Month: January 2010
Return to Reality
In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been…last week, Pat and I went on a little vacation to Jamaica. He just finished his tour of duty on the USS Ross and has a little time off before he checks about the aircraft carrier, USS Theodore Roosevelt. We decided it would be a great time to take a vacation to somewhere warm. His parents offered to watch the kids and we booked 5 days at the Sandals Grande Ocho Rios in Jamaica.
The Post Christmas Blahs
Some days, there’s just not a lot of funny going on around here. Actually, I’ll amend that. There are generally some funny moments to every day. But on some days, all the mundane, frustrating and exasperating moments block out the funny stuff.
Funnies
Just Keeping it Clean
Both grandmothers decided that the kids needed a toy vacuum for Christmas. I’m not sure if they think my carpets are dirty and figured they would be cleaner if 2 and 3 year olds did the cleaning or if they know that I secretly like vacuuming and therefore it would follow that my kids like vacuuming. Luckily, it turns out that they do like vacuuming. In fact, they went methodically from room to room upstairs on Christmas day. Jack even did some detail cleaning. At one point Casey says, “Loud, Loud, Loud!” When she was younger and I wanted to vacuum, I thought that I should try to ramp up the noise level in the room so I would say, “Loud, Loud, Loud!” I figured that was gentler than just throwing the switch and scaring her. Now she thinks it’s what you say when you vacuum.
Christmas in Pictures (and captions)
Christmas Eve morning…just before going to get Grammie & Grampie at the airport. I took pictures because these are Casey’s first piggy tails. They lasted for approximately 12 minutes. (I didn’t have the right elastics…not that the right ones probably would have stopped her from pulling them out.)
Grampie with Jack and Casey before church. I’m proud that I didn’t really plan our outfits but we were all pretty coordinated. Unfortunately there is no family shot. We were running a little late for church and like last year, we arrived two minutes after all the seats were taken.
Jack opening his Christmas eve presents…this bag has his ornament for 2009. Pat went to about 15 stores looking for a Thomas the Train ornament.
While the children were nestled all snug in their beds, it only took Santa’s helpers a couple hours to put this together on Christmas Eve. Jack literally ran to his bed and was asleep within minutes so that Santa would come. It was the easiest bedtime ever. He wanted to run no risk of Santa not coming because he was awake or of seeing Santa.
Casey’s presents from Santa. Auntie Jenn got her the cute chair.
Jack likes his new hockey sticks. I like them too because they are longer and I don’t have to play hockey with him on my knees.
Casey wanted to open all her presents in her chair.
She also figured out unique ways of getting in and out of it.
Pat & Jack play with some of Jack’s new fleet of construction toys. He also got a set of Lego construction toys and Pat spent hours putting them together. Jack wanted to put them together as soon as they were unwrapped.
Stocking time. Santa also brought silver bells for everyone. After reading The Polar Express, Jack really wanted Santa to bring a silver bell. It was not so easy for “Santa” to find one and when he finally did, he had to buy 12 and then walk around the mall with them jingling and jangling.
Randomness from a year ago
Happy New Year! I was thinking a recap of the past year but I didn’t feel like sitting down to try to think of all the things we’ve done this year. But then I set up my new calendar and transferred all the birthdays and saw a few of the things we did in 2009. (Hopefully all the birthdays are transferred…I had a little help from Jack and Casey with this project. There were stickers involved so they thought it was fun.) Then I cleaned out my receipts from January and that was also a reminder of some of the things we did last January.