Christmas in a nutshell!

Since I am writing this in March, I am just going to summarize Christmas! We visited the families for Christmas, another long trip across the country, but well worth the effort! We were able to leave earlier and Craig stayed longer than he did last year. We had the Weir annual Christmas party, several other family get togethers, and Lucas was able to spend lots of time with his cousins! He enjoyed unwrapping his presents and made out like a bandit. Christmas was fun and we enjoyed being with our families!

I do have to tell one story. For Christmas we bought Grandmas Nean a bag of Peanut M&M's. We had Lucas give them to Grandma. Several minutes later, Lucas found the bag of M&M's ripped a hole in them, they spilled all over the floor, and as were trying to quickly pick them up, Lucas was quickly shoving handfuls of M&M's in his mouth! Yummy!

Plenty of room to grow!

This has been one of Lucas' favorite things to do! Try on my shoes, he is not quite coordinated enough to try on daddy's shoes, but I am sure that won't keep him from trying!

The Polar Express!

I love our library! The children's department is wonderful, they have story time, and fun activities going on all of the time! At Christmas time they do the Polar Express activity. You have to register for this, and spots usually fill up really fast. They had story time first and read the Polar Express, Lucas sat still for this for about five minutes before he was up and moving around (oh well). At the end of the story they handed out a little pouch with a bell and a token to use at Santa's Workshop! We then took a ride on the trolley around the block and ended up just down the street from the library at "Santa's Workshop." Things did not go well with Santa, Lucas did not enjoy this part at all, though he really enjoy Santa's workshop where they had a bunch of nice toys. Everyone could pick a toy and pay with your token. Lucas wandered around for several minutes, he would pick something up, and a few minutes later find something else that caught his eye! In the end he ended up getting some bounce balls! (Not a surprise.) The really challenge was deciding what kind of ball he wanted because that is what he was interested in was all of the different balls!

Talking on the phone!

I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day, and Lucas decided that it was his turn to have conversation with grandma!

Christmas Cookies!

This seems like the best season to make and decorate cookies! Every year I think, "I am not going to go through the hassle of decorating cookies this year, I just don't have time". But I end up doing it every year, because it is a fun time to decorate cookies. And who doesn't like cookies! However, I was not about to decorate a bunch of cookies by myself, that would have been very tedious and boring, decorating cookies is so much fun when your doing it with friends!

Ginger Bread Houses!

This has become one of our new yearly traditions. We go over to our friends house put together a gingerbread house and decorate them! Craig is usually the one does the putting together, I decorate, and Lucas eats the candy....a lot of candy! It is a lot of fun. Our friend Spencer spent most of the time unwrapping the candy, while our kids kept eating it. It was quite awhile before he realized he was not getting anywhere with unwrapping the candy! I think our house looked pretty good and festive. I look forward to next year when Lucas can help decorate.

Thanksgiving!

On our way home from the Thanksgiving parade, we stopped at Cracker Barrel and had their special Thanksgiving meal! I thought it was pretty yummy. It was nice not to have to cook a really big meal, and then have only three people eat it. Later that evening, at home, we had our friends over for pie, we had eight different kinds of pies, to split between the four of us and three small kids! Plenty of pie! It was a very unique but memorable Thanksgiving!

The Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade!

If you are re-reading that title to making sure you read it right, you did. After much convincing and debating we went to The Thanksgiving parade. Despite some of you (you know who you are) thinking we were crazy (and granted we probably were a little crazy), we went! We thought if you can't spend Thanksgiving with your family, why not spend it with five million of your closest friends! After getting the 411 on the parade, parking, where to stand, drive and such, we developed a plan and did it! So here is the nitty gritty on how we survived the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We headed to New York the day before the parade and stayed the night in a hotel outside of New York City. We then were up, ready, and driving into New York a little after 5 am. We parked several blocks away from the parade route and walked from there. We found a front row spot on the corner of 66th Street and Central Park West. We hunkered down to wait for about 3 - 3 1/2 hours till the parade started. At first Lucas was able to wander around, but as it got closer to parade time more and more people gathered around us. By the time the parade started I felt a sardine packed in a can! From the beginning, Lucas was a concern; would he enjoy the parade? could we keep him entertained for several hours in a small confined spot? He exceeded all my expectations, and did really great! He was entertained by all the people and everything that was going on! He also did some of the entertaining himself: the police that were around got a kick out of him. They came over a couple of times, to talk to him, and at one point one of them put his hat on Lucas and said 'here, have your parents take a picture'! We did and it is one of the cutest pictures we have! Lucas did have one problem. Several minutes before the parade was to start Lucas decided to fill his drawers, and fill them he did!!! We were packed in and not going anywhere!!! So when we had to change Lucas' pants, he bared all, literally, in front of New York City and the police. It was hassle. We had to take of his snow suit and change him, plus I was trying to hurry because I didn't want him to get cold.

If I had to say one bad thing about our experience I would say it was the cold, but it could have been worse considering it was the end of November. On the plus side it wasn't snowing or raining. Next time, not that we will ever do it again, I would haul a blanket in, it would have been worth the effort.

The parade lasted about an 1-1 1/2 and it was really neat, the floats were put together really well, the bands were very entertaining, and the balloons! Let me tell you about the balloons: watching them on television doesn't even come close to actually seeing them. They are huge, massive, and it pretty cool to see! Lucas really seemed to enjoy the parade, though at times he was more interested in the handfuls of confetti that the people threw at us as they passed. And when I say handfuls, I am not overstating how much confetti came our way, we were covered in confetti. It is March and I am still finding confetti from the parade! All in all things went well and I left feeling like it was worth it!

Making Pies and Traditions!

For those of you who know me know that I am all about traditions, especially traditions that revolve around food! As such, Lucas and I had to make pies for Thanksgiving. I remember when I was growing up my Grandma Dot made the best homemade pies, crust and all! If we happened to be around when she was making one of her pies, she would take the extra pieces of crust sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar and bake them. These extra treats were very yummy! While making my pies this Thanksgiving I had some left over pie dough, so in remembrance of my Grandma, her yummy pies, and a childhood memory, I made Lucas some cinnamon sugar pie crust treats! He loved them and so did Craig!

Turkey Cookies

Seeing as Katie is letting me write some of these blog posts, I feel that I should issue the following warning: The opinions, circumstances and details expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Katie (or the actual truth, for that matter).

Contrary to what you may be thinking based on the title, we did not make cookies out of turkey. Though that may have been easier than what we actually did. Katie has a knack at picking out the most difficult recipes/activities for us to try. This episode of "Frustrate Craig through Cooking" dealt with making frosted cookies that look like turkeys (see Figure 1, although I think we needed to take the picture from a more over-head view to really see what it is).

The cookies, the frosting, and most of the decorating wasn't that bad. The infuriating part was making the legs for the turkeys. This required the precision cutting of pretzels to form something that looked like a leg and feet. I don't know if we picked a bad bag/brand/style/whatever of pretzels, but I cut ~80 pretzels (breaking most of them) to get about 14 usable turkey feet. Needless to say, Craig was not a big pretzel fan by then end (see Figure 2). (Not a very intimidating picture. Note to self, use bigger knife for next deranged serial killer picture.)


Not all of us were unhappy with the turkey cookie making, Lucas benefited and really enjoyed himself!

Christmas at the Mall

Craig here finally doing my dues on the blog. I've been busy the last year or so with my candidacy exam, but now that I've passed and it is behind my, I'm helping Katie catch up with the blog.

Our local mall (the amazing Nittany Mall, don't blink or you might miss it) had its Christmas kick-off the weekend before Thanksgiving. They had fun and games for kids and promises of Santa Claus showing up. We decided to take Lucas and get out of the house. The best part of the whole experience was the fact that Lucas was more interested in the guy dressed up as a Nutcracker than Santa Claus and the reindeer hat the Christmas Magician made for Lucas.

Art Museum

For playgroup Lucas and I went to the Art Museum on Campus. It was interesting and something different to do. The lady that gave us our tour was really good with the kids and making it kid friendly. She even brought a special friend to assist her on the tour, it was an ostrich hand puppet. It was fun to take Lucas to the art museum, which is something I would not normally do. Lucas did pretty well, considering he stayed in his stroller the entire time, due to the fact I did not want to find out what kind of mischief Lucas could get himself into.

My favorite part about this season!

Those of you who know me know I am not a big fan of this season. I don't like being cold and I don't like snow! Unfortunately it gets cold here, really cold! Since there is not much I can do about this I have decided to look on the bright side! The bright side is that when it gets cold I get to bring out the Hot Chocolate maker!!! I love the hot chocolate maker. It is an awesome appliance, one of my favorite appliances in fact (it ranks right up there with the Kitchen Aid, and that says a lot)! The other day we plugged it in and used up the last of our hot chocolate mix from last year! Lucas loved it! Hot Chocolate, yum!

No Nap!

This is what you do when your child doesn't take a nap and you can't handle it that he will not take a nap!


Sidenote: We're not sure how this happened, but Lucas knows how to turn on the TV and cable with the remote. Lucas sometimes watches Sesame Street or Yo Jabba Jabba in the morning while we're getting ready for the day, but that is about the extent of his TV watching, so we're not sure when or how he learned this new trick. Not sure if we like it.

Library

This may not seem very amazing, but to me this was an awesome moment that needed to be documented, when I felt that I was an alright parent! Lucas is a very energetic, busy child. When other mothers go to the library to let there children play in the designated play area (it has a train track, a wood house, puzzles, and other fun toys), they can sit and relax. I am the mother that is chasing after my child as he aimlessly wanders the library and at times tries to escape from the children's area into the main library. I have been taking Lucas to story time at the library once a week. Last week we went to story time and I let Lucas play after. Brace yourselves, here comes the amazing part.... Lucas stayed in the designated area, he even played with the train for several minutes! I got to be like all the other mothers that sat and talked! It was Amazing!!!

Fall!

We have a pretty big tree in front of our apartment, and its leaves have been changing colors. The other day Lucas and I ran an errand and we came back and our yard was covered with leaves, from the tree. I had not taken any pictures of Lucas and the leaves so I thought this was the perfect moment.

Our annual Halloween Dinner!

For Halloween I made Lucas a festive tie to wear to church, he looked very handsome and very festive! I was pretty proud, the tie turned out better than I had expected (which was relief since it took me several hours to make the day before).

We also had our annual Halloween Dinner! Which is dinner in a pumpkin and of course our pumpkin caramel cheesecake, which was excellent! This was Lucas first dinner in a pumpkin and he thoroughly enjoyed it! We also had our new neighbors, the Van O's over for dinner.