Ringing in the New Year

It is New Years Eve and in our family tradition, we have celebrated and learned about a new country all at the same time.  The kids chose Belgium this year which was solely because they were craving waffles.  We make home made waffles a lot though and by today, meh, waffles.  Luckily Belgium is also the true home of the french fry!  The menu changed but the celebration continued.

I was impressed that the kids went upstairs while I was decorating the dining room and setting the table and emerged dressed to impress.  We had played outside in the snow earlier in the day so everyone was in various states of disarray.  I hadn't asked anyone to change for dinner, but I was pleased that they did.  It showed that our celebration mattered to them and also that they understand that some events should not be attended in pajama pants! :-)

I had a couple of books from the library on Belgium and made them available to them this week.  From these  books I drew a variety of trivia questions. I mix the silly and odd with the more typical.  So yes, there were questions about Peter Paul Rubens, but there was also a question about what the most famous fountain in Belgium called Pis looked like.  (they scored on both questions!)  We played boys against girls as they seem to be doing that these days and the boys beat the girls by 15 points.  However in the interest of fairness, the girls should have been handicapped and spotted some points--it was really only Lissa and K on that team as I had created the game.  But it was close enough that all had fun.

A friend of mine has a family tradition where they put together a 1000 piece puzzle every new years eve.  The deal is that they all work together and it must be done by midnight.  I am horrid at puzzles and the littles are too little for that, but it was still a cool idea.  I used the banner program on my computer and took a montage of pictures of family over the year and put them on a banner made of 12 pieces of letter sized paper.  The way I set up the pictures a tiny bit of each pic overlapped onto the next one to give a clue to the watchful of the order the pictures should be laid out in.  It probably took a good 12 minutes to get the pictures in order and taped down. Then we each wrote a wish for the new year on the back.  From there, we adjourned outside to set off confetti cannons into the snow.  Those were loud enough to impress the kids, not loud enough to bother neighbors and tissue paper is biodegradable.  Back inside the toasty warmth of the  house, we jumped on plastic poppers that  you use for packing breakables. This too sounds fairly impressively like fireworks and is  a great energy burn.  It was rounded out with glowsticks spelling out 2013 in the dark, another collaborative venture as it took a while to figure out how to best use the glow sticks to achieve our goal.

The littles go to bed at their regular time.  Neither is physically capable of handling such a late night and I don't see the point in starting the new year cranky.  K will likely go to bed early as well. Rob and I typically stay up and see the New Year in, either watching some of the music programs, or with a movie marathon.

After our celebration, I was checking my email and saw that one of my friends from church had  just passed away due to complications from a heart attack she suffered 3 weeks ago.  She leaves her wife and  a daughter my Rob's age.  And suddenly, in the midst of celebration, sadness.  Life is like that.  It is the celebrations that sustain us when the sorrows inevitably come.  I wish you all small celebrations and moments of joy to store for darker times of the spirit.

Xtreme Winter Sports--Our way!

More snow.  The boys shovelled our elderly neighbor, then us, and I played outside with them all.  We have a little hill into our back yard and it is nice for sled runs and snowboarding.  I really would LOVE to know how to snowboard but I feel like I would look like a fool out there on the slopes.  It is just not a 50+ momma type of hobby.  My kids are prone to saying to me "Ooma are you EVER going to grow up?"  LOL  Um, probably no.  I still love Candyland, sitting on the floor with blankets for a movie, playing tag in the water at the beach.  I figure at this rate I can keep doing what I love and people are going to either think I am young at heart or senile. But seriously, snowboarding would mean taking lessons from a 12 year old I don't know at a ski area, paying a whole heap of money, so that bit of immaturity isn't going to happen.  Instead, KC and Rob got to try and give me pointers while I repeatedly fell.  We considered it a success when I fell gracefully!  LOL  It was a blast, even with the fact that I had a migraine factored in.  My goal is to make it to the bottom of our hill erect by winters end.

When Lissa got cold, I came inside with her. KC and Rob stayed out to play longer.  KC came in suddenly to change mittens as his were soaked through.  He had a funny look on his face and I asked what was up.  Seems he and Rob were doing some "X Games Training" JE Team style and jumped off our back railing.  In the course of said acrobatics, Rob's cell phone went missing in the snow.  First I tried calling his number to see if that would help locate it.  No dice. Rob usually keeps his phone on vibrate as no teen wants their parent to notice how much they are texting.  :-)

I put my gear back on and went to help with the search, leaving Lissa to have a snack and play with her Leapster while I hunted with them.  I swear we looked like those people who go to an avalanche site trying to find the victims. We dug up 1/2 our yard, sifting snow, banging ice chunks, looking hither and yon.  No phone.

The phone never cost me anything.  A resident gave it to me a bunch of years ago.  When I no longer needed it because I was issued a smart phone by my company, I gave this one to Rob. He has used it for over two years and been very responsible with it.  So I now have a phone on order with BJ's  Nothing fancy but it will allow the texting that is the lifeblood of teen socialization.

Movie Night with Friends

The littles are good friends with a young girl who lives up the street from us. This is the same family we camp with once a year.  They called late this afternoon and wanted to know if we were free to come up for a movie night.  I said sure.  When I hung up the phone, KC let me know in no uncertain terms that he was unhappy with my decision.

KC has this thing where he is easily frightened by visual mediums.  Specific triggers are strong black/white imagery but I have also noticed that the size of the screen a movie is shown on has a lot to do with things as well.  Our friends have a small TV and I knew that we would NOT be watching anything scary.  There is a fine line between letting him come to something when he is ready and initiating opportunities that will facilitate that growth.  I choose to believe that the pushy parent saying he was coming to the movie night was giving him that opportunity.  :-)

Humor aside, I did make a plan with him.  He could sit on the couch which afforded him distance from the screen. He could sit next to big brother Rob who is so cool that one could not possibly be afraid sitting next to him, and he could bring a sketch pad and just doodle if he felt that he was getting overwhelmed. If all else failed, I could come sit with him if he wanted me to and I would rub his head for him. (that has always helped him relax.)  KC didn't think much of the plan, especially when K wound up coming home early from work and he theoretically could have stayed here with her.  But I said no, we would stick.to.the.plan.

We went and watched Tangled, which only Rob and Lissa had ever seen.  KC and I had not.  It is so cute and I realize probably everyone else in blog world knows that all ready. But I am always shamefully behind the times when it comes to movies.  I sat on the floor with Lissa and our friends little girl so that KC could be on the couch.  I don't mind as I sit on the floor tons at our house. . . . and I listened for sounds behind me.

And I heard the first one.  A giggle.  Then a snort. Then a chuckle.  KC loved the movie!  He was proud afterwards that he had faced things and found out that it worked out okay.  I praised him and  we talked while he washed up for bed about how things sometimes might not always work out like we hoped but if we never try, we miss all kinds of opportunities for amazing experiences.  I think that at least this gives us something to build off of, and I'll take that as success!

Surly Saturday

Well most of the "surly" is the weather as we have another snowstorm brewing. The skies are milky and threatening and there is that bite in the air that lets New Englanders know that weather is coming in.  It did not stop us from our tasks of the day--shopping for Rob's Youth Group party tomorrow, grocery shopping and our weekly library visit. I even got good news at the library.  I had received an email that I had a book 14 days overdue.  I was shocked as we are very careful of this.  I checked the house and the book was not here. I asked the librarian to check and somehow it was re-shelved by their staff without being removed from my card.  Presto! Fine gone, good library name restored. :-)  KC worked outside on a snowfort he is constructing this year and the older boys played a long game of the card game called Magic.  Miss Lissa and I used her shrink art kit that was in her stocking and made a chain of teeny hello kitties as a result!

Tonight we are going up the street to have a movie night with friends.  We have not seen each other since fall. Despite our close physical proximity L is in nursing school with high demands on her free time and I have not wanted to intrude. It will be great for the kids and also it will allow my wife a bit of quiet when she returns home from work.

The above picture is Fiona with her Nike high heels. She is wearing the red and white and holding the gold and white ones.

Cleaning as meditation

Wish I could take credit for this shot, but my wife took it.  It is very Ansel Adams to me and i love the play of black and white.  This is the brook area beside our yard. It makes our space look more rural than it is, but that's okay too.  I wish often that we had more acreage and lived more rurally but this place and space is best for raising my diverse family.

I have spent the day cleaning and will return to that soon.  I am not hurrying about it, I am trying to take time to be more present and in the moment as I do these simple tasks.  I know that so often my life is so busy that I am thinking little about what I am doing--my mind all ready racing ahead to the next thing to check off on the mental "to do" list.  I am not a meditative sort, but for this moment in time, I can slow, pause, and breathe.

Let it snow!

It started snowing last night and continued through the day today.  I would normally have to sally forth to work but as I am on vacation I was much more laissez faire about the whole weather thing.  The roads were atrocious and I had no intention of driving in them.  KC played outside early in the day while big brothers did shovelling duty.  I can reliably say that the big boys do a bang up job in the shovelling department. They did our driveway, my parking space next door and our elderly neighbor across the street.  When they came in and had dried off and had snacks, KC and I set off for down town via foot.

I had a VERY pressing reason for doing this. The long awaited Nike high heels for Fiona had arrived yesterday afternoon.  I wound up with not one but two pairs.  One is red and white and one is gold and white.  I wanted either or but frankly a bonus pair for her is fine with me.  I wanted to get them to her as soon as possible so I wanted to priority mail them today.  That way I was confident she will get them tomorrow.  I packed the box in a tote bag and also the Christmas cards I had finally written out on Christmas eve.

It was a leisurely walk, filled with chatting and looking about at the way our world was changed by the blanket of white.  We enjoyed ourselves completely despite the biting wind and made it quickly to the post office.  The post office was nearly deserted and the fellow who waited on us was happy to take as much time as we needed for our task.  He even set KC the job of taping the box which totally thrilled my manly little 8 year old.

After setting things to mail we popped next door to Dunkin Donuts for a bite to eat.   KC got a gift card for there as well and was eager to reprise the experience of purchasing his own food.  He ordered a blueberry bagel and an orange coolata.  We hung out inside while he ate, warming up and just enjoying a chance to have conversation together.  8 year olds have interesting conversations that veer wildly from the serious and complex to the inane and the silly.  I love that about this age!

Once he was full and warm we set off back home which was  a bit harder trek as we were going both up hill and into the wind.  But it was soon accomplished and we arrived home, having had some nice exercise and time together.

The rest of the day we spent working together as a family putting away a large portion of our Christmas decor.  I have a huge snowman collection and this helps the kids not to mind so much that we are putting things away.  Also, I still have some areas of seasonal lighting, just with a snowman theme to it.  I need that to push the darkness back a bit at this time of year.

I want to go to Friendlys!

One of the gifts KC asked for from his Nana was a gift card to his favorite restaurant.  Friendlys is his place of choice for brunch as he loves their breakfasts.  He will eat like a stsevedore there and this is a good thing as he goes through spells where I swear he lives on air.  It makes K and I crazy as while he probably is fine, his build is lighter than that of the other kids and we are always afraid he isn't getting enough food for healthy growth.  Yesterday, he wanted to cash in the gift card he got the day before--he is  not into delayed gratification at this point in life!--and we set off.  I have to say it was a lot of fun.  I don't usually get to go with them as it is typically a weekday thing for the kids and K.  There was not a table big enough for our brood so they gave us two booths which were across from each other. Copious quantities of pancakes, french toast, home fries and eggs in various cooking styles were consumed.  (I had juevos rancheros for those who are wondering!)

It was really cute because KC got to pay for the meal himself.  He very carefully carried the little sleeve that has the bill in it up to the register and gave her his gift card.  He was so grown up; it was a portent of the future as he will be 9 this spring!