late...

We are having a nice time in KC! Christmas was lovely, and we are especially enjoying playing with our newest family member, V, and watching her make funny faces. Pictures soon!

Hope everyone is having a happy, peaceful holiday.

Say cheese!

Here's the Thanksgiving crew! We were so fortunate to have Nana and Boppa, Tim and Mindy and the new cousins, and one of our international sons join us for dinner and the ensuing food coma.The excitement proved to be too much for M4 on more than one occasion: Games were played... (I fell off the chair right after snapping this pic): The weekend ended with quite a bit of snow; fortunately, that hasn't prevented anyone from getting home safely so far:

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wish I could post photos more quickly and easily...I would post some pics of the crew gathered at our house for this great holiday. But I can't take the time, and I just want to say Happy Thanksgiving! I am so grateful for all of you out there! I am grateful every day that my family's situation is stable, healthy, secure and, really, majorly luxurious compared to many people on this earth. Much love to all of you...

Happy Halloween!

Here are our little historical characters. And a big thank you to Grandma and Grandpa who helped with costume issues, the small Halloween lunch/party the kids had (I don't think I'll do that again! I'm just not one of those moms who can whip up a kiddie party like a batch of cupcakes...I was frakkin' wiped out even with my parents' help!), and trick-or-treating escort. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous day for Halloween!