Christmas Vacation Fun

The morning after Christmas we piled the kids and boogie boards in the car and headed down to Satellite Beach, Florida, for three days. We fell in love with the place when we were living there for 3 1/2 months while Rick was doing a preceptorship at Patrick Air Force Base his last year of school. We forgot how much we liked that place. It is so beautiful and has great beaches!

Blake and Dad spent the entire time boogie boarding and had a blast. Blake is finally old enough to be out by himself most of the time riding along side Dad.Ashlyn decided that she wanted to try out the boogie boards. We figured this summer she'd be the same age Blake was when he learned, but tried to tell her she was probably too little now. She wouldn't listen and insisted on trying - her ride was short lived when a wave knocked her off. She was pretty mad about falling off and wouldn't try again.Instead she spent her time trying to out run the waves all weekend. It was the cutest thing to watch...she'd scream and laugh her head off, running as fast as her little legs would go.
Just like when we lived there, we'd spend a long day at the beach and then end up in the pool at the end of the day to relax and get all the salt and sand off!

Merry Christmas!

We hope everybody had a great Christmas. The kids had a blast opening presents, of course, and playing with all of their new toys all day long. Santa stopped buy and left a Hot Wheels race track and Play Station 2 game for Blake and a pretty Cinderella dress and glass slippers for Ashlyn. The kids had a great day - thanks everybody for the gifts that you sent.
The most creative gift goes to Uncle Steve and Aunt Lisa's family. They found a University of Oregon Mr. Potato Head doll for us! Our kids had no concept of Mr. Potato Head (how old are we???) but loved it and ended up fighting over it most of the day.

Christmas Eve

Christmas is finally here and boy were the kids excited today! Rick ended up closing the office early and not seeing patients past noon, so we decided to take the kids out to the island for a bike ride on the beach. We sure enjoyed the sunshine and 75 degree weather as our friends and families dug themselves out of snow!Then we headed home for dinner and the usual Christmas Eve traditions - reading a Christmas book, singing Christmas carols, watching a Christmas movie and reading from the scriptures about the birth of the Savior. Then the kids opened their one gift they get to open tonight. Surprise...pajamas! (Blake has already figured out that's what it'll be darn it.)
Then since Ashlyn is old enough now, we started the tradition of all the kids sleeping in the same room on Christmas Eve from when I was growing up. However, Blake commented on how lame that was since there was only 2 kids in the family. They couldn't agree on who's room to sleep in and who got to sleep on the floor, so they compromised and both slept on the floor in Blake's room.

I Stand Corrected...

...Blake DID wiggle his tooth enough before Christmas. Five dollars richer, he can now officially sing the popular Christmas song, even though he says he'd rather sing "Feliz Navidad"!

Graduation Here I Come!

Many of you know that I have been working on my M.Ed. in Reading through Georgia Southern University for the past year. We just completed registration for summer term and they posted the tentative class schedule for next year. Surprise - the two classes I had left were not going to be offered- at all! However, after talking with my advisor this week and him approving two classes to substitute for those classes, I'll be done July 30th! Hooray for me!!!!!

Remember to Thank Our Troops this Holiday Season

I heard from a friend about a great program that Xerox has of sending postcards to our troops who are serving overseas. Using the link below you can choose from a variety of thankyou cards that have been designed by school aged children and have it printed and sent out to one of our troops. It took about 10 seconds of my time to do...please take the time to visit the link and thank them this Christmas season for all they do for our country. Leave me a comment and let me know you participated in the program.
http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1280.html

"Dog Barf Cookies"

After church today we made and decorated our Christmas cookies. At holiday time growing up we always made a ginger cut-out cookie instead of the normal sugar cookie. The first Christmas we were married I made them and Rick o-so-politely dubbed them the "dog barf cookies" because that's what he thinks they taste like. (I wonder how he'd be able to make that connection???) Anyways, they have molasses in them, which he hates, not that the cookies are gross. We've made them for generations in my family (it's my great-grandmother's recipe) and I'm not about to break traditions - so every year I make them and ever year he complains!
This is the first time Ashlyn's been old enough to help decorate cookies, or "paint cookies" as she called it. She did really well and didn't even make a mess.
Blake is very meticulous in his decorating efforts and creates a masterpiece with each cookie.Eating one after all the hard work is definitely the best part!

School Christmas Program

Blake's music teacher did an awesome job with the kids this year! It was so fun to see them up there singing and dancing and really getting into it. We had to laugh at Blake through the entire thing however - if they were giving out performance awards, he would've definitely won for most dramatic! He was singing so loud and dramatically and gettin' down with his funky self with all the dance moves. One of the songs I was laughing so hard I was crying! It's a good thing his spot on the risers was on the end, otherwise I think the kids standing next to him would've had a couple of black eyes and bumps and bruises from it all. It was even funnier when all of our friends from church, classmates' parents and staff members commented on it all afterwards. That's my kid!

Finally...

a gingerbread house that turned out! I've tried MANY times in my 30 years to make a successful gingerbread house and it has alway resulted in sitting and eating the broken pieces while chatting with everybody doing theirs. So I was reluctant when Blake bugged to buy the kit this year. Not having the heart to tell him they are next to impossible to build, we bought one. After putting up the walls and attaching the roof it all started to fall...that's when I broke the news to him that they're a pain in the butt, which he replied - "Maybe Dad should be doing this with me, momma." Fat chance. So we started over and held things a little longer to let them dry better and even watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" before adding decorations to give it some extra time to harden. In the end I'm not sure who was more excited about how it turned out - me or Blake. Needless to say, I would recommend the kits rather than trying it from scratch!

Becoming a Real Southerner

Blake lost another tooth last night and looks like the stereotypical southern now with a bunch of holes in his mouth. Luckily his will fill back in though, but until then he looks pretty silly. The one next to it is loose too, but not enough to pull yet. So I doubt that he'll be able to sing the popular Christmas song about front teeth this holiday season. He refuses to wiggle them when they're loose and waits for them to basically fall out on their own. This one has been loose since the beginning of the school year! He's even had one that was loose long enough, that the new tooth was completely in behind it for a couple of weeks before he let Rick pull it. Needless to say, I don't think dental school is in his future! (Sorry about the scary picture, his mouth is sooo small that ya couldn't see the hole unless he made this awful face.)

Our Georgia Peach

Ashlyn and I are in the middle of cleaning house today and listening to Christmas music on satellite radio as we work. There were a bunch of kid Christmas songs in a row and then "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" came on....

Ashlyn- "Mom, Christmas music, please!"

Me - "This is a Christmas song, Baby. Listen, the guy singing is saying he wishes they'll have snow on Christmas."

Ashlyn - "Oooo, yucky! No like snow, brrrrr...too cold!"
(She's only experienced Georgia winters, how does she know this?)

Mom - "Don't you want snow for Christmas?"

Ashlyn - "No, I want go pool for Christmas."

Brrrr!

Okay...we moved to Georgia for the warm and sunny weather - where has it gone? We have had to COLDEST last couple of weeks with highs only in the 50's! There have been days where my sister in Denver, CO has been warmer and days where our friends in Flagstaff, AZ have been the same temperature as us! What is wrong with our weather? Everybody's been beefing about global warming...we're not seeing it here, that's for sure! We finally went out today and bought us all some slippers, our feet have been freezing with the cold temps on our hardwood and tile floors. This time last year the kids still had the slip-n-slide out, we were wearing shorts and still playing at the beach. Hopefully this weather is just the 3 weeks of yuck that we usually get in February and we'll be smooth sailin' from here - wish us luck!

Chattanooga, Tennessee

For Thanksgiving we headed up to my Aunt and Uncle's in Atlanta since Rick actually got the four day weekend off. The day after we stuffed ourselves silly we decided to head up to Chattanooga and take the kids on a train ride. The place was full of all kinds of restored steam engines and some they were still working on. The kids had a great time on the ride through the mountains.Then we went down to their river front park and rode the carousel and walked around. It reminded us a lot of Waterfront Park in Portland with the walking bridges and fountains. It even made us miss Portland for a second - but then we remembered we were walking around in t-shirts and it was then end of November!

Ashlyn enjoyed cuddling in bed with Great Grandma Woolhiser and Annabelle to watch tv in the evenings.