Save the Newsletters!

Attention FAFNAF (friends and family near and far):

The worst snow storm in Seattle in 10 years + 4 days stuck indoors = the annual Christmas Letter is ready to go out!

If you've moved in the last year and haven't given me your new address AND you want a letter (you know you do), you have until Thursday. On Christmas day we'll be heading South and recycling any poor, sad, unread newsletters. Save these cute little guys from the awful fate of the blue bin and email me today-- they're counting on you.

Getting into the Spirit of things

As an addendum to my previous post, the kids do have their own tree which they decorate themselves and I am not allowed to touch. Here it is:

It's amazing how they are able to capture the true essence of Christmas.

The holidays are in full swing over here. A few days ago Sam put together some "presents" to put under the tree. They contain highly sought-after items such as a half used tube of toothpaste and dried out crayola markers. Like they say, tis better to give than to receive.


Christmas is such a great time to learn what your true priorities are. I'm often asking the kids the "What's more important?" question (ie what's more important: your being nice to your brother or sitting in the exact middle of the couch?). Last night I was looking at ads and putting together a shopping list when the kids broke yet another glass ball ornament. Mia kept telling me that Sam was touching it, while I distractedly kept telling them to "just leave it alone, we'll deal with it later." Finally Mia got a little fed up.

Mom, What 's more important: Sam getting killed, or coupons?

It had been one of those days...I had to think about it for a while.



Hope you're enjoying the Holidays everyone.

The Not So Mysterious Man in Velvet

Ward Christmas Party Dialogue:

Mia, did you tell Santa what you wanted for Christmas?

No, it was just the Bishop. He's not going to give me any presents.

Christmas Games

All the planets aligned tonight and we managed to decorate our Christmas tree, which now looks slightly less plastic, but only just. In an unusual turn of events, we actually had a good time, and were quite taken by surprise that all 5 people in our family could be happy at the same time while in the same room. It's a Christmas miracle. I managed to successfully act like I didn't care that there were 12 silver ornaments on one branch and 7 bows on another, all just about at Sam's eye level. And I even refrained from redecorating it after they went to bed for at least an hour, until the Martha Stewart in me couldn't take it anymore. But I guarantee you that tomorrow morning, Mia will walk in and immediately say Hey! That's not where I put that silver snowflake! And thus will begin our favorite Christmas game of Mia redecorating the tree each day, and me "fixing" it at night. This will be repeated every day until Christmas, or until enough ornaments have been broken that we stop caring. I just love holiday traditions!

For the Grandparents

I suppose it's time for an update. Which would mean tons of pictures of my kids being super cute, and detailed descriptions of all the unbelievable fun we've been having, except that I've only taken about 3.4 pictures since Halloween and, according to my kids, no one has had any fun around here since at least 2006. So instead, here are some things that you'll probably only enjoy if you happen to be one of my kid's grandparents. For the rest of you, I'll try to make up some stuff so you can feel like my life is way better than yours.


Starting with the baby, here is Nate's newest trick:

When I told Mia she said, "I know, I've been working on that with him for a long time."

I hadn't realized that I'd been outsourced.

Then to drive the point home, Sam walked up to Nate and fed him a spoonful of yogurt. And thus Nate had his first solid food. Maybe they'll just potty train him while they're at it.

Speaking of first foods, a few days later we did give Nate some food actually recommended by pediatricians, and it went over fairly well (meaning, it ended up all over his face and was a big mess). Here are the pictures to prove it.

Starting off:

The end result:

That's what I'm talking about: cereal boogers.

And speaking of potty training, Sam has been modeling some new Thomas the Tank Engine underwear recently, and we're hoping it becomes a permanent addition to his daily attire. Again, big sister has been taking all the credit. Sorry, no potty training pictures (this is a public blog after all), but here's something we got a kick out of recently:

Seriously, can we say binky junkie?

Thanksgiving was mostly good. I attempted to make homemade rolls for the first time ever (not so good), had a sweet moment with my kids (Involved me saying through clenched teeth something like: Clean up this mess right now! We are trying to have a nice dinner so we can sit down as a family and be grateful, dang it!), spent some time with friends (who happen to have a trampoline, hot tub, therapeutic lap pool, and the world's funnest play room-- my kids thought it was Disneyland), and enjoyed a nice Day After Thanksgiving Dinner with Mark's brother's family (we're very grateful for Tammi's Sweet Potato Pie). And finally, we sat around watching hours and hours of America's favorite sport: synchronized swimming. Just kidding, we don't watch sports.

This week we got some sad news, and Mark ended up driving to Utah with Mia for his Aunt's funeral. They were gone for 5 days, which meant it was just me and the boys at home for most of the week. Sam spent most of that time building "houses" for Nate, which entailed piling up anything he could find all around Nate. Here is one such example:

And a closer view:
When Mark and Mia got home today, we were all very happy to see each other. For about 30 minutes, Mia and Sam played so well you would have never known they were brother and sister. But before I could get out the camera, they quickly remembered and soon I was wishing we could find another excuse to send her off to Utah for week again. I can just tell that the 2 weeks of Christmas vacation is going to be awesome!