Who's That Girl?!

And when did she grow up?

 (Quinn's School Picture)

Christmas Fun

Last Saturday we completely OD'd on Christmas.

We started out by going to Cheekwood to see a Holiday Magic Show.  I frankly don't know what was more entertaining, watching the magician (who by the way was pretty decent), or watching my children laugh and stare in awe when he turned a handkerchief into a dove or pulled giant underpants out of his magic bag.

Then it was off for the requisite visit to Santa's lap and the over priced picture of said event.  Though, I will have to admit isn't half bad....


Afterwards, a lunch out and then to cookie decorating.


(Exotic flower courtesy of my sweet boy)

 

Finally, home for a quick nap (well OK Raif and I fell asleep, Lord only knows what the kids did.).

Then out to see Chad's Christmas Light Extravaganza and pizza out.

I am feeling Christmas in the air.

Thanksgiving in Austin

This year we spent Thanksgiving in Austin to visit Page, Jamie and Hudson and to meet their latest addtion, Camden.

We spent the better part of a week doing nothing and it was glorious.  We let the kids roam wild (I admittedly was jealous with the 70 degree weather enabling the kids to spend most of the day outside) and just relaxed and caught up with old friends.  It is so nice to be able to do nothing and not feel the need to keep everyone entertained.

My kids spent most of their time vying for Hudson's attention, probably because they were sick of playing with each other.  Hudson must have felt he was the bell of the ball.



 

Meet Baby Camden.

After Hudson, my children's favorite person was Tio Robbie (Page's brother).  Do you remember back in college, that one guy that when he came into a party you knew it was about to be ratcheted up a notch? That people cheered as he entered the room:  that is Tio Robbie.  Whenever, he came over my kid's would chant "Tio Robbie" like he was Elvis or something.  And clearly you can tell from the picture below that Quinn thought he was the bees' knees.  Look at the girl, what a crush she has.



We were also able to have lunch with our friends Elissa and Steve and their daughters Reagan and Abbie.  And if will have to say that seriously, Abbie is the happiest baby EVER.  When she wasn't scarfing down rice, beans and flour tortillas she just sat there with the biggest grin on her face and just giggled.  Never a cross look or moment through all of lunch.  I wonder what they are putting in her bottle. :)

Thankful

(Yes, these next posts will be woefully out of order.  Too much to do and not enough time.  Just consider it reminiscing!)

For the first time we did a thankful tree for Thanksgiving.  I let the kids each day pick a leaf and write what they were thankful for and then hung them from the dining room chandelier.  It made a great Thanksgiving display and honestly it was quite interesting to see what they were thankful for.  Eventually, they were thankful for me, but that was only after LEGOs, bikes, food and a teacher or two.  But hey, at least I got on the list, right?

Chopping Down the Candy Cane

I think that most people feel their Christmas season starts when they put up their Christmas tree.  Normally we go to our local tree farm and cut it down the weekend right after Thanksgiving.  Now under normal circumstances I would be a tree on the first weekend of December kind of gal, however around here the grandparents that aren't coming for Christmas are usually here for Thanksgiving and it is nice to include them in at least one Christmas activity.  However, this year we were in Austin TX for Thanksgiving and the kids and I got home Sunday and Raif went straight on to a business conference in Chicago and so we had to wait until the actual first week of December.

So for that whole week the kids were getting more excited each day as they saw more and more houses with lights and trees.  And each day Quinn would ask when we were going to cut down our tree and squeal with excitement as the day got closer and closer.

"Mommy, are we going to the Christmas tree farm on Saturday?!"

"Absolutely."

"I can't wait!!  Yay!!!!"

"I know, isn't it so fun to walk through the rows of trees and find your very own Christmas tree that is just perfect and then bring it home?"

"That's allright."

(Huh, she was bouncing out of her seat a minute ago and now has the excitement of receiving melba toast for breakfast.)

"I thought you were excited."

"Oh, I am!!"

"You don't sound excited anymore."

"I am not excited about the tree.  I am excited about the candy cane and the hot apple cider."

So there you have it.  For the last three years I have attempted to create this wonderful Walton-esque family memory about cutting down our own tree and what does my daughter remember and get excited about?  The $0.15 candy cane and the free watered down hot apple cider mix they give away at the farm.  Sigh.

But regardless of the lack of excitement of the actual purpose of the event, at least from Quinn, off we went and found the perfect tree.

 (Here the kids are enjoying their watered down apple cider on the porch waiting for Raif to have the tree trimmed and tied to the car. They actually didn't have candy canes this year, much to my daughter's dismay)

 (The required hanging the first ornaments on the tree pictures.)

Greyson's "sweet spot" for his ornaments.  I think he put about 5 right on the lowest branch all together.

And the finished product...Ta Dah.....

Christmas, here we come....

The Great Holiday Mix-Up

Greyson's class is learning about holidays from all over the world this week.  They are doing a special emphasis on Chanukah because Quinn in Greyson's class (ah yes the irony of Greyson's best friend in school being a boy named Quinn) is Jewish (more on this later).  Every night he is so excited to tell me the different facts he has learned but I think he may be getting a couple of things mixed up.  Here is his description of Chanukah.

"This guy named Peter has this boat that he sails from England and goes to all of the countries around the world, except here because Santa comes here.  In his boat he has St. Nicholas and a helper who wears a purple coat and has dark skin.  They ram the boat up on the shore to deliver presents.  He can ram the boat up on shore because the front of his boat has this bulldozer thing that can help get it up on land.  After he gets out of the boat he puts on this pointy hat and gets on a white horse and goes off to deliver toys to all the Jewish boys and girls.  If they boys and girls are bad they don't get coal like we do, Peter's helper chases them around with a stick."

Now I am not a Jewish scholar by any stretch of the imagination but I don't think that a single syllable of that is actually true.

But what is even funnier is how excited Greyson is to learn about Chanukah because of his friend Quinn.  He has come home every day to tell me some of these odd tidbits about Chanukah he has learned from Quinn.

Today I happened to run into Quinn's mother while picking up my Quinn as her other son goes to the same preschool.

"Greyson is so excited to be learning about Chanukah this season and celebrate the holiday with Quinn."

At this point, Christina burst into laughter and promptly told me that they are, in fact, Catholic and she has no idea why Quinn is going around telling everyone he is Jewish.  And the only reason she knew about this was because their teacher happened to see her in the car pool lane one afternoon and told her they were doing a special section on Chanukah just for Quinn.

So now I don't know what parts of my son's crazy Chanukah stories have come from Quinn just making things up or getting confused with other holiday traditions.

What I do know is that he loves Chanukah and I can't wait to hear all about Kwanzaa.

The Great Tooth Tragedy of 2011

As most of you may recall, we held Greyson back last year.  One of the reasons, was that he was by far the youngest kid in his class.  There were many ways that being the youngest manifested itself into issues, some unknown to Greyson, but one way was very obvious.  He hadn't lost a tooth.  By the time school ended last year and EVERYONE had lost a tooth (well except Jessie but as Greyson pointed out between sobs, girls don't count) it was a major point to my son.

So at the start of this year, while I am sure all the other mothers were learning the new kids' names and which mother was attached to which child, I was surveying mouths to see where we stood in the lost tooth arena.  To my delight and relief, there was a handful of children who, like Greyson were hanging on tightly to their baby teeth.  Yes!!!

In September, we went to the dentist and after she reveiwed Greyson's dental x-rays I casually pulled her aside to see if she could give me a estimate of when that first tooth would fall out.  She gushed on for a full 5 minutes about what a wonderful root system Greyson had, even taking it so far as to turn the x-rays back on and show me on the film.  I really wanted to say that I didn't much care about a root system that was destined to fall out over the next few years but that she really needed to get to the actual answer to the question.  But when she finally got there, I was less than enthused.  "With such a wonderfully deep root structure, don't expect to lose any teeth for at least another 6 months."  Well crap.  Surely some other kids in Greyson's class have just as  magnificent root structures as he does.  One of them will hold on to their teeth longer, I mean he is the oldest kid in his class.  Surely, this tragedy will not befall the family again.  And thus far there are still kids in his class who have all their baby teeth.

What I didn't expect was this:

About two weeks ago I went to pick up Quinn after school (luckily Greyson elected to stay in the car and finish reading his book).  I was greeted at the door by an ecstatic Quinn "I have a loose tooth!!!"

I just shook my head in disbelief.  "No you don't really?!?!"

"Oh, yes" chimed her teacher.  "She noticed it at lunch today."

"No, it really isn't loose?!?!"

By this time Quinn was using her finger to show me that yes indeed it was loose.  Clearly my face was crestfallen and I could tell that her teacher thought I was crazy.

With all the fake enthusiasm I could muster I said I was excited for her as we gathered up her things to go.

By this time her teacher was giving me this look and I could tell exactly what was going through her mind "Crazy lady, don't you know that kids teeth are suppose to fall out??"

So I mouthed to her that Greyson hadn't lost a tooth yet and we headed out the door.

Drama ensued for the 20 minute drive home.  Greyson sobbed because Quinn was going to lose a tooth before him and Quinn cried because Greyson was mad at her and kept screaming "It isn't my fault, I can't help it is loose."  I just kept wondering if there was a liquor store between school and home.

The next few days were a roller coaster of emotions in the house and I had to perform a major balancing act.  Trying to be excited for Quinn because it was a big moment for her and I didn't want anything to take away from that and at the same time downplaying it for Greyson ("No one goes to high school with their baby teeth") so he wasn't constantly in dismay.  It also didn't help that Quinn carried around the little tooth container I bought her at all times.  "It may fall out any minute and I don't want to lose it."

And so we rolled into the weekend and a trip to see "Junie B. Jones: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" at the Nashville Children's Theatre helped to lift Greyson's spirits a bit and afterwards we went out to lunch.

It was about halfway through lunch when Quinn proclaimed mid pizza bite that she had indeed lost her tooth.  And there it was, a little hole, where that tooth should be.  Her excitement was quickly extinguished by the recognition that she had not only lost her tooth but had also swallowed it.  It was at this point she burst into tears convinced that the tooth fairy was not going to come and she was going to have nothing to put in her little tooth box.  Moments later Greyson joined Quinn in the tear fest bemoaning the fact that Quinn had lost a tooth and he hadn't.  And well, since I didn't want them to cry alone, I followed suit realizing that I wouldn't be able to save the first tooth that Quinn ever lost.

So there we were, all 3 of us crying in the middle of the restaurant, with everyone staring at us and Raif completely stumped as to which of us to console first and proclaiming that we were all over reacting.

At the end of the day, everything had calmed down.  We wrote the tooth fairy a note and gave Greyson an extra story that night and all was well with the world. 

Who would have thought such a little piece of bone could cause such drama....

Halloween Flashback

Halloween isn't just a day anymore, is it?  It is a celebration over many days, with various activities and multiple costume changes, similar to the Oscars.  Or more simply put: chaos.

We started our Halloween celebrations at the Nashville Zoo's Ghouls at Grassmere.  Unfortunately we were suppose to go right when Greyson came down with that wonderful Hand, Foot and Mouth nightmare and so the first go round only Quinn went and then the following week Raif took Greyson, but forgot the camera (which really wasn't his fault because I didn't tell him to take it).


Then after that it was Halloween parties at school.  Greyson got to wear his pajamas to school AND have a party where he got lots of candy. 




Quinn got to wear her costume and parade around the parking lot like the Quinncess she is.  (Note the regal hand wave)





Then finally it was THE big event - Halloween night.  What a nightmare.  Raif had to work late so I was running the night solo.  The parties at school caused me to be late getting home and I misjudged how long dinner would take to make so I was still getting the kids ready when the first trick or treater arrived at my door.  You can imagine the chaos that was me trying to get the kids in their costumes while simultaneously answering the door plus trying to calm the kids down who were convinced that we were going to miss trick or treating if we didn't leave RIGHT THEN.


"But Mommy, EVERYONE is out trick or treating right now.  There won't be any candy left!!  We need to GOOOOOOO."  Argh.

So I did the best I could, shoved them out the door mostly in costume and off we went.  Of course I couldn't keep them still long enough before trick or treating to get their picture.  So here they are after an hour and a half or running through the neighborhood
 

At one time Quinn's hair was swept up in a lovely bun with a pink scrunchie which got lost somewhere after the third house and even though Greyson insisted on taking his sword this is actually the only time he held it with the exception of the first house we went to.  Ahhh, Halloween.

A Day at the Garden

Two of our favorite fall events happen at Cheekwood: El Dia De Los Muertos and the Scarecrow Exhibit.  We usually try to do them separately so we can enjoy a little quiet time in the gardens with the scarecrows but time flew this October and so we had to pack it all in in one afternoon.

Organizations, schools and individuals come together every fall and create a myriad to different scarecrows scattered throughout the gardens.  From girl scout troops, to local schools, to charities, to professional artists - a wide swath of the community creates and displays their scarecrows.

El Dia de Los Muertos celebrates the Hispanic celebration of death, coincidentally occurring right around our Halloween.  There was salsa music, crafts for the kids and the best mexican food to ever come out of a portable trailer.












(Of course the BEST thing to do in the fall is to throw leaves at your Mother)

I took this picture just for you Cindy, this is the Wear-crow, sponsored by an organization hoping to increase the awareness for wearing babies in sling.  Thought you might appreciate it.

Birthday Rewind

Somewhere in all of the chaos of the last month my darling little girl magically turned into a big one.  (She actually had another milestone since then but that is for another post).  5 years old.

We didn't do a traditional birthday party but rather her celebration was her weekend in Atlanta and then we just had presents at home and a trip to her favorite restaurant for strawberry cake on the actual big day.  She also had a little party at school.  So here are a few moments from the day....

 
(First picture as a 5 year old.  You will notice that this is the only picture we have of her in her birthday dress.  Apparently she was sooo excited about being 5 that she threw up all over Raif's car on the way to school.  Happy Birthday to Raif!)



(Her only two requests for her birthday: Wonder Woman and Police Officer costumes)

Hockey Time!

It should be no surprise that Greyson is in HEAVEN now that he is playing hockey.  I myself am in desperate need of a Snuggie and an ass warmer (whoever thought that metal bleachers in an ice rink was a good idea ought to have his head examined).  Greyson is in the Termite league and is a proud Hurricane.  I have to admit though, that as kids' sports go, youth hockey is highly entertaining.  While there are some AMAZING skaters out on the ice for such a young age, most of the boys (and a few girls) out there are, at best, average and so the games in some aspects resemble a Three Stooges cartoon as multiple kids go for the puck and one falls into the other and they all fall boink, boink, boink like a set of Dominoes.  And besides the frustration of being really cold, I will say I have a hard time figuring out exactly which one is my kid.  They all are padded to the hilt like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man with the same red jersey and black helmet and face cage and when they are all in the mosh pit around the puck it is sometimes hard to determine where one kid ends and the other begins.  But the sweaty, exhausted smile of my boy coming off the ice tells me it is all worth it.

Soccer Round Up

The soccer season came to a close sometime in October, shortly after Quinn's birthday.  While I truly enjoyed watching the kids play and sitting out in the wonderful weather, I am more than a little relieved to be done with 3 a week sport practices and marathon mornings at the soccer park.

Quinn finished the year as the team MVP (well to be honest I gave her that title, but since she averaged 8 goals a game I don't think that is a stretch).  And Greyson found his calling as a defensive play maker, occasionally throwing in a goal for good measure (see pic below).  All in all, not a bad fall sports season.

Catching My Wind (and Up)

As Mark Twain once said "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

I have tried very hard over the last few years to keep my blog updated fairly regularly.  It keeps the Grandmas happy and it keeps me with a journal of such of my children growing up.  So you may wonder, "Where the hell have you been these last two weeks, Michele?"  Well let me explain....

About 6 weeks ago or so, Raif's company (which he is a 30% owner) landed a HUGE client with a very critical timeline.  Great for the company, bad for my husband, or more accurately bad for me in getting to see my husband.  During these last 6 weeks I have been averaging about 15 minutes of face time with him a day.  We groggily grunted at each other over the sink in the morning as we brushed our teeth.  At breakfast we quickly went over the crucial life happenings of our children and any other urgent business that needed attending.  He took the kids to school so he could spend a little time with them and I told him I would see him tomorrow as he usually rolled home that night sometime between midnight and one.  On the weekends, IF he was home he was plastered to his computer in the dining room with a Do Not Disturb sign clearly plastered on his forehead.  So I have basically spent the last six weeks playing the role of the single Mom and for all the single moms out there...you so deserve a medal.  I had to navigate through the end of soccer, Quinn's birthday, vacation to Atlanta, Halloween, various school programs and volunteer days and hockey practices all without my usual safety valve.

To add insult to injury, somewhere in all of that Greyson managed to contract a horrid case Hand, Foot and Mouth disease.  His poor throat was pretty much swollen shut and he cried like we were pouring battery acid down his throat anytime he swallowed food.  He spent a good 3 days or so subsisting on hot chocolate and popsicles.  He pretty much missed a whole week of school and any attempt I had of keeping life going after that went down the tubes.  I will admit on more than one occasion a school uniform was recycled from the laundry bin after passing the smell test and I am sure I offended someone who was down wind of me.

Thankfully, however I have seen the light at the end of the tunnel.  Starting middle of last week my husband made his first appearances at the dinner table and he even had the weekend (mostly) off.  So as I am starting to dig myself out of my hole, I will be trying to catch everyone up on all the exciting things going on around here, which honestly aren't many because we have been too busy to be exciting.  But there are a few nuggets here and there, so enjoy!

Happy Halloween