Merry Christmas!

And our 2011 Animoto here

Merry Christmas friends!

An Ellie Angel

"Angels we have heard about... Sweetly singing all the time" -Ellie

Christmastime in New York

image found here

We spent a super rainy night enjoying the NYC Christmas sights -- a plus for the low crowds, but we were a soggy bunch by the time we returned home!

FAO Schwarz toy store - where we dried off, warmed up, and waited for Jordan to join us before braving the short subway trip to our next destinations. (And where we almost bought Jordan a 2 lb. Reeces until we saw that it was $25!)

"Let's all choose our very favorite color and hug them!"

Dancing on the big piano

The Rockefeller tree -- beautiful, and amazing to see the Rockefeller building as a backdrop - so tall that it disappeared into the clouds above.

image

And the ice skating rink there - with 2 lone skaters circling the ice in an inch or so of rain puddles.

image found here

The Saks 5th Avenue light show -- this was amazing. Kathie sent us a link beforehand and it was the big event that Landon and I were most looking forward to.

(Watch this -- it's so fun!)

Time to baby-proof

This little guy is scooting and crawling and kneeling and pulling up and standing and discovering all sorts of exciting places around the house. (How did this happen so quickly?)

The moment Jordan 'gets home' from work

(and me of course trying to talk to him about his day/my day :)

I'll have to ask Landon to tell me the story

Just found this on the camera tonight when we uploaded our photos. :)

From Landon on my Birthday

"I want to write down all the things I love about Mommy!"

What New Yorkers haven't seen

There are a lot of things to see in New York --

image by Fernando Volken Togni

And besides all of the sight seeing, you could easily spend an entire vacation here just people watching

People by Peter Spier

But one thing that you won't see (at least I have not yet seen it)

is a mom (or dad, grandma, grandpa, nanny...) with three young children :)

We've been quite the happy little parade this week!

Sitting on the dock of the bay (and other fun)

Landon with a new friend

We revisited this great dock near where we stayed last year and the kids had a blast racing around, performing on the stage, climbing and dancing on the benches, watching the boats go by... a fun afternoon spot. :)

'Did you see I can do this cool thing?'

We also took a ferry over to Battery park (we were loving the warm sunny day -- but the park was mostly empty (thankfully - for a worried mom in a huge park :)

This is my favorite thing there -- a bicycle merry-go-round where you peddle to make it spin.

and Ellie enjoying her peanut butter crackers. :)

A day in

Out my bedroom window this morning

I've been sick this week and poor Owen was sick today too, so we decided to spend the day in. (Except for a quick trip on the light rail to go and pick up my purse that I left at a restaurant on Tuesday night!)

Best of the day --

• Waking up in the morning to a beautiful blue sky view (after a crazy day and night of storms)
• Landon's "What a fancy dinner!" (a little low on our hotel rations -- mac and cheese, baby carrots, grapes and deli ham :) Making dinner and chocolate pudding with the kids.
• Dancing with Owen to Peter Breinholt Christmas music.
• Skyping with Kathie
• Jordan calling to check in and see how we were doing.
• A clean up game/scavenger hunt - especially the kids excitement for it.
• A few quiet minutes right now -- looking out at the apartment across the street with Christmas trees glittering in several windows.

Happy children :)

Obviously not too disappointed with a day in rather than a day of out-and-aboutness :)

Best of today - in Manhattan

• beautiful, warm Fall -ish weather (w/ lows much higher than our highs this week - hooray!)
• Landon and Ellie climbing on the rocks in Central Park -- Landon eyeing the huge tall rocks, but obeying and enjoying the smaller (safer) ones with Ellie
• Landon and Ellie crackling, gathering, throwing leaves in Central Park -- running and jumping and tumbling in the piles. Landon chasing Jordan with piles of leaves, Ellie following behind with one leaf in her fingertips 'I have this leaf to throw at Daddy!' or carefully carrying an armful 'I'm going to give these to the animals if they're here..." Owen happily surprised at a stroller full of leaves from Landon
• no children lost or any other tragic misfortune that we cautioned them about :)
• Owen's 'da da da' jabber on the subway
• cozy quiet time in our nice apartment, resting and listening to Landon read to Jordan.

Twenty Eight

Source: flickr.com via Tirajeh on Pinterest

This year I want to:

enjoy the sweetest moments of each day with my family.

give loving care to my family.

have more dance parties.

play the piano for my children.

write more.

draw more.

create. I feel like I'm just bursting these days with wanting to create in so many ways.

do the things I ought to do every day and let go of things that aren't important.

set aside time to think, focus.

connect and stay connected to friends.

start a business?

sleep through the night.

find a solution to my ever increasing gray hairs :)

read to my children.

eat lots of vegetables and other healthy foods.

do yoga. run. bike. snowshoe. adventure.

make my children smile. make Jordan smile.

be grateful.

Celebrations

Jordan and the kids surprised me with a sweet and wonderful birthday party yesterday. Matching plates and cups and napkins, a house filled with balloons and streamers, party popper confetti toys, birthday cards (including a singing one!), pink flower wrapped presents with pink ribbons, and a pink pony birthday cake. (Landon helped with the party planning :) Jenny and April (and Kathie and Winslow via skype) celebrated with us too.

Such a wonderful day. I felt so loved by my dear family.

Also, Jordan's gift for me was drawing supplies. Wonderful because I'm excited to try them out, but even more wonderful because he thinks I am good at this. And wants me to keep doing it and getting better and sharing my happiness in this newfound talent.

On Thanksgiving evening, April asked if she could color one of my pictures. I just felt bursting with happiness. She and Jenny and I sat on the floor in the front room and I wrapped a few Christmas presents while they colored.

And other Thanksgiving break fun -

A carefree out-to-eat Thanksgiving dinner, lots of pies, a great visit from Jenny, a shopping trip to Park City (Jen and I), fun time with April, a crawling Owen, sick children :( wig and mustache shopping (for an upcoming Animoto party!) warm and beautifully blue-sky sunny days, melting snow, leaf raking...

Such happy moments in these days.

Twenty Eight

Source: flickr.com via Tirajeh on Pinterest

This year I want to:

enjoy the sweetest moments of each day with my family.

give loving care to my family.

have more dance parties.

play the piano for my children.

write more.

draw more.

create. I feel like I'm just bursting these days with wanting to create in so many ways.

do the things I ought to do every day and let go of things that aren't important.

set aside time to think, focus.

connect and stay connected to friends.

start a business. (make something that someone thinks is so great that they'd want to buy it)

sleep through the night.

find a solution to my ever increasing gray hairs :)

read to my children.

eat lots of vegetables and other healthy foods.

do yoga. run. bike. snowshoe. adventure.

make my children smile. make Jordan smile.

be grateful.

Happy Thanksgiving (a naptime sketch :)

My cup runneth over

Loving baby Owen

I was sitting by Jordan on our little couch for a minute today - soon he had Owen in his arms, Ellie climbed up into my lap, Landon squeezed in between us... It was a moment like sitting at the dinner table when Ellie shared her high chair with Owen for the first time and our table was so full. It almost seems unbelievable that this little family is my own. I'm so grateful for them. I love them so.

A spark...

Things have been changing at our house. Nothing huge, but little hints are starting to pop up all around. An organized craft room. Clean bedrooms. Dinners in the freezer. Full dresser drawers instead of full laundry baskets. Kid arts and crafts activities... what could it all mean?

I'm learning to sleep! (And crawl -- watch out!)

I am getting some sleep! This little guy is finally sleeping consistently in 3 hour stretches (and sometimes more!) And, oh what a difference it makes. I'm so grateful.

Also, with a little more sanity that sleep has brought, we've had more time to focus and plan and more intentionally simplify our lives. I've been realizing lately that right now in our lives, things are going to be a little hectic. (Right after our weekend of wedding travels I was talking to Landon about our upcoming plans - Thanksgiving and company, my birthday, a trip to New York, Christmas, Ellie's birthday, Grammie and Grandpa visiting, our trip to California...) So my new goal is to make all the days in between simple. To just do the things we need to do and have peaceful and happy and simple days.

Tonight we cleaned the house and then had a Christmas decorating party. We decided if we wanted to enjoy this Christmas time, we needed to get a head start :) Judging from this year's history, we knew if we didn't start now, we would probably still have Halloween decorations up in January and then be left wondering 'what happened to Christmas? How did we miss it?' Also, we are having Thanksgiving at Elements restaurant. It was such a nice feeling to walk past the turkeys and on-sale Thanksgiving items and not have my mind racing to remember what I might still need.

We'll see how we do at enjoying and keeping our days simple. But oh what a blessing to have some sleep to help us do it!

And remember when it was Fall?

favorite fall time activity for Landon

brothers!

my boys :)

playing go fish with my kiddos

a cute smores face

happy guy!

soccer in the front yard

Snow Season

(the scene over our back fence -- I took this yesterday, today we have 8-10 inches or so)

Last year, it snowed all Thanksgiving weekend -- a happy festive beautiful snow. We loved it. But, then it didn't melt and didn't melt and didn't melt... until the end of May. (I'm not sure if it would be an exaggeration to say that we didn't see our grass from Thanksgiving to Memorial Day) I feel a little anxious about all of this...

But, we've enjoyed a beautiful weekend of snow. Snowman building, snowshoeing, snow shoveling and raking and sweeping. And today was such a clear blue day with all the glistening snow, it was unbelievably beautiful. We're doing our best to prep ourselves to enjoy the next 6 months of snow! :)

I love my Ellie

From Ellie today -

I love my mother! She is so cute! Her name is Mommy!

A Sunday Afternoon

The boys, playing Risk on the front porch.

Snow Day

Landon couldn't be happier about the snow. He had an afternoon of shoveling, sledding, snow ball throwing... he is one happy winter-loving boy.

"This is my snow rake!" says Ellie

Things have been pretty crazy for us lately. And so, so busy. (Last weekend for example with two brothers getting married in two different states...) It was pretty nice to have just a regular day today. A trip to Costco, shoveling snow, Landon and Daddy play time, house cleaning and organizing, pumpkin pie for dessert... With all the snow, the Costco Christmas decorations :) and a day to recuperate and enjoy our family - we're feeling excited again about the holidays, even with the busyness this season brings.