Santa has come and gone, and the kids and Tim have had the entire week off (the kids don't go back to school until the 7th.) It's been a good one, but unbelievably busy! I feel like we've hardly been home, other than Christmas morning when Santa came to visit. The kids were both pleased with their gifts - Adam wanted a bey blades set, and Ellie wanted a Hatchimal. Santa delivered both... unfortunately did not realize that a Hatchimal is much like the Furby's of yore, the horrible chatting robot. Thankfully, it has an off switch.
You know what does not have an off switch? A kid with a magic 8 ball. They each received one from Gigi and were DELIGHTED. The best part is that they understand that they have to ask a yes or no question, but they love to ask questions about the past, not the future. And then their method of asking is to shout into their question into the magic 8 ball, turn it over to read the answer, delightedly shout the answer, and then turn to me and shout the question they asked and the answer they received, as though I wasn't in the room with them. The other hilarious part was Adam's malapropisms in trying to read the responses. His rudimentary reading skills caused him to say an unprintable word in front of his grandparents, and we all had to correct him while trying to keep a straight face. He also said one response was "most lick-ly."
Speaking of licking, this is the best picture of the family we got at Don's birthday party.
I'm pretty sure he's just sticking his tongue out, and not actually touching Santa, but I could be wrong. The kid is a nut. Ellie is showing off the stuffed Hedwig she received from the big man.
They had a great time with their cousins this week - both their Parmodesen cousins (who are not really their cousins) and their Smith cousins (who are actually their second cousins.) Christmas at Mimi's house was a mad house of almost fifty people but thankfully the weather cleared so people could sit outside. Adam suckered many of the older cousins into playing bey blades with him until he crashed on the couch for a bit, and after everyone left I fell asleep for a solid hour. It's not just small children who can't go as hard as they used to!
They really are a fun age this year - very into all of the Santa magic and delighted with all of their toys, while also being able to stay up late and hang out with friends to that we're not rushing around to take a nap or get a crying baby home for bed. We've had dinner with friends four different nights, at various houses, and it's awesome that they mostly disappear and come back when they're hungry or need a fight broken up. They also had a sleep over at Gigi's house and then the following afternoon we all went to see Mary Poppins Returns. I LOVED the movie - I thought all of the actors were great, and I thought it was wonderful as its own movie, with a few nice call backs to the classic Mary Poppins. During one song both Gigi and I were crying and Ellie, who was seated between us, looked at us and told us that we were both crybabies. TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE.
What have we been doing! Well, one weekend we went up to LA and got to celebrate Hanukkah with Lauren, Jonathan and baby Piper:
And then from there we drove on to Fluff and Jasmin's house for their holiday pot luck, filled with delicious food and good friends. Adam and Lucas have really started to hit it off, which was cute.
(in a post food and bounce house coma.)
Tim and I attended the Team Four holiday party in all of our festive, velour glory.
We celebrated a year since adopting the cats. This is how I take my coffee in the morning. Usually just one lump, but sometimes I get two.
Tim turned 39, which means he is very elderly.
Annnnnnnd Ellie got fitted for a palate expander, and we can add orthodontists visits to our list of things to do in the coming months. The x-ray of her teeth is nuts - there is almost no room for any of her adult teeth, and that crowding is part of why they haven't pushed through normally. The hope is that if she wears the expander for the next twelve to sixteen months, as her baby teeth fall out, the adult teeth will come in straighter so that she can spend less time in braces (because let's be real, they talk about avoiding braces completely, but based on my amateur opinion, this is only phase one.) She has to wear the expander 24/7, except for when she takes it out to clean it and brush her teeth. She's really excited about the whole thing and is very charming to the staff. Her speech was pretty impaired last night but that should get better, and I'm cutting her food up for her so that she has an easier time chewing. I feel for her - her mouth is sore, it's all a weird new thing and the process will be at least a year so she just has to suck it up and deal. This morning when we were walking to school she goes "so your teeth just came in straight? That's just what they did?" Yup kid, sorry. Your father has many fine qualities, but a wide enough jaw for his head and chompers is not one of them.
Our trip to the North Pole via Arizona this past weekend was wonderful! The kids had an absolute blast - they loved the actual experience, but more than that, they loved having three straight days with their best friends. They begged to sleep in the same beds, they rode in the same cars together, we threw them into showers together. All besties, all the time. And fun for us adults - loved getting to see Kristen's home town and hear about growing up in the Phoenix area, her parents are super nice, and after the kids went to sleep every night, the four adults had a cocktail and stayed up late goofing off.
We flew into Phoenix on Thursday and stayed overnight there, and then drove to Flagstaff in the morning. There had been storms coming through and though it rained a little on our drive, it wasn't bad at all. The girls were in our car and FREAKED OUT when we hit an altitude where they started to see snow on the ground. We had lunch at Kristen's mom's boyfriend's home in Flagstaff and he's on a golf course, so the kids had a bunch of open space to go out and play in the wet snow. Perfect for making snowmen!
Almost immediately after they finished their creation, the snow started coming down hard. They came in to warm up and marveled over the white stuff falling from the sky.
Our hotel in Flagstaff was nice - definitely overrun by people going to the North Pole, but fun to see everyone in their Christmas jammies and outfits. The North Pole Experience runs buses to the North Pole every fifteen minutes basically all day long. We had a 6:30 bus, which was perfect timing. They make a big deal on the drive out about how you're going into a portal to the North Pole, and when you arrive, the elves start making things fun. They led the kids through a series of rooms with something different to do in each room - make toys, help the elves fill the stuffing machine, going to elf university, having cookies and hot chocolate and then dancing with Mrs. Claus and the elves, writing a letter to Santa. They kept things really moving so the kids didn't have much of a chance to whine or get bored, and the only real waiting was the last ten minutes before we went in to see the man himself. And the nice thing about that was that each family got to be alone with Santa - so it's not like your kid is in line screaming at Santa while other kids are trying to have their moment.
And they each got a teddy bear!
The kids loved it. They're all at such a fun age to still be wowed by all of the magic. Later, the girls said that they were sure it was the real Santa. They also liked that afterwards they got to stay up late playing around and then sleep with their friend instead of their sibling (they sleep like puppies all cuddled together, it is about the cutest thing ever.)
The next day our package also allowed us to have breakfast with Santa at the hotel. This Santa was not as impressive, nor was the buffet breakfast, but hey, it was right there! We drove back to Phoenix, but on the way, detoured through Sedona, which was GORGEOUS.
Here they are holding up the mountain!
We did a little shopping in some of the fancy shops and had a nice lunch. I really wanted to go into a crystal rock shop, because I am a nut, and the girls came with me and were very pleased to look at all the rocks, and meet the resident store cat. Please note, that is my future someday. Taking woo-woo photos of people's auras, hanging out with rocks and cats.
For our evening fun back in Phoenix we went to a local park that decorates all out for the holidays. They have a little train that runs around the perimeter, and lots of lights in the trees, plus a carousel and a model train museum. The line just to buy tickets was well over an hour, but thankfully, there was also a play ground, which the kids LOVED, and truly, letting them just run around saved the day.
Though, after waiting an hour just to buy ride tickets, Adam was very upset when I told him we weren't waiting for additional hours in line to ride the train. I told him we'd ride the carousel instead, and he said that was for babies.
STILL HAD FUN THOUGH.
Sunday we had a relaxing day. The kids slept in a little and then each set of kids watched a movie in bed so their parents could doze (I heard the girls start watching the Greatest Showman, fell asleep during A Million Dreams and woke up during the final number.) We had a leisurely breakfast and hung out with Kristen's dad at his house before we loaded back up on the plane to head home.
It was such a good time. The kids had so much fun and were such funny little travelers. It was awesome to get the best of Arizona, from the snow to the scenery. And now, we're feeling fully in the Christmas spirit and ready to have Santa come to our house.
Well, it's officially "the holiday season." We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend - appetizers with Tim's side of the family, dinner with mine, and then Friendsgiving on Friday afternoon with our friends with kids (our framily, as it were.)
The kids have had half days all this week, and we've spent a lot of time hanging out with friends at the park after school gets out, which is quite nice. There's a really great group of moms who have second graders and then a younger kid, and a lot of them actually live in our immediate neighborhood. Ellie's friend Anabelle hosted a Friendsgiving for the girls last Monday, which was darling.
Anabelle has a "club" and the girls go over every other week on Wednesdays. Anabelle's mom is a saint (those are her almost three year old twin boys.)
From our Friendsgiving. We're lucky to have all of these people, for sure.
We went and got our Christmas tree over the weekend and put it up. Thus far only one ornament lost, but Ellie's also crafted a half dozen more. The cats are being reasonably well behaved with the tree - we adopted them before Christmas last year, but by the time we brought them home the tree was already up, plus they spent a few days without having run of the house, so this feels the first real "tree" experience for the babies. They thankfully haven't shown any interest in climbing the tree. I asked Tim, now that Thor is gone, does he need ME to eat a bunch of the Christmas tree needles, then sit on the floor, yeowl in pain and immediately vomit said needles right back up? EVERY YEAR that poor dumb beast, and he'd do it through ALL of December.
Today I have the kids school conferences - Ellie's was this morning and she's a pleasure to have in class, smart as a whip, a good friend, all that good jazz. Adam's is this afternoon, and I am 100% going to ask his teacher which of my children is her favorite. Then we're off to Arizona at 4:30, headed to ride the Christmas Train with Judd and Lexi. Should be a blast! (a blast of cold air, it's going to be cold enough to snow in Flagstaff!)
The kids don't have school this week, but we've been keeping busy (thus far. It's only Monday!)
Last Thursday night we went to a volunteer event at Share Our Selves, a local health care provider that services the homeless for their family night event. Everything was designed to help kids learn about the services they provide and the community they serve, in a kid-friendly way. They said they'll provide 1,600 meals this coming week to local families and individuals. Our group started off the evening packing produce bags to be handed out, with potatoes, onions, apples and carrots, and then the kids colored paper bags to hold the food bags and made cards to add to the pick up.
From there, we moved on to helping sort canned goods that had been donated over the past few weeks. We finished the evening cutting and tying the ends of fleece sheets to make blankets for those in need.
It felt good to be giving something back, and to be talking with the kids about how part of being thankful for what we have is doing good for others as well. Share Our Selves had really good materials available for parents on how to talk to kids about homelessness in a caring way (because it's also hard when kids are like "so we should just let them live with us!" to bring up the topics of mental illness or drug abuse, etc.) On the drive home we were talking about how the things we'd done, and the things we'd brought to donate would help people who were living on the street. Adam was quiet for a minute, thinking about the tooth brushes he'd helped me buy at the store the week before and asked "will the toothbrushes get squished, on the street?" Sorry buddy, I don't mean that the homeless live directly in the middle of the street, where cars are.
Friday morning was the kindergarten Thanksgiving play, and they were very cute. They ditched the out of date Pilgrims and Native American costumes, and all of the kids made "thankfulness vests" except for the five little girls were dressed up as turkeys (looked very cute, and also, very itchy.) Adam got reprimanded twice during the production, once for screwing around with a class mate, once for flapping his vest up and over his face a bunch. But, he delivered his line with confidence, and did some all star dancing and singing.
We spent Friday night and Saturday horsing around with friends, relaxing, and doing some planning for the upcoming holiday onslaught. The kids slept over at Mimi and Poppy's last night, and Tim and I were thankful for a night out!
This morning one of Ellie's girlfriends had a bunch of the gals over for a friendsgiving. I am truly thankful for Anabelle's mom, who took on a half dozen little girls along with her own twin toddlers and let them make slime and also apple sauce and pasta necklaces and have a feast.
The kids had Monday off for Veteran's Day, which is the first part of our No School November (next week they have completely off in the lead up to Thanksgiving. The following week is school conferences so every day is a half day... and then we're going to Arizona for a few days so they'll miss school that way.) Basically, I hope they learn something between now and New Year!
Anyhow, it worked out well because Pari and James had rented a house in Lake Arrowhead and asked us if we wanted to join, and yes, yes we did! It ended up working out quite well - Saturday morning we had family pictures taken, Adam had his final soccer game of the season (that's enough youth sports for me for this calendar year, thank you) and then we loaded the car and headed up the mountain.
The cabin was great - three stories, plenty of bedrooms, and came fully stocked with everything we'd need to just relax and unwind together. It had a real chef's kitchen, and Pari is a great cook (I brought breakfast supplies, home made cookies, and my sparkling personality to make up for my cooking deficiencies.) Mila is five days older than Adam and Rahim is four, so the kids all had someone to play with (plus we could send them to a different story of the house!) Pari and James also invited two other couples (one stayed Saturday night, one Sunday) and so the kids spent the day hanging out, then we did a big dinner, put the kids to bed and stayed up late drinking and talking.
When we got up there on Saturday we went down to the actual Lake Arrowhead village, which was rebuild in the last twenty years, and reminds me of an outlet mall, with random high end stores, and then a little carnival area. Sunday we made the windy drive over to Big Bear. The lake is really pretty, but sadly very low with the drought. The kids were hungry and nuts, but we were able to find a place that would seat all eight of us quickly AND bring out the kid food almost immediately. We did some good poking around, and then on the way home I declared that we MUST go to the Alpine slide on the outskirts of town. And lo, it was awesome! We all got to ride the chair lift up (Ellie was the only kid who had ever been on one) and they you take a sled down a concrete luge. I was all prepared to ride with Ellie, and then they informed me that she was too tall and had to ride by herself. Farewell little friend, hope you figure out the braking before the end of the track!
Tim and Adam made it down safely as well!
They are such a funny little foursome, we were sad to pack up and leave yesterday morning. We made it home in good time and Tim went into the office. The kids and I stayed in our pajamas all day, went over to Gigi's house for a bit, and then when Adam started melting down out of exhaustion, came home for early baths and VERY early bed time. All that fresh air and friend time is exhausting!
I am still confused that it's only Tuesday. Adam has a feast at school on Thursday and then the Thanksgiving play on Friday. And then, no school? Ellie has already complained about having to go to the YMCA with me, I've already told her I don't care. Family fitness for all!
Another great Trick or Treat in the books! We end up going over to our friend's neighborhood in Laguna Niguel to take advantage of the Candy Corn lane they have. Those people really go all out - there's donuts, there's popcorn, there's a woman manning an ice cream sundae table, there's water bottles, sometimes the houses will top off beer or wine for the adults. This year, there was also someone walking with a miniature pony. I mean... com'n.
The kids have been planning for months to be Harry Potter and Hermoine Granger from the Harry Potter series. Tim decided to be Professor Snape, and I decided to be Mrs. Norris, the grounds keeper's cat, in the interest of wearing my cat onesie for the third year in a row. I bought the kids cheap costumes at Target, and then this week Adam kept telling me he was going to be PacMan. The heck you are kid! He then clarified - he's going to be PacMan next year, so stay tuned. Tim got really into his costume, and found the perfect Michael Jackson wig to complete his look - he said the Amazon reviews were especially convincing when someone mentioned they bought it for their husband, who has a huge head.
Tim and Meg met in 2003 at UCLA, only three weeks before Meg graduated, and only three months before she moved to Canada for graduate school. They dated long distance for a year, got engaged in 2004 and married in 2005. Tim makes video games as an actual job. After five years in LA, in a 500 square foot apartment, we moved back behind the Orange Curtain and bought our first house in October 2009. We followed up that fun by having our first daughter, Elizabeth Rosemarie in October 2010.
Tim is 6'6" and Meg is 5'3". Yes, we know we look mismatched in pictures. Yes, Meg tries to stand on things to be taller whenever she can.
