Christmas 2013

a month or so late!

Oops. It's been over a month since I posted last. When I wrote the ICE! post I was on my death bed, day 4 of a 6 day bout with the flu. The six days was just the time spent in bed; it did not include another week or so of feeling better than miserable, but not by much. My lingering cough has finally quit lingering, I think. The flu accounted for a few weeks of blog avoidance. The rest of the time has been spent manipulating my broken wrist, trying to make it work like a wrist again. It's depressing. I dread it and I haven't been doing it enough. P/T lady told me I need to spread my exercises out through out the day to improve my motion. Try working a full time job & three kids and see if she can spread her exercises out through out the day. Good luck.

On to happier times, here are pictures of Christmas. Tonight is the first time I've looked at these pictures. I set the camera down that morning and haven't picked it up until now.


Before the rush


Boys are excited


A horrified by a camera so early in the morning


B was excited by his Dempsey jersey


Frankie found his present under the tree all by himself


He was very proud of his new squeaky ball


And they're done!

Christmas Programs

We had three Christmas programs before school let out for break. First up was J & M in the band concert.


You can listen to them play if you wish.




I'd say they aren't bad for 1 clarinet, 4 saxophones, a trombone and bass guitar.

Last Monday was the grades K-3 program. It was something about spies and stopping someone from hating Christmas. I don't really know because you couldn't actually hear a thing.  But B looked cute in his spy get up.








And they got to visit Santa.


Tuesday night was the grades 4-6 program. Again it was hard to hear and figure out what was going on. It was something about time travel. Strange.







B was responsible for taking that last video. I apologize in advance

I personally prefer a traditional concert with traditional songs with fewer dance moves. Maybe word will get back to the school before next year.

Merry Christmas 2012

Our Christmas wasn't so merry this year. When we were driving home from our day trip on Friday, DH called to say he was going to the doctor. Later he called to say he had the flu.  He spent the next 3 days in bed dying.  A ran a quick small fever and had a sore throat on Sunday. J woke up with a fever and upset stomach on Monday.

Before the illness spread, we managed to make Christmas cookies


On Christmas Eve our Christmas plans at the cousins' house were cancelled, we skipped mass and celebrated with the family via skype.




We decided to do a nice white elephant gift trade with the family. We skyped to the cousins, who in turn skyped to the Iowa cousins. With laptops facing each other, we were set.  It wasn't the clearest picture, but it worked. And I have Fran's Chocolate coming my way soon! Thanks S#1!

J rallied and we had a nice evening. I made a mexican food dinner since we were missing fajitas with the cousins. A made hot chocolate, the boys readied the cookies and carrots for Santa and the reindeer.






By Christmas Eve evening, I wasn't feeling so hot. I tried to pretend it was all in my head. I made cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. I stayed up late to finish up last minute wrapping and get some laundry done.

By Christmas morning it was all I could do to sit upright and pretend to smile while gifts were opened.

Before


Frankie enjoying his new frog


After

DH & the kids (who had recovered) headed to the ILs house to celebrate. DH apologized for ruining my Christmas. I reminded him that I never get a chance to spend a quiet day in bed watching whatever I wanted and sleeping as much as I could.  A little flu wasn't going to ruin my opportunity. I watched the BBC miniseries North & South, the movie Sliding Doors and slept in between.

I almost slept through our white Christmas. DH sent some pictures of the kids playing, so I got up to look our our window and headed back to bed.










I spent about half of yesterday in bed. Today I'm up and moving. Kids are enjoying their presents, especially the air pogo. A knocked another item off the to-do-on-Christmas-break list, making crepes.








Hopefully the illness is over and we can enjoy the rest of our Christmas break. Unless I kill the children for asking again if we can go ice-skating/geo-caching/to-the-mall for the 800th time. Why did I ever let them make a to-do-on-Christmas-break list in the first place?

Christmas Programs

B & J had their class Christmas programs this week. Since the church had been going under renovations, they split it up and held them in the cafetorium/churcheteria. Each grade had a program of its own. I liked it. The kids got to sing more and it was a much smaller affair.

I guess since the crowd was smaller, I didn't make much of an effort to get there early for a seat and ended up standing in the back. For both boys. (You think I would have learned after the first one.) I took pictures with my cell phone (forgot to charge the big camera battery again) and I only got big blurry blobs on stage. Lucky for me I had a more dedicated friend who sat in the third row at both programs. She sent me these pictures.




Thank heavens for friends.

Jammin' in the Christmas Parade

J joined the band this year. He is playing the bass guitar. Saturday morning the band played in the Richardson Christmas Parade. He & cousin M (who is playing the trombone) had to be there in the wee early morning so he could get a spot on the trailers with electricity. If we got there late and there wasn't room, he would have to walk and fake playing the whole way.






After finding J's spot on the trailer, M & I walked through the enormous crowd of parents and band members until we found friends.


I left M with them so I could drive to the end of the parade before they closed the roads. I ran into the friends at the parking lot so we walked a 1/4 mile or so back and found a place to watch the parade.  DH and S#2 and family met us to watch the parade.

It was a nice, but a very s-l-o-w parade. There were lots of gaps between groups. At least it was interesting.






We all made it through the parade. Even cousin E, who sprained her ankle in basketball on Friday night (say prayers for her because she is suppose to run a national cross country meet in New Mexico on Saturday, she needs her ankle to heal quickly!), toughed it out. B just waited for the next group of people who threw candy. He ate a lot of candy.




The band (which is a combined band from all lot of private/Catholic schools in the area) was probably a quarter of the parade and it was the very, very last group. We were given an estimate of an hour and half for the total parade. We couldn't even see the band until after 2 hours and we still had to wait a good 15 minutes before they passed us.



 
 

Can you see J in that second picture? He looks like he was done with the parade. They waited for almost 2.5 hours before they started the parade, but they time he got to us, he was pretty bored. I'm not even sure if he was still playing his bass. At least he perked up and waved when he saw us. M was still happily marching and playing her trombone.

Even though the parade was long, J enjoyed it. He is really excited to be playing in the band and he's playing and practicing willingly. It makes getting up early twice a week worthwhile.

family band

Santa was good to the boys this year.

J got an electric guitar



B got drums



We've got a good start on a family band.  At least it is sounding less like noise and a bit more like music.

Christmas

After staying up late to watch a movie, DH & I were pleasantly surprised that the kids listened to us and didn't come into our room until 7:30.  So much better than 2:45 in the morning.

It was an exciting Christmas morning.










All we need is a microphone for A and we have a family band. I would not recommend visiting my house anytime soon. It is loud and not very musical yet.

For breakfast, we made cinnamon rolls in the waffle iron.




Gotta love an easy breakfast from Pinterest. Clean up wasn't so easy so I probably won't do it again but it was fun for Christmas morning.

DH continued with the random foodstuff presents. I got a 12 pack of diet coke, individually wrapped candy bars & this:




He did balance that out with an ipad, so all is good.

We spent the afternoon at the ILs house for a fish fry.  We ate the fish the boys caught on a fishing trip back in October.  After that, DH took the kids over to the cousins and I came home for a 2 hour nap.  That might have been the best Christmas present of all!