Christmas in March

As St. Patrick's Day approaches, I find that I have gotten further and further behind on the blog! In February, we went to Disney World, and once I have gathered all of the photos up from that, I have a big blog post planned, but in the meantime, I realize I didn't even post any Christmas photos. Now Christmas seems like a million years ago, and I have long since forgotten any small stories about the week (which is unfortunate, as that is one of the main reasons I keep the blog!), but it feels important still to have some of the photos out there for at least those parts of the memory. 
This year's trip was to my family only, which meant fairly minimal driving. We were able to visit with a lot of family, but you wouldn't know it looking at the photos, as I apparently stuck to taking pictures of my two favorite photography subjects. Earlier in the month, I spent a weekend with Alaina, sans kids, and got some camera lessons, and I was working really hard to practice and get some of the photos I thought I should be capable of. There was mixed success, but now that I know some of the more basic principles of using my camera, I think I will generally be more successful, especially in the dreaded low light environment.
One of the highlights of the trip was a visit from my Aunt that brought a snow machine for the kids to play with. It was a fairly warm day and the since snow was fake, so it was exactly the kind of snow play I love.
Kevin and Stephanie got to go to the movie theater to see Rogue One. Gwen became completely obsessed over the toys at my Mom's (dollhouse things that never appealed to Stephanie much but that have now fully had their use with her hours and hours of play).

Christmas present yoga!

Learning the low light settings on my camera!

Mom had about 4 little signs like this... I let Stephanie choose between them "Family" and "Love" were also options.  "Relax" was her pick. It was appropriate for the week, but gotta say I thought some of the others were more what I wanted her to choose for the photo op!

Went for our third year at Lewis Ginter Gardens for the lights show.  Still very cool, and a lot of (mostly failed) opportunities with my camera. I think it will be our last year for a while. It is very cool, but it doesn't change all that much each year and is a pretty significant drive and expense. I think we will all appreciate it more if we take a few years off.

BUT there WAS this. The train room has stained glass buildings in the little town that the train went around. We almost didn't wait in line for the trains, as we have seen them several times before. What a fantastic surprise! I could have stared for much longer than we were able to stay.

Here is a Mom lesson. I was really annoyed that Stephanie was making silly faces when I FINALLTY got a picture in which Gwen was looking and smiling. Three months later and it is a funny picture to me. SO apparently I just need 90 days more than Stephanie to find the funny in the silly.

SNOW MACHINE! Best great aunt ever!

I do really wish I had gotten to this sooner for all of the smaller memories, but looking back at the photos, there are plenty of happy big memories!

Snowpocalypse 2017: The Sled Sisters

North Carolina takes their snow seriously.  I was told by another parent on the morning of the looming storm that we should estimate one day out of school per every inch of snow.  She was clearly feeling conservative with her estimate.  Here is the reality:

1. Snow predicted to begin at 7pm, then forecast adjusts to 5pm on Friday.  School dismisses early at 11:30 Friday.

2. Rain starts before I pick Kevin up, so maybe 5:15?  Snow does eventually start, after dark. 

3.  Sleet and snow overnight.

4. Heavy wet snow on the ground Saturday morning, but thankfully large flakes fell for long enough that morning that it really felt like a snow day.  I would estimate about four inches of total accumulation.

5.  Freezing temps that had set in remained through Tuesday at noon.

6.  School resumes on Thursday at the normal time. 

It was honestly fully treacherous out until Tuesday evening, and our first outing was Wednesday, at which point cars were still abandoned on the sides of the road in our area and the driving still wasn't great on the local backroads.  They just don't have the resources to treat snow here.  Nor should they, which was abundantly obvious to me when I walked into work yesterday and thought to myself, "It feels kind of chilly, maybe I should have brought a coat?"  Today is was downright warm mid afternoon.

As previously mentioned, the snow was wet and heavy.  Not good for snow balls or snowmen, and not even really good for sledding.  Stephanie and Gwen ending up sledding in the large culvert/ditch in front of our house.  It was relatively short in length, but turned out to be long in fun.  They played in the snow every day it was on the ground, and the last day was as much fun as the first.  We were armed with hot cocoa and a fireplace, and since the snow and freezing weather is so uncommon, we really enjoyed the time that we were trapped by our NC blizzard.

The last three shots were of a legitimate crash.  They cried, I laughed.  Stephanie told me it wasn't funny.  I assured her that it was in the pictures.  She marched over to the camera, took a look at the photos and agreed.  Then she tried about 10 more times to crash on purpose.

Will it be the last snow day of the year? That is pretty likely, which is okay with me.  We are now out of built in snow days for the school district, so I am not really interested in her missing any more days-  I don't want to pay in summer weather what is fun once a year in winter weather!

SIX!

Since the middle of December, Stephanie has been six. With new Kindergarten friends on top of the neighborhood crew, a "run around Stephanie's house" kind of party was out of the question.  There are a lot of places like the Tumble Gym and bowling alley that put on a fun party and keep the kids out of your space.  Kevin and I are a big fan of our space and don't spend much time wishing we could share it with 15+ kids.  This summer, however, the kids and I saw a balloon artist/magician in action and after reviewing all of our options, we decided that he would make the party a fun and unique day. 

The weekend prior to the big party, my parents came down, to generally visit and bring the bounce house from their house for the party.  It was fun to have them here, and they are the best house guests ever.  I don't mean this as an insult to our many wonderful house guests that frequently stay with us, but until you show up driving your own house with every meal we will eat while you are here prepared with paper plates to serve on, you simply can't compete.  Nor should you, but it was really nice since we were focused heavily on beginning the readying of the house for the party, which ultimately meant moving a lot of stuff out of our large guest room and stashing it in many other rooms where it neither fit nor belonged, a job that went on until hours before the party, with Alaina helping me wrap it up.

Did Granddiddy read Olivia to Gwen?  That would be a yes. 

And now, for the part where Stephanie turns six. 

Ultimately, we didn't use the bounce house for the party for a number of reasons (the weather wasn't ideal, our only large indoor space was being used for magician set-up and the thought of managing 15 kids all wanting to jump on a 4 kid bounce house made me kind of nauseous.  Instead, we staged Stephanie outside in the natural play area that Kevin designed and built, and had all the kids meet her there.  It was a huge hit and admired by all the parents and on my list of future things to feature in a blog post. 

The kids came in 15 minutes before the show started for a mass snack chaos, but with only 15 minutes to go, we could handle the kids in the house.

Many of the kids were able to participate in the show, including, as you might expect, the Birthday Girl.  Clark, the balloon artist, made her a huge haul of balloons. 

The kids that didn't get balloons as part of the show were able to get balloon sculptures following the show (Thanks to Mom and Dad, who made one of their birthday presents to Stephanie an extra 30 minutes of balloon twisting), but I was able to get a group photo between the show and the other children getting a balloon.  His work was just fantastic!

And then Alaina stole a kids balloon, temporarily...

Some of the kids had to leave before cupcake time, and initially I was really sad that we were down a few kids.  However, I quickly realized that Stephanie didn't care, the chaos was greatly reduced, and more cupcakes leftover for me.  Here is where you should squint and admire the hand dipped pretzels made to look like magic wands on top of the cupcake!  And if you don't think they look like magic wands, I'd like to refer you to my past birthday party cake fails- the Dora cake that in no way resembled a Dora theme, the ladybug cake that was not a ladybug (but to be fair the pumpkin pie year two totally looked like a pumpkin pie, thank you Marie Callender), and you will see how totally magical wand my magic wands were.

Seriously, nicest guy ever!

And then Slash showed up!

As did Tasha and Whitney!  It is so nice to live close enough that family can come to a birthday party, though it was still a solid 4 hour drive for them.  What a special day we had, and I was glad they were here to share it.

Here is Stephanie with the final balloon haul. 

Whitney got roped into reading to the girls, of course. 

It has taken me a while to get this post done, mostly because after her party we had a week and a half of school and then slid into Christmas break and then almost immediately into snowy weather.  We are now approaching day 5 of snow days on our three inches of snow we had last week!  In the meantime, I have organized Christmas photos and taken snow photos, so they are up soon!

Thanksgiving 2016

Last year we spent Thanksgiving in both New Jersey and Virginia, and then we did the same at Christmas.  This year we reluctantly acknowledged that this was crazy and decided to split them up.  New Jersey took Thanksgiving because Kevin's brother and his family was going to be there from Michigan.  One might think that descending upon Kevin's Mom's house with two families of 4, including 4 girls under the age of 6 would be crazy town.  I suppose it was, but it was actually far more manageable than I had anticipated it would be.  The older girls (about 18 months apart in age) played pleasantly independently allowing the four parents to only have to really keep and eye on the two littles (5 months apart in age) and those two mostly tagged along with the bigs.  All in all they were mostly cooperative with each other.  Bedtime was becoming increasingly difficult with the room sharing, but we all made it work.  It makes me sad they don't live closer, because if they get along so well in close quarters for days on end, I think we would have fantastic single afternoon playdates. 

Kevin's mom hosted and cooked a fantastic Thanksgiving, and it was an entirely lovely visit. 

There is a playground that is walking distance from Granny's house.  It made for a nice afternoon break every day. 

PIGGYS!  and the Dora picture on the fridge was a cousin cooperative art piece. 

The girls with Grams, Kevin's grandmother (Stephanie's namesake).  She is 92 now, and as sweet as ever.

Seriously, look at these four.  They really did like each other!

Oh, and the lace table cloths turned into capes.  More popular than any of us would have anticipated or probably cared for, but they had a lot of lace cape joy.

And the series of pictures below... How do you choose just one?  I couldn't, so here is a selection.

Happily anticipating next year with these sweet cousins!

Our Veteran's Day Tradition

Last year, unintentionally, we went to the Natural Science Museum and History Museum in Raleigh on Veterans Day.  When we cruised into Raleigh, I realized that the federal holiday meant abundant (and free) parking, no school groups and a quiet museum experience.  It was awesome.  So when a day off of school on Veterans Day came this year, I knew just where I wanted to go.  And we went. 

To touch some hissing cockroaches and snakes...

...and hide behind some "plants"...

...and do some science (and seriously, this experimental station setup over multiple labs was so cool that I really wished I could have just spent the whole day there with Stephanie, but our little Gwen was a bit too little)...

...and see some native NC wood samples...

...and marble samples...

...and then to the History Museum...

...and then back to the Natural Science Museum for a 3-D movie...

...and then back to the History museum, because now Gwen was awake for the fun NC photo postcard...

The End.

A whole day.  And it was so FUN!  Kindergarten is amazing and great and all of that, but it is really eating into the fun adventures we had with no fixed schedule.  But we are packing in the fun when we can!