Frank Costanza was on to something

*It has been about a million years since I have posted anything so prepare yourself for a long one. *

As some of you know, I started back to school to get my M.S. last fall and this year has proven to be extremely challenging for me to manage everything I have on my plate.  As a result... not much posting.  Now that I'm on my winter break, I have a bit of breathing room and I thought I would do a bit of an update- in no particular order.  We have had a few major things happen around here since my last post!

For starters there have been two birthdays since I last posted.  William turned 1 and Emma turned 4.  We were lucky enough to have my mom and Peg here over William's birthday.  Emma had a low key party with a couple friends and all sorts of Frozen stuff.  Very fun.

 

This is a video of some of William's first few steps.  I love how mundane it seems to be compared with all the other activities of the day.  Third kid.

Emma was able to give up her bubba (pacifier) and just like her big sister, she left them for The Bubba Fairy.  The Bubba Fairy left her a present and as a result the girls got bunk beds (to be stacked after it's not so terrifying for Mama).

Ada lost her two front teeth.  One got knocked out while tumbling on Halloween just before trick-or-treating but luckily she was still able to eat the candy...thank goodness!  And luckily the tooth fairy found us even though we were in Massachusetts visiting family at the time.  Halloween was incredibly fun this year since we were all together and in the neighborhood I grew up in.

Witch, Mouse, Lowly Worm, Super Rose, River otter

When Ada had her accident she knocked the other front tooth pretty good so we knew it was a matter of time before it fell out.  Well, sure enough a few days before Christmas that one fell out too.

"Dear tooth fairy  I had my tooth out from my tooth brush  I love you  from Ada"

We recently watched the Seinfeld episode, "The Strike" about Festivus as part of our traditional holiday media consumption.  It is simply fabulous and for some reason this year I realized just how right Frank Costanza is - he realized there are no rules about the holidays and he could make it whatever he wanted it to be, aluminum pole and all.   One of the things I love about our family is we try to do just that.  Take the things we like and leave the things we don't.  For me, I love baking cookies, sending and receiving paper holiday cards, decorating the tree while drinking egg nog and listening to Bing Crosby's Christmas album, and generally just hanging with my family and friends. Well this year was perhaps the best.

I must say that the awesomeness began at Thanksgiving which is easily my favorite holiday and has been the hardest for me to be away from family since moving to Minnesota.  This year we were treated to a dear friend visiting.  It seems strange to call her a friend since Julia is so much more than that to our family.  We call her "Aunt Julia" and it has been interesting to talk to the kids (Ada especially) about what it means to be family.  Being five, the idea that Aunt Julia and Aunt Alexa are not really my sisters and yet we call them "aunt" was not sitting well with her.  It was nice to see her get it- that sometimes we choose our family.  That when you have love it doesn't matter how you are related and that we are so, so, so lucky to have friends in our lives who love us and who share their lives with us and we get to share our lives with.  Seriously good stuff.  So, on that note, Aunt Julia (chosen family) was able to make a trip out to chilly Minnesota from Oregon to visit with us for Thanksgiving.  It was blissful.  We talked about the menu and cooked together like we used to when we were first developing our friendship (over 10 years ago).

We look like kids here!  This was taken on one of the nights we made a spread of food together to accompany some t.v. viewing of an old favorite.

If you were a fan of "Lost" you will get how awesome all of this is.

Julia made a pavlova decorated with a scene of the plane crash along with some meringue numbers...4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.  Just spectacular. 

We have both improved with age I think and made a yummy Thanksgiving spread complete with some incredible gluten-free desserts.

And she was a wicked good sport with the cold MN weather.

We were fortunate to move on from our fantabulous Thanksgiving to land squarely in what has easily been the best holiday season we have had as a family.  Each year we fine tune our family traditions and this year we kicked it off with picking up the tree.   I love the smell of the fresh tree and the Christmas music we listen to while decorating reminds me of childhood.  We all enjoy it.  My mom found a bunch of ornaments and sent them to us last year, and the kids have made a few at school, including a rad woven star that Ada made in Spanish class that says Feliz Navidad which became our new topper.

Of course this is what you do with boxes.

The kids took a couple of trimmings, stood them up with playdoh and used them as "fairy Christmas trees".  Ada is making little bobbles for her tree.

This year we were also able to see a performance of The Nutcracker and Frozen.  One of Ada's friends performed with her ballet studio and it was so fun to get to see her on stage and the performance as a whole was great!  The experience made a big impression on the girls and we even made a new station on Pandora just for Nutcracker music- they love to dance (even William is known to start spinning when it comes on).  The Frozen performance was another local ballet studio and was an adaptation from the movie.  I was so impressed with the girls at each show they were excellent audience members.  William was not so patient with the idea of sitting for that long, but did very well running around in the hall.

William and I spent most of the time checking out the Christmas trees outside the performance hall and watching through a window, but it was still very fun.

The girls danced all the way back to the car.

We had a number of fairly normal/ non-Christmas-y days and here are a few of my favorite moments.

Using a glass for the first time. 

Mini date with Tony.  I'm kind of  excited.

Sibling love

This was taken by one of our sitters- such happy kids:)

Okay, so back to my point... we had an amazing Christmas season this year from picking up the tree to the nonstop carols, to making cookies, being together, and seeing their faces when they realized Santa had come.  It will be tough to beat next year.  Here are the highlights.

GINGERBREAD HOUSES

HOLIDAY BOOKS

SANTA VISIT

We went to an event at a local nature center

BAKING FOR TEACHERS 

(Continent cookies in Montessori colors- label says "Thank you for making my world sweeter")

DATE WITH ADA

(She wanted to go get hot chocolate and work on her present for Emma- so sweet)

ICE SKATING

Man this was harder than I remember!  Mama needs more practice!!

WILLIAM!

VISIT FROM DANICA & JESSE

You have probably heard me rave on about Danica.  We all miss her and it was so sweet to see William respond to her as if no time had passed.  Felt so special to have them stop to see us on their trip back from their new home in California.  

CHRISTMAS EVE

No time for baking = chocolate covered strawberries for Santa.  This may become a new tradition around here.  

Which brings me back around again.  WE get to decide what our traditions will be.  I love that.  I love that we get to choose what we do as a family and make it our own.  And with that...Christmas.

Note the cat siting under the tree.

Sleeves in her stocking

This was a huge hit for this little chatterbox.

The girls made shirts for each other.  Emma painted "the night sky" for Ada and Ada embroidered a rose for Emma.

Santa brought Anna and Elsa dresses :)

Frozen backdrop from Mama & Poppa (designed by Poppa)

They love it!

"Do you want to build a snowman?"

And of course, trains.

And books.

If you're still reading, thanks for staying with me on this long and rambling post.  While I may not find tinsel distracting, and do not need to air my grievances with my family, I am glad that we can make our own family holidays.  And make them WICKED AWESOME!