Lights All Aglow

In early December the Holmes family joined us for an evening at the Garden of Lights, a walk through light display at a nearby garden.  It was a frigid evening for being outdoors (especially for our Texan-born friends), but we toughed it out and enjoyed the evening together and the amazing light displays.

One thing that made the cold temperatures more bearable was the indoor train display.

Every year a local train club sets up these trains for display in the Conservatory of the gardens during the light festival. 

It's always fun to see how they create new scenes from year to year.

The kids were fascinated for quite some time.  Either that or they just liked being warm.

After we left the train displays, we took in some more lights outside and then headed home to warm up.

We enjoyed hot cocoa, cookies and popcorn.

Then the adults played a game while the kids

alternated between playing together and raiding the popcorn bowl.

Dinner is Served

They do make the most delicious food around here. 

And the cooks are cute, too.

They must be good cooks, just look at the mess they made.  That's the sign of a good cook isn't it?  I'm thinking so, since my kitchen is perpetually messy.

Attention

Do you think this baby could use a little more attention?

Actually, maybe a little less attention would be better.

Hands On Christmas

The beginning of December brought lots of Christmas festivities to the Pull house.  One such festivity, that actually didn't happen at our house at all, was a MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) Christmas Playdate.  Lots of moms from our local MOPS group got together and shared a morning of Christmas activities.  

Our morning began with cookie decorating.  The girls thought it was especially fun that they got to lick the knife when they were all done frosting their cookies (see above).

It was also fun to see their personalities shining through in this activity.  Xandra was very careful and meticulous with her cookies getting the frosting on just so and taking 30 minutes per cookie to do it.  Theia glopped it on her cookies in about 3 minutes total, made a huge mess on the table, plate, her hands, face and shirt.  I'm pretty sure she licked every cookie in the process, too.

Aliyah, being the delightful age and stage that she is, spent a lot of the morning like this

and like this.  Could someone please control this child?

When she was on break from throwing fits, she did participate in a few activities with us.

Her favorite was the playdoh station, where she spent a good portion of her time trying to eat the playdoh. 

The homemade playdoh was red and green, of course.  There were Christmas cookie cutters and rolling pins set out for the kids to use and when we were done, each child got to take their playdoh home.

Xandra and Theia liked this station, too.  In the end, I think what they liked most of all was mixing the red and green playdoh together.  It's so ugly, but so fun.

The other stations were craft making stations (which we never made it to), a nativity station where the kids could play with nativity sets, and a book station filled with tons of Christmas books to read aloud together.

Our friend, Beth, came along for the playdate and she read a book or two to the girls at the book reading station.  

Joey hung out in the sling the whole morning, napped and missed all the pictures.  I'm guessing next Christmas he'll be the jolly one pushing playdoh up his nose, arching his back on the floor and sticking his fingers in other people's cookie frosting.

Platypus Turns Three

Happy Birthday to one silly girl.

A good sister

who's a bit, or rather, a LOT messy

a tad adventurous,

and very huggable.

I hope you have a sweet birthday, Platypus!

I love you with all my heart!

Chocolate Rebellion

House rules are that no one gets sugary treats until they turn two.  On each child's second birthday, I bake a cake, decorate it, and then they get their first try at sugary, sweet cake and ice cream.  At least, that's how it's supposed to happen.  It seems Theia and Liyah have different ideas about the way things should work around here.

Remember our Thanksgiving Turkeys? Two weeks past Thanksgiving, they were still sitting around with Hershey's Dark Chocolate Kisses inside. Well, they were until Liyah found them and devoured the chocolate, wrappers and all. When she saw me, she immediately started crying.

That's how I feel when I get caught eating all of the chocolates, too.

Speaking of eating all the chocolates, I wrote it before and it seems to be true once again...if I had simply just eaten ALL of the chocolates in the turkeys (just like if I had just eaten all of the chocolates in the van), this never would have happened. 

Lesson learned.  Baby Joey, from now on, I will do my best to rid our house of all chocolate goodies from now until the time when you turn two, so that you, too, will not fall into temptation.  Either that, or I could just learn to pick up after myself. 

I think eating the chocolate sounds much more reasonable.

Again, Please!

Despite how I have felt the last few weeks as we've been recovering from the holidays, this video, which I didn't know Joe took until I downloaded pictures recently, makes me want to do it all over again. 

Anyone with me? 

PS - I love that you can hear baby Joe's talking on the video.

PPS - I love Theia's excitement about the T on her stocking ornament from cousin Nick.  Her little gasp of exclamation was heard again and again this Christmas each time she opened a present.  It's wonderful to see life as fresh, new, and exciting from the eyes of a child.

O Christmas Tree

Thanksgiving weekend, as full as it was with food, friends, and races, would have been incomplete without decking our halls.  On Friday, we ventured out to Home Depot with all the kids and picked out our tree.  The tree waited patiently outside until Sunday evening when we finally got around to decorating it.

After the lengthier-than-normal task of getting the tree in the stand so it wouldn't tip over, Joe strung our new LED lights on the tree.  These lights are supposed to burn for an insanely long period of time.  Although we left our tree up until January 13 in 2011, I still expect to be using these lights in 2040, if the guarantee on the package is even close to accurate.

Waiting for trees to be put up and lights to be strung can only hold the attention of these two for so long.  While daddy was stringing the lights we got their Christmas Kitty Pillowcases out and put them on their pillows.  Everyone has one of these, right?  A few minutes later, I found them laying on their Christmas Pillows with their everyday pillowcases over their feet.

The tree looks cool and all,

but I guess it just can't compete with two empty pillowcases.

After a bit of tree gazing.

we set to work decorating.

Even baby Joey got in on the action.

Many of our Christmas ornaments come from Joe's childhood.  As Joe was growing up, each year his mom would buy an ornament for each child in their family.  When Joe left his mom's house, she sent a box of these childhood ornaments with him.  The kids love to ask about them and rediscover them each year. 

I love to see them each year, too.  It's like greeting old friends as we pull them out of the boxes.

I love Christmas,

and decorating trees

with kids, on a chilly night, by a warm fire. 

It's simple, fun, sweet, festive, and one of the many pleasures of being a mom.

Trails to You

On the Saturday following Thanksgiving, the kids and I accompanied Joe and our good friend, Dan, to the Northern Central Trail Marathon in Sparks, Maryland.  A quiet and rather beautiful part of Maryland.  We really should get out to these quiet, beautiful places more often, it makes me appreciate Maryland a lot more.

The Marathon was an out and back trail marathon, run mostly on the Northern Central Railroad Trail.  Our friend, Mr. Dan, is a FAST runner.  In fact, the first time we saw him, he was in third place and the second time we saw him, he was running in first place.

Joe's running times usually put him squarely in the middle of the pack, which, coincidentally is well matched to the speed of a momma lugging around four little kids trying to see runners.  You'll see Xandra's gloved hands in the above picture.  Whenever we see Joe, the girls are always ready with bandaids and ibuprofen.  Joe usually doesn't need them, but they sure enjoying being ready to help daddy out.  At this stop we got a kiss and hug from our favorite runner as he zoomed through mile 11.

It's very exciting watching a race in which you know someone who is actually in contention to win the race. 

Unfortunately, while Mr. Dan's time was SUPER fast (under 2 hours, 40 minutes) and would have been fast enough to win the race any of the last five years, he lost to a semi-professional marathon runner on the day in question.  He finished well in second place with a good time, however, and we enjoyed seeing him cross the line.

The girls thought the best part of having Dan cross the finish line was that they inherited his foil warming blanket.  This provided lots of entertainment on a cold, windy day.  Dan thought the best part of crossing the finish line was that he could stop running.

Any hour later when Joe crossed the line, I'm pretty sure he agreed with Dan.  Joe finished the race with a personal best, 03:51:32 (an 8:51 pace).  Impressive for a man who was unable to complete some of the last weeks of training due to an injury. 

After a resting period inside the warm elementary school where the race was hosted,

and some more fun with the foil blankets, we watched Mr. Dan get his trophy.

Mr. Dan, while disappointed to not finish first, still got excited about his trophy (okay, not really, but we made him smile, anyway).

The highlight for the girls, aside from the foil warming blanket, was this fun playground right outside the elementary school.

They also liked our visit to Chick-fil-A on the way home, compliments of Mr. Dan.

Joey's highlight was wearing daddy's medal and Trisha's highlight is a tie between watching Joe finish the race and resting at home the rest of the day.  On race days, it's always a joke as to who's more tired at the end, Joe who ran the marathon, or Trisha, who just felt like she did, from corralling the many small children to and from finish lines, water stops, bathroom breaks, car seats, and strollers.

Congratulations on a personal best 26.2 miles Joe!