2013 in Photos

The Christmas Train

Yes another year and another successful outing with our family and our Christmas train!   Yes the kids go to bed like any other night and then shortly after we say good night we come back with their tickets and their Santa hats and we board the Christmas Train!     We have Christmas music, decorations in the car, Christmas blankets, a snack (oranges this year!) and we go on an adventure to find great Christmas light displays.   

During our outing we allow the kids to choose the direction from time to time and they love it.  We go out for about an hour and then come back home and put them to bed.    It's a great tradition that we've done for a couple of years and they asked several more times if they could go again on the Christmas Train!  Can't wait until next year!

Christmas 2013

Our Christmas was great!   ...And I am woefully behind on blogging about the close of 2013!  Goodness, I'm going to try and play some catch up and so there will be some blog bursts.  I know, I know - the only acknowledgement to Christmas so far in my blog has been about Ivy the Elf... not even the focus of Christmas in our house!     2014 I'm going to try to be better about blogging and keeping up! Resolved?  Eh maybe.  ;)

Now for Christmas 2013 let's enjoy a photo array of our morning!  This year I did an elapsed timer with the camera set up on the tripod.  I got it going and then just let it go.   Leaving me hands free to enjoy time with the kids and not trying to grab a shot of them opening presents.    It was great!  Later in the afternoon I grabbed the camera and got a few more close up shots of them with their fun.  

The traditional shot at the top of the stairs awaiting the word they're allowed to come down!

Reading the Christmas Story out of Luke before we begin the presents

Merry Christmas, Pixel!

Legos from Grammie!!

Present for dad!  Another Walk Rock Jar they painted (the first one was full!)

Pose for a couple shots here!

Legos and Ninja Turtles.  All boy!

Someone was introduced to Calico Critters this Christmas and she's super excited about them!

We got to chat from afar with my family for 90 minutes.  While my nieces showed me all their presents and I got to laugh and spend time with my family.    I love technology.

We had a wonderful Christmas season!   We hope yours was too!

Ivy the Elf

Yes, for the third year a little elf came to visit our family after Thanksgiving.     For the second year in a row we did the North Pole breakfast which was festive and fun.    The elf arrived and brought donuts, Pez, candy canes, and their 'Christmas' pjs!    Yes, Ace's were Hulk pjs but well he's green... and red and green are traditional Christmas colors.  ;)   He was thrilled.   It was a fun morning (though mommy was quite unhappy with picture quality, fooey!)

The kids again enjoyed the game of hide and seek - they are allowed to touch our elf and play with her throughout the day once both kids have found the elf in the secret spot and as long as she wasn't up high.   If she was up high - mom or dad had to get her down first!   Ace was quite frustrated some mornings because his sister had little desire to find the elf.  It didn't concern her in the least but he desperately wanted to get her before he left for school.   It caused some tension sometimes, but again they loved the elf and the hide and seek game that we make of it in our family. 

As December waged on Ivy the Elf got herself into lots of festive places and at time antics!    There were a few parental favorites and one request from a friend for where/how to hide the elf.    There were a few "phoning it in nights" (Ivy under tree skirt, Ivy in bucket of blocks)  and one night that must have been so lack-luster I didn't take a picture and I can't remember where she hid one night.    Overall not too shabby! I *do* have to pat myself on the back that while there were many nights it was right as I was going to bed I remembered to hide the elf every night and only once had to get out of bed to do it and the elf did move every night!  ;)

There were a couple of nights when the creativity bug got a hold of me and we spent a decent amount of time being *THOSE* parents that other people blog angrily about regarding elf mayhem.   Sorry folks.  :)   To be fair we were only those parents 25% of this holiday elf-hiding season.

My first wave of creativity came when I wanted Ivy to sail the seas, then I thought a battle scene would be fun and so it just evolved after that.   It probably did take 20 minutes, but let's be honest a good part of that was cleaning enough so that I would be willing to capture that space of my house on camera. 

And well we couldn't just let Ivy get away with charging attempting to take over the Pea's land...couch?  and so I wanted to build a jail out of tinker toys... but Ace had dispersed them amid the house and my best efforts to collect them from his room (and Mae's) before they went to bed was not enough to construct something with them alone and thus the Zoobs had to be brought out and the husband called in for some serious construction assistance - but I have to say the jail is still intact and in Ace's room... pretty sure the minion is still in it.  ;)

On another night as I was ready to just go to bed I was hunting for a good spot for the elf to hide and I was struck with inspiration for drawing on the chalkboard and so I went to work drafting up a drawing for Ivy to have been posed to draw.   There was also another good 5 minutes of shoving stuff away from the easel and if you panned the picture out - to the right would be a pile of crap that normally lives under the easel.  True story. 

We recently have been undergoing construction.  New floors, new paint, new fireplace, new mantle.   Our fireplace and mantle before was this ugly shabby chic brick.   Not shabby chic pretty - like shabby crap.   Like there once was tile stuck to it and it was ripped off.  Not pretty!  HOORAY for family that is good at stuff like this and was willing to do the job of building us a new mantle and tiling up the fireplace nicely for us!  Love it!    So I wanted to unveil the mantle in an excellent display of photos of Ivy.   Alas my excitement and all of my toner spectacular photos were upstaged and barely noticed because it snowed the night before and there Ivy sat all day with barely a notice.  

Finally for you fine readers I present to you this delightful elf!  My friend sent me a picture of another elf in a Christmas tree sitting on an ornament, someone (the same person that posed it, or maybe not)  had posted the ever so infamous Miley song lyrics along with it... my friend begged me to please do it!   Since I'm mildly obsessed (in the way that you can't stop looking at a car wreck) with Miley's utter train wreck of the last year of her innocence I couldn't resist and thus this fabulous (and carefully posed) shot was taken! 

Merry Christmas, Ivy!  Now off you go until next year and a new personality will be born! 

Black Friday 2013

First, I have to say that I was incredibly sad that my partner in crime for the last six years was under the weather and unable to go with us!   I can't say how disappointed I was to not be traipsing through the mall and various stores and inexplicable hours with V.   Now that said, my SIL had planned to join us so while we were missing a key player we certainly didn't lack in Black Friday (and Gray Thursday, hehe) fun!    

After SIL's power nap we headed out around 10:30 - music cranked, seat warmers on, gas filled up - we were on the way to Target!    We got a pretty decent haul - I had one tote with me and filled it to the brim, got several movies, a few gifts, and a lot of fun - we got in line that literally was wrapping in and out of the outer aisles of one half of the store.  It was great fun, met some fun people in line,  we sang happy birthday at midnight and we were only in line there for about an hour and unlike when I went in 2011 the line was constantly moving.    SIL stepped out of line and got us Starbucks while I maintained our place and it was grand ol' fun!  :)    

Next stop was the mall and a great adventure getting many presents taken care of at the Disney Store!  We found a parking spot right away and headed into the mall!  We had to wait in line for about 20 minutes in order to get into the store (or at least it felt that long, it was nearing 1am)  The line wasn't quite as long as Target but for a store that's like 1/6th the size it was still impressive.   We headed home and were in bed by 2:30. 

We slept until around 7:30 and were up and out the door again by 7:50 for the next store - in which we spent 3 hours there and knocked out several more presents and purchases!   It was great and so much fun to go out with SIL!    

Upon returning home I commenced my sad face and pleas to persuade the husband to get out the Christmas tree - which for the most part didn't take too much effort - he loves me! ;)      We got the tree out, got all the lights on it, and then each of the kids grabbed an ornament and put on the first two ornaments of the tree while we captured the moment.  :)  And so begins the wonderful Christmas Season!!

Thanksgiving

Another great year with the family!   Auntie and Uncle Kai came to our house late on Wednesday night and were here for the whole weekend,  the kids love them, we love them, it was great!    The kids woke up at the same time that Uncle Kai and Loving Husband did, which was around 6am so they could head out for our church's mud bowl, so while we tried to keep them contained a while longer the morning began early!   

Since I was up nearly three hours before the parade I decided to get a head start on some of the kitchen prep while my co-chef was off playing football.   Breakfast supplies seemed so normal and boring so I put together some pumpkin bread to kick off the morning.   Next up before the parade I blended together the herb butter that was going to need to smother the turkey.    Kai and I had spent the last couple of weeks collaborating on a menu that we would enjoy cooking and exploring.  



The Chefs of 2013

We went with a southern theme to our dinner and our menu was as followed:  Herb Roasted Turkey,   Corn Bread Stuffing,   Green Beans baked with oil and garlic, Sweet Potatoes soufflé, Mac & Cheese with ham, Cranberry Relish (a family staple from Grum), Butternut, Apple,  and Cranberry Bake,  and then for dessert Gran brought her pumpkin pie and Kai found a delicious recipe that was entitled Is It Really Better Than Sex? Cake -  we substituted the pineapple for mangos and around 10:30am our cooking began.  For the chefs and the other two folks that were corralling the kids, I put together some Boozy Berries and we enjoyed some mimosas while we cooked.   We moved a small tv into the kitchen so that I could watch some football while we cooked as well.  We had a good time and moved quite efficiently with all the various steps that the dishes required.  Sometime around 3pm I realized that I had yet to even break to go to the bathroom!   

Prior to getting started cooking we enjoyed watching the Macy's Day Parade and the kids played with Auntie.   It was a great day and the meal with tasty and oh so many leftovers were around.    Dinner was an hour later than we had planned and we began plating the meal around 5pm.   Less than 20 minutes later, with no nap from the little miss, Mae asked to go to bed.  It was so sweet and so I cuddled her up and toted her off to bed.   

Dinner was wrapping up by the time we got back so I had a few more bites of food and then dove straight into desserts and they were delicious!    Yes, I had 2 helpings of that cake and we ate it throughout the weekend - so yummy!    Then of course the silliness ensued with the family as it often
does around the table. :) 

After we got Ace into bed and said goodnight to the grandparents we sat around chatting for a while before 9pm rolled around and Loving Husband headed off to bed at 9pm... and Auntie headed downstairs to take a power nap before we began our late night shopping!   Thus leaving, somehow, Kai and myself who had spent nearly seven hours in the kitchen cooking the meal to then clean it up.   Halfway thru clean up we acknowledged this injustice and declared that in 2014 the siblings would be cooking the meal and we would wrangle the kids and then post their bedtime we'd leave the siblings to clean the meal up and he and I would go out (as we find sleeping at 9pm laughable, sorry fam.)  ;-) 

Halloween 2013

I'm a little late to posting, but the kids had another great Halloween!    This year we had another Superhero and this time Captain America was chosen! Mae early on chose to be a Purple Princess and as mommy hunted for a perfect little dress for her - I came up with nothing, so I made her outfit.   Piece of elastic and 4 rolls of tulle in various purples and some black and a ribbon to hold it onto her shoulders and the dress was born.   Toss on some of her regular purple clothes for layers, a little feather hair accessory and a crown and the Purple Princess was ready to go!   The kids had no issues this year in the understanding of how this whole Trick or Treat thing works and had a great time going with their friends again this year.  They even scored full sized candy bars at two different houses.   Mommy that night ate one and my little girl the next day found the evidence and was MAD.  Man did I ever get a sneer out of her!  She's so silly and sweet... and easily offended!  It was another great year of fun and silliness! 

 

Checking out their haul

Yum!

Guess I should have hidden the evidence!

Pumpkins of 2013