Good Bye 2009!!

We had a rip-roaring party, starting with some Sam's club Pizza. We watched Lady Hawke, played Monopoly and I petered out around 10:45. I was coming down with a sore throat, and everyone was tired and crabby. Shawn made it until 11:00.

Those were MY pink properties--I was on a roll! I just felt too terrible to stay up anymore.

Cole just about had a heart attack when he realized we were calling it a night. So, we let the boys stay up and watch the Harry Potter movie we had got for them, by themselves!!! I was a little nervous. I woke up at 1:15, came down and found them passed out on the couch, movie playing away.

The next morning, Cole again informed me of my terrible parental holiday planning.

I AM A LOSER OF A MOTHER.

What can I say? It's obvious if an 8 year old boy--whose only concerns should be bike riding, bathroom humor and getting out of bathing--thinks we are boring fuddy duddies who can't even stay up until midnight of New Year's Eve, then it must be TRUE!

So, the next morning, we had a great breakfast, and drank all of the Martinelli's. At least Cole thought that was pretty cool. I've got to score points when I can.

Goodbye, 2009! Here's hoping for a much, MUCH better year.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas morning, it was finally here! And we all were determined to make it happy and pleasant. Shawn had to work for a few hours and wanted to bring us along. So we got straight to the important event of the day: the presents!

Cole and Seth were on pins and needles wondering if they would get their coveted presents that they had found in my car the day after Thanksgiving. I got A LOT of mileage out of making them earn back those presents. I wish I had big things like that to dangle in front of them all the time as motivation! They were very happy to get their gifts.

This was the first year I didn't buy matching pajamas. It is just too expensive. And someone always complains. I started giving them ornaments that are symbolic of something they did or something that reflected this past year. Cole got a cub scout ornament, Seth got an Indiana Jones ornament, and Sugar got a ballerina ornament. I couldn't find any crying baby ornament, so I left Luke out of it.

So, about those pj's: I packed pj's so the kids could wear them home from my parent's. Getting them out of there was a total hassle, and we never got to change their clothes. The boys changed when we got home, but Sugar was stuck in what she wore at Grandma's house. I had her dressed all cute, but she spilled punch all over her and I didn't have another pair of panties. So she wore her swimsuit, and it's turned into her favorite thing to wear. She doesn't want underwear anymore, just bathing suits.
Already, Monopoly has been the hit gift. We play it all the time, and now the boys are starting to get pretty crafty. It just takes so darn long!

Shawn's dream is for Seth to play football for UCLA or BYU. I think he sent a pretty clear message who he thinks is the better team. In this house you either wear BYU or UCLA gear, so at least now Seth can grab his t-shirt when UCLA is playing and feel part of the team!
The best part of the day was totally unexpected. We all headed over for Shawn's work--dressed up and ready to deliver treats. I was worried about how my kids would disrupt a hospital full of older, sick people, but more importantly, the tubes, wires, beeping machines, etc. Not a good combination. We ended up visiting everyone there-40 plus people, and caroling to them! Now, I am no singer, and I pretty much carried the thing, but the 3 kids sang along and were well behaved and didn't ask any embarrassing questions. We were so proud! There were about 3 women in semi states of coma, or massive droolers and mumblers. They scared Seth, and Cole had this weird curiosity and staring fixation. But no finger pointing or fire alarm pulling. Just a sweet experience meeting people and hopefully spreading some holiday cheer. Finding true service opportunities for little children is a challenge, and this just fell in our laps. We had a great talk about feeling the spirit and how good we all felt after meeting all of the residents at the hospital. By far the best part of Christmas, and it truly brought the meaning of Christmas home to our family.

Christmas Eve

I had a meltdown the day before Christmas Eve. It all ended around 8:30 when I slammed Sugar's door and yelled at her so much that she peed her pants. My lowest moment. I share it because I want to remember how horrible the whole day was and to never, ever feel that way again. Why do I let a 3 year old break me? Who is in charge here? Oh, I wish Mary Poppins could fly into my upstairs window!! Finally, when she passed out from crying, and I had vented my gallons of tears too, I promised the boys that tomorrow would be a better day. The next day was still on the not so good list. Sugar did not force me to endure a 5 hour tantrum marathon, but Christmas Eve sort of looked like this:

Sick Baby

Filthy, cluttered house

Shawn calling me and telling me he needed a triple batch of toffee delivered to his work by 1:30

A trip to Wal-Mart with 4 children whiny and hungry and a line of 20 grumpy people

Finding a kid on the roof

Pinching my hand when I tried to put the ladder back in the garage

Sweetie knocking over a very full trash can

Trash man kindly waiting for me as I scooped up slimy, filthy trash with my hands so I could take the can to the curb (the kids ran off with the shovel, naturally)

Using all my willpower for the next century not to start cussing at the top of my lungs in front of the trash man

Kids chasing Sweetie down the block

Sugar chasing Sweetie onto Main Street

Me crying as I drive my car about 100 mph out of my neighborhood to get Sugar off of Main Street

Offering a prayer of thanks that Sugar was okay, and giving her a big hug and feeling like a horrible Mother for how I treated her yesterday

Toffee not setting up. 3 batches turning out 3 different ways, for no logical reason

Luke refusing to sleep

Kids fighting and complaining that it isn't a very fun Christmas Eve day

Cole giving Luke a bottle filled with apple cider vinegar

Seth mad that Cole got him to drink apple cider vinegar

Trying to make rolls for the Christmas Eve party at my parents and burning them

My Dad calling me and asking me "why do you never answer your phone, dammit!"

Cole crying that I had promised him this day would be totally unlike the day before. I told him, "Hey, I haven't cussed at you today, right? Consider it a much better day than yesterday."

At least the cousins came, they got to play, eat a lot of really good food, and have a good Christmas Eve. We read the story The Fourth Wiseman, and the kids did a little talent show. We sat in nasty traffic, got home around 10 pm and my wrapping marathon finished around 12:30. I was so glad to call it a day.

And that is why I have no pictures of Christmas Eve. Better left undocumented with photographic evidence.

Me and my potty mouth

My kids hate to hear me swear! How are they my children? Swearing is not something I'm proud of. When I say that I can cuss like a sailor, I don't say it as a way of bragging. I say it with guilt and embarrassment. I have precious few talents; unfortunately, cussing is one of them.

I won't go into the great details of my cussing education. My parents do not swear. But the kids in my neighborhood did, and I was a prodigious learner. My mom loves to tell the story of teaching 5 year old me how to ride a two wheeler. We were out on the street, with the neighborhood and my Aunt Verner watching, when I slid out and fell. I got up and yelled at her and somewhere in my tantrum dropped the F-bomb on her. My mom says the collective gasp that went up on Garland Street that day was so strong no one had to vacuum their carpets for weeks.

I told Shawn that when I'm really angry, cussing actually makes me feel better. Shawn never swears. He looked at me like I had sprouted a third eye. He was disgusted with my lack of control. I agree. It is a lack of control. A wild abandonment to my more animal instincts. It is a way of venting, letting off steam, releasing the anger inside me. Ever have, say, a 14 month old baby chuck a metal train at you from across the room and it hits you in your left eyebrow? That is some serious pain. A heartfelt swear word truly does make it feel better. And it just may save the life of the said 14 month old. I still have all 4 children, if that tells you anything. And I've seriously been beaten up by these kids. I have bruises and scars to prove it.

However, Cole and Seth understand now the social stigma and INSANE amounts of trouble that saying those nasty words written on the boys' bathroom walls will get them in. And I feel like a big ole' nasty hypocrite when I tell them that swearing is wrong. I get Tabasco sauce on my tongue when they catch me. They get to rub soap on my tongue, too. When I get upset now, like when I discovered Cole had put apple cider vinegar in the baby's bottle as a joke (ha! you would be cussing on par with me and if you drank that expecting apple juice!) Cole will yell: "Mom, just DON'T swear, PLEASE! "

I love the movie "A Christmas Story". The part that really applies to me is the part of the Dad swearing. He never says any words, but a bunch of gibberish. "Sweegin, flallish, micker crabi BLAH!!!" Those are my new cuss words, too. But the kids are so used to hearing me refer to Hell and great piles of Scheise, that it takes them a moment to realize that those particular words did not get used. I hope it works the way Darn it, Oh, Heck!, and Shoot! do. But it just doesn't feel as good as my more "colorful" words. They roll off the tongue. They morph into crazy combinations. And they make me feel really, really bad later. Cusser's remorse.

I've got to tame my tongue. I can't bear the thought of Sugar swearing at me while trying to teach her to ride a bike.

Christmas Dress

I tried to get the kids color coordinated for the Sunday before Christmas. Sunday dressing is always a battle. Cole just wants to wear shorts, and Seth has fits about tying his shoes, and Sugar has some crazy idea about the dress she wants to wear, and Luke is always crying.

This Sunday, Luke was asleep. YAY! Sugar wore the dress I wanted her too AND let me braid her hair. Double YAY!

Seth finished crying about the shoe tying problems, and sort of grimaced for this shot.

Cole made really goofy faces, and practiced raising his left eyebrow. He gets that from me. One of the few skills that I am proud of.

Since Luke slept for an hour before Church, it meant that he was all over the place during Sacrament. Ugh. I felt very Catholic, getting up so many times!

Sometimes I just love Church

Shawn's Quilt

Shawn used to go to Oingo Boingo Concerts every Halloween--long before we were married. When we moved into this house, I found this bag full of old concert t-shirts. My first instinct was to throw them away. I was in the process of removing certain articles of clothing from Shawn's closet. Shawn had 1 or 2 shirts that he LOVED and were in every picture of him and his girlfriend just prior to me. The first 6 months of our marriage I plotted ways to destroy those shirts and obviously, any ties to a girlfriend that he may or may not be pining for. They slowly disappeared, and when he asked, I claimed a terrible laundry mishap, or astonishment that they were not in his closet. But those concert t-shirts, I felt, might have another purpose.

Not have any sewing skills whatsoever at that time, the shirts sat high on a shelf in my closet for 9 years. In that time, I have learned a very few, basic sewing skills. I took these very basic, pathetic excuses for sewing skills and convinced myself that I could take on a sewing project for Christmas. I decided this about 2 weeks before Christmas. Very, very stupid.

Fortunately, my mom can sew, is very patient, and dropped things on a moment's notice when I decided I needed to get this quilt project done.

Cutting the t-shirts all to the same size was tricky. In between crying Luke, a needy 3 year old and fights between Cole and Seth, my Mom and I managed to get the shirts ready.

We then sewed the shirts onto orange strips (Shawn's favorite color and these are all Halloween shrits)together and the kids all said WOW! They thought we were done. Oh, we wished it, too.

A week later we sewed on the batting and the back side. Instead of tying it with yarn, I decided to sew the shirts so the batting wouldn't bunch up. Dumb me, the shirts all pulled and bunched. Still learning: jersey material is NOT my friend. Nothing huge, but someone like Shawn would notice. He did. He just asked, what is this? But he was so happy and excited, he didn't really care.

The best part: he told me this was the best Christmas present EVER! This is huge, since he is the ultimate big, creative gift giver. In our 11 1/2 years together, I have never outdone him on a gift. Finally, I did! I am very proud of this quilt, and Shawn is very possessive of it. But I owe most of my gratitude to my Mom. Without her, those shirts would still be wallowing in a bag in the back of my closet. Thanks, Mom.

A new chapter has begun

I never thought this day would come!

I never thought it was even a possibility.

Shawn never--or extremely rarely--thought about it.

But here we are.

We knew it was coming.

He prepared. We prepared.

We prayed. We pondered. We fasted. We went to the Temple, A LOT.

He is so excited! I am so excited. The kids don't understand enough about it to really care.

What's happened?

Shawn, for the first time in his life, is no longer self-employed!

The story is long, and can be summed up like this: It is a miracle! Everything Shawn has done has lead him to this point. We can see the Lord's hand in making this happen . We are grateful, and feel extremely blessed.

Today Shawn started his new job. He is working in the Health Care field, training to be a Hospital Administrator. The hours are long: 12 hour days. But the payoff is worth it: stable income, stable job, expanding field, amazing opportunity. This next year will involve 2 moves, one of which we have no control over.

Big changes are coming.

Life will be completely different in many ways.

Shawn will have a set schedule.

We will know EXACTLY how much money is coming in every month.

We will have a 401k.

He will have a Boss that he is accountable to.

I will be, essentially, a single mother.

I am nervous. I am weighed down with the responsibility. I am filled with anticipation. How will our relationship change? How will our family change? Where will be a year from now?

Big changes require big leaps of faith.

We're jumping right now.

Seth's chat with Santa

Santa visited our Ward Christmas Party--imagine that!

Cole pronounced him a fake, and didn't want anything to do with a party that hired a fake Santa. Besides, Cole was still mad that Santa didn't answer his email proposal about taking his thrashed rip rider 360 and fixing it up brand new, rather than giving him a new one. He probably would have demanded an answer from Santa, right then and there, and that would have ended so, so badly. One disaster avoided!

Sugar wouldn't even walk within 20 feet of him and made me carry her through the foyer where Santa was sitting, harmless as could be, giving out free candy.

Luke, well, I didn't even try.

But Seth, oh yeah, he was waiting, waiting, waiting to get to Santa and speak directly with the guy in charge of fulfilling all of his toy fantasies.

I had to lean in close to get the scoop on what Seth wanted. I was surprised. It wasn't the highly detailed letter to Santa, but a request for just one thing: a Lego Indiana Jones airplane, white, not green.

I have a really good feeling that Seth is going to be overjoyed when he opens his present from Santa this year.

Palm Springs Aerial Tram

We got hit hard with rain. It was C-O-L-D. 45 degrees at most, and down to 28 at night. Not So Cal weather! Brrr is the best description of the past week. We decided to make the most of it--embrace the cold and wet--and hit the snow.

We got out our meager snow gear. Sugar had the whole ensemble, thanks to friends, but the rest of us had to make do with gloves, boots and jackets, but no snow pants.


This is a view from the tram about half way up. I hate heights, and this freaked me out. The tram rotated 360 degrees. The scary part for me was that the kids leaned against the windows and the doors as they rotated. I had visions of them pushing the doors open and falling to their deaths. I did not like the tram ride. It was much better coming down in the dark. What I can't see, can't freak me out.

After about 2 minutes in the hip high snow, the boys pants looked like this:

Which means they were soaking wet in about 10 minutes. To their credit, they didn't mope and complain, the way I would have. They got busy playing. They found this huge tree that had fallen over, and made a tunnel underneath it and used that as their "teleporter". The teleporter is their main wish on their Santa wish list, and I keep trying to tell them that Santa doesn't give scientific inventions to children. He lets the children invent those things themselves. The boys maintain that a teleporter will be under the tree on Christmas morning. I might have to tell them that it is invisible.
This is the entrance to the teleporter in the snow, and below is the exit. If they had been dressed properly, and Sugar wasn't having a fit because she missed her nap, and if Luke had stopped crying for a minute or two, if Shawn didn't have snow in his boots and if I hadn't done a snow angel and gotten my butt all wet and cold, we could have stayed there forever!

I can't claim any credit for this snowman, it was there when we arrived. But I can tell you that before my kids stood next to it, the snowman had a carrot nose, a mouth, a complete line of buttons, and a hat. The snow was too wet and grainy to make a snowman. We couldn't even make snowballs. We just sort of threw this snowy dust on each other.

There weren't any groomed trails or sledding areas. If we had known this, we would have just headed straight up to Big Bear and saved ourselves the hassle. That is a picnic bench there, and the kids loved jumping off of it into the snow. Okay, the boys loved doing that. Sugar liked sitting on top of my right leg, while Luke was zipped into my jacked and resting on my left leg. I was pretty warm--except for my wet toosh.


Even I, Jabba the Hut, could not make a snow angel. The snow was not cooperating this day. And neither was Luke. He thought that it was a perfect time to play patty cake on my face. And I was stuck! The snow went up to my knee, and I didn't want snow in my boots.

After we went into the lodge and changed, we grabbed some hot chocolate and warmed up. We ventured out onto the deck--where our hot chocolate was promptly spilled onto the snow--and enjoyed the view. Cole, naturally, asked what would happen if he jumped over the railing. He also asked why he wasn't allowed to go climbing on the rocks. I asked myself why this child does not understand death, danger or pain?

I think I would rather do the tram in the summer, when the hiking trails are open and there are many more things to do. For future local snow fun, it's Big Bear all the way.

Candy Trains

When I was a kid, I remember drooling over and maybe (once or twice--every year!) secretly pulling off a piece of the roof candy from gingerbread houses. These gingerbread houses were like Martha Stewart good, before there was a Martha Stewart. One was made by our neighbor Wendy. She made zillions of cookies and gingerbread houses, and when I was playing with her kids Katrina and Kyle, I was sure to linger by the gingerbread house and see if there were any loose candies I could quickly grab. The second group, which I could write endlessly about for so many childhood memories, was done by my friends Stephanie and Melissa's parents. Their parents built gingerbread houses that were perfect. Their dad was a home builder, so I guess he had the skills to get the proportion and scale just right. The roof of their gingerbread houses were these multicolored pillow candies--that I have never seen except on the gingerbread house--and they were divine. They were never loose, but once in a while--especially after Christmas, when it wasn't such a big deal anymore--Melissa and I would try to pry some candies off from the back.

In our home, we made candy trains. Not a precise science, and readily open to creative interpretation. Fun to make, fun to eat, and the only prep work is buying the candy. We started building candy trains with the kids a few years ago and we're trying to get a tradition going.

This time, we started off in the backyard at my parents house, but it was like 50 degrees and the wind gusts were coming straight from the North Pole. It was outta control cold for Southern California!


It started out well. Then the kids began eating faster than my mom and I could unwrap and glue together with the royal icing. Seth had it figured out pretty quickly. Stuff his mouth with as much candy as he could, then whine to Grandma that he couldn't do it. All he had to do was sit back and watch.

We decided to move indoors and let everything set up while everyone warmed up by the fire and I made a mad dash to find more candy. 4 stores later, and I was back ready for part 2.

The kids found their creativity while I was gone and made some sweet trains! Seth wanted one of his cars to be carrying the Christmas tree. This is part of his train set:


Sugar made some adjustments and her train and graham cracker/gingerbread house looked great. She was very good at decorating her tree, and making sure that the gingerbread people were a Mommy and a Daddy. She wanted us to put a frosting dress on the Mommy.

After all was said and done, and before they began picking off the candy, we put them all together. All of the candy trains were awesome! A little sibling rivalry broke out between Cole and Seth and they kept trying to one up each other. We finally ran out of just about everything and they had to quit. Cole came up to me and said: "Seth's is better than mine. I thought I was the creative kid in the family. But not today." Such a sad little face, and such a funny moment to me.

Chocolate really does make you happy

Sugar gave Luke a melted Reese's Peanut Butter cup in the car after Church on Sunday. He was so very, very happy! Drat--I HATE taking the car seat apart. It went EVERYWHERE! The chocolate high lasted about 10 minutes. Awesome! I may have to turn Lukey into a diabetic just in order to keep him happy.

Christmas Tree

Every year we drive out to Riverside to a choose and cut your own tree place. The kids love wandering through the "forest" for the perfect tree. Then the boys all get to help saw and cut the tree down. For some reason, Shawn only sawed about 3 times and the tree fell right over. It narrowly missed landing on Sugar and Luke. Usually it takes a lot of muscle to get these suckers to topple. Close call!

The tree was just the right size and shape to be placed in our front window. Being a perfectionist, Cole saw all of the gaps and wholes in the tree. But that all gets covered with ornaments.
The cutting area was up a hill and much further away than the last few years. This meant that the kids had an awesome downhill ride on the cart with the tree. The awesome part most likely was when Shawn went crazy pushing it and pretended he was going to crash them into a mountain of boulders.

Luke didn't like it so much. Sugar wouldn't get anywhere near the prickly tree. She walked way ahead, leading the way and yelling: "Come ON, guys!!!!"
After the guys shook the tree and loaded it in the back of the truck, we all warmed up around the fire. We ate candy canes and talked about the gallons of hot chocolate we would drink when we got home.

Luke's 1st Haircut

BEFORE

AFTER


DURING

I knew the crying would come, and it did. We took Luke to the kid hair salon, with the Thomas Trains, and airplane seats. Cole and Seth were very nostalgic. If I hadn't just butchered their hair myself, I would have coughed up the money to have their hair done. I promised them the next time they need a haircut--IF they have been very good--they can get their haircut here.

The best part (meaning, the best part for me to laugh at later, like 30 years from now) was that once I was in the seat holding Luke, and both the hairstylist and I are sweating buckets trying to keep Luke still, Seth and Sugar have a knock-down, drag-out punching/kicking fight over the video games. My yelling has no effect and I can't get up. They drowned out Luke's' screams, which should tell you something. I wanted to die. Any possible way. Even bloody and painful, I didn't care.

The manager, who probably had a giant bottle of Whisky under the desk for moments like this, ran over and got both Seth and Sugar's attention and worked out their fight. She brought some crazy noisy light up toy over for Luke and it kept him from crying for about 2.3 seconds.

I am not a fan of long hair on boys, even babies. It confuses me. Boy, or girl? It distracts me. Clip it back, put it behind your ears, already! This is the running commentary in my mind when the Deacons are passing the Sacrament every Sunday.

Luke's hair looks much better, and I am happy. I am really hoping that when I go back in a few months, the management will have changed. I'm not too keen on showing my face back there any time soon!

I don't understand this obsession...

With ink on her body! That marker stained her for days! She even put it on her lips--she looked like Morticia Adams from the "Adams Family".

And all of the pens ARE hidden! She'll find these random markers the boys found.