That was a fabulous weekend!

A spur of the moment trip up to D.C. was just what January needed!  It was not as cold as it could have been.  And we had vivid memories of how terribly hot it was in August, such that we could temper our reactions to the need for jackets and gloves!  We all voted we'd take the jackets and gloves over the oppressive heat.  Another perk to January sight seeing, you mostly have the place to yourself!  Even on a holiday weekend. 

When we went in August, we didn't have the energy to endure the wait and the heat of the Washington Monument.  With Rachel F. being willing to get downtown first thing Saturday morning, she secured us tickets for a 4pm tour.  Perfect timing to see the city lights at night.  GORGEOUS!

We recruited the whole gang (sans Ken who was working) to join us in the early afternoon at the down town Air and Space.  It's never very hard to convince the SAZband to join us on an Air and Space outing.  Their dad has a soft spot for all things that fly.  We enjoyed a 3D IMAX movie this time too. 

The trip up the Washington Monument was monumental as we had a whole bunch of us who had never actually done that yet! 

My kids now have an obsession with going to the top of all the most famous monuments.  They think the Statue of Liberty should happen this year too.  And Henry is convinced that he needs a re-do on the Eifel Towel since he can't remember it.  I hope all of his dreams can come true! 

By the time we all made it back down, the day was getting long, and the night was setting in.  Rachel and Steve's families decided it was best to call it a night, but encouraged me to trek my kids all the way over to the Lincoln Memorial, promising that the night viewing was even more spectacular than a day-time visit.  Darin went to get the car and circle it around to be the paddy wagon should we need a rescue vehicle.  As it turns out, my Earnest children are hardy winter-time walkers.  We made it all the way to Lincoln with energy to spare:

It was spectacular, as promised!

It's hard for me to put into words just how meaningful it is that we are close enough to spend a weekend in D.C.  Staying at my brother's house.  Having Sunday dinner at my sister's house, and all the while in between having worthwhile and meaningful activities for the kids to do.  It's truly amazing.  At the end of the day on Saturday, I heard the boys saying to each other, "This was the best day ever". 

Times like that make it all so worthwhile.  Best of all, we are now in the zone of making memories that aren't going to be forgotten.  These are the times and the days that count in their childhood memory receptacles.  These days will be remembered.  That means a lot to me.   

More to come...

Three days and counting.

On Monday morning around 6:10am, school was canceled.  No two-hours-delayed, just canceled.  One weird thing about that, there was no snow.  There was only the prediction of snow.  To be sure, there was snow in Atlanta, and that had us all spooked.  It was okay, I turned my alarm off and slept in until 9.

Live weather cam, Monday morning:
 Safety first.

Later that day I took the girls and went to Sam's Club, Target and JoAnn's, just like the olden days when I used to take them everywhere with me.  It was nostalgic.  But this time, they brought their Nintendo DS's along.  At JoAnn's they opted to wait for me in the car, not wanting to turn off their games.  At Sam's Club they opted to go buy their own pretzels with the $3 dollars I had in my wallet, not wanting to wait in line with me.  Subtle differences, but all the same made me realize wistfully how grown up they are.  I bought the pack that contains 6000 pieces of construction paper while at Sam's Club.  That afternoon was mostly spent crafting away with a couple hundred pieces of construction paper.  One old lady at Sam's Club saw my ginormous package of paper and said to me, "You must be a teacher".  I laughed, "No, I just have four kids and we needed something to do this afternoon."

That afternoon, the boys had their first piano lesson in about six months.  That made me feel like a good mother to finally figure that out again.  Why it took so long to figure out is one of life's great mysteries.

Even later that day (it was a L O N G day), it finally started to snow.  Around 7pm I got another call, canceling school for Tuesday.  "Whatever", is all I had to say about that.  But when I walked up to our neighborhood gym this morning, and nearly slipped on the ice 54 times, I decided today's school closure was necessary.  The world is blanketed in a strange and somewhat thick layer of ice.  No snow to really speak of, but dangerous ice.

When I got the call today around 6:35pm, again with the heads up that the kids will be home with me, for the third day in a row, I started dreaming about having Darin transfer to the University of Florida or something.

To keep myself entertained, I reupholstered my mom's chairs, again.  The last time I did it was five years ago.  The girls were babies!  Babies.  I can barely remember it, but I did it.  All of it.  Had lots of babies, reupholstered stuff, ran marathons, cooked, was happy.  I should have been impressed with myself more often.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

These new chairs make me happy.  School being closed makes me less happy, but the kids are happy.  I believe in happiness, do you?!

I thought this bird was beautiful:

What will entertain us on day three?  Tell me, are you experiencing a series of unexpected snow days?  I'm not complaining about the alarm being turned off.

It's a New Year!

So the Christmas cookie plate must be removed from the top of the blog.  Along with a new year, comes new BIG ideas about life.  Number one is admittedly unimaginative, but important all the same, "Eat More Healthy".  Every letter got capitalized because that's how important it is :)  Treats are out!  At least for a month while we detox from our Christmas gorging.  Admittedly, I would not love Christmas as much as I do, if Trader Joe didn't invent mint Joe Joes and all of it's various delicious brothers and sisters.  And admittedly, I ate entirely too many of them in the month of December.  Or maybe it wasn't too many at all.  Maybe it was just enough to make the season merry.  And just enough to prompt me to eat more healthfully in January.  I am not alone, Darin made the salad for dinner tonight.  Secretly, I think I can live without treats longer than he can.  But not so secretly, he thinks he can live without them longer than me.  So I would say we are smartly set up for a good old "battle of the healthy living", or something like that.  I will keep you posted.

Since we're starting off fresh with a new year, I hate to go back and talk about stuff that happened last year, but I also hate to not wrap things up.

Before the Fitzgeralds left to go back to Virginia, Rachel F. orchestrated a family Skpye gingerbread decorating party.  That was a clever idea, because we were all apart for Christmas this year.  It was fun to spend one evening together, albeit through a computer monitor:

D.C. Row Houses, Gingerbread style.

Later that night the adults got to sneak away to a late showing of True Grit, thanks to our best babysitter in the world (I made him, so I'm allowed to be biased).  The next morning the Fitzgeralds drove away, and that was sad, because it made it seem like Christmas was really over, and that I would have to probably clean my house again, not being able to claim I was being sociable with the company, etc.

I don't really remember what we did for the next two days.  Maybe Henry's basketball hoop got built, and maybe the boys suddenly spent hours of time outside.  And now that I'm remembering,  I think that was all made possible by our 60 degree and sunny weather that we had, all the way up until New Year's Eve!  Those are some great Christmas memories.

New Year's Eve was spent in our traditional manner, a la Fondue pot.  It was so delicious!

Le Fromage:

After devouring the entire pot of cheese, we sent the kids away while we cleared it all and set out the second (and most important) course:

Le Chocolat:

The boys were determined to stay awake until midnight.  I was determined to sew two new dresses before Sunday, so the evening was thus spent until 11:56pm when we all gathered together in the attic to toast in the new year with Sprit Zero and Crandberry Gingerale.

The end of an era.  Henry will turn 12 this year.  The girls will be 6 in a few short weeks.  I don't know how it's gone by so fast.  I look forward to all of it.  Life is grand.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Favorites

Christmas cookies were baked and delivered, with very little time to spare!

The Fitzgerald's arrived, too late to have Five Guys, but not too late for Domino's delivery, and our Nativity scene. 

Christmas Eve jammies were opened just in time to go to bed!

The kids just barely remembered to lay out cookies for Santa...

And just like magic, we all woke up on Christmas morning!!

The smiles made the short night worth it!

RUBY

JANE

HENRY

GEORGE

Then George insisted on staying in his pajamas all day long, even while out in the neighborhood testing out his new rip stick/scooter.  Also, this is the last beautiful weather we had.  It started snowing Christmas night, and produced an impressive five or so inches, which ended up cancelling church, etc.  We sent The Fitzgerald's out for provisions, since we were going to be snowed in for a while.  Being able to use the Whipeez machine seemed like a day-after-Christmas necessity...

DELICIOUS.

Honorable mentions to the Barbie Rockin' Girl guitar.  Christmas 2010 wouldn't have been the same without it!  

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

I don't even have time for this right now...

...but I'm not a quitter.  I hate the fact that the blog has sat un-updated for a record breaking five weeks!  Christmas eve-eve is tomorrow.  Just ask my kids, I've heard that expression no less than 100 times today.  We're all giddy with excitement and anticipation.  The new Fitzgeralds are scheduled to arrive in about 36 hours.  I could equally fill those 36 hours with wrapping or laundry.  You pick!  We need to bake cookies, go look at Christmas lights, share cookies with people, watch more Christmas movies, sing some Christmas songs!  And we only have two days to do it all in!

Oh well, one thing is for sure, the older you get, the faster time goes, because it really felt like it was just Thanksgiving yesterday.  It's a hard pill to swallow, the time going faster and all.  I do have one question about the phenomenon, do my kids feel the speed of time the same way that I do?  Or is it just me?!

The quickest recap of the last five weeks, and then the slate will be cleaned for Christmas.

We had a totally low key Thanksgiving.  But it was really sweet too.  Trader Joe's mostly catered it.  We did throw in some homemade rolls which stole the show, and our traditional Thanksgiving chocolate cream pie.  My kids hate pie, and that's kind of what Thanksgiving is all about.  So I've turned chocolate cream pie into a tradition, just so that my kids can feel a kinship with the Pilgrims, or something like that.  Anyway, it was all lovely.  It was followed up with a Thanksgiving night viewing of "Tangled".  And then, just like that, it was all over.  Came and went, zoom.

The North Carolinian autumn was stupendous.  I would be out running just dying over the colors and the leaves.  By the time we finally got the family gathered up for a photo shoot, we had mostly missed the colors.  But these faces were stupendous this autumn as well.  Take a good look at them.  There are no babies here anymore.  These are mostly big kids.  It's a new adventure everyday.  Lots of mornings I wake up with the thought, "I was a really good young mother.  I did babies really well.  These kids are a mystery to me."  But they are bound and determined to grow themselves up.  I'm trying to lead, or rather, be guided with grace.  I love them.

 
 

Throw in some Thanksgiving parties at school, some corn husk doll making, several days of substitute teaching (that's my new job now), and we woke up and it was December.  Time to get ready for Christmas?!

Did you know North Carolina is either the number 1 or the number 2 exporter of Christmas trees?!  That means we have a tremendous selection at really competitive prices.  Let's just say, fresh cut Christmas tress are SUPER expensive in Korea!

 I really wanted to chop our own tree down, so I found us a tree farm.  But when we got there on December  2nd, the chop-your-own-tree-down variety, were very picked over (what?!).  You've gotta chop early here in NC.  But do not fear, the Major was not disappointed in the least bit that he did not have to saw my tree down for me!  He was happy to watch the eager high school boy carry my pre-chopped tree to the van.

Better luck next year!  But our tree really is beautiful.

And thus ended our interactions with the Major for the following ten consecutive days.  He was fully "Heads Down", all camped out at the dining room table.  There in body, but far, far away in mind.  He thought he was going to flunk all of his classes.  He thought he had left everything to the last minute.  I tried to be sympathetic.  But, you know when you know someone, and can see them in a way that they can't see themselves?  He has since learned that he got straight A's.  He's acting surprised.  And in a way, I think he really is.  But I'm not.  I knew it all along.  I wish I had a picture of him freaking out at the dining room table.  Those were good times.

Next came the flurry of Christmas parties and performances:

Jane's class presentation of "The Gingerbread Baby":

Then followed a literal flurry of snowflakes.  They amounted to about an inch.  Probably less.  No one was even enticed to play in it.  But school was cancelled one day because of it.  And delayed two hours the next day, when it was already supposed to be a half-day of school that day.  We were not proud to be from North Carolina on those days.

And thus ended all the school days in 2010! 

And before we could really soak that in, George turned 9!!!

Highlighted by a sacvenger hunt around the house:

To find the bike we had hidden in the laundry room:

Which we were sure was going to be his most prized birthday present, until his cousin Oliver sent him a Marshmellow gun, which instantly trumped the bike!

But maybe not the giant container of cheese balls that are proudly on display in George's bedroom as I type.

Late on Sunday night, after putting George to bed on his 9th birthday I felt all kinds of pride (I hope the good kind), in who he is becoming.  It's hard to be a George.  He's got so much inside of him.  And yet, he looks like he's just a kid to most people, and to his parents.  And sometimes he really doesn't think before he acts.  But other times he's thinking so, so much that I feel completely inadequate to teach him anything.  I love him to bits and pieces.  I tell him that some nights.  I drag it out as long as I can, using words to describe smaller, and smaller measurements of things, and concluding that I love him that much.  Maybe it doesn't makes sense right now, and though most times when I do it he says, "whatever" (with a smile on his face), but I know he feels it.  His mama loves him, and in the end, to be loved unconditionally is what we are all after. 

Well, I've lost an hour and a half of my time composing this post.  And it's probably too long to stay interesting to most folks.  But hopefully, in the grand sceme of things, when I look back, it won't be time lost, but a precious gift I gave to myself a decade from now, when I can't remember any of the details anymore. 

Merry Christmas.  Ready or not.