I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas...

AND IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

Okay, before I delve into the details of this year's festivities, I should probably tell you that I used to be pretty darn Scrooge-y about the holiday. Last year, if you asked me what my favorite part of Christmas was, I would have said, "When it's over." I have, in fact, uttered those words before. Yes, I am ashamed.

Last year, we didn't put up our Christmas tree or decorations until December 23rd. No joke. Last year, I did our Christmas shopping around that time. I'm serious. Last year, the Christmas tree came down on December 26th. Yep.

I was that bah-humbuggy.

This year, however, all the decorations went up the weekend after Thanksgiving. I actually did most of the Christmas shopping on Black Friday. (Yes, I braved the chaos, because I couldn't wait a second longer to start on the holiday fun.) I have had a total turn around about the holiday, just like Ebeneezer in A Christmas Carol. My house has been blasting holiday music since Thanksgiving. Holiday movies have been our source of entertainment since the first of December. My refrigerator has been stocked with Egg Nog all month.

Ask me what my favorite part of Christmas has been this year. ALL OF IT. I'm almost sad it's nearly over.

I wasn't able to do everything I had hoped to do: homemade tree ornaments, holiday baking extravaganza, hardcore exterior decorations (though we did have some), etc. But there's always next year, right? And I was pleased with how things turned out.

Now, onward with the photographic depiction of our Christmas!

First, we made an executive decision not to put the presents under the tree right away. Why? Because Princess and C-bear have a little trouble letting wrapped gifts go untouched for days on end. It's best to keep temptation from them as long as possible.

C-bear had a problem with how barren it was beneath our tree, so she took matters into her own hands.

Look at the the pretty presents!

They were good place-holders until we finally got the real gifts under the tree (which, unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of).

The the eve before Christmas Eve, we had a wrapping party in my bedroom. All the kids were so thrilled about the gifts they had gotten each other. In the past, they all got gifts for every sibling, but with our budget, that meant dollar store gifts. This year, they drew names and they were able to get something a little nicer for their recipients.

Every year, Scrooge-y Mom or not, we open all of the family gifts on Christmas Eve. It's a tradition from my husband's Norwegian side, and we've chosen to carry it on with our family. But, before we tear into the wrapping paper, we go caroling. Yes, we travel about to the homes of loved ones (who are home that evening) and sing to them--right after our Christmas dinner. We've done it since our oldest two were little monkeys.

This year, we added cyber caroling to our repertoire, serenading via webcam family members who live too far for us to knock on their doors. Gotta love the age of technology!

And then, it's finally time to open gifts. Now, you'd think with a family of eight that would be utter mayhem, but we've got a tradition there as well (also stolen from my husband's family). We take turns opening gifts--one person and one present at a time. It makes it more of a family experience, with the kids being just as excited to watch their siblings and parents open the presents they've carefully picked out for them as they are about what they receive.

Here is the Christmas booty:

Big E was happy with his Oregon Ducks themed gifts. From me: the very nice (and far from cheap) watch. From the kids: the vertical flag and sunglasses.

Lee-Lee's bounty! (And yes, she did chop all of her hair off--inspired by Natalie Portman's 'do in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium.) From Mom & Dad: Christmas PJ's and Sims Medieval. From G-Man: The Trylle Series novels and City of Bones. Lee-Lee is a hardcore bookaholic.

Banana's haul. From Mom & Dad: Christmas PJ's (with lime green fuzzy pants--her favorite color), art kit (markers, pencils, oil paints), and painting canvases. From Little E: Make-up and a make-up box.

Little E's stuff. From Mom & Dad: Christmas PJ's (Star Wars, of course!) and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II video game. From Princess: Light Saber that goes all the way in (from Little E's Christmas Wish List) and a small Star Wars Lego set.

G-Man's take. From Mom & Dad: Ninjago Christmas PJ's and a Ninjago Lego set. (We're very keen on Legos in this house.) From C-bear: Let's Go Fishin' game, Hot Wheels set, and Angry Birds Hot Wheels launcher.

Princess's goodies. From Mom & Dad: Disney Princess Christmas PJ's and a girly basic Lego kit. (Her big siblings won't let her play with theirs, so we figured she ought to have her own.) From Lee-Lee: Princess Barbie and Disney Princess coloring kit.

C-bear's gifts. From Mom & Dad: Tangled Christmas PJ's (her favorite Disney film) and Tangled doll. From Banana: Cinderella play-doh kit, more play-doh, and animal play-doh kit.

My gifts? The entire holiday, and even better, the joy my family had during the entire season.

Christmas morning is Santa's big show. This year, Santa was played by Mommy, Daddy, Lee-Lee, and Banana when it came to filling the stockings. And for the presents under the tree (or in our garage), Santa was portrayed by generous and anonymous folks who like to bless military families during the holiday season.

But first, this is what we woke up to this morning:

Again, as a reformed Scrooge, I was ridiculously excited to have a true White Christmas. I'm probably more thrilled than the kids!

I didn't take any photos of the Santa gifts, but I can tell you what we received (aside from the candy canes, chocolates, and clementines in our stockings). All of the children received brand new bicycles and helmets.  I recevied a gift card to Target. Lee-Lee got a gift "card" to Amazon.com (so she could buy more books!). Banana got a gift card to Famous Footwear (and is already pestering me about going). Both Little E and G-man received Lego sets ("City"), and the littlest girls got Barbies.

This has been one of the best Christmases I've had since being married. I'm already counting the days until next year--where I plan to top this one.

I hope those of you who have meandered to this blog have had the happiest of holidays. Merry Christmas!

Card-Making, Tree-Trimming, and Santa! Oh, My!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I walked into Michael's for the first time in a very, very long time. (I did mention before that at one time I was quite the crafter/scrapbooker extraordinaire.) The store was in the same strip mall where I happened to be doing some early Christmas shopping. I thought, "Hey, I'll pick up those cross-stitching needles I need." (I'm currently making C-Bear's Very Special Christmas Stocking and the needle that came with the kit was unworthy of me, but I digress.) I'd be in and out in a jiffy, no problem.

 The doors parted for me and all that glorious Christmas stuff was right there before my very eyes. Wouldn't you know that the tapestry needles were in the back of the store? I had to walk past all the wonderful holiday craft stuff--including my personal Kryptonite: paper crafts.

I told myself there was no harm in perusing what was the latest in scrapbooking and card-making. Oh, Michael's knows what its doing, my friends. Buy one, get one free stamps? Ridiculous sales on paper, cardstock, blank cards, everything and anything having to do with any kind of paper craft that could ever be dreamt up in all of humanity? Yes and yes.

I got an idea. I got a wonderful, awful idea. And it didn't have anything to do with stealing Christmas from unwitting little Who's. (Fortunately, my heart had already grown twice its size since re-engaging in this glorious thing called Real Life.)

I decided that not only would we be sending out Christmas cards this year, but that I would make them myself. I designed the card in my mind as I wandered the aisles, not knowing the sort of torture I was about to put myself through. Two very large bags later (and no, I didn't forget those needles), I walked toward the car full of blissful ignorance.

Things I have learned during the several day process of making 50 Christmas cards with a "simple" design:

• It helps to have a helper. For real. In this case, Banana became my master "stamper." She also helped me cut some of the card stock.
• Cheaper does not equal better. I bought several inexpensive silver ink pads only to discover that you can't see the silver at all. I ended up having to do a bit of a re-design using silver glitter spray.
• Silver glitter spray is toxic. Even though I sprayed the cards in the garage, we still had to open the windows in the house in order to breathe.
• You can't use the standard setting with an inkjet printer when printing on vellum paper. I sadly discovered this after I'd printed everything. It took about 4-5 hours for the ink to dry.
• If you're going to attach papers with ribbon, do not use stiff ribbon. I did. The stuff I used, though pretty, is not easy to work with. There were moments when I considered scrapping the whole project while doing the ribbon part.
• You can never have enough permanent double-sided tape. I went through 5 things of the stuff making all 50 cards. I went back to the store twice just for the tape alone.

Will I do it again next year? Most likely. I'm rather pleased with the outcome, despite the challenges--and I've got 12 months to forget the ordeal. I imagine I'll be just as blissfully ignorant next year--especially since I will be coming up with a whole new design.

Here are the cards. (And I have some extras, so if you want one, please e-mail me your address. My e-mail is in my profile blurb on the upper right of the blog.)

Cards drying from the toxic glitter spray. Big E used to do fine-woodworking and even he was knocked out by the fumes.

In the process of putting the cover together. I did each part in shifts--spending a few hours each night to whittle away at the project.

The finished product (the cover). The poem is an original of mine. I used Papyrus for the "A" and "Y" and the rest is in Rage Italic.

The entire design came to me when I saw this Nativity stamp. Banana did all the stamping for me. Didn't she do an amazing job? :)

And here is the inside. (I opted for as much simplicity as possible.)

Now, that same weekend I got the wonderful, awful idea, our family excitedly pulled out our Christmas boxes, ready to put up our tree (we've got a fake one). The kids helped Big E attach the branches to the base of the tree and fluff them out while I began work on the cards. Christmas music blared from our stereo as we happily holiday-ed along.

After the tree was put together, we all gathered around the Christmas boxes with holiday enthusiasm only to discover all of our tree-trimming accessories were missing. All but one: Big E's favorite ornament (which happened to be on his nightstand for some odd reason). No lights, no beaded garland, no string of Norwegian flags (we're rather proud of my husband's heritage), no angel tree-topper, no ornaments (not even the ones from my childhood). We tore apart the garage and various closets where we have boxes stored. Nothing. Not a single sparkly ball.

All I can say is thank you to WalMart and The Dollar Tree. Without their very cheap stuff, we would still be sporting a bare tree save for that one ornament. I hope we find our decorations, but at least we have a proper Christmas tree.

The hardest thing to find was a proper topper. (Oy, alliteration.) The Dollar Tree had a few but they were too whimsical for our decorations. WalMart had only one (one!) and while the design was fine, the colors would have clashed with the ornaments that we had purchased already. Luckily, because of the silver ink pad debacle with my card-making, I had to head back to Michael's for the toxic glitter spray. They had the topper we needed. Yay.

Because we had to buy the supplies, however, it was a week before we were able to trim the tree. Fortunately the kids were still just as thrilled to do it.

Banana took charge of the trimming event. She's very artistic and did a good job of directing her siblings so that we didn't have too many ornament clumps. (Big E took care of the lights, and both he and I hung the garland.)

Can you guess which kid turns into a little ham when Mommy breaks out the camera? If you guessed C-Bear, you would be correct.

Princess can ham it up, too. Apparently she used all her happy for this photo, because when Mommy wanted to take a photo with all the children and the finished tree... Well, you'll see.

Big E put on the angel. Note that he is standing on the arms of our couch and loveseat. (Both our living and family rooms are a little small, so we had to improvise the best place to put the tree. Interestingly enough, the upstairs is very spacious--we would have had more than enough room to put the tree in our bedroom! Ha!)

The finished masterpiece.

The aforementioned sole-surviving ornament from our original decorations. (Ever see the film "Fever Pitch"? This is my life married to Big E, only instead of an obsession with an MLB team, he's all about college football. Go Ducks!)

And here is the photo where everyone but Princess was pleased. (I can't remember why she was cranky.) Back row (from left to right): Little E, Banana, Lee-Lee. Front row (from left to right): G-man, Princess, C-Bear

The above photo is going out with the cards, by the way. Somehow, when she's older, I think Princess will probably be even less pleased that I sent this photo to all of our friends and family. My response will be thus: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Because Mommy has a wicked sense of humor.

Finally, last weekend we attended the annual work Christmas Party. It wasn't as swanky as last year's (where there were dozens of activities for the kids as well as photos with Santa and plenty of seating for meal-time). In fact, we were all crammed into a DFAC (for you non-military folks, that's the "Dining Facility" which is a cafeteria--and this one was not particularly big). But we couldn't complain since the special events center was being used this year for soldiers and their families to be reunited after deployment. Who cares if we had to eat standing up while the kids were squished in a booth, right? Families were getting Daddies and Mommies, husbands and wives back after a long separation.

Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

Besides, the food was still good and Santa still came. The kids may not have gotten face-painting and crafts, but they got a big bag of candy and a beanie-baby from Jolly Old Saint Nick. A good time was had, even if it wasn't quite as good as last year.

Little E was the only one of our kids who opted out of the picture with Santa. There's no surprise there. He didn't want to do it last year. He's rather leery of strangers, especially when they are dressed-up in costumes. (I'm reminded of the time he met Elmo when he was about 6 or 7 years old. I had to physically hold him in the picture.)

The other five monkeys were quite excited to see the man in red--even my oh-so-mature 12 and 14-year-olds. In fact, Lee-Lee had quite the conversation with Santa about the spirit of Christmas.

Princess, C-Bear and Banana with Santa. I wasn't there for this photo, but Banana tells me C-Bear was rather nervous about sitting on the big man's lap and squeezed big sister's hand very, very hard. Hey, at least she smiled for the photo!

G-man and Lee-Lee take their turn. (And yes, that's a Twilight shirt Lee-Lee is wearing. What's funny, though, is Banana is a far bigger fan of the series than Lee-Lee.)

There you have it, folks, the latest in the House of Crazies. The Christmas shopping is nearly done and the baking is about to begin.

Happy Holidays!

Halloween & Thanksgiving (aka The Year I did not Overeat...Turkey)

But man, did I enjoy the candy!

Halloween:

This year, we went beyond our typical carving of pumpkins and decided to do some real decorating. It's the first time I've ever used that fake cobweb stuff, and I have to say it's loads of fun. The entire family got in on the action and while it's no jack-o-lantern light show to Gangnam Style, we did get a lot of compliments and one family even took photos of our decorations when they trick-or-treated our place.

Nice.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take photos, myself, until the morning after. So, some of the awesome (particularly our spooky lighting) is lost. Oh, well. (You can click on the images for larger versions.)

This is our back porch (which is quite viewable to the neighborhood). Those black dots are fake spiders.

Even the bushes in our front "yard" were not exempt.

The pumpkin carvers from left to right: C-bear (with help from Banana), Little E, Princess (with help from Mom), G-man, Banana & Lee-Lee

The lights were an eery dark purple. And that spider was my favorite!

And now the kiddie costumes! (In no particular order. And again, you can click on the images for the larger versions.)

Banana was a CSI victim. As you can see by the GSW on her head (death was instantaneous) at close range (judging by the GSR stippling around the entry wound) and probably a small caliber bullet. Before her death, she'd been having a night out with friends (see the sparkly false eyelashes?). Sadly, my camera was having some sort of issue and so the photo is blurry. :(

C-bear was a generic princess. Her dress is quite reminiscent of Rapunzel's in "Tangled." (Mommy loses brownie points for taking a head shot rather than a full body one.)

G-Man as Bumblebee from Transformers. This choice should probably come as no surprise since the boy has loved cars (particularly fast ones) from a young age. (I'm serious. He actually enjoys watching NASCAR!)

Lee-Lee, I think, should win all the awards for this year's most awesome Halloween costume with her portrayal of Dead Marie Antoinette. Lee-Lee actually does suffer from a condition where she grows faint at the sight of blood (folks, this is a real thing!) and we learned this year that fake blood will do it to her, too. However, her tolerance for fake blood is a smidge higher than for the real stuff, and she was able to stomach the level of gore on her face and neck. (The dress was made by Nana.)

Little E was our resident Ninja this year. He is also one of my more health-conscious children. He only trick-or-treated for less than half the time the others did because, and I quote, "I don't need that much candy. It's too much sugar." On top of that, he gave half of what he had away to his siblings (and parents). But he did have a grand time sitting on the porch for the evening with Mom and Dad, passing out treats.

 

And Princess was, well, a princess. Actually she had fairy wings (that she chose not to wear in the end), and a crown and scepter (which had gotten broken during another Halloween activity the weekend before), so this wasn't the original idea. In fact, this was a "Southern Bell" costume, but she didn't like the other princess-like offerings the store had and loved the pink in this. I have a feeling since she was so hands-on in piecing together something that fit her 5-year-old vision that in years to come, we're going to see some really creative offerings from her.

It was a fun Halloween. We had a pretty decent showing of Trick-or-Treaters as well. (Lots of little ones in our neighborhood) and I always enjoy seeing the costumes.

And I ate way, way too much candy during pretty much the entire month of October.

Now onto...

Thanskgiving:

No photos for this one, unfortunately. (I never think to bust out the camera during this particular holiday.)

This year, being far from home, we invited a couple of other families (also far from their respective homes) to join us for the festivities. Thanksgiving, for me, is the biggest family holiday of the year. You just don't celebrate it alone.

I have happy childhood memories of Thanksgivings spent at my uncle's house or my grandparent's home, where my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and my cousins were all practically piled on top of each other as the house would be full of card tables and folding chairs. Everyone would bring something like a huge, delectable potluck: homemade dinner rolls, the typical Thanksgiving trimmings, and of course, meatballs. Yes, meatballs. (And the best you've ever had, I promise.) I loved it. I miss it.

And so, the thought of whipping up a crazy-big meal this year for only our six picky-eaters (who wouldn't have eaten much)... Well, how would that be different than Sunday dinner? We found another family or two who were wondering whether to bother with Thanksgiving for the same reasons (though they have decidedly less children than we, if still the same picky-ness) and decided to thrown in together for the holiday.

It was quite nice. And delicious (sadly no meatballs, however). Since we were hosting, we provided the main course stuff. Big E has cooking the turkey down to a science. (He brines it the night before. He cooks it upside down for the first couple of hours to make the breast so tender it's like butter. And he stuffs it with apples. Yep. Apples. My man can make a mean turkey.) I made my mashed potatoes (or "smashed" potatoes as Princess likes to call them) along with other traditional side dishes.

We had a buffet full of tasty food (the other families brought some yummies, too)--which, of course, with only 6 adults and 9 very, very picky eater kids, we had tons and tons of leftovers of. (I only had a modest plate-full myself this year.)

But then, despite the hours spent in the kitchen leading up to the main event, Thanksgiving isn't really about the food, is it? It's about family. It's about friends. It's about forgetting our cares for a few hours to be grateful for what we have.

This year, I'm grateful for second chances. I'm grateful that my kids somehow think I'm pretty neat despite how much of a non-Mom I've been for so long. I'm grateful that they've embraced these changes I've made without bitterness, without resentment, without holding a grudge. (My kids are phenomenal, I tell you.) I'm grateful for a husband who supports me and doesn't hold my past mistakes over my head.

And most of all, I'm thankful to God, for the wake-up call He gave me and the chance to make things right.

I'm happier now than I've been in years.