Cohesive Pieces

Good Stuff: Weather permitting

2012-01-26T15:37:00.002-07:00

The last week or so has been a break in the routine we barely had reconstructed after the chaos of the holiday season.

______________________

Madison Turned Three

They had a fun party for all her friends and family at Ninepipes.

Aspen put together an amazing and incredibly cute Nutcracker-themed party.

All of the little girls came dressed up in their tutus and ballerina shoes. A few of the boys were dressed up, too.

Jack

I think her Pinintrest research makes Aspen more than qualified to handle all my children's birthdays. I wouldn't want her to have to wait an entire year to plan another party, anyway.

She had all sorts of fancy food and decorations, cookie decorating, Nutcracker story time, a pinata, and fancy goody bags with each kid's name on them which included little nutcracker coloring books and mini-Nutcracker. Since Lex was very intrigued with nutcrackers this Christams, he was pretty happy to have a little one of his own. It entertained him for few days.

______________________

We did a lot of nothing on MLK Day.

Some years we're good at actually recognizing the holiday.

This year not so much.

I worked in the morning and then left the little boys here playing games while the older people were still lazy and sleeping and ran into Missoula to return Christmas stuff I'd never got around to taking back.

I imagine they were still there an hour later.

Next year we'll do better.

______________________

After two days back to normal, we suddenly got a huge snow storm. . . nearly two feet of snow in some of the higher areas.

So, it was a snow day for everyone.

And then the one snow day turned into two snow days for the kids.

Israel on the sledding hill

Even their vehicles were snowed in.

Which was better than driving them.

There were an awful lot of slide off sorts of car situations.

And piles and piles of snow everywhere, even when it wasn't icy.

______________________

Jenna Turned 10 on that first snow day.

And then she had her party on Saturday.

Ahni & Paisley

Getting a little help from her brothers with the present opening

______________________

And then back out into the snow in the dark

Aodhan and Zoran were sledding partners for most of the evening.

The hill in town was pretty packed down by the end of the weekend. I don't know if it's even gotten so much use in such a short time span!

Ahni & Chula (I think? Maybe that's Gracie under the hair?)

Israel getting ready for a little snowboarding

______________________

And inside, sewing.

When she wasn't hanging out in the snow, Azia was figuring out her Christmas present.

She finally got her sewing machine out and set up. She figured it out pretty fast.

She had quite a collection of creations by the end of the weekend.

______________________

and not really connected to anything else, but

Lex Loves His Orange Dishes

(also, he loves graham crackers and milk)

Graham crackers and milk. . . another good wintertime pastime.

Colorful: Jenna at 10

2012-01-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

Jenna turned 10 on Thursday.

I kept meaning to find sometime to take some pictures of her before her birthday, but we never did.

I love pictures of Jenna, because she quite possibly has the most beautiful combination of natural colors of anyone I know: deep red hair, bright blue eyes, pink lips and glowing skin and freckles.

We had a snow day on her birthday.

I'm a little jealous that my dear niece manages to be so vibrant in 4-5 candid pictures snapped in about 10 seconds at the top of a snow hill, bundled up in all her snow gear.

Happy Birthday Jennavieve!

just a little frosting

2012-01-25T19:56:00.000-07:00

Israel demonstrates the intersection of planking and frosting

If a bandwagon passes by, we just have to jump on. . .

especially if it's taking us somewhere more fun than where we are supposed to be headed.

So rather than cleaning the house or getting back on schedule for the return to school, we took "frosting" pictures Sunday afternoon.

and the boys heckling her from the window

Last week when we had the snowstorm so huge no one could drive anywhere, a couple people in Missoula took a few pictures of themselves out in the snow & ice pretending the weather was nice.

And then they created a facebook page.

I'm pretty sure buried in some box somewhere I have pictures of Cori and I circa 1988 sitting in beach chairs and swimsuits out in the snow, very similar to this version of Azia here, but we didn't have facebook back then.

Less than a week after it was created, the Frosters Anonymous page has over 4, 000 likes and hundreds of pictures.

It's been in the Missoulian, on the local news, and in the University's newspaper.

We posted this picture of Zoran to the page & he had fun watching the dozens of people liking his photo and then was really excited when it was on the news that night.

Azia was mad that I hadn't gotten around to posting hers. I put it on my blog the next day and posted it to the Frosters page. This afternoon her cousin Courtney shared this picture:

Hers showed up as a big half page photo in the University newspaper in Missoula. And then, of course, Zoran was upset because now he thinks it's possible hers might be cooler.

Even Lex (who hates snow, refuses to go sledding, and seems content to stay inside till summer when he can comfortably run around the yard with very few clothes) wanted to get in on it after he watched the older kids.

He had me come take pictures of him. When I ask what he was going to do, he told me, "I'm jumpin' in the snow."

". . . but, I'm leavin' my boots on."

And he did.

He ran to Dad for a high five when he was done.

Now, back to work, I suppose.

If I can get all the kids out of the snow.

24: and still, snowpiles

2012-01-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

But they are melting fast and getting pretty dirty.

That didn't seem to stop many of the kids from including them as a detour on their way home from school.

23: work.

2012-01-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

I guess this isn't really much of a change since most of the classes I've taught in the last couple years have been in this building. But now I officially have an office (or rather a whole "center"?) here and I have to be around much more frequently.

Not having to be anywhere specific very frequently is still probably what I prefer, but after the first couple weeks in the Writing Center this doesn't seem too. I have a lot of work to do, but I have a great staff, flexible hours, and a nine month/ year contract so I'll be able to be at home with my kids through the summer. So far, so good.

22: by the book

2012-01-22T20:52:00.000-07:00

Frosting by the book. . .

Azia joining into the "frosting" craze that has overtaken Montana in this last week as we got buried under more than a foot of snow. People began to amuse themselves by pretending the weather was nice, even though it wasn't, and taking photos.

21: a little help from a little brother

2012-01-21T20:19:00.000-07:00

Jenna's tenth birthday was a couple days ago, but the birthday party was today.

And of course there was cake. . . and little brothers.

iPhone Friday: Snow. And then even more snow.

2012-01-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

There is a definite theme to every picture I have taken with my phone in the last week.

We finally have snow.

Like a lot of snow.

And since we went from no snow to about a foot and a half of snow in one day, I seem to be a little fascinated by all of it.

falling on the windows

accumulating in our unplowed parking lot at the ambulance garage

Piling up higher and higher on the deck outside. (I didn't have a ruler near by to measure how much had fallen in that evening, but it appears it was approximately 1 3/4 diet cokes of accumulation over the course of a few hours.)

And with all the snow, I've spent a lot of time in the ambulance.

It would be nice if people didn't get sick or hurt when it was snowing like this. Or at least less frequently until we get an ambulance with four-wheel drive.

Of course there have also been quite a lot of car accidents with the snow piling up on the roads.

The good part about the bad visibility and nearly impassable roads is that everyone has been going pretty slow, so no one has been hurt.

But, this weather is sure keeping the local tow companies busy.

And the fun part of the intense winter weather is that since the buses not only couldn't drive on many of the county roads but couldn't even get out of where they were parked, the kids got not one, but two snow days.

Which meant a lot of playing in the snow and hanging out with all your friends and cousins who also didn't have school.

laying in the snow (with bright sun in eyes) photo by Zoran

This is Montana, so a snow day here and there isn't uncommon, but because we expect snow, we're usually pretty good at dealing with it.

But this amount of snow has been pretty amazing. I can't remember the last time we had two snow days in a row.

But it's finally stopped snowing. The sun has been out a bit. It was perfect snowman making weather today and the sledding hill in town is packed down smooth and pretty speedy now.

We'll have to see if winter is going to decided to stay around awhile.

"Wonderful, amazing, we-can't-go snow!"

2012-01-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

We've finally got a bit of snow around here.

We did get one pretty good snowfall to give us a white Christmas, but that's about it. For the past week we've had reports that there was supposedly big snow coming, and then Dev called me on Wednesday to tell me I should try to leave work early because he was looking at the weather reports. Then he started texting me satellite images of the storm moving in to convince me.
On the way home I stopped at the store and realized it was coming down pretty thick and heavily.

And then it just keep coming.

We began to get buried.

The back deck. That huge 15 foot Christmas tree is still taking up most of the space, but you can't see much of it anymore.

Before 9:00 pm the college had decided they'd be closed the next day.

The kids started getting excited about maybe getting a snow day, too.

Snow Day by Lester Laminack.. . . my kids dug put this timely book as they planned what they'd do if they got a snow day

By morning the ambulance had already responded to three vehicles that rolled and slide off the roads that were becoming increasingly impassable.

The kids did get their snow day.

Although the handful of city roads were getting plowed, they were covered a again a few hours later each time. The school buses couldn't even get out from where they were parked, let alone get out to all the country roads that were covered in more than a foot of snow and had yet to be plowed.

As my kids were reading a snow day book, this description seemed about right for things around here lately:

It's definitely been that "wonderful, amazing, we-can't go" sort of snow.

My brother's snowpack on Thursday. . . he spent a few hours shoveling. . .

They were still digging the school buses out Thursday afternoon, but that didn't stop the kids from getting out and enjoying the snow.

Zoran clears a little snow so he can use the slide in our front yard

I sort of doubted, even with all our four-wheel drive vehicles, we could get a few miles up into the mountains to some of our favorite sledding hills. Or, if we did get in, I wasn't optimistic about getting back out. Luckily, the one right in town, wasn't too bad.

The sledding hill serves as the community outdoor amphitheater for most of the year.

The stairs made for interesting sled jumps.

Or sometimes just giant holes where you could get stuck.

Azia and Jenna tried out all sorts of teamwork approaches to the sledding.

Israel. Overseeing things.

Eldon & Bryce

Iyezk trying to catch the girls

The hill isn't too steep, so it's not the most exciting sledding hill, but it's about perfect for figuring out snowboarding.

It didn't really ever stop snowing all day Thursday, and many of the roads still hadn't been cleared by that evening.

So, by Thursday night the kids already knew they were getting snow day number two on Friday.

So, it was yet another day of sledding, hot chocolate, books and movies. (And, for Azia, a lot of sewing and crafting).

I think it's going to be difficult to get back into that routine where we actually go to school everyday.

For more than two days in a row.

20: snow piles

2012-01-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

It finally stopped snowing and started melting, but we still have giant snow piles– some as tall as buildings– scattered all around the town.

19: Snow Day

2012-01-19T18:12:00.000-07:00

All the local schools closed, many of the roads not yet visited by snow plows, and nearly 20 inches of fresh snow.

You just can't waste a day like that.

18: Cold

2012-01-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

After not much of a winter so far, our snow seems to have arrived.

It's been really cold for a few days, but this afternoon it started snowing and hasn't really stopped. By the evening they'd already delayed some of the start times for schools in the area and cancelled all classes at the college.

17: MHS Wrestling defeats Arlee 42-24

2012-01-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

The Mission-Charlo wrestlers won another duel (against Arlee) tonight and remain unbeaten so far this season in duel competitions.

16: morning video games

2012-01-16T21:19:00.001-07:00

15: Madison is Three!

2012-01-15T23:31:00.003-07:00

Madison had a very cool Nutcracker-themed party with all sorts of family and friends and a whole collection of very beautiful little sugar plumed fairies dancing through all the festivities.

She was even wearing the skirt Azia made her to complete her outfit!

14: more tattoos

2012-01-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

This is one of the kids' favorite activities to do with their dad. I have no idea where or why it started, but they do it all the time. (And I wonder why I can't stop them from writing all over themselves. . . as if their parents' regular tattoos weren't enough. . .)

Another reason I only buy washable markers. . .

13: appliances vs. kids (really not much of a competition)

2012-01-13T19:02:00.004-07:00

One reason I liked this style refrigerator better than the last one we had is that with that one my children would open the door and step inside to look around – often enough that they actually cracked the inside floor of the refrigerator. I realize the other day now Lex just pulls out the freezer a bit and climbs on up to look around. Apparently he can work with any design.

And notice the nice full sized hand print? That looks about his size as well. There is a matching one on the other door. I wash this thing down every day. . . should've gone with the Clean Steel I guess.

12: Sunset over Ninepipes

2012-01-12T18:54:00.002-07:00

My drive to work is only about twenty minutes and I generally hate driving at all as well as these short days where it's easy to spend all the daylight hours working inside somewhere.

But, the advantage to this time of year is both the sunrise morning drives and sunset evening ones are both pretty beautiful.

11: new year, new job

2012-01-11T19:18:00.000-07:00

First day today as director of the Writing Center at the college today.

It's very strange (though also nice) to start a job without doing a whole lot of work before I even officially begin. I'm too used to teaching where I have a huge amount of work before I show up for the first day. This new job does double the number of classes I'm officially teaching this quarter since I now have to suppervise all the tutors working in the center and their progress through various certification levels, but those are all much less structured and much of the work will be done while I'm there during the day. So, even that is a whole different sort of work.

Really, day one was just showing up and beginning to figure out what all the days after this one might need to look like. My to-do list is growing pretty quickly, so I'm sure the calmness won't last. It was a good way to begin though.

10: another fiire break

2012-01-10T14:52:00.001-07:00

I don't like that people need ambulances and fire engines, but when I've been sitting at a computer working for a few hours, I do like the change of pace that working with those crews brings.

This morning after a few hours of reading I spent a few hours with a eight month old baby– sick enough to need a visit to the doctor, but not sick enough to be real miserable and still happy enough to babble and "talk" with me throughout our drive to the hospital.

Later this afternoon someone's shed went up in flames, but the fire crew got the burn out so quickly the property owners didn't lose any of the other buildings right up against that burning shed.

Sometimes when you spend hours each day working with ideas, it's nice to get back to the practical world for a bit too, and remember there are a lot of situations where the work you do matters immediately.

9: first morning back on campus

2012-01-09T09:35:00.001-07:00

View out the window via iphone after my first class of the new quarter.

There are many things about staying home with lots of little people that are chaotic about mornings and getting everyone dressed and feed and all of that. Still, it's nice and cozy to hang out in your pajamas (till at least after the sun comes up) fire blazing in the fireplace and the world still frosty outside.

After this longish winter break it was so odd to go out to the car this morning– the world still completely dark at a little after seven in the morning– and drive away to work, the full moon still following me all the way to campus.

8: sunday afternoon

2012-01-08T14:29:00.000-07:00

There is nothing good about this photo I found on my phone except it sort of feels exactly like every Sunday afternoon lately.

I have all sorts of things I think I'm going to get done all week and they get pushed later and later until the day is half over Sunday and I still have a load of laundry somewhere under that body on the coach and spilling onto the floor. And I have a pile of papers somewhere under the people laying on that laundry spilling onto the floor. Or maybe the papers are being trampled by Zoran bouncing around cheering for whatever football team is playing.

Luckily, I think Lex is here to save the day. He seems to be flying through the air only in his two-sizes-too-small underwear (on backwards) because, as he yells, "You can see my buttchecks!!"

And if you look closely he has a gun tucked in one side and a knife in the other.

Even if I haven't accomplished much today, at least I've been reminded never fly around showing off your buttchecks unarmed.

7: "Hey look, you're on my picture."

2012-01-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

Lex showing KaNana the picture of her on the Christmas card we still have hanging up

Lex and Nana had a little reunion tonight while Azia watched Gwen's girls. Lex and KaNana have spent most days together the last few years, but now Lex is off to Headstart & Nana has been hanging out with her mom and her other female cousins during the school days.

But, all those girls aren't as much fun when it comes to boxing, MMA, indoor bike racing, monster truck crashing, and giant laundry mountain climbing. KaNana came with her purple cat whiskers and eyebrows drawn on and Lex already had his own Captain American shield colored on his chest, so they were ready to go as soon as she arrived. (Many of the other cousins just don't share the enjoyment these two seem to get out of decorating themselves with markers.)

There were only a few breaks in the all evening activities for milk and lemonade out of fluorescent straws. Apparently it was an evening that called for fancy straws.

6: a little documenting

2012-01-06T23:20:00.000-07:00

We're going to attempt to do a simple family journal/ scrapbook this year. We'll see if we can make it longer than a month or so. It's hard to keep up any more little things like this when we're so busy. I'm trying to figure out how to build in some writing practice at home for my kids that doesn't feel too much like more school, since I'm pretty disappointed about where they are as far as writing skills right now. I'm pretty sure Israel is actually weaker than he was a year or so ago. Homeschooling seems like a more and more likely option at some point--at least for a few months to try to get them caught up again. Having a job makes figuring the scheduling of things like that tricky.

Also, it makes figuring out dilemmas like how to change light bulbs in my house tricky, too, so it appears I'm making Azia write late into the night by the light of a small lamp. Really, I just have no idea how to change light bulbs sixteen feet up in the air. I'll remember to take these sorts of details into account next time I design a living room.

sparse spattering of phone photos

2012-01-06T02:38:00.001-07:00

New Years Eve flag football

I wish I was more enthusiastic about this end of January onto February time of year.

We had a full Christmas and a busy New Year but then it's been back to school and routines and pretty calm and uneventful around here.


New Year's Eve car wreck: getting patients up from the bottom of the embankment 20 yards or so below the highway where their car came to a stop, upside down. Both passengers will be fine. Eventually. And after many years of plastic surgery. Sometimes I think I should bring my nearly high school (and driving age) son on calls like this. It's one thing to tell people about the dangers of drinking and driving and yet another to see what the end of a fancy New's Year's celebration can look like when you make that choice.

I've been trying to get things organized for the beginning of the new quarter and do some cleaning and organizing I didn't get to before Christmas.

I have been very unsuccessful at maintaining a sense of normalcy when it comes to routine.

I found myself covering fabric bulletin boards at 3:30 am once. Another time I came back from an ambulance call at 2:3O in the morning and started working on a shuttefly photobook. I started to get tired when I realized it was getting light out.

So this means on more than one day this week Lex and I may have been still hanging out in bed watching Captain America at like ten am– the rest of the kids and Dev off to respectable ways to spend the day three hours earlier.

Once we got up nice and early and got the kids off to school and got lots of work accomplished: a closet cleaned out, his bedroom and the kitchen scrubbed, dinner in the crockpot.

And then took an hour and a half nap before lunch.

At least the other three kids are back on schedule.

The week prior I was feeling bad about my lack of structure when it occurred to be as I was reading at almost two a.m. that my teenage son was doing some sort of reading of his own beside me. I sent him to bed, but then noticed he was still talking to other people on facebook for at least another hour or so.

But by this time I was already all the way upstairs in my office and his room seemed so far away. I still have this pet peeve about communicating electronically with others in the same home and I also apparently some tendencies toward laziness, so I choose to ignore it.

And there were at least 4-5 other respectable teenagers online later than him that night. For some reason that confirmation that other young people all over town were also not keeping normal hours made me feel better.

Sometimes I'm pretty sure I'm not quite mature enough to be in charge of other people.

Also, not quite mature enough to be prompt about my work obigations. . . two new classes to pull together plans for and write syllabi for sometime in the next 24 hours. . .

5: what passes for entertainment

2012-01-05T22:51:00.000-07:00

I usually keep a small box of these packing things from packages I get to use when I have to mail things. Lex is always trying to pop them as soon as I open anything. Since I had a big bunch after all the mailing going on before Christmas (and don't plan to mail much soon) I let him have the big box full to destroy. He was pretty excited. And his older siblings convinced him to share. Who knew loud noises could be so exciting?

some favorite 2011 Photos

2012-01-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

First day of 2011. . . our family Polar Plunge, -7 down on the lake, and we had to walk across that ice in the foreground to get into the water. This year it was over 30 degrees.

Iyezk & Christina getting ready for a little skating

Lex and Superman. We've definitely been through various superhero modes and obsessions throughout the year: capes, action figures, shields, masks. . .

Azia with Tami, Zoe and Sophia during our Florida trip this spring. Yay for great friends who don't mind house guests.

Comfort and his little sister Zhane doing the orange dance at the spring Powwow at the school.

A sports picture of Zoran. I have any number of other baseball, basketball, soccer, or football pictures I could have thrown in here. This kid would play ball all day if he could.


Dev and Zoran in the Badlands

Azia on her 9th birthday. . .all outfitted and ready for her zebra-themed cheer party. We've had an awful lot of zebra stripes around here this year.

Jaspen and her little boy Jhett at her wedding this summer.

Azia hanging out at the lake.

Aodhan getting a little boost from Israel during our apple picking/ cider making day.

Sunrise at the Bison Range this fall.

Israel fighting in the Smoker. (He's already excited for this year.)

Renee, Canyon and Zoran watching Canyon's big brother wrestle.

4. home movies

2012-01-04T23:04:00.000-07:00

Dev dug out his old video camera and he and the kids were watching Israel-age-two era footage.

Israel at two looked an awful lot like Lex at age two– so much so that Lex would become very angry (and apparently pull the hair of) anyone who suggested that the little boy on the tape from the year 2000 was anyone but little Lex (who was born in 2007).

3: getting organized. slowly.

2012-01-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

I spent a large chuck of the night trying to create a new organizational system to keep meals, chores, appointments and activities for everyone all clear to everyone in the house and running smoothly. (This proves to be more complicated than you'd think--for me at least--I've been "thinking" about set ups for like 6 months without yet exactly finding one that seems a good fit.) Anyway, I finally just decided to go with version 1.0 since we've outgrown what I had been doing and I figure I'll revamp after a few months. But before I even got it all put together Lex needed more room for drawing superheros & erased all the dates off my calendar (maybe switching to a whiteboard wasn't such a good idea for this piece). That wasn't a big deal and it seemed harmless enough to let him continue his picture. Then I went to print the job descriptions and get the new calendar from upstairs and he continued his superhero mural down the wall. He also drew an approximately six-foot captain American shield on the living room floor.

I probably should make my first revision to the daily duties making one person's main responsibility monitoring Lex. Clearly, I'm not up to the task.

Into 2012!

2012-01-02T13:55:00.001-07:00

We started off New Years Eve with some flag football since there was no ice for hockey. I really prefer the snow and ice for this time of year. . . but these pictures are misleading. It was still pretty cold out there.

My fingers were frozen.

Probably could have solved that with more playing and less photographing and possibly some gloves.

So either Azia has on the wrong color flags or she forgot the rules to the game.
Or possibly she just really likes the idea of chasing down her teacher.

Zoran was so excited to play. I heard him talking to Dev before they left: "So last year I was only six, but now that I'm seven that means I'm big enough to play?"

Unfortunately you don't get to be involved in a lot of the big plays when you are only seven and about 40 pounds and playing with a lot of big people who are much older than seven and weigh much more than 40 pounds.

He didn't really pout, but you could tell he wasn't too happy with not being more directly involved.

He was pretty excited about the plays he was in on though.

And he's still talking about that interception he "almost" had.

After football the kids and I headed up to St. Mary's Lake for dinner and sledding.

Lex and Kylie are the group's most unenthusiastic sledders this year.

St. Mary's might have the best sledding hill around.

And even though it's not that many miles away, it is still like a 40 minute drive in with the snow (yes there's still snow up that high!) and small, slick mountain roads, so there wasn't anyone else around but our gang.

Which is still a pretty big gang.

We made it back into town before midnight and the kids' had a cousins sleepover.

Complete with superheroes

and movie watching.

The next day we headed up to the lake for out annual Polar Plunge.

Lex doesn't like sledding but for some reason was excited about jumping in the cold lake? He didn't want to wait for the rest of the group.

It was even warmer Sunday than New Year's Eve– a balmy 34 degrees. . . nothing like last year where it was -7 below down there and we had to walk over the ice to get to the water.

Azia doing a temperature check

Still, pretty cold though.

The gang getting ready to head in.

I think we had a bigger group with the warmer weather though. Even most of the little kids jumped in. (Not just the crazy, little boys like last year.)

Israel, Daij and Shawncee showing off their muscles

Zoran and Bryce trying to warm up

a picture someone took of me with Israel's phone

and the picture I was taking with my camera:

Afterwards we stopped at Pizza Hut to eat. We basically took over the restaurant. I think someone said there were forty-some people in our group?

And now on to the rest of the year!

2: Azia's night list

2012-01-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

I spent the entire day cleaning Azia's room.

It was awful. She cleans her own room normally, but if she doesn't do it every single day she is so messy and busy (with supplies) that it quickly spins out of control and is too overwhelming for her to handle. This happened somewhere near the end of November and I haven't had time to help her since then. So once the space under the bed and in the bottom of the closet got full, the edges of the room started to collect random things. I could do a small book on the strangeness I find every time I help her clean.

But, this list explained a lot. If Azia's room is clean, she'll often spend hours in there by herself. If she's busy with all these items on her night list, no wonder she doesn't have time to put anything away. That's leave no time to choreograph a new dance or practice juggling!

1: Polar Plunge

2012-01-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

First day of the New Year!

Similar photo as last year, much different weather.

(I think Becky took this photo with Israel's phone. I found it on my phone, but I was on the other side taking pictures and then already in the water at this point!)

New Year's Eve Sledding

2011-12-31T23:26:00.000-07:00

Daytime football, nighttime campfire and sledding and home with all the kids for the switch over to 2012.

Good Stuff: last odds and ends of the year

2011-12-30T22:29:00.000-07:00

Azia always loves a reason to dress up. She came home after school and got all ready for her Christmas concert.

It was at 7:00pm.

I had no time to even look at most of the photos I was taking in December, so the last couple days I've been switching back and forth between cleaning and organizing and my house and my computer. I have much work still to do on both, but it's almost back to work.

Anyway, as I work backwards posting things from different activities from the last month, I've been collecting a few things it seems I've skipped over.

___________

Caroling

outside the assisted living center

I ended up doing quite a lot of hayriding/ Christmas caroling this year. All sort of by accident. It's nice we have all sorts of groups in town that like this business of spreading Christmas cheer.

singing to residents

Ahni was very into naughty and nice lists this year. Not sure if she has an in with Santa or not, but luckily I was always on her nice lists.

___________

Lex the baker

Lex loves baking. Cooking or any kind really, but when we do baking things he can add all sorts of ingredients, so I think that's his favorite.

We did tons of baking this month– something every couple days. (This is a lot for me, because some months I only get real dinner made about that often.

And of course we always seem to do this right after he's taken a bath.

My timing isn't so great.

___________

Zoran's class

I've been going in and helping out in Zoran's class a few mornings a week since my teaching schedule this last quarter has been pretty flexible and because I needed to do something positive with the school since I've been completely angry and disappointed with every dealing I've had there this year. Zoran's class seemed like a good place to start. I love his teacher and I love this group of kids! Of course four of them are his cousins, so I might be a little biased to begin with, but he has always had such a fun class. I've know most of the kids since Headstart and am friends with most of the parents of those who didn't go to Headstart.

the whole group reading on their walk down to the computer lab

It's fun to watch them all grow up together.

___________

Azia's Art Museum Field Trip

Azia's fourth grade TEA group (which used to be TAG–talented and gifted–though I have no idea what TEA stands for?) joined one of the fifth grade classes for a field trip to the Missoula Art Museum to see the Ansel Adams exhibit. The fourth graders had been reading about Ansel Adams and looking at his work for a few weeks leading up to the trip.

Breeze checking out the photographs

They had a collection of docents who gave the kids tours of all the different work on display at the museum and then had an Adams-inspired art project for the kids to work on.

This group of kids really impressed me. They were smart. They were knowledgeable about the art and all sorts of related issues. They were also interested in learning more and asked great questions, and were very respectful of the speakers and the building. It's always nice when that's the case.

Azia working on the print-making step in her project.

All the kids art hanging, ready for their critique

After lunch at the museum, they took the kids to check out the University on the way back. We mainly did a little mini-tour of the UC.

I think my favorite part of the UofM stop was watching the kids on the elevator.

I forgot how new and exciting small things like this can be. (Especially when you live in a town that might not even have one elevator? There must be one somewhere, though I honestly can't think of any buildings that have one.)

___________

Ornament Making

We made three or four different sorts of ornaments this year. These were going to all be gingerbread looking ones, but then I left the kitchen while Azia and Zoran were painting.

They turned out a lot more colorful.

___________

School Christmas Concerts

I think the school was seeing if they could create the most awful lighting situation possible at the Christmas concerts. Low light + harsh spotlights on some random kids + strange colored lights on others? Photography was a bit hopeless.


Israel is in there somewhere (Santa hat directly above Santa himself) though nearly hidden by the combination of pretty girls and bad light.

The high school choir always does a great job with their performances.

Azia and Zoran on the way to their concert a few days later:

my little drummer boy (okay so maybe it's xylophone or something)

Making music with his buddies: Lanie, Rodney, Zoran and Bryce

Lettie and Ahni: stylish sisters

___________

Beautiful Winter

I love Christmas lights in the house, late at night when everyone else is sleeping and the whole house is clean and calm. One of my favorite things ever.

And also, I love beautiful winter skies and light.

___________

Lex

Entertaining himself with the old computer.

He also really liked the new one, though he hasn't quite figured out how to use it. Yesterday I came in and he was watching this Spanish YouTube tutorial on how to make leather slippers. (As close as I could tell. . . also I'm sure it had something to do with a grandmother, but I'm not sure what. My Spanish is not so stellar.)

Or maybe he has figured it out. I never really know what's going on with this guy.

He also really loves the ipad: movies, recording studio apps, drawing...

Also math.

But we still have a little work to do in that area.

___________

Rain. Panning for Gold

Israel got a gold pan for Christmas. Any day now we will certainly strike it rich.

He's doing all the actual panning, but I say "we" because I've told him he has my support, so it's only right that he share his fortune once he finds it.

Duke in his jail. He stands on the doghouse and puts his front paws over the top edge when he sees us coming down the driveway. I'm just waiting for him to just jump out one of these days rather than wait for someone to let him out. I'm pretty sure he could do it. He is growing so fast. He's only 7 months old and a monster.

A monster who likes to hug (even though he isn't supposed to) and who is just about exactly the same size as 9-year-old Azia.

Rain, shorts. . . hardly seems like December.

So, we're taking down Christmas. . . on to the new year.

undecorating

2011-12-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

I usually sort of like the Christmas stuff around till close to New Years. This year it's all just driving me crazy. Maybe because we have weird spring-like weather and its seems like Christmas was so long ago. Or maybe it's because we never really finished decorating to begin with, so all the tubs are still in my laundry room. I just want it all gone and my house clean. I'm afraid I'm going to run out of time to get it all back in order before we're all back to school.

So, I helped the little boys take down this mini-tree and Israel and I got the big one out of the house, but now everything still isn't out away so I've once again just made the mess worse at this point.

InstaFriday: mostly Lex . . .

2011-12-30T03:39:00.000-07:00

Hanging out waiting for me during my appointment at the eye doctor. . . back in the old days when Israel was my little sidekick I brought regular old books to keep him busy during things like this. Spoiled youngest child get to play with the ipad.

It seems the last few weeks most of the photos on my phone are of Lex. I think this is partially because both of us had a week of school when everyone else didn't, so we were back to hanging out a lot. Like 24 hours a day.

Also, he's just crazy.


I keep thinking he's going to grow out of this destruction phase. Not yet. The other day I left my stamp pad on the end table and when I was in the other room he stamped his stomach and covered his arms. I took it away and went to put it upstairs, and came back down he'd cut open his stuffed Shriek doll and was tearing out all the stuffing, throwing it all over the room. When he saw how upset I was, he just said, "I can fix it." He put on Shriek's miniature brown vest, stuffed all the stuffing back in the hole, and slapped a piece of duct table across the hole. "See? All fixed." The next day he showed up for room cleaning with this mustache. "I wanted to be the bad guy." I think his sister helped with the make up. Sometimes he just leaves me speechless. Today we were getting ready to go play flag football and I noticed he had orange marker all over his face. I asked him why he did it. "I had a scrap right there (pointing to his forehead) so I covered it up." And as I washed it off I noticed he was right. There was a little scrap, but his camouflage had been effective. You didn't notice it at all under all the orange marker.

Yesterday I walked into my bedroom and he was sitting on my bed, watching something on the ipad wearing no clothes. I told him he had to get dressed and he came out of his room wearing about four shirts, a few pairs of pjs and shorts and some underwear on top (and on his head). I guess there's no middle ground.

He was also my fabric shopping partner a few times over the last few weeks. Apparently fabric shopping is more fun with a shield.

Actually is seems everything is better with a shield. He also found the drawing app on the ipad and can draw pretty good Captain America stick figures.

A few other people did sneak into the pictures occasionally.

My strong boys.

Iyezk & Lex. Preschool buddies.


Sometimes they definitely look like they're related.

Azia hanging out all fancy looking and sparkly. It sort of looks like that's a fake backdrop out the window.

Azia and my Grandma Elda. I love this picture.

Of course I'd probably love it more if it was taken with my real camera with some real light, but I love that while we're visiting at 11:00 at night I can just take my phone out of my pocket and get a quick picture like this of them sitting there together which I wouldn't have otherwise.

My fuzzy boots drying by the fire. (This kindling rack is not necessarily for boot drying nor stray Christmas tree bulb collecting, but since we never have wood in it. . .)

I've thought these boots were really ugly for years. Then I made the mistake of trying some on about three months ago and I've hardly taken them off since. The are so warm and fuzzy and awesome. And, I'm going to completely wear them out and have to buy some really expensive, ugly boots all over again next fall because I keep doing things like wearing them out on ambulance calls and soaking them. Or I leave them unattended in my house and one of my children steals them and wears them around.

And as a grand finale, my dear husband has himself a snugglie.

Thank you, Nick Dinnell. All he needed was something that makes it more appealing to hang out on the couch! (Our children have also taken to stealing this.)

December Rain

2011-12-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

So, no snow to try out the new Christmas sled.

Good thing it also works well as a rain shelter.

images of Christmas

2011-12-29T00:59:00.002-07:00

. . . nearly a whole month since I've last sorted through pictures on my phone!

25 Days of Presence and Presents

2011-12-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

As I was just sorting through my phone photos from the last month and finding all these blurry and random images the kids and I took, I felt a little better about just not ever really getting to so many of the Christmas activities I wanted to do.

Even though I didn't really photograph it well or completely (or even with my real camera) this is my favorite Christmas project from this year. This is something, in some form, that we'll definitely figure out how to do again.

The idea was simple. The kids and I decided that we'd give someone a gift every day in December leading up to Christmas.

Then we did.

What we did was very random and a little different for each day. We did a lot of baking: cookies of all kinds, brownies, rice crispie treats, banana bread, a few meals for families with moms who had jobs and kids and classes and surely a lot of other things going on during finals week. Some were really small gifts; others more substantial. "Instant movie nights" (a DVD and a few packages of microwave popcorn) were a favorite as were rootbeer floats. We collected a few favorite books and the kids made some stuffed toys, baby blankets, a few little tutus, and a couple of kid-sized aprons. We also gave gift certificates for the handful of local restaurants and coffee shops in town. One afternoon we went around to all our local businesses and got about $30-40 worth of gift certificates from each one. Some days or for some families we combined a few of these different things.

I tried to keep much of our spending local, but our town is so small we did buy a few books, movies, games and fabric for some of the projects in Missoula since none of that is available here.

How we chose people was random, too. Sometimes kids were excited about a specific person or an idea of something they wanted to make and planned ahead and worked on it for a few days. Other days they'd come home from school and something they saw or heard earlier in the day made them want to do something for someone who they thought could use a reminder someone was thinking about them. We did big families, young couples, grandparents of some of the kids' friends, and young single people. Some people we knew really well, some we were even related to, and some we only knew a little. Some were fairly close neighbors, some lived a few miles out of town, and we even mailed a couple anonymous packages. The only consistent piece was that we do something nice for someone else every day without expecting anything in return.

The kids actually initially wanted to stop and tell everyone Merry Christmas each time we delivered something (which is another option we might try next year) but this time around we ended up doing everything anonymously. The kids were on board because they liked the challenge of trying to make it through the whole month without getting caught. I liked the idea of people having no way to feel like they needed to do something in return. We've also had such an awful wave of crime and theft in town lately, I wanted people to have good things to say about what was happening in our community to balance out all the negative, even if just a little.

Lex really wanted to cut the onions for one of the meals we were making. He was really annoyed that it made his eyes burn once I let him. And he also was really annoyed that I kept telling him not to touch his eyes with the onion hands. And then he was annoyed when I suggested he stop cutting the onions. A viscous cycle.

I initially underestimated how much time this would take. (I underestimate the amount of time required for every single thing I do, so this wasn't surprising.) Even on the nights we didn't cook or sew, there was still putting together whatever else we were going to drop off and the driving around and sneakily figuring out how to leave our packages without getting caught by quick door answerers or loud dogs or bright motion lights. We ended up spending at least a half an hour together every day, some times four or five times that. The time it took made it harder to fit it in every day, but also even more worthwhile than I was expecting because we did build giving, and talking about giving, and thinking about how to do nice things for others into every day. (We did miss two days because of our over totally over-scheduled days--which really bothered the kids!-- but then we just did two or three people the next day. A few other days we did extras as well. I think we did about 30 people/ families by the time we finished.)

Convincing Dad to help with the blanket knots. . . too many make your hands tired!

I loved the way it influenced the kids' thoughts and actions throughout the entire month. There were those days when they'd come home with ideas for what they wanted to do. Other days they'd come home ready to come up with plan because it became an important part of their day. They talked all the time about who they want to give things to and what they wanted to give, but very little about what they hoped to get for Christmas themselves.

I realized in the middle of the month that Azia had even started doing a little mini-giving project with her little brother. She was sitting at the table on evening and asked me, "What can I do for Lex's seventh day of Christmas?" I asked her what she meant and she explained that she made him something every day and then wrapped it so he could have a little present every day leading up to Christmas.

Lex fabric shopping (with homemade Captian America shield in hand). He went right to the zebra print and wanted to make something for his sister.

We did spend a few hundred dollars on this which is a pretty big chunk of money for us– more than we often spend on the kids' Christmas presents. This fall right before school started I convinced the kids to get on board with cleaning and clearing out their things and doing a yard sale. They never like to get rid of their stuff, so the deal was they'd get some of the money from the things they sold. I also sold some furniture and baby equipment and computer things and we ended up making much, much more than I ever expected. We had enough to get each of the kids a new outfit for school with nearly three hundred dollars left. Once we had that unexpected money, we changed the plan of giving the money to the kids and they decided they'd all put in their share and we'd put it away for names off the giving tree once Christmas came around. Each year my kids want to take a name off the tree, but we never really have the money for a very nice gift.

Around Thanksgiving we changed the plan one more time. We did buy one big gift: an American girl doll for a girl we knew wanted one and probably wouldn't otherwise be getting one this year.

Azia ready to wrap. I used to think these things were ridiculously expensive (which they are) but then my daughter who spends any money she gets immediately and who hates work so much she still has a breakdown every time she needs to clean and who never even played with dolls when she was younger, worked extra jobs for relatives and saved her own money for more than six months to buy one. (She has done nothing like this before or since.) That was two years ago and she still plays with it all the time and is constantly designing clothes for it. The things sure seem to make girls happy.

The rest of the money we used on the gift certificates, so the only real direct increase in normal December expenses was a few games and books and all the meals and baking we did.

Even though we did spend a lot of money, I think we could do something nearly as cool without spending much at all. (Though, if I was going to overspend on Christmas, I'm glad this is where we did it.) It was good for my kids to give away things of monetary value. A few times they suggested maybe we could keep a certain movie because they love it and just make that person more cookies instead? Or how about we use that certificate for us for dinner because we never eat out? But as soon as we talked about how cool it was to give those things to some other people who might not have them either, they were even more excited to drop them off.

Zoran and Israel off for some sneaky night operations across the field. Israel did much of the delivery work since he was a bit faster and not opposed to running a quarter mile or so back to the car in some cases. Teenagers sure come in handy.

But even if we had zero money to spend, which could very well be the case next year, I think it would be just as cool to do something as simple as just have all of us leave someone different a note every day telling them something as basic as we're thinking of them and we think they're sort of awesome. That was pretty much the unstated message with each thing we delivered this month, and I think as much as the gifts, people just appreciated that someone was thinking about them. Or maybe we'll do a family challenge that each one of us will do one small act of service for someone else each day.
(There are a lot of us, so with either of these approaches we'd hit a few hundred people over the course of the month!)

Lex trying to make his quick get away. He was upset a few times when the older kids wouldn't let him do some of the treat drops with them (he isn't quite up to their level of either speed or distance). But on one of the last days we had him do the drop off at one of our accomplice's... they let us use their driveway to as a shortcut for some of our early missions so they knew what we were up to. I thought he could just bring it to them and tell them Merry Christmas, but he wanted to be sneaky like the older kids!

All and all, it was a great way to spend more time with the kids really enjoying what the Christmas season should be about. Now we have eleven more months to think of what we'll do next year.

on break

2011-12-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

Hanging out: Azia doing crafty things, Lex still eating popcorn balls in his underwear and following the bigger kids around, and Zoran checking out stats on baseball cards.

here's the solution

2011-12-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

posing for a webcam pic

There was some discussion about what picture to include for the "owner" when setting up their new computer.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-27T00:45:00.000-07:00

Azia, getting her correspondence with Santa organized on Christmas Eve.

Christmas

"is a glorious time of the year, simple in origin, deep in meaning,
beautiful in tradition and custom, rich in memories,

and charitable in spirit." -Thomas S. Monson

Azia reading her part. Her fellow angel Jenna looking on.

I suppose it's a little relaxing to have the chaos of Christmas behind us until next year, but also always a little sad too. There's so much good about this time of year and so much anticipation with all the kids to all the fun traditions and activities it's sad to see it come to an end.

Christmas Eve Tradition: the kids' live nativity. The oldest trio of boys got bumped to the audience this year, but some of the younger ones read pretty well now, so they had scriptures to narrate the story.

They did a really nice job with the Christmas story.

And after it was over, we had a few wise men who like dramatic exits. That crown seems to be flying through the air.

And you all have a Texas longhorn and Superman in your nativity, too, right? (Sometimes bargains are necessary to secure happy participation.)

And then there was this:

Four generations of family all in one room. My grandma was there at my parents' for dinner, along with all five of us kids, our spouses and all of our kids.

We have the best sort of Christmas excess.

This was one of our presents for Grandma this year. The kids all recorded little clips about their favorite things about her. Eldon put it together into this movie:

There were a lot of Christmas laughs and secrets and presents and an exciting Truth or Dare app that kept about a dozen little girls entertained and giggling for the better part of an hour. And then all these little people in Christmas attire and little people reading the Christmas story (as soon as Gwen released them. . . someone has to be in charge of these things.)

Israel

Zoran reading the note in his present from Yaya: "Your life is important! Write about it."

Mom gave all the grandkids journals for Christmas. Azia and Zoran were both very excited and got to work writing right away. Azia also wrote messages to Santa in hers and left it with the milk and cookies she left for him. Zoran had to find the perfect spot for his (right next to the computer in the library) so he could find it each day after school to write about what he did.

And then we had this sort of jarring interruption to the evening:

Michael surveying the scene

Our ambulances needed to respond to a car wreck in Dixon and we had six of our volunteer crew (which is more than half) all at our Christmas Eve gathering. Unfortunately, this almost seems like part of our tradition, too. My parents were both on the ambulance when we were all growing up and we have always had a good portion of our holidays interrupted like this.

Of course the timing is always disappointing when anyone has to leave in the middle of meals but as much as all of this gathering is an important part of Christmas, if you really want to try to remember the charitable spirit of the season, it's a little hard not to go when someone clearly needs a little help. Food reheats, presents don't go anywhere and while some families are spending the evening in the hospital, we get to come back to all this:

All the cousins. Except maybe Bryce? I can't seem to find him in there anywhere. Is he buried under someone?

I love that my kids don't take having all this family around forgranted. They love their cousins. We took this picture of them right before we all headed home. A little later when I was cleaning up the kitchen I found this note Zoran wrote to Bryce:

And then my kids let me take pictures of them in their matching Christmas pajamas.

I told the younger three to sit beside Israel (who was already sitting right there) and sit like he was. Zoran ignored me, Azia's hands-on-elbow looks sort of like she's going to punch someone, and Lex has an angelic praying sort of pose.

It seems when life is this good you sort of owe it to the universe to help others where you can.

As the kids got ready for bed, Azia got cookies and milk and notes ready for Santa.

Zoran had written a letter to Santa a few weeks ago promising cookies and beer (he is his father's son. . . ) so he added to Azia's set up.

Azia not only left a note for Santa, she also gave him a pretty extensive lists of tasks. It took up quite a few pages in her new journal. She wanted to know who was on the naughty & nice lists (there was a list of people with boxes to check), a questionnaire about Santa's favorites (colors, foods, and so on) and place for him to sketch a picture of him and Azia together, instructions for him to build her something with those mold-able, bending blue things beside the notebook in the photo that she got from someone, and also a page where he was to write a story.

And then in the morning, they were all up early for conquering the presents.

Lex is expanding from Captain America. A couple days before Christmas he told me he really wanted a Thor hammer. Since it was the only thing he asked for and I hadn't really bought him any presents it seemed like an easy enough request to fulfill. Of course I didn't think through to the part where he'd begin throwing it around the house. As if the Captain America shields hadn't caused enough damage.

Lex got a motorized Captain America toothbrush in his stocking. I was very hopeful this would encourage him to brush his teeth (which he hates). He did try it out once.

Then he decided it was a great cleaning device to scrub all his toys.

After a nice relaxing day of doing basically nothings, we all headed into the movie.

Azia and Jenna happened to get matching, stylish bright pink boots for Christmas. And apparently Christina and Dad had nearly matching shoes, too. :)

I love Azia's flashy dressing. She got ready to go and was wearing zebra print pants with her zebra coat. I suggested she go put on some jeans so she wasn't mistaken for an actual zebra. I'm not sure the layered multi-color skirt and flowered leggings are much less wild than head to toe zebra print.

iphone photo in complete darkness. . .you can actually see there are some kids in there!

And yet another reason Mom is wonderful. She took this whole row of children (and a few in the one behind it) to see Alvin and the Chipmunks so the rest of the adults could go to an actual adult movie.

It was a pretty great ending to another great holiday.

And now a few days to get life organized again (maybe even buy some groceries?) before the new year begins.

Christmas toys

2011-12-26T23:30:00.000-07:00

Both Israel and Azia got these little remote control helicopters for Christmas, so we've had what seem much like giant, mechanical insects buzzing around the house the last couple days. They fly them up over the balcony while I'm working upstairs, down the hallway, and I kept hearing them late at night and thinking Israel is using power tools again when he is supposed to be in bed.

another Christmas Movie

2011-12-25T23:04:00.000-07:00

I wonder how long till it becomes cheaper to just rent the entire theater?

Our family usually does a Christmas evening movie. I'm not sure when we started doing it, but it's become a fun tradition, even more so since sometimes it's the only movie our chunk of the family goes to in the theater all year.

We're a pretty big gang to go places all together in public these days (only about 1/4 of the group happens to be in this phone-photo). I think if we add any more kids or friends we're going to eventually have to set up our own screenings.

We love a little too much Christmas

2011-12-25T02:10:00.000-07:00

I found this collection of Christmas decorating photos from a few weeks ago when we put up our tree. I was going to add to it for a decorations post when we finally put up the rest of them and got our house looking all Christmas-time-like.

Big boys in charge of lights and garland. I'm always happy to not be involved in that task.

And then we never did that.

Boxes of decorations, strings of lights, all my good intentions. . . it's all buried under Christmas trash and loads of dirty clothes in my laundry room.

And now it's late on Christmas night, so it seems we won't be doing that this year.

So it seems we won't be doing that this year. I'm not sure what happened to December. I feel like I've been saying that about everything all month long.

We had so many Christmas projects planned. I was so excited to have a whole week off work before Christmas this year. I don't think that's ever happened (not since my "work" was being a college student who didn't have kids) but somehow each day of that week got filled with all those awful sorts of necessities: eye appointments, dentist appointments, phone calls to make more appointments and keep bank accounts and jobs and kids all on track, millions of emails to answer. Maybe it just piled up since I hate that sort of stuff, but every day I'd get the kids off to school and just have a few things to get taken care of before I started on the list for the day and then suddenly we'd be off to a Christmas program or dinner or party or concert or something and I'd never even get started on that list.

I suppose this is the sort of thing that happens when you have the blessings of a handful of jobs between your spouse and yourself and a handful of active kids in three different schools with four different schedules. It's so much work to keep up with the mundane, so you don't miss any of the fun.

Every year I talk to people or read about people's plans to do less at Christmas. That they hate all the "extra" that distracts from what Christmas is really about.

I'm not one of those people. I don't really want to do less. I understand that point with the consumerism aspect that overtakes some people, but I'm not real great at the shopping part of Christmas. I hardly do it. But all the gatherings and activities and traditions? I like them all.

When my son was about two, "too much" was his favorite amount. As in, "How much milk do you want, Israel?"

"Too much!"

How much syrup on your pancakes?

"Too much!"

I think I'm discovering that my be my favorite amount, too. Or maybe it always has been. Wanting to do everything does cause me quite a few problems, because of course we can't do everything. But, I do like to fill our extra hours with all the extra stuff that comes along with Christmas. I don't find it distracting. The decorating and Christmas cards and crafting and baking and parties and visiting with friends. . . I love the idea of a whole month of too much of all these good things.

Last year Azia laid on the couch drawing elves in her minature notebook while everyone else worked. I thought she just upgraded to ipad distractions for this year, but then I saw she was googling stocking patterns. While we were decorating she made Christmas stockings for all three of our pets.

I mean look at all this joyous decorating? Doesn't it just look like some sort of Norman Rockwell Christmas scene? How could you not want a month full of moments like this?

Of course you can't hear all the cussing about broken lights and the kids who don't follow directions or the hunting channel blaring on the TV in the background, trying to drown out the kids' Christmas song singing. Still, though, Christmas magic. . . at least small glimpses of it.

I love cooking with my kids, sewing with my daughter, making gifts for friends and family, figuring out what to put on our Christmas cards and see how quickly I can take a picture before the kids start dissolving into MMA brawl and their dad starts in with loud profanity again.

I'm getting better every year. It's another one of those specialized-to-my-specific-family parenting skills. Each year as they get older I do get a few more seconds to take a photo, but their fighting also becomes more dangerous, so it's still a time game.

The Christmas cards almost got pushed into that "not this year pile," but then we took a few minutes one afternoon to take some photos and decided to go for it anyway. I've decided cards are fun whenever they arrive. So we're stretching out Christmas another couple days.

Here's what we came up with:

And even a second version since we couldn't decided which to pick:

So tomorrow as our Christmas cards are still arriving to all our friends, we'll do a little more of that stretching out the season here as I figure out where in the mail my Grandma's lost photo calendar might be, get all the files of photos from the last year I have for each of my siblings onto the USB drives I meant to tie to their presents, finish my redo of an old suitcase that was to be a gift that could hold all my niece's American doll clothes but which I totally forgot to finish. Begin downloading all the photos of all this Christmas chaos that I've taken in the last couple weeks.

Then I suppose we'll have to start cleaning up and file a lot of other activities into that So it seems we won't be doing that this year pile.

But it's only eleven more months till we get to start all over again.

Next year for sure. We'll definitely be up for the challenge of too much Christmas.

all pajamaed up and ready for Santa

2011-12-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

So, not exactly cooperating with my directions to stay in one place and look at me so we can get a photo, but. . . They're all in the frame! They're happy!

Yes it's progress!

And I did make them wear bizarre matching, home-made pajamas which sort of make them look like a bumble bee gang or something (which I think is actually pretty awesome) so, all things considered, I think they're actually cooperating pretty well.

I asked my phone how I was going to get everything done.

2011-12-23T05:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes that phone really does seem pretty smart.

a perfect day for sledding

2011-12-22T19:30:00.000-07:00

It's a cousin sledding party! The other half of the kids are around the fire.

Huge piles of new snow, sunshine, and dozens of cousins to hang out with. All the ingredients for a perfect sledding day.

First Grade Musicians

2011-12-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

Rodney, Zoran, Bryce

These may possibly be the cutest musicians I have ever seen.

The elementary kids had their Christmas music concert tonight. Each grade (k-4) just sings a couple songs, so it's a bearable length and there are an awful lot of pretty adorable tiny people singing, dancing, jingling their bells and waving shyly to their fans in the audience.

Still, my favorite part is watching the small sea of parents all crouched below the stage, cameras of all varieties in hand, ready to catch their kid's big moment. They are at least as excited about the whole thing as the kids performing.

snow day . . . enjoying it while we can

2011-12-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

We finally got a big dose of snow the night before the kids' first day of winter break.

Since we've had so little snow this winter (especially compared to last winter) everyone decided a sledding trip was in order. We all headed up to the Dam after school got out at noon.

Snowy Zoran

Lex still doesn't like sledding. Though when we arrived at the Dam, he looked out at all the snow and said, "Hey, are there polar bears here?" I told him I'd never seen any, but he just explained, "well it looks like there might be some polar bears. I'm going to go find them."

And he was off.

He didn't find any polar bears, but it's still a pretty great place to explore.

Perfect sun. Perfect snow. Lots of great company.

Christina and Eldon practiced a little frolicking.

And a beautiful sunset to end the day.

Good Stuff: all sorts of Christmas cheer

2011-12-21T01:57:00.000-07:00

Zoran and Iyezk . . . festive Christmas boys

I'm taking more photos than I have time to actually look through these days.

But maybe someday when Azia is 17 she'll be using my computer and digging through my stuff on some random Saturday afternoon (because, really, why would she stop doing this between now and then?) and stumble upon my collections of photos she's never seen.

I found a notebook full of my dad's old negatives when I was in high school– all photos of me and my siblings a decade earlier. All pictures I hadn't seen. I still remember it as one of the coolest discoveries I made in high school.

So rather than thinking about this backlog of photos as just one more thing I don't have time for, I'm going to just try to start thinking of it as a collection of all sorts of future surprises.

But, there are a few I have made time to look through in the last few weeks:

Gingerbread House Building

My mom always made these with us when we were young and now my kids look forward to it every year.

Still no actual gingerbread involved here. . . one of these years though, we'll try it/

Yes we just used glue guns! Way easier than scaling sugar!

Dylan doing some construction

Azia, Gwen, & Paisely

Lex really like the cotton candy for decorating his abode.

A closer look at Lex's wild, little house.

So as better to compare it with his brother's approach to things.

There are definitely some differences in Zoran and Lex's approaches to tasks. Lex's house is crazy and forcefully thrown together. Zoran's is very methodically and strategically arranged. Even down to the straight lines and consistent pattern.

And even the eating is different:

Lex actually cared little for the eating, but he loved the destorying. And then the smearing it all over everyone and everything he could reach.

Zoran didn't really want to wreck his at all. So, just a small bite out of the corner so as not to mess it up much or get his hands too dirty.

_____ -----_____ -----_____ ------_____ -----_____ ------______

St. Ignatius Christmas Bazaar

Breeze & Azia

The "I'm so sad you won't buy me the beautiful handmade scarf" pout

_____ -----_____ -----_____ ------_____ -----_____ ------______

Beautiful, Cold Weather

We haven't really had any snow . . . just a lot of fog and frost.

Cold and dreary, but beautiful, too.

_____ -----_____ -----_____ ------_____ -----_____ ------_____

Gwen and Kylie's Birthdays

Gwen gets some help with her candles from her girls

Gwen finally has someone to share her December birthday with. Her and Kylie both got to celebrate this month.

_____ -----_____ -----_____ ------_____ -----_____ ------_____

Ward Christmas Party

Lex considering Santa.

He's still not a fan. I mostly have pictures of him last year just trying to get away from him. This year he wouldn't even go any closer than this.

He finds him sort of interesting. As long as he keeps his distance.

Daid, Gage, Israel. . . watching the little kids sing

_____ -----_____ -----_____ ------_____ -----_____ ------_____

Headstart Christmas Party

Lex had his Christmas party last week. And we were the only ones there. Well a couple other families showed up after an hour or so. His class basically has zero participation in anything so far– maybe about 15% for one or two things. It's really depressing. At least the community center was a good place for Lex to throw his shield.

And Santa was there to give the kids (all 3 or 4 of them) presents. Of course Lex didn't want to talk to Santa, so he sat here by the food table and someone delivered him a present while all the other kids were on the other side of the room talking to Santa.

Zoran reading Lex on of the books he got from Santa

_____ -----_____ -----_____ ------_____ -----_____ ------_____

Lex . . .

Snow!

2011-12-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

As I was heading toward bed last night, I looked out the door and realized this had happened.
(And was still happening!)

Yay for snow!

Just in time for the official start of winter.

(okay this was like 3:00 am so maybe this is tomorrow's photo not today's.)

Middle School Christmas Concert

2011-12-19T02:35:00.000-07:00

Ahni found a good seat in the middle of the isle

The high school and middle school had their concert tonight, and they both did a great job. I don't actually have any photos of Israel since it was in the fancy new "cafatorium" which is very small and actually about 96% cafeteria and only about 4% auditorium . . . if a hole cut in the side of the wall counts as a stage. So, I couldn't actually see even really much in the crowd of students preforming, but the overall result was very nice and Christmasy and festive.

It's really too bad I don't have a picture since of Israel since he looked so handsome in his Captain America t-shirt, suit jacket, Santa hat, and the matching Santa slippers which I've always assumed he must have stolen when I lost him in the mall when he was barely two (because he was wearing them when I found him 15 minutes later) and which only now just fit him.

It's nice we still have them twelve years later so we can get them out every Christmas and reminisce about my poor parenting.

from a few buckets of cinnamon . . .

2011-12-18T22:30:00.000-07:00

The only thing I got accomplished yesterday besides hours of cleaning (with no clear visible results) was turning about seven bottles of cinnamon into ornaments.

A chunk of them are going into little gift bags for the school teachers from our parent teacher organization. The other half was going to go on our tree which is still only partially decorated. It's all gold and neutral sorts of colors, so I thought these would fit in nicely. (Along with the half strung popcorn garland sitting in a bowl on the counter for about a week now.)

After many hours of cooking them last night and more drying this afternoon, the kids and I started painting them tonight. Then when I went upstairs to get the ribbon, my kids switched to fluorescent pink and vibrant blue "icing" colors. So we have a few that look like this and a lot that are much brighter and more specifically themed: superman, Mission cheerleader, Captain America. . .

They like to make sure I don't get too uptight about this decor thing.

Our Elf. Really he doesn't do much but hang out on the shelf. Really.

2011-12-17T22:30:00.000-07:00

This is our Elf on the Shelf, Mr. Izzy McSkizzy, hanging out in the Christmas tree. Sitting around. That's basically all he does.

Despite this, for the past few days Zoran has been convinced the little elf cleans up our house every night after we all go to sleep. He has been convincing other small children this is clearly true. Zoran has heard stories about other elves. I haven't heard a lot about them cleaning, though I have been wishing for cleaning fairies for quite a lot of years. I have heard other elf stories. Other people's elves do all sorts of creative and exciting things when their humans go to sleep: decorate, eat Christmas treats, dress up, make s'mores, read books. Ours mostly finds comfy places to relax.

He's so damn lazy, he only moves every couple days.

I don't think my children have ever noticed that the house magically gets cleaned nearly every night after they go to bed– regardless of the season.

I was having a hard enough time trying to convince them to clean up after themselves before they thought an elf would just magically do it for them. Mr. McSkizzy might be even more mischievous than I thought.

Christmas spirit. . . expressed through sweaters

2011-12-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

Most people came with just one ugly Christmas sweater.

Eldon, being an overachiever, went with the layered-double sweater look.

Rolled Paper Christmas Tree Ornaments

2011-12-16T03:05:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break from work to figure out what sort of Christmas decorations to make this year. And then sometime I need to figure out when to make them all!

I got a bunch of cool paper really cheap a few weeks ago. I had a plan to use that, but I'm not creative enough to think of any unique things to make. So, I think we're going to make a few dozen Christmas trees. We started by cutting little strips of paper about two inches long and in all different widths (about a half inch difference in each size)

As I started rolling the paper, Azia reminded me that it was the same process as she used when making magazine beads. You could actually make these ornaments with old magazines or wrapping paper, too, and I think they'd look pretty cute. They'd also be easier to roll and glue.

Since I picked out some really thick (almost cardstock-like) paper, I dunked each piece under water before we started rolling them, just long enough to get the whole think covered. Then I rolled up each, using a pen or pencil to keep it tightly wound and a glue gun to stick them in place.

In this first version I just used dental floss (reinforced with glue) to tie it all together and added another little paper circle for the trunk. The star is a brad and the name is just done with stamps.

I tried another version where instead of stringing the pieces together with floss, I used a wire and slid them all onto that. I bent the white wire at the top into a star. After everything was on it, I bent the remaining wire on the other end into a trunk. I stamped the name and date onto little metal plates in that one.

Though I liked the second version better. I think we're going with the first just because it's a little faster and easier to make, especially when I have no time to figure out where all out my wire bending jewelry supplies are. Or all my hammers. I've not been too successful at trying to stamp things in the metal with the makeshift supplies I could find. The lettering looks a little rough.

At least I have a plan. Now to just find the time to get them all done in the next couple days!

2010: Sled Ornaments

2009: Reindeer Ornaments

Missoula Art Museum

2011-12-15T22:49:00.001-07:00

Azia and Breeze checking out the display of Debra Earling's book The Lost Journals of Sacagawea

A small group of fourth graders joined one of the fifth grade classes on a field trip to the Missoula Art Museum today. The MAM currently has an Ansel Adams exhibit which was very cool for the kids. They liked the photos and the museum staff did a great job getting them to look closely at some of them and learn a little about the photographic elements Adams was working with and the different places he photographed.

Our docent started the tour by explaining the process Adams used and showing the kids the types of cameras he worked with, emphasizing how big and heavy and complicated they were. Then after a lot of leading information (that I thought pretty clearly lead kids to answer “cell phones”) she asked the group what we usually used to take photos now.   Azia raised her hand & when she was called on to answer replied, “Definitely a Nikon.”

The woman was caught a little off guard, but then explained that she too used a Nikon and DSLR cameras were really the way to go, but of course a lot of people did just use their cell phones.

Then the woman explained how Adams adjusted his images in the darkroom to get the effects he wanted and sort of gave an overview of techniques like burning and dodging and asked if any of them had ever been in a darkroom. Azia told her, “You can do that on the computer. I’d just use photoshop.”

The woman was a bit taken back again, but then started talking about how it was great that we had this great program “printshop” to do this all now.

Yes, I think Azia might be my daughter.

and then there was the little calf and small boy who warmed the angels' feet

2011-12-14T21:19:00.001-07:00

A very important, though sometimes overlooked, little part of the Christmas nativity

just reading quietly and being good

2011-12-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

Except, not quite.

Because Lex's version of quietly reading is done on the top of the kitchen table with the remnants of a present you weren't supposed to open right at your side.

Frost

2011-12-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

We don't really have any snow, but the last few days everything is covered in sparkly, white frost.

This isn't like the everyday, winter morning frost. It's thick and makes everything white and lasts all day.

On top of all the frost is fog.

It looks pretty for a few moments, but it's really cold and the fog is annoying to drive in.

I'd rather have snow.

yet another photo shoot attempt

2011-12-11T23:43:00.001-07:00

This actually captures every one of my kids' personalities pretty perfectly. (Too bad I was trying to hide those distinctive personalities & create one one of those photos that subtly persuade people that you have children who are always cute, clean, and well behaved.)

A couple times a year I like to clean my kids up and take a picture of them all sitting together smiling.

I guess I should say I would like to do this. I have not yet done it successfully (ever) but I do still try a couple times a year.

I guess I get derailed right at that part where I have to find clean clothes for four people all at once and have them wash their faces and brush their hair. Because by the time I get the second kid dressed the first one is already dirty and by the time I make it to the third it’s guaranteed at least one of the first two will have lost their shoes. Also, it’s about at this time I’ll notice at least half of them need a haircut yet again and while I’m thinking about this I realized I’ve lost half the children. If tell them to come back they scream or start fighting because this picture taking thing is soooo boring!! And that’s before I’ve even taken one photo, so it only continues downhill.

But, we did try to get them all in one picture today so I could put something on Christmas cards. Totally uncooperative as usual, but at least they were mildly happy about it, so I think I may even have one to use that includes more than their feet.   

So, that’s progress.

IHF: Family Fun

2011-12-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

Always a fun challenge to convince the family to let me take their picture. . .

other photos from the same session

Montana Grizzley Football: Quarterfinal

2011-12-11T18:33:00.001-07:00

Games like this . . . they could make me a football fan.

We don't go to a lot of football games anymore since regular season games are usually Saturday afternoons– right when all the kids have games (two different soccer games and MS football). Besides being so busy, it gets really expensive really quickly when you have so many tickets to buy.

A little pre-game hockey at the tailgate

But, we have a few boys who love football. This was a big ESPN-televised playoff game so there was a lot of excitement the whole week before. Also, it was under the lights. The University has only done this a few times for ESPN televised games (they bring in portable lights--the field doesn't have them) so that makes it even cooler.

The crowd ready for kick off:

The University won their first national championship just as I was starting college. I know I'm getting old, but it's pretty amazing how much this program has grown in the last 15 years.

They've added another national championship, made five more appearances in that game, and taken home the conference championship nearly every year.

Not sure if it was quite a full moon, but it had to be close!

They routinely sell out the 25, 000+ capacity stadium. They start games with sky divers and have a 35 foot "GrizVision" screen in the south endzone. There's a huge band, a mascot who also has some national titles and the National Guard firing a canon with each touchdown.

The environment there is pretty amazing, and I'm sure a pretty impressive home field advantage. As we sat watching the game with the kids we told them about the "old days" when I was in college. When the stadium had less than half as many seats as it does now. When we sat in the end zone on the regular old grass. When the players on the field played on real grass too.

Zoran & Dev

Azia watching the scoreboard intently. Zoran was keeping an eye on the score too– tracking time left and possessions and downs. But after Azia got cold and a little bored in the middle of the second quarter she began cheering for the clock to wind so she could go back to the food and fire at the tailgate.

She likes the excitement surrounding the game a little more than actually watching football. I sort of get that too.

The crowd was sort of unreal. Three or four hours of this:

Picture of our crew– minus Lex

Fireworks for the win . . . on to the semi-final game!

Israel practicing some of Monte the mascot's tricks

And more tailgating after the game. . .

A pretty great evening of football, family, friends and food!

Winter Portraits

2011-12-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

the whole gang

Israel

Azia

Zoran

Lex

Azia trying to make her little brother look presentable

sort of difficult when they both think they're puppies

Duke & Israel

Azia & Yettie

December 11, 2011

Christmas Bazaar

2011-12-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

This was Azia's favorite vendor because they had a huge assortment of zebra stripped hair accessories.

Lex was really annoyed that I wouldn't buy him a $40 hand-knit baby blue scarf at the vendor right next to this one (it did seem very nice) but here he got a nice reusable shopping bag that stuffed into a strawberry shape for $1. Not quite as cool as the scarf, but he was still pretty excited to go to the store and carry home our apples and bread in it.

Playoff Time

2011-12-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

Zoran and Dev celebrating at the Griz game. There was a lot to celebrate if you're a Griz fan!

(48-10 UM win over Iowa and onto Texas this weekend. . .)

Gingerbread (inspired) Houses

2011-12-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

So, there is actually no gingerbread involved here.

These may be more like Hanzel and Gretal Christmas-themed houses. This year we went with Gwen's idea of just using hot glue rather than scalding melted carmalized sugar to build them (awesome idea it turns out), so I think they are also becoming increasingly less edible as the years go on.

Oh well though, since the kids' building skills are increasing, so the houses are getting taller and more uniquely shaped and the kids are finding more and more ways to attach insane amounts of candy to their structures.

Really, I'm not so sure a few pieces of hot glue are any worse for you than approximately 45 pounds of straight sugar anyway.

Caroling

2011-12-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

All the primary kids went caroling tonight.

They were accompanied by a large group of adults who attempted not to lose them at this assisted living center or who tried to prevent them from jumping from the back of the trailer or falling out of the back of the truck as they drove through town singing.

There have been no reports of missing children so far, so I think we made it back with all of them.

Wrestling Fans

2011-12-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

Renee, Canyon & Zoran watching Barrett win his match.

Mission defeated Thompson Falls 55-24.

"Hey Mom, it's lookin' pretty good in here!'

2011-12-05T23:05:00.000-07:00

I like that sometimes my kids' expectations aren't too high.

One string of lights plugged in on the floor? (with about half the bulbs broken or burned out. . .)

Some pretty darn good Christmas decor.

Community Christmas Celebration

2011-12-05T15:42:00.001-07:00

KaNana tells Jolly Old Saint Nick (Dinnell) that she wants five puppies for Christmas.

I realized I have a little collection of posts with photos and no words accumulating in a virtual pile of drafts. Doing all sorts of these Christmas activities while also trying to go to work and get papers grades and meet deadlines seems to take up more hours than I have in each day.

But I love all this evidence of Christmas time.

The now annual Christmas carnival seems to be bigger every year. There was a huge group at the community center last Saturday.

This is probably because they give away all sorts of prizes like this xbox Trance won. And the PS3, flat screen, kindle fire (and some regular kindles, too) along with a whole collection of other prizes. . . at least one small gift for every kid there. It's sort of unbelievable what they're able to give to the community when we have only a handful of really small businesses.

I love his little sister in the background running to check it out. Go Addison go!

And of course Santa was there.

And facepainting

And all sorts of little carnival games. Our ambulance crew traded in the straw search for an EMT-themed obstacle course:

Joe ready to time Christina & Kyle

Jeana & Emma race through

After the carnival they had the tree lighting and a little parade of lights.

On come the lights. . .

the caroling crew watching the tree from the trailer

Last year was the first year they did this parade. I think they only had one person. (So maybe they weren't quite starting yet?)

This year there were five or six floats, so that's quite an improvement!

Keilana, Azia & Dylan reserving some good spots on the trailer.

Lex found one of his buddies from school and got very excited to sit by him on the hay ride.

Since Lex decided to go, it meant I got to join the caroling and light parade fun too which wasn't actually my intention. The kids seemed to have fun even though the parade seemed to be about five times as long as I was expecting. Near the end I was beginning to feel like I might be a prisoner on this mission to spread Christmas cheer and light. Our town isn't that big, and I'm sure at any point I could have jumped off and ran back to my car, but leaving all my children unsupervised on a moving vehicle didn't seem like the best plan.

Especially since they all like the seats right on the edge.

Next year I think we need to recruit a choir director. We had all these packets of Christmas song lyrics, but not a clear plan about how we'd go about singing them. Also, not a lot of real loud singers except the trio of middle school boys who sang the first line or two of many random songs (Christmas and otherwise) from the top of the cab of the truck. Also there was another one next to me who shouted lyrics at loud as possible until he'd get stressed out because all the others singing quietly were usually at vastly different places in the song or just singing different songs entirely so it was hard to tell what exactly you were supposed to be singing.

But we still had pretty lights, all sorts of Christmas cheer, and excited children so I think it was a successful caroling expedition even without the real emphasis on the caroling.

Good Stuff: back from when we had snow & my boys didn't desperately need haircuts

2011-12-05T01:35:00.001-07:00

I seem to have collection of unpublished posts sitting here from the last month. . . photographs I uploaded and had no time to write about. At this point that probably means I should just start posting them more or less wordless.

Once upon a time we had snow. . .

Zoran even got his apparel all ready to go the night before a few times.

And there's Lex. He still does stuff like this.

Basically a few times every day.

Cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. In pjs, since Lex nearly always prefers to wear those.

Lex used my camera to take this photo of me taking a picture of him with my phone.

Snowy shopping on Black Friday:

And Lex, with two of my hammers. This photo has just become part of my ongoing investigation of what happened to all my hammers. I forgot I'd taken this, but clearly Lex had at least two of them at once sometime in the last month. I looked forever for even one hammer the other day when I needed one to make Christmas ornaments.

Escort back into town for our local Punt-Pass-Kick champ. Emilio won the competition in Seattle.

Clouds that seem to be on fire. . .

Lex, hanging out.

Zoran writing all sorts of Christmas notes.
"Dear Santa Close. I have some berer and cookies for you on the deck."
I think he senses Santa may be friends (at least) with Santa.

Griz playoff game:

handwarmers. . .face warmers

Zoran LOVES Grizzly football. I didn't know people this small watch entire football games.

All my boys..

just waiting for a little more snow to cover those fall leaves. . .

2011-12-04T23:48:00.001-07:00

Griz game with the boys

2011-12-03T22:42:00.001-07:00

decoration #1

2011-12-02T23:29:00.001-07:00

My plans for Christmas decorating didn't quite come through this evening, but Lex and I did put up the wreath we got from my mom's students' Dogs With Wings program.

Lex still sometimes surprises me when I remember so much is still new to him. After we hung it up he just looked at it for quite awhile, then asked, "Why do we have a tree on our door? And why does our tree have a circle hole in it?"

I'm sure there's some good lessons or explanations about the symbolism of wreaths but I just said that when we have it on our door it reminds us it's Christmas time every time we come home. That seemed to be good enough for him. He spent a little while longer checking it out from different angles. Tomorrow more decorating.

But this is a good start.

Christmas Tree Cutting

2011-12-01T09:41:00.001-07:00

Montana weather is so unpredictable.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving is when we always try to go cut our Christmas tree, but some years (like last year) there is so much snow we can't even get our four-wheel drive vehicles into the mountains just a few miles away from home.

First weekend in December, 2010

Last year there was so much winter we had to wait another week just to get be able to drive on the roads outside of town. Even then, we did a lot of walking to get into areas with trees. The snow in many of the places we usually just drive was too deep to get through with trucks.

But this year it was like a nice spring afternoon– sunshine, mud and all.

Thanksgiving weekend, 2011


KaNana even changed from her snowboots to her water boots before we left since they were much more appropriate. Lex didn't want to change his. He said he had "water feet" whenever I told him to get out of all the puddles– whatever that means. After a few hours in his wet clothes I think it started to feel a little more like winter.

We had a lot of cousins ready to help. I think there were 18-19 kids. Some of the "kids" put themselves in charge of the four-wheelers.

Azia ready to cut down some trees (pink ax & all)

A lot of adolescent boys with four-wheel drive. A little scary.

The little boys wanted a turn too.

And the first graders were actually busy working. In search of perfect trees. . .

They found a couple, cut them down, and loaded them up into the truck.

I think we'll keep them around.

Lex did a bit of looking for trees too. He liked this one

I told him it looked too big. He told me it wasn't too big at all. It was really good. I asked him if he thought it would fit in our house. He just looked up again and shook his head no. "But it's really good. Not too big at all."

So maybe that fitting in the house thing just wasn't one of his deal breakers.

We had a little fire for breaks in the tree hunting.

There was also gourmet meals fixings including hot dogs; marshmallows; crackers, meat, and cheese; and cookies.

Lex & Nana

Boys. With crazy hair and lots of mud. I guess this is what you look like after an hour of four-wheeling in spring-like winter mud.

Azia taking her turn at the driving

And by the end of the afternoon, we had trucks full of trees and smiling kids, two of the most important indicators of a successful trip.

You Capture: People

2011-12-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Lettie

People pictures are my favorite sort of photos.

Typical posed portraits, probably my least.

But, dirty faces, pine needle treasures and real expressions. Perfect.

Kylie

Every once in awhile I find someone who is cooperative and looks at me and smiles and looks beautiful . . . and not posed into some plastic or frozen representation of themselves. Like my niece Keilana:

Kielana

But that wouldn't be my children. Mostly they just run away.

Occasionally they'll glance my way for a moment if I yell at them.

Lex

Or I see them laughing at someone else.

Azia

But mostly they run away.

Eleven-year-olds are sometimes extremely camera shy, too.

Daij

This means my focus may be a bit soft since some days I get not-quite-even-one shot to get some sort of image that makes it appear like he was on board with my snapping even this one image.

Luckily I have all sorts of cousins to work with.

Bryce

About 1/4 of the gang of cousins who all went on the Christmas tree expedition this weekend are represented here. Sometime I'll have to try to get a picture of all of them in one outing!

It's December– on to Christmas traditions!

2011-12-01T01:03:00.000-07:00

So the plan is to get a little more organized with the variety of Christmasy things we are working on through this month tomorrow, but we did get started today (without organization). I left the house a little after noon to pick up Lex early from school for an appointment and it was about 10:00 pm before I ever made it back. Hopefully tomorrow doesn't turn out to be as busy.

But the kids were excited to start on some of our count downs! And of course they were fighting already about who got to read the first book– ah the Christmas spirit. (We'll start working on that a little more tomorrow, too.)