Christmas Excitement

This is the first year that the kids have both really grasped the concept of Christmas.... and by grasped I mean that if you ask either child what Christmas is about, they will mechanically respond, "ItwasthedayJesuswasborn". All. one.word. The presents make a little more sense in their young concrete minds... Here are pictures of the kids "excited-cause-it's-Christmas-eve-so Santa-is-coming-to-bring-presents" faces. Ava obviously feels very intensely about the arrival of Santa and those long awaited presents!
Eli is happy because I let him lick all the frosting off his cookie without giving him a hard time!
Each one picked out the cookie they thought Santa would like best, sprinkled "magic" reindeer dust on the front walk, and Ava spent a good amount of time leaving this for Santa...
And,um, Santa really enjoyed those Cooces too!
Doesn't it all look so pretty? I can tell you it only took the kids about 4.2 seconds to turn the living room into a swimming pool of wrapping paper, bows, gifts, and debris from the Great Lionel Train "crash" of '08. Amazingly no presents were harmed in the frenzy!
"Can we Puh-Lease come down yet???!!!" (Eli wakes up a little rough doesn't he?)
One of the kids' gifts was steering wheels and a racing game for their wii... in my often delusional tired Mommy state, I thought they could take some of their arguments to the race track... um, yeah...
While I was in Prague, I had picked up some little garnet earrings for Ava.
The kids always love books, and the grandparents sent books about dinosaurs (with puzzles included!) the kids were in heaven! Some other favorites were: Ava's fairy princess game for Wii (a video game involving dressing up a doll and helping her pick flowers... she's addicted of course!), Eli's weasel ball (the most annoying toy ever and the battery never, ever dies!), their fleece pants, Ava's slinky (that she found one too many inappropriate uses for... leading to demise of poor slinky), Don't break the ice (which Ava is scarily good at!), and their digital cameras.
Eli contemplates the possibilities of having his own camera... better watch out Ava... little brothers have been known to blackmail...I should know!

Oh yeah

I also had an amazing Christmas... Eric got me perfume, a rockin fun video game (complete with sword and shield attachments!), and I also got smell good stuff, videos, clothes, more Wii accessories (because who needs family board game night when we can all be mesmerized by the glowing lights of the TV?), and loads of other good stuff!
Oh, the remote control cars! The remote control car that, when they smash into something, will make a screaming noise and eject the driver. We had to wait for the kids to go to bed so we could have a go with them!
You may remember the "Woe Christmas Tree" story from a few posts back... I still have a hard time talking about it. Eric was kind enough to make it disappear from the yard today...
Speaking of "ole' Dad", he had a pretty good Christmas too! He is at the driving range right now trying out his new golf driver, has enough books (as do I) to last the entire year, new clothes to fit his slender 20-something-esque- physique, toys and games too! Here the three of them are playing with the rocket stomper... which if you jump on will in fact launch a rocket over the fence...
Hope everyone else had an awesome Christmas too!!!

Escape to Prague

Ever since we moved to England, I have wanted to visit Prague... and, finally, I got my wish! The kids expressed their desire to NOT go spend 3 days in the cold shopping for garnets and crystal and taking in the sites, so Eric was nice enough to stay home with them. (Bet he didn't really want to shop for pretty stuff either!) So, I went with my friend Racheal... and it was fantastic!
What happens in Prague, stays in Prague...
Now, I have been to quite a few European cities by now... and I have to say that Prague is by far the most beautiful!
Nativity at the Christmas market
Racheal and I found this amazing store right next to the man hanging from the pole... and we spent hours trying to re-find it to buy hand painted pottery. We never could. It's like it didn't even exist. We walked miles combing every side street of the city...nope...no pottery store... or hangy man. Weird huh?
And this city isn't just beautiful; it smells amazing! Probably not so much when it isn't Christmas market time.... but during the Christmas market it is a combination of hot spiced wine, German sausages, chocolate, gingerbread, and, just Christmas!
The famous clock tower. Legend has it that the clock was made by the most famous Clockmaker in Europe, Mikalus, (who was from Prague) who spent an entire year locked in his room creating the beautiful clock. When the greedy council saw how beautiful it was they had Mikalus' eyes gouged out so that he could never create such a beautiful clock again...
That's me... I am shopping without any interuptions... could my smile be any bigger?!

Seriously, I have been to London, Paris, Rome, Edinburgh, Brugge, Dublin... and quite a few other places. But Prague? Wow. Blows em all away!

Just Another Day In Paradise

Well, another rainy, drizzly day in cold England has passed, but we try to make the most of it. So today was "Cutout Cookie Day". As you can see, the kids were excited as always ... for the decorating of one cookie. As the story was told to me, they each decorated one cookie, ate it quickly, and then went away to play "Mommy and Baby". Which left Ness all alone to make all the others. I doubt she minded actually.

Here's Ava overly excited. But it is still true that she would rather clean and detail the muddy cars than bake cookies.

Here's Eli eating cookie number one. It took quite an effort to keep him from eating cookie number two. And it is still true that he would rather bake and eat cookies with Mommy than help Daddy clean and detail the cars.

What an amazing effort. I still don't know how she does it, but we needed to use the last of the icing from all three colors to decorate the last cookie. Now that's talent folks.

Another little story about our darling Ava. At times she is so smart. She reminded me that her dress says New York - which is the state in which I was born. (I think I told her that once about 16 months ago.) And she let us know that monkeys like Boots (Dora reference) can pick things up because they have "a-poisonous" thumbs. And Ness and I think "This girl is going to be a doctor or scientist after going to Harvard or Yale." And then she does this.

The Lion King!

So, for the couple people that haven't given up on my sparse blogging... you may remember that I took Eli to Ireland for a medieval banquet a few weeks ago for his birthday. Today Ava got her "special day" with mom. We went to London to see The Lion King. She did pretty well considering the play was almost 3 hours long! We had awesome seats right close to the front and by the aisle... so Ava's little face was priceless when all the animals paraded down the aisle and onto the stage for the "Circle of Life" number. When she saw the elephant (which was huge), she got a little freaked out and stayed on my lap for the rest of the show. I did have to do a lot of explaining but she clapped enthusiastically after each song and claims she loved it!

Here we are after the show... other than to pose for this picture the kid did not hold still for a single second after the lights came on... I guess 3 hours of sitting still was a little much for her! So, I "bounced" her through Covent garden to look at the Christmas lights for about an hour before we got on the train to come home! I would have taken a picture of the Christmas lights... but I was using all my hands and wits to keep my daughter from launching herself into space (did I mention I let her eat an entire bag of chocolates while sitting still for 3 hours?)
Ava in her awesome seat at Lion King!
The "Mom was her too" picture!
Ava likes to play "guess the animal", "guess what I'm thinking", or "You're ignoring me some I'm going to count to 119 really loud" whenever we are out and about. So, realizing that I have a finite amount of patience, I loaded a new Dora episode onto the iPOD. It kept her busy for about 20 blissful minutes... until Boots the Monkey reminded her that she would rather play guess the animal with me...

tradition

Before we had kids, Eric and I always bought "real" trees to decorate at Christmas. The fear of your one year old eating/climbing/catching fire to a real tree was enough to send us to the store for one of those real nice artificial trees...oh... about 4 years ago... and we have used it ever since. It never seemed real, smelt like plastic, and I couldn't wait till the kids were old enough that we could get a real tree again and be rid of the ugly artificial one! This year (since we officially have zero babies in our house), we were excited to buy a real tree again. So we did. It was a beautiful, full, um British? tree, and it looked so lovely as we placed it in our tree stand in the living room. We screwed it to the tree stand...it fell over and scared the cat. No problem... that tree stand is old and we need a new one. So we bought one... a really nice one.

After a solid hour of positioning and repositioning the tree into the tree stand, we finally had to come to terms with the fact that it looked like it was leaning back and to the right, but at the same time the angel on the top looked like it was about to jump off...hmmm.

Tonight... we were sitting on the couch about one minute and seven seconds after the kids went to bed... just commenting on how the angel looked particularly suicidal tonight... when the whole thing just fell over. We grimly cleaned up the forest of pine needles, the lake of sappy water running across the floor, and several broken ornaments. We took all the ornaments off, spent a good half hour re-attaching the tree to the tree stand, I combed the pine needles out of my hair and washed the sap off my face and we re decorated the tree. We hadn't been back on the couch 5 minutes before the whole mess fell over again.

The ornaments are now all in a box, I would have thrown the tree into the backyard ( and very likely set fire to it) if the branches hadn't dropped to where it would no longer fit. It is now propped against the door and I refuse to give it more water. If it wasn't dark and spidery in the shed, I would retrieve the clippers and make a wreath out of the doggone thing! In the morning, Eric and I will be collecting our beloved artificial tree that fits so nicely in its tree stand, and God bless me if I EVER consent to buying a "real" tree again...

And if anyone knows what will take tree sap out of hair.. .please let me know...

I was going to write about Ava and I making dog biscuits tonight... but the tree distracted me... sorry...

Eli does Ireland

My kids have everything... really everything. So, instead of adding to the army of toys and the closets of clothes, I decided to take each kid on a special day with mom for their birthday present. So, for Eli, we decide to hop a plane to Shannon Ireland and see some castles and go to a medieval banquet (in Bunratty Castle). Eli loves planes, loves castles, and doubly loves food so it seemed like a pretty good plan! And it pretty much was.... Oh, and try not to look too closely at any Eli face shots... unless snot doesn't bother you!
After an hour long plane ride, we rented a car and drove 20 minutes to Limerick to see the town, eat some lunch and see Limerick castle. Such a happy little man!
That's Limerick castle... have no idea how old it is or if anybody lived their... too busy trying to keep Eli from launching himself off a tower...
Eli asked for "chips and ketchup" for lunch... and since "chips" are fried potatoes and we were in Ireland... rock on Eli...
He was trying to talk me into dessert using "the Force". Not gonna happen young Padawan...
Just in case the first booger picture just wasn't enough!
So here we are at Bunratty castle... Eli had endured about 30 minutes of me shopping at the woollen mills where my little shopping trip was cut short when Eli hijacked the stroller and took a fast lap around the Waterford Crystal section. Sorry, not many of you will be receiving Christmas gifts from Ireland this year...
Our hotel was right next to the castle so we walked on over and where invited in to start our dinner!
People greeted this lady and the "young lord" and showed us up a tiny winding staircase to the upper great room of the castle. They gave me a glass of mead and "lord Eli" a glass of juice... I think...
... this picture makes me a little concerned about that "apple juice"...
Anyway- We spent 3 hours eating with our hands (no silverware) and being entertained by about 15 lords and ladies all dressed in 16th century costume. They sang Irish songs, threw a few audience members in the dungeon, and doted on Eli. Eli had one particular lady that he really liked (probably because she kept bringing him extra bread... the way to a little man's heart....)
Both of us gorged on the awesome food and had a great time! I am going to try to forget the plane ride home the next morning.... Eli's "spirit" and "energy" touched all of those sitting near us... I tried to pretend like I didn't know him either, but he just kept calling me mom...loudly... Too much Apple juice I guess!

How About Some Snow In Winter!!!!!!

Well, today is November 23rd, and around 8:00AM Ava ran to me excitedly to tell me ...


Now it's not going to stick I don't think, but the last time the family got excited because snow was falling was on Easter Sunday - and that was the first and last time it snowed all last year.

Doesn't England know that it's supposed to snow in Winter?!?!?!?!?!?

Happy Birthday Ava and Eli!!!!!!!!

And so the birthday came and went and as usual it provided unending fun, excitement, and just a pinch of "What the ... ?!?!" But seriously, what could be more fun than having your favorite meal under a piano bench? Because Ava got to eat whatever she wanted wherever she wanted. And nobody got upset when she spilled her Sparkling Apple Juice 3 times. Yes, it was the start of a great birthday weekend.

Ness made Ava a Flower Cake. Well done as always. Ava blew out all the candles in 3 blows. Not bad for a 5 year old!

The theme for the party on Sunday was "Jungle". Putting the party together was quite fun, and the kids did their part to make everything look great.

I don't think the kids really appreciated the level of detail in the party, but the adults all were impressed!

A picture of the outside. Even though the party started at 5:00PM, it was completely dark. Actually, it was completely dark by 4:00PM. Luckily, weather was on our side. It rained Saturday all day and all of Sunday until about 2:00. And then the clouds parted, the sun shone, and everything looked A-OK.

The kids were told that Dumbo was carrying a huge basket of peanuts as he flew overhead. All of a sudden, a gust of wind blew the bag out of his trunk and the peanuts fell all over our yard. The kids scattered throughout the land and gathered them all up. The kid with the most nuts won a prize. A fun game.

There was also a pinata filled with treats. Again, the ground was picked clean!!! I'm telling you ... if you've ever seen hyenas take down a zebra in the African Savannah, then you have a good idea of what took place.

After 2 fantastic cakes, Ava and Eli seemed fine with cupcakes.

Something we learned about kids parties here. Even if the children are 3-5 years old, apparently in England the parents are expected to just drop off their kids and pick them up when the party is over. With almost 20 kids present, 4 parents took pity on us and stayed. That's not a good ratio people!!!

But between the balloon/bubbles activity and the trampoline outside, everything went smoothly. The kids had a great time and the parents didn't scream in terror once! A good day. I just don't know how Ness is ever going to top this one. And I don't even know if we'd want to try.

Again, Happy Birthday to Ava and Eli and a big thanks to everyone who called, sent gifts, e-mailed, and mailed cards to tell them how much they are loved.