preparing for the jolly

We tried to gear up for Christmas with our usual zest for the holiday; but, we were thrown this year...as we will be from now on, because SP 2.0's birthday is, pretty much, right after Thanksgiving (it was this year, anyways). We want to celebrate his birthday apart from the celebration of the birth of Christ, because it seems important somehow. I also don't want my kid walking around in future thinking he is some kind of poor sucker for drawing the short straw to get born in December (I really did try for a November birthday, Little Dude).

We waited an extra week to get our Christmas tree from our favorite place for that sort of thing, Maple Lane Farms. It was SP2.0's first tree-cutting, as far as he is concerned, it didn't live up to the hype.I threw my Martha-complex out the window this year, and Papa and I let SP1.0 pick the tree. The stipulation being the tree could not be taller than his Dad (or it wouldn't fit in our house). He eventually settled on a tree that happened to be one of the wider trees on the farm. Awesome.
The tree sat undecorated for two weeks due to Papa's end of semester crush and our last minute travels; but, once we got around to decorating it, we started to feel quite jolly.We went to the annual party at the Coast Guard Academy. While most kids used the opportunity to have serious discussions with Santa about how good they were this year and what they deserved, our kids used their moment with the jolly fat man to ask him if he was aware that he was not real (but, please still bring presents, thanks) and wonder why the parental units handed them over to the jolly fat man's temporary care.For those unaware, "Santa is like Thomas the Train, not really real". And what do you say to that? We say, "get outside and play in the snow." Mostly because it was 5 days before Christmas and we still needed a Christmas picture.

And that's what we did after the snowstorm last weekend. Twenty-four inches of white fluffiness. I am not a fan (clearly, SP 2.0 and I are of similar minds on the subject of snow).
But Papa got a change to use a snow-blower and is pretty convinced that this will make an awesome Christmas gift next year (he seems to be aware that I am done on the shopping front, and, you know, so is Santa).

There are a lot of photographs in flickr. There will, of course, be more on Christmas Day.

south and west, and then back again

In the midst of holiday celebration, we were given some sad news. My grandmother passed away on December 10th, and Papa's grandmother passed away on December 11th. We headed down to New York on the morning of the 12th for my grandmother's funeral; and, from there, we headed west to Dodge City, Kansas, to attend the funeral for Papa's grandmother. We were rushing to make time on the road, so the time spent on the road was not so enjoyable; but, ultimately, we are glad we made the trip. It was a good opportunity to see and spend a little time with family members (I have found that funerals are very good for providing reunions).While we are saddened by the loss of these great women from our lives, we have great memories of our time with them. I think their lives were celebrated in lovely ways at their funeral services; and their memory will live on in the people who loved them.
Papa remarked that the trip out to Dodge will likely be our last trip there, so we wanted to see the house that his father grew up in as well as his grandmother's house.

Papa's mom had some pretty great stories to share about her memories of Dodge City as well.

On the way back home, we made more stops for our sanity and to prevent a mutiny from the seal pups.
They did a great job, considering they were strapped in with little, to no. prepartion for the 50+ hours on the road that they were subjected to.On the return trip home we stopped at the Indianapolis Children's Museum for two short hours to allow the kids a chance to move around a little, it was a good stop.

The Indianapolis Children's Museum is, quite possibly, one of the best Children's Museums we have gone to, and we have gone to quite a few.
As much as we love a good roadtrip, we have established a new benchmark: if it's more than a 15 hour drive to get there, we are flying. I am putting it here, because it's like it's in stone now, and that makes it a real rule...one we will follow, and everything.

There are a goodly amount of photographs from our trip west to the midwest in flickr.

Tomorrow, I will talk about Christmas, because Seal Pup 1.0 wants me to tell you about it, because, "you know, it's four days away."

toljabee!

Last week we celebrated SP 2.0's advancement in years (or to a year, I guess). The (big) Little Guy turned one year old, and we celebrated the best way we knew how, we threw him a party. A big one. We threw a toljabee.

We observed Korean ceremonial celebrations.
Oh, look. He is going to eat well for the rest of his life. Shocker.

As well as American ones.
There was good fun (and a wardrobe change).

And now SP2.0 is no longer a baby (technically).There are more photos in flickr, I have not done any editing on the photos, so what you see is what you get. I just needed to get the pictures up before my mother started calling me about them, because she was probably wondering where they were last night.

Please excuse me while I go and reconcile the fact that I now have two "big boys."

sp 1.0's five seconds of fame

So you know how I love flickr? Last month, SP 1.0 got five seconds of fame when a photo of him appeared on the Martha Stewart show (the producers found it on my other flickr feed--which gets tagged with tons of metadata). If you want to watch it, go here. It's about 5:15 seconds into the segment; but, he gets a little air (and you can learn about flickr in the process).

Or, you know, you can just look at the picture here (but you miss the Martha commentary, which, why would you want to miss it? I mean, it's Martha!).

The shot is from almost January of last year. It's blurry and not the greatest (low light, I hadn't yet recieved the awesome lenses that I got for Christmas last year)...but the pie is Martha's recipe, so there you are.

thankful.

Thanksgiving has come and gone. We are all walking around with a pound or two (or five, whatever) extra about our persons; but we are none the worse for wear. I found myself especially reticent last week since Thanksgiving was, traditionally, a holiday devoted to my father and his visit to New England, as well as the enjoyment of good food. While my dad couldn't join us this year (and won't in future), I think he would be pleased to know that we ate good food. A lot of it, actually (see previous note about extra poundage). We also watched the new Star Trek movie, which I am absolutely certain my dad would have loved (it was quite good, and I say that as a non-Trekkie, not that there is anything wrong with trekkies, perse).

We also kicked off SP 2.0's birthday week (the countdown to '1' began on Thanksgiving this year).

Don't worry, there will be more birthday coverage later, I promise! There is a lot of birthday goodness that will need reporting! Get excited!

This year, we had two Thanksgiving meals, one on Thursday...which, you know, was Thanksgiving. And then we celebrated again on Friday. There was a goodly amount of fabulous food (if I do say so myself, and yes, I do). For those interested in such things, you can find the menu for the dinner tables here (or at least what was intended, I had to change the soup (no fennel) and I opted to make cupcakes instead of the meringue cake that only I would eat).

We had two meals because we had a special visit from some Adventuring Seals and we wanted to celebrate accordingly.

It was fun. And the cousins had a ridiculous good time with each other.
Even the youngest ones!

Watching all the Pups play with each other reminded us all about how we wish we could get them together more often. I think it was a good trip/visit (one of these kids got really sick after this tire swing ride, and it wasn't one of the ones from the west coast).

The trip was a short one, however. Papa had to load up the van to get the Adventurerers back home a few short days after they arrived. Since they were flying out of Boston, there was a little stop in Boston Common to see some ducks before the long flight home.Thanks for visiting!

And for those interested in such things...there are tons more pictures in flickr (hello, grandmas.)

around the house

A great deal is made about spring cleaning; but, if I were being honest, I would have to say we do more household refurbishment in the fall than at any other time of year. And by refurbishment, I mean anything that improves the status of our home--and here I, indeed, do include such menial tasks as taking out the trash (it's the little things, really). We are busy people, or haven't you noticed?

There is the obvious neccessity of raking and bagging leaves (because, Ohai! We live in New England). There were only 28 bags this year (but there is at least two bags worth sitting in piles, so that's something (what, I have no idea).

And just to shake things up a little, we also painted a room in the house. It only took us 5 and a half years; but, we finally painted the master bedroom (and by we, I mean Papa, with light assist--that was not me).

There are probably some of you who are shocked about this, knowing how much Papa and I loathe home improvement projects that we have to undertake ourselves in general; but this time we had help.

Pretty soon, he is going to be doing it all himself.

Hopefully, he will still think it's fun at that point.

all aboard!

During the beginning of November, there was a good bit of train adventuring.

I took a day trip to Boston (on an Amtrak train) so could attend a conference (the train ride gave me plenty of time to prep for a session I was chairing); and, Papa and the Pups went to Essex, Connecticut to see Thomas. SP 1.0 is old hat with all this Thomas business. But, Thomas is magpiously shiny and new for SP 2.0.

We aren't totally sure; but, we thing he loved it...maybe.

More shots in flickr!

one weekend's worth of fun

There was one weekend, back in October, that I never got around to mentioning. I should do that now. During the weekend before Halloween, we went headed up to Maine for our annual LL Bean run. We ended up cutting the trip short because we wanted to have the pups dedicated at church, so we ended up in Maine for an overnight, which was all the time to we needed to do the things we most wanted to do.

We saw our good friend Amy.
We ate a great breakfast (BreaLu is very family friendly, though I love Bintliff's American Cafe, it's hard to have an enjoyable experience there with young children, in my opinion).

And then we went to L.L. Bean. SP1.0 got a winter coat and ski pants--there was a lot of dressing going on (the new duds will see a lot of action, because it will eventually go to SP2.0 (as is the nature of hand-me-downs).
And then we headed Connecticut so we could get the boys dedicated at church. Not a lot of shots from the dedication as we were all on stage (and it still amuses me that so many people in general; but, especially at church think SP2.0 is a girl).

After the dedication we headed to the apple orchard and picked apples.

We picked a pumpkin.And then went home and made applesauce. It was a good weekend!