Hello out there.

We are alive and doing well!  Just busy, busy, busy- really, busier than we have ever been before.  After living with my parents for the summer, we bought our house (finally) on the day of the Open House for the new school year for the job that I was hired for less than 24 hours before I needed to start (one week before school began for the year.)  I am still teaching full day kindergarten full time but in a different district in a different state which is a whole host of time consuming challenges.  Our short sale house buying had drama up until the end (complete with being stood up at the first closing) but the house is ours now and any spare moment is spent painting rooms or spending time doing work related school stuff or spending time with Sam and Anna. I love, love, love our house and in retrospect would do all the craziness again to end up here- we have breath-taking sunsets AND gorgeous sunrises.  The wildlife in and around our pond makes me smile and the features of our home are more than I thought we'd be able to get.  I, however, will never do another short sale ever again- which is good, because I plan on living here for the next 30 years or so!

Sam and Anna are great, adjusting to preschool life well and are thankfully inching towards 4, which I hear is much better than age 3.  Maybe over the holiday break I'll give them both the update they deserve.  But that's it for the meantime- There is simply no extra time for this blog in my life right now.

I'll leave you with:

A Few Remnants of the Holidays

Days later, Sam and Anna are still talking about Santa.  They love to take turns pretending to be Santa or Mrs. Claus and will assign the role to us as well.  I caught Sam sitting on Anna's lap one day telling her what he wanted for Christmas.  This hat has been worn almost every day since December 25th.

Anna loves candy canes, which I find interesting because she's usually not the one with a sweet tooth.  I'm not sure how she ended up with sticky candy cane all the way up to her eye!

Christmas Day

Christmas Morning, Sam and Anna blessed us all by sleeping in until 8 am.  Those kid clocks they received as presents the night before are great!  Both kids were excited to see what was in their stockings from Santa.  Sam was thrilled to see trains... but immediately asked where Toby was because he had asked Santa for James and Toby and only James was in the stocking (Grandma had bought Toby for a gift so Santa couldn't.)  Anna's favorite stocking gift were the candy canes.  Both have played with the moose and deer family figurines endlessly since then, so I'd say Santa did pretty good! 

 

 

Checking out the crumbs left behind from the cookies set out for Santa

After checking out the stocking loot, we had Santa pancakes for breakfast this year.  I couldn't take a picture fast enough to beat Sam licking off some of the whipped cream beard.  Last year we had Rudolph pancakes on Christmas morning, so I'm going to have to spend some time figuring out something new for next year!

We headed to my parents for Christmas Day festivities, and decided that this year we wouldn't fight the nap battle and work hard to find time to fit one in.  Sam and Anna still did not sleep on the 4 hour drive there, even though it was right in the middle of their traditional nap time.  Both did great with zero nap on Christmas Day, just like I thought they would.  No meltdowns at all- and once again, they had excellent behavior the entire time playing with their cousins.

Running around the house

 

Wrestling with cousins Zach (5) and Alex (2 1/2)

Opening more presents- Thomas presents were a common theme for the 3 almost three-year-olds.

My brother's family

The best photo of all 4 kids sitting still for a nanosecond

 

One more Christmas celebration to go next weekend!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve morning, we had snowmen pancakes for breakfast.  We had a relaxing morning around the house, which happens to be my favorite kind of mornings around here.

 

After playing for a bit, we decided to open the presents that were sent to us from Grandpa Dan and Joanne.  This year they weren't able to celebrate with us because we live 7 hours away and Grandpa Dan had surgery on his foot a few weeks ago.  It's fun to be the adults and have control over deciding when it's time to open presents!

 

 The sleeping bags were a hit and will come in handy next summer when we go camping.

 

 Sam and Anna also got color wonder paper and paints from Aunt Mary in the box of presents.

 Books, including a First Bible.

 The play tent was one of the favorite presents from Grandpa Dan and Joanne.  I don't have any pictures of them going in and out of it, but rest assured, they spent the rest of the morning playing with it.

 Anna loved her Vtech camera... and now she can be just like Mama- taking a million pictures of the same thing. :)

Anna was still napping late on Christmas Eve, so we didn't make it to the 4:30 service at church.  After deciding to attend the 7:00 pm service, we chose to open our family gifts after nap since we would be rushed to fit it in on Christmas morning.

Sam and Anna each had three gifts to open from us, just like they have had in years past.

Sam was very excited about his zoo animal puzzles- they have so much fun with the other Melissa and Doug 12 piece puzzle box we have.

I got these kid clocks on Babysteals- they show with pictures when it is time to be awake and when it is time to be asleep.  So far with using them, we've been sleeping until 8 am during winter break,  which is exactly the time I set them for- perfect!

 The wooden blocks box was played with right away.

And so was the jumper, as soon as it was put together.  This was the "big gift" this year (last year the kitchen was the big gift).

We made it to the 7:00 pm service early (unusual for us!). Sam and Anna did as well as they did last year, but they always do amazingly well during church services. We rarely take them out at all. When the service began, there were some bells rung, and Anna said immediately (and loudly) "Is that SANTA?" which was cute and the extent of their toddler chattiness. They were transfixed by the dancing light of the candles while everyone was singing Silent Night. It was magical.

Bedtime was an hour late due to church and an hour after turning out bedtime lights (so 2 hours past normal bedtime), we could still hear murmurings of "Santa..." and "Ho ho ho.." coming from Sam's room.  I would say he was excited to have Santa visit and see what was left after Santa visited our home!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

(Our shutterfly card this year.)

View the entire collection of cards.

Gingerbread Houses

This year Sam and Anna were not able to go to the free gingerbread house making event held by the public library with their daycare provider because they tightened requirements and said that they needed to be over 3 to participate (which I'm still a little irked about, because they did it successfully last year when they weren't even two yet, but whatever). 

I decided then to get our gingerbread house making on at our own home instead.  They really enjoyed reading all the versions of the Gingerbread Man that I have- the Gingerbread Girl, The Gingerbread Baby, The Gingerbread Boy, Gingerbread Friends, and two different Gingerbread Man versions and so I knew they'd have even more fun creating a gingerbread house this year than last(they made Gingerbread Man cookies at daycare).  The "village" kit with 5 little buildings was just prefect for us: one for Sam, one for Anna, one for Daddy, one for Mama, and even one Snoopy-ish dog house for our dog Bella.

 A new family holiday tradition in the making!

 

 

L-R: Bella's house, Anna's, Sam's, Mama's and Daddy's with the green roof

Holiday Lights and the Man in the Red Coat

Last weekend we were bound and determined to do some holiday family fun, so we bundled up and headed to the (free) zoo lights display near us. Although there was no snow on the ground at the time, it was certainly chilly enough to warrant boots and snow pants, in addition to hats and mittens.  This year was even more fun than last because Sam and Anna were able to walk around on their own the entire time.  It was a lot more fun to have conversations beyond "wow" about the lights too.  It wasn't very crowded, so we even stopped to see Santa before leaving. 

(closely cropped because I had a zoom lens on my camera and this Santa was in the tiniest little shed in the middle of the light display.)

If there was a real line, we wouldn't have.  I'm not a huge gotta-see-Santa kind of mama. But Sam asked on our way out and I didn't have a good reason why not.  Last year Santa visited daycare and that was enough for me.  I would have been content to not "see" Santa at all this year.  My reasoning- I know my kids are going to get that these store Santas aren't the real Santa early on.  I mean, it doesn't make sense that Santa is all over the place wearing different clothes and with a different looking beard right before crunch time. I don't want to build it up to have to downplay it later on.  In my opinion, I'd rather tell my kids from the get-go that these store Santas are not the real Santa and are just Santa's helpers because he's simply too busy getting last minute things done to sit all day all across the country/world for the month before Christmas. That's just how I think we're gonna handle that in our family. I've always had a hard time pretending when "Santa" visits my kindergarten classroom each year, because I feel like I'm being dishonest.  To me, saying that the man in the red coat is "Santa" isn't true.  But, I believe in the idea of Santa; the magic of Santa and so I don't feel dishonest when we include the spirit of Santa in our holiday celebrations through stocking filling on Christmas Eve night.  Different families do Santa in different ways, and that's okay.

Christmas Part 3 and 4

Better late than never, right?

Christmas Part 3 began when we arrived at my parents' house for our Christmas Day gathering.  We got there early  after our 3+ hour drive so that Sam and Anna could get in a nap at around their usual time before we ate.  Our "early" ended up being about 2 hours late for their nap due to Sam's poor sleep the night before and sleeping in to recover his lost sleep, so we ended up letting them nap until we ate at 5 pm, which worked out okay, because they stayed up wayyyy past their bedtime that night and finally went to bed after 9 pm.  Rarely are they up even as late as 8:30 pm.  The late nap helped them stay in good spirits the entire time.

Running in circles around the upstairs with cousins

With one 4 year old and 3 kids all almost 2 years old, it was a grand time watching them play with each other, giggle, and run in circles (literally) around the upstairs of my parent's home.  My nephew that is less than a month older than Sam and Anna loved our dog Bella and gave her lots of hugs.  The almost 2 year olds had no problem sharing some of their new toys as community property (which is always the case in our home).  And bonus points that my children weren't the crankiest from being the most overtired or the one that got a bloody nose from getting the most wild from running around. :)

Enthralled with the Elmo holiday wrapping paper

Opening presents- my children now know that pirates say "Argh!"

Investigating the plethora of new toys

I wish I had gotten better photos, but it really was chaos in a semi controlled climate.  My family also opens in a free-for-all all at once, which makes it especially difficult to take any good photos of gift opening.

And then back to running around in circles (way past bedtime)

***

Christmas Part 4 and our final Christmas took place on New Years Day with my father-in-law's family.  They came to our house until the day I went back to work.  It was a less than ideal time, because the day before I was cleaning the entire house while taking care of both Sam and Anna and a husband recovering from his wisdom teeth removal (a surgery that the doctor said was probably his most difficult extraction of 2011).  Anyone with toddlers knows that cleaning with toddlers around is like cleaning up during a tornado.  Oh well- it went okay regardless.

Pros at unwrapping gifts

Sharing each other's toys

We opened presents that evening, and Sam and Anna were expert gift unwrappers by that point.  They enjoyed playing with each others gifts.  It's a good thing we got two shopping carts for presents from different people because that will definitely be one toy that it will be nice to have two of.  They also spent over an hour playing with their new playdoh tools and their aunts the next day.

They only stopped because it was lunchtime... almost 2 hours later.

Sam and Anna really enjoyed spending time with their aunts.  They got quite attached to them, and it was nice to see them bond so well considering they hadn't seen them since this summer.  I was a little bit like chopped liver until they left, which was not so nice for me, considering I was also trying to soak up as much Sam and Anna time before I went back to work- and our guests didn't leave until I was already back working.  Again, oh well.

Trains with Aunt Mary and Aunt Lindsay

Post family visits were also got belated gifts of the flu (me only thank goodness) and colds (Daddy, Sam and me).  I think we squeezed in one or two "normal" days before Daddy leaves for his week-long work trip tomorrow.  Oh well again- what exactly is "normal" when you have two twin toddlers, anyway?