Please Stand By - Technical Difficulties

For Christmas I got a new camera (thanks Nini and Dede) which I have been happily snapping away on since Christmas morning. What is even better is that this camera also has a built in video recorder too. My old camera did as well but the resolution left a little bit to be desired so I never used it all that much but this one takes really good videos. What a better way to break it in than to video the kids first skating trip - which I did and got lots of pics and little videos of them skating.

Here's the rub. On my old camera you could take video either way - portrait or landscape and then Raif had a nifty program to flip it on our computer. Well so such luck with this camera - Raif tried for several hours last night to no avail. Of course I took ALL of our videos portrait - which means they are all on their sides (sigh). I know how much Grandma is eagerly waiting for the videos so I am posting them anyway (along with some regular pics). So sit back, cock your head to one side and enjoy.

Maybe Next Year

So another Christmas has come and gone and as usual it went faster than expected - there are still Christmas crafts yet to be done and Christmas cookies yet to be baked. Oh well - maybe next year.

I wish I could post pictures of my children opening their presents but as usual I got caught up in the moment - I had the video recorder and camera standing by and not a picture was taken. Oh well - maybe next year.

The highlights of the day were as follows - big girl bike for Quinn, hockey skates for Greyson, a new camera for me and Vibram Five Fingers for Raif. And both kids loved the little kid camera from Aunt Susie. Last I looked they had taken a little over 200 photos - of everything. I even caught Greyson opening the fridge to take a picture of the inside. At least we have some photos of the day!

Houses

The Challenge: To build the best gingerbread house ever

The Teams: Boys (Greyson, Daddy and Dede) vs. Girls (Quinn, Mommy and Nini)

Shots from the heated battle:

The Results:
Quinn's cottageGreyson's Chateau
And the winner is.....

(I think it was a tie)

The Nutcracker

So I have a confession to make..... Before today I had never been to the Nutcracker. The two major metropolitan areas I lived in growing up really didn't support a ballet so I never saw it as a child and when I was an adult there was always too much to do around the holidays to fit it in.

But once I became a mother I really wanted my children to experience it so this year I bought our first Nutcracker tickets. After I bought them I wondered how the kids would react to two hours of an event where nary a single person spoke. I thought it might be helpful to them to know the story beforehand so last month I went out and bought an abridged children's version of the Nutcracker. For the last week or so we have been reading it and discussing it and we were all set. Then on Friday I was talking with a friend of mine at Greyson and Quinn's school: Anna Claire told me how much she loved seeing the Nutcracker as a child and always left the ballet dancing around like Clara all the way home. Clara??? Who is Clara?? The child in story of the Nutcracker is Marie. The only mention of Clara in the story we read is a one line mention of Marie's favorite doll. So I went on-line and did some research. The original story of the Nutcracker has little to do with the actual ballet. The Nutcracker ballet only encompasses pretty much the prologue of the story that we read. How the Nutcracker becomes the Nutcracker - how he breaks the spell of the Mice Queen to free Princess Pirlipat and then how he himself falls in love with Marie completely excluded from the ballet. The story that I drilled into my kids head for the last week in anticipation of the ballet - totally irrelevant from the ballet's perspective. To make matters worse I learned as we walked in tonight that the Nashville ballet does its own interpretation of the Nutcracker based on the city. Arghhh I thought - were the kids going to be confused and was this going to be a complete cluster???

As usual my fears were unfounded - from the moment the curtain went up they were enchanted. Greyson sat wide eyed at all the magic that appeared before him. Quinn laughed and giggled all the way though it telling me about a thousand times that this was so silly. I did feel a bit sorry for those sitting around Greyson as he asked Raif a million questions about everything that was going on including my favorite "Why isn't the Nutcracker wearing any pants?" Greyson loved it so much that when the lights went up at intermission he got misty eyed and asked "It isn't over is it?"

I think we have found a Christmas tradition.

Perfect Tree

My roommate in college's family always had the perfect tree - literally. Every year Steph's mom hired a decorator who decided on a theme and decorated the whole house accordingly. The tree was always massive, perfectly cylindrical and had those gossamer ribbons flowing down it like you see in museums and high end department stores. The ornaments were perfectly and evenly placed and always coordinated. Everything was perfect.

When I got my first job and apartment I thought about that tree as I decorated for my very first Christmas. I went out and tried to buy matching ornaments and tried desperately to create a 'theme' on my shoe-string budget. What I ended up with was a tree with a lot of balls on it.

Over the years, like most people, I have bought ornaments here and there when on vacation or out and about. I have started collecting my picture ornaments too and my mother has sent the kids an ornament every year for Christmas. Slowly we have built up a decent collection of them.

Last night as I was finishing my hot cocoa I stared at our tree and realized that my definition of perfect has changed a lot because what I used to think was perfect was in fact the furthest thing from it. What I took for perfect was actually a cold, expensive imitation.

Our tree isn't cylindrical and there is a nice hole on one side but it is the one we as a family picked out and cut. Our ornaments don't match but are a patchwork of our lives and adventures over the past decade. And those ornaments certainly aren't symmetrical but rather placed on the tree by giddy children who only wanted their ornaments to be next to each other so they wouldn't get lonely. Honestly, this tree is the complete antithesis of what I used to think perfect was. But now I realize that Christmas perfection isn't seen through the eye but felt through the heart.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town

Realistically, this is probably my fault. I am big on Christmas - really big and so by virtue of being around me a lot the kids are big on Christmas too. We listen to the Christmas channel in the car coming and going to school and they can sing all sorts of Christmas carols (including the little diddy intro for Holiday Traditions on Sirius). All the books we are reading these days are Christmas related and all are craft projects are Christmas-y too. So it really should come as no surprise that my son has started to pretend that he, himself, is Santa Claus.

He has his own sleigh (his wooden push bike) and his own reindeer (imaginary) and even his own hat. He spends the afternoons collecting toys in his sleigh (he has put a basket on the back of his bike to store them in) and delivering them to good boys and girls or placing them under the tree. Here is where it gets a little sticky. His 'toys' consist of mostly his actual toys however he has also started putting other household items in his sleigh too - like the remote or various cooking utensils he has swiped from the kitchen. So in the midst of cooking dinner I find myself without a needed measuring spoon or a ladle. Attempting to get these items is quite tricky because either a) I get yelled at for stealing them from under the tree because it isn't Christmas yet or b) I have to go into a lengthy diatribe of why I have been good this year and why I deserve said toy as I smell my chicken burning in the kitchen. And he is quite a strict Santa Claus and just doesn't give toys out to everyone - he has got some standards. So at times I am left with making do with what is left and hiding needed items before Santa gets home from school.

Here's hoping that your house is as filled with Christmas as ours!!

Merry Christmas to Me

Most everyone who reads this knows my love of cooking....Well realistically it is the love of eating well but in order to do that I have to cook - but I digress.

This year I started to do some baking (breads, pastries etc) but my attempts were somewhat restrained by the fact that I did not have a stand mixer. Santa read my wish list and brought me one. OK, it was actually my parents and in the theme of "Christmas Day/ presents are really only important for the grandkids" the box came with them at Thanksgiving...unwrapped.

Even though it technically isn't Christmas yet I busted it out and made some rosemary focaccia yesterday morning and it turned out yummy. Yay me. I am excited for my new kitchen gadget so you may be seeing some more food posts over the next few weeks.