Category: holidays

A Really Lovely Weekend

This last weekend was great. On Saturday E and I (but let’s be honest, mostly I) put in our vegetable garden. We planted some strawberries, Walla Walla onions, spinach, zucchini, tomatoes and started some lettuce from seed. I ran out of time (and steam) on Saturday but am still going to plant beets, beans, and cucumbers from seed as soon as the rain we’re having lets up.

Then on Sunday after church N made me a tasty lunch of ramen noodles with kimchi and ham while I baked him some belated birthday cupcakes. The afternoon was a fun mish-mosh of celebrations. After lunch we sang “Happy Birthday” to N, scarfed down our vegan chocolate cupcakes, and then N and E gave me my Mother’s Day gift:

A Polaroid SX-70 OneStep camera and several packs of Impossible Project film! I was THRILLED.

And then after I finished ooing-and-aahing over my new toy we all took long naps.

It was great.

The End.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Supreme Computer Overlord!

Happy Valentine’s day! We’re keeping it pretty low key today: E is having a party at preschool so last night I dutifully wrote his name on a bunch of Cars-themed valentines and made him some dairy-free, egg-free treats so he would have something fun to eat.

Having a two week-old baby kind of put a damper on any plans to go out on the town so tonight N and I will probably get some take-out, hang out with the kids, and then settle down and watch Jeopardy!

Even though we’re total geeks we actually don’t habitually Jeopardy! but beginning tonight N’s brother Ken is going to be playing against IBM’s Watson computer. Who will win–my snarky brother-in-law or our future supreme computer overlord (or the other guy Brad Rutter)?

Check your local listings and watch to find out!

Christmas Recap

We’re finally getting back into the swing of things. E came down with a cold over Christmas that morphed into what I think was Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (SUCH a charming name). Last week he developed a few little sores around his mouth but other than that seems to have been spared other symptoms.

As soon as the sores appeared and I suspected HFMD we quarantined ourselves at home so as not to spread it around so New Year’s was pretty quiet. N and I watched The Wire on DVD and snacked on cheese, summer sausage, and a shrimp tray from Costco. When we kissed at midnight I realized that it was 10 years ago exactly that N purposed which made me feel kind of warm and gooey inside (ten years!)

Even with being under the weather E had a nice Christmas. We got him a few things and our family and friends sent him some thoughtful gifts that he had a lot of fun unwrapping. He has been really into robots lately so this Alphie robot that my parents sent was a big hit.


Watching E’s face light up when he saw everything in the morning was a lot of fun.

N really outdid himself this Christmas…he got together with my thoughtful SIL and BIL (who works at Adobe) and got me a copy of the Adobe Create Suite Master Collection! It’s amazing to have a copy of the latest full suite of programs like Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, etc… I like to tinker with design programs but since I’m just an amateur I could never afford the $$$ it would cost to purchase the suite retail. So I was really thrilled and grateful to N and Miranda and her husband for setting this up. I can’t wait to dig into it and see the updates Adobe’s made to the programs.

As awesome as that gift was N had an even bigger surprise waiting for me under the tree. (But it deserves its own post later.)

Merry Christmas!

E is excitedly counting down the hours until he gets to rip into the presents he sees stashed around the house.


I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a joyous new year! I plan on spending the next little while relaxing with E and N and enjoying their company (and if there’s time I’ll hopefully squeeze in some baby/home improvement stuff around the house).

I might check in here and there but otherwise I’ll be back to posting regularly on Monday January 3rd.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Letting go a little

I think I’ve mentioned before how easily I get sucked into “the idea” of things. I get a picture in my head and then inevitably feel disappointed when things don’t work out as well. This habit has only gotten worse since I had E because while I see so many opportunities for Magical! Childhood! Moments!, E is not always predictable or more accommodating than you would expect from a three year-old.

After seeing Santa at our church Christmas party was a big hit I thought I’d try and take E to the mall today to see Santa again and take a photo. I had a vague goal of getting to the mall around 10am but by the time we actually there it was already noon. And the line for Santa was a hour long.

I actually stood in line with E for a little bit and while he was good he started to get antsy after about 10 minutes. I did a bit of soul searching (“But we’re already here and he’s dressed in a cute outfit that will coordinate perfectly with Santa’s suit!” vs. “There’s NO WAY he and I are going to be able to stand in this line for an hour–it will get ugly.”) and then we got out of line and I took E to have a ride on the little train that chugs around the mall instead.


He loved it. And then we left the mall, went grocery shopping and came home–the end.

So, while we didn’t get an overpriced photo with Santa this year I think I might finally be learning to let go a little and sincerely put E’s interest ahead of the craving I feel to create and document Magical! Childhood! Moments!

(I also learned that if I want to do Santa photos next year I’m going to take the kids in November.)

Good Enough to Eat

I saw these pre-assembled gingerbread house kits at Costco a while ago and picked one up to decorate with E. We decorated it last night and he was surprisingly good about not eating the candy pieces unless I told him it was okay. But now every time he walks past the kitchen table he sticks his face inches away from the house, staring at it, and declares that he wants to eat “the Christmas house.” I guess we’ll see how long his self-control holds out.


Santa

Last night we went to our church’s Christmas party. There were rumors about an appearance by a certain special someone and I was curious about how E would handle it. Luckily his face lit up when Santa walked in the room. It was pretty cute.


Sadly the professional photographer who volunteered to take photos of the kids had her camera knocked over and her pricey lens broken (thankfully it was insured) so I only have a few photos I snapped with my phone.

I know I was supposed to learn my lesson about pushing E into what I think will be Kodak moments after the disaster that was the Yo Gabba Gabba live show but now I’m thinking it might be worth it to take E to the mall and get a real pictures with Santa.

Am I being utterly foolish or do you think it will turn out okay?

For the Christmas Card

Yesterday I snapped some photos of E for a Christmas card. I’m trying to decide which of these first two to use for the card. What do you think–any strong opinions?

As he’s gotten older E has less and less patience when it comes to having his photo taken. After about 5 minutes the situation dissolved into this (only with more spittle than pictured flying around the room).

Thankful

We had a nice relaxing Thanksgiving. We hung around the house watching football and playing with E then whipped up a dairy-free, egg-free Thanksgiving meal. The hit of the evening was this vegan pumpkin pie which was actually quite good (I copped out and used a pre-made Marie Callendar’s pie crust).

E was pretty excited about the whole thing.

Yesterday I felt a little worn out and sort of over Thanksgiving but when I stopped to think about it (which I need to do more often) I was floored by my many blessings, especially my family and my relationship with my Savior.

The tricky part is hanging on to that feeling and not letting my first-world problems get me down.

Music and Crafts for Christmas

How is it that I’m both eager to get into the Christmas season and already vaguely panicky that I’m running out of time?

I received an Amazon gift certificate recently and I used it to go on a mini Christmas-themed spree. I picked up these two things to help me get into the swing of Christmas.

This Sufjan Stevens box set, Songs for Christmas*, is a good deal at Amazon right now ($14) and has nice alt-folksy versions of favorite carols. (And it comes with stickers!)

And I’ve been really enjoying flipping through this book, Fa la la la Felt*, and daydreaming of the cute Christmas ornaments I could make if I, you know, actually got my crap together. Amazon doesn’t have the option of letting you search inside but if you go here you can see the table of contents and a few sample pages. The ornaments are so cute! There are several that I want to make for our tree.

*FYI, these are Amazon affiliate links which means that if you purchase something through them I get a small percentage.