A glimpse into our lives...

Happy New Year

On New Year's Eve Steve was planning to head to the Grandville Mall to help his parents tear down the Almond Haus booth and bring it home. Since the mall closed at 6pm I made the last minute decision to take the kids to their first movie in the theater while Steve was working.

We ate Wendy's in the car on the way to the mall. We headed in to the movie theater for the 6:30pm showing of Bolt. Steve helped me buy the tickets and get the popcorn, then the kids and I slowly shuffled through the crowds into the movie theater. They weren't sure what to think about it. It was dark in there and the screen was enormous, but I finally convinced them to sit down in their seats. They had a look of awe and confusion on their faces.

We all munched on popcorn and put on our 3D glasses, which I was disappointed only came in adult sizes. Lorelei held them on her face for most of the movie and I helped hold them on Allan's face for the first half until he decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Allan did some moving around and getting out of his seat (which neither of them were heavy enough to keep flat while sitting in them.) But he was just exploring and liked standing to see the movie.

Proudly we made it through the entire 2 hours without leaving the theater. I can't imagine what people were thinking as they watched me exit with 2 small kids hanging onto hands and my huge pregnant belly.  All three of us slowly shuffling down the hallway while saying, "stay by mom, keep holding hands, keep walking guys" repeatedly… Luckily, Steve was waiting at the exit to the theater to help out the rest of the way into the mall.

Advent Activities Rewind

I owe an apology to anyone that really did want to follow along with my advent celebration.Two weeks before Christmas I was hit with a bunch of freelance projects and since they pay the bills and blogging doesn't the work got first priority.

Here is a recap of the last 2 weeks of our Advent Activities. Some of the details (which I should have blogged immediately have been forgotten already.) I have definite baby brain at this point and am having trouble focusing on anything other than getting out baby stuff and preparing for the arrival! More on that in a different post…

Christmas Cookies are always fun to make and this years gathering didn't disappoint. Lorelei remembered having red hot reindeer noses from last year and insisted I help her put one on her nose. Allan thought it would just be funny to try and smear frosting all over his nose instead. Both were really good at decorating the cookies, we kept most of the sprinkles on the table and they didn't eat too many. One of our plans was to surprise Dad (Papa) this year by making a gingerbread man shaped cookie using his mother's original cookie cutter. Imagine our surprise when we brought the borrowed cutter home from Aunt Nancy's house and realized that Mom (Grandma Edith) already had one identical to it. The background story is that each year Papa reminisces about the perfect sized and shaped cookie cutter that his mother had… None the less we all had a good laugh about it and we made lots of cookies using it this year.

Christmas Cookie decorating was on Saturday and the following day we lit the pink advent candle at dinner time.

 On December 15th we colored pictures of Poinsettia's after nap time.

 On the 16th we talked about the role the shepards played in the birth of Jesus.  We colored a picture of Shepards tending their sheep and after dinner Dad helped Lorelei create a sheep ornament out of yarn and felt.  Allan was invited to join in, but he just wanted to play by himself and didn't seem to care about the craft project. If you would like the instructions for creating your own woolly sheep ornaments they can be found here.

On the 17th Lorelei had her own Christmas party with her dolls. She lined them all up and they ate snacks on the couch. Allan went about his own business. One of his favorite Christmas activities it knocking the Fisher Price

nativity set onto the floor for me to pick up later. (Maybe he enjoys

watching me moan and groan as my pregnant self crawls around looking under the end table for missing pieces.)

On the 19th we had a movie night. Both kids were excited for  the event. Steve made them both a cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows. Allan kept saying it was yummy, but I am not even sure he took a sip of it, must be it looked and smelled good. Lorelei drank all of hers and his. We all watched The Polar Express for the first time of the year.

I really wanted to do an activity every day leading up to Christmas. Some of the days got away from us and if the kids were keeping themselves busy I let them play so I could concentrate on my freelance work. I don't have to feel guilty about that right?...

So we jump to the 22nd. Steve was home for the rest of the week of Christmas and it helped me have more time to finish my work. He took Lorelei outside with him while Allan was napping. She played on the big snow hill out by the building and when Steve was done plowing the driveway out he helped her build a snow tunnel through the hill. Just as Allan was  waking up Lorelei was heading in, but I dressed Allan up and Steve was a good sport and went back out to play in the snow for awhile with him.

Now we move to the 23rd, which for us was Christmas Eve. We wrote Santa a note asking if he could visit us a day early so that we could go and see Grandma and Grandpa George and the rest of the George family on Christmas day. Before bed they each wanted to open a present, so we let them swap the gifts they bought for eachother. Lorelei got Allan a Pluto stuffed animal and Allan got Lorelei some Tinkerbell story books with a picture viewer. Afterward, we put out our milk and cookies and sprinkled reindeer food on the porch before bed. There was a lot of excitement in the house. Lorelei kept asking if Santa was going to come "right now after we go to bed." The answer was yes, as long as they went to sleep good.

Of course the morning of the 24th was a flurry of unwrapping… Lorelei came in our room as soon as she was awake and told us Santa had been there and left us presents. We had to go and gently wake Allan up so that we could start opening gifts. Lorelei was eagerly waiting to start ripping. Santa had wrapped Allan's and Lorelei's gifts in different color paper making it easy for them to tell which gifts were theirs. Lorelei was almost done unwrapping all of hers, while Allan was only just getting started. Santa even left a present for each of them to give to Mom and Dad as Lorelei had requested on her list. It is always one of the highlights of my year, watching both of them so excited about Christmas and its magic.

Allan was most excited about his barn and tractor. Lorelei was excited about her Fisher Price digital camera and Coco Calypso and Sea Berry Delight Strawberry Shortcake dolls.

We spent most of the day lounging around and playing with toys. We had pizza and bread sticks from Big Chuck's for dinner and then got ready to go to the Children's Mass at church.

The mass is another good memory. Toward the beginning Father announced that the children could come up to hear a story during the Homily and afterward they would get a piece of candy. Lorelei immediately whispered, "I want to do that" in my ear. When it came time I was so very nervous for them to go up there and listen to the story. Allan was by far the youngest one up there. Both were at the very back of the group of children gathered around to hear the story. Allan couldn't see, so at one point he crawled over another little girl's legs and found a spot closer. Oh, did that make me nervous, I wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he sat still in his new found spot. Lorelei also petted the same little girls coat because it had a fuzzy leopard print. I didn't hear any of the book Father Mike was reading, all I could do was pray that neither of them did anything embarrassing. We made it through the story and then Father handed out candy to each child. Lorelei got hers and came back to the bench, but Allan was the very last one to get his and we sent Lorelei back up to help him. As soon as he had the candy cane in hand his face got a big smile and he came running down the center aisle back towards us. I heard a few chuckles from the congregation. During the rest of the mass Allan kept whispering to me about when we could get doughnuts.

On Christmas Day we headed to the George's house to celebrate with the family. We had another semi-relaxing day there. Lorelei used her new camera to take pictures of everyone and everything. It was really pretty fun to see what she shoots. Allan got a 2-wheel bike from Grandma and Grandpa George and Lorelei got an American Girl Ruthie Doll. She was so happy about that doll. She thanked Grandma for it numerous times.

 The day after Christmas we celebrated at the Smith family house. Lorelei got a 2-wheel bike from Aunt Amanda (0r Santa Manda) and clothes for her American Girl doll from Grandma and Papa. Allan got a wagon from Aunt Amanda and a Shake-n-Go Raceway from Grandma and Papa.

The Cusacks' came over for dinner and the kids got a really fun gift from Aunt Nancy and Uncle Doug. They have been dancing in front of the TV watching themselves ever since. Lorelei know how to work it all by herself.

The next morning/afternoon Grandma and Amanda watched the kids while Steve and I took a little trip to the mall for some shopping and had lunch by ourselves. That evening we loaded all the loot and finally headed home to recover from Christmas.

That night at 3am our power went out and poor Steve hauled buckets of water up and down the stairs for the majority of Sunday morning and early afternoon until Nick arrived with a generator for us to borrow. Of course an hour later the power was restored at 3:30 pm. Good thing Nick came though becuase the sump pump also quite right after we started using the generator and luckily he had an extra one on the truck.

So that my good friends is our Christmas in a nutshell. I hope you had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!