O Tannenbaum

Interesting fact:

 I know the song "O Christmas Tree" in German "O Tannenbaum"

maybe not all the lyrics of the whole song, but enough to impress myself

Anyway.....back to trees. This year we shopped and shopped around for a recession tree. :)

Ok, ok just a tree that wasn't $80.

And we found it. It wasn't a one of those picturesque

cut-down-your-own-tree-and-feel-like-you-are-back-East places.

It was our local hardware store.

Here I asked Luke to pose next to his favorite tree...interesting choice Luke. But what I like best my little man are your hands and feet. Check you out white boy! Get DOWN!

Alexis is my mommy helper, and she comes over every Thursday to play with the kids while I cook and entertain my peeps. She was pretty excited to come along with us as I was informed she has a fake tree this year and misses the real thing.
 Charlotte loves her.

I know it's common practice to delete, burn, hide, etc. incriminating pictures but whatever. I'm not hiding anything. I took a self portrait to remember forever how I almost got high sniffing the air about 1,000 a minute to get as much Christmas smell in my system as possible. Even if we are in a tree lot in a basement parking lot of the local hardware store. I'm just not that picky.

But wait, it's getting pretty Hallmark card(ish) now. Looky here at my girl.

Dang she's cute.

Oh, I'm feeling a Normal Rockwell coming on. Very cute.

Check out Luke's bedhead. What's up?

The end result (before ornaments) is beautiful.

Here's to our recession tree. We love you.

the average conversation

Hola my beloved daughter. Below is the conversation we had while making dinner tonight. By the way this was going on while you were "helping" me do the dishes. This consisted of you smearing cream cheese into the sponge, filling the sink of water and then sighing and trying to leave. :)


Me: Char, remember we are supposed to be practicing not whining anymore. (like when I tell you to complete the task you started)


Charlotte: Mom, whining is a part of life.


Me: Actually, it isn't.


Charlotte: Are mermaids?


Me: I like to think so.


Charlotte: I think mermaids make the ocean waves.


Me: I like that.


I absolutely am addicted to your randomness my sweet. I love it more than carmel.

Oh so yummy

This is the one and only picture I took on Thanksgiving. Yep, pretty thankful for these guys.

Oh wait, just kidding, I took these too..... :)

I love you guys more than carmel...and that's saying a lot.

Reader Boy!!!

It all started on an average and hectic day a few weeks ago. I was rushed (what else is new) and scrambling to get home to unload the groceries to make dinner. Wait.... it was Saturday morning. LOL Wow, just kidding. It was actually a pretty relaxing day (wow that's new) but I am just usually so rushed that I forgot, and I usually have melting groceries and whining children who are hungry, I'm sorry.........

Take 2:

It all started on an average relaxing Saturday. We were just getting in the car from buying a few things at Trader Joes and Luke looks up and reads this.

He said it loud and clear and correctly. I jumped up and down (as we can only do so well in the seat of our cars). I was FLIPPED OUT!!! I knew Luke could read. Words like cat, sat, cake, make, etc. And I knew he could read easy books (another huge and amazing thing). But when you take a skill and apply it to LIFE this really gets me. I almost cried I think.

And then it began....

All over the place we were picking out words like crazy....

Wonderful words like Vons

(thank you Vons for being a short vowel word, 

for having signs that are huge and in simple fonts, 

and for being in RED - nice and easy to see)

And Bob Smith

It was a frenzy!! We were all INTO it!

Charlotte got into it...

Turkey got into it

And then there was...

Good ol' Goodwill.

And then I just needed to do this...

Because I just don't have enough going on while I am driving...

Anyway.....the point is I have a reader. A small person who pipes up in the back

of the car on every trip we make, words he is reading from the street signs, store fronts,

billboards, and anything else.

It's fantastic. And it's a HUGE deal.

And I am SOOO proud of you Luke.

Santa Monica Pier - Hurray for Veteran's Day

We had the day off of school (thank you Veterans!!) and decided to play.

We went to Santa Monica Pier with my friend Leslie and her kids Merceda & Daxton, and my brother in law Memo & my nieces.

This shot above is Lucas doing the ....what would you call it??......bungee jumping thing for kids. Luke, you were so funny. The kid before you was a energy ball crazy man. You get on and are jumping but very conservatively. Were you scared perhaps? You didn't do anything crazy, and I could tell you were having a good time, but seriously dude....it's okay to bust out and get all crazy once in a while. Especially while you are strapped to huge bungee cords and are jumping on a super sized trampoline. Get crazy!

Next the kids did the free fall ride. This ride is made for rascals 3 and up. They only rode it like 166 times. And each picture (and there are many) is freaking hysterical.

Check out Daxton. So cute.

I'm telling ya.....a lot of funny faces.

I love how uncontrollable their laughter was. The grown ups (who did not go on thank you very much) were laughing almost as much as the kids.

And then we moved on to tea cups and yellow school buses....

Check out Violet just chillin'

Oh my ladies....how I love them.

The difference between boys and girls....

The boys were pumping that thing as fast as it would go.

The girls? A little push here and there but were mostly smiling at everyone around them. :)

Merceda was such a good sport. She couldn't go on any of the rides and she was still all smiles. We love you Merceda.

Too much. There is just too much cute right there. Oh but wait...there's more...

What a great day.

Charlotte finishes preschool!

Today's the day!!! Our baby girl finished preschool!

And she started Kindergarten!!

(Our school runs year-round and the curriculum is self-paced. So any student can go as fast or slow as they need to. Hence the November graduation of preschool.)

Pictured with Charlotte is her lovely, lovely teacher Cecilia.

Oh how I adore her.

ADORE HER.

She speaks Charlotte. Almost better than I do.

Thank you Cecilia!!!

Halloween 2009 - continued

Thing 1 & Thing 2

Thing 1 and Thing 2 with their maker Cat in the Hat

"mom" just came home!

And she's a witch!

But she's so cool Luke decides to try out his surf move while greeting her

And then tries his crazy hands pose

Charlotte took this photo and I wanted to see if I could scare her....not so much

Lucas's Jack-o-lantern (he took the photo too!)

Charlotte's jack-o-lantern (she too the photo too)

Go sit on the gorilla

There is never a dull moment around here. Especially when John gets an idea.

Especially when John gets an idea regarding the kids.

Especially when John gets an idea regarding the kids and possible fun or a toy.

John came home today with the most massive, huge, gynormous pink gorilla that you have ever seen.

Look at it!!! It doesn't even fit in my frame! Three children could sit on it easily!

I loved John's reason when I asked one simple question...."why?"

He said: "Because how could you not?"

He said this while hysterically laughing and pointing. And it's true. The thing just grabs your attention and says "Gawk at me." So the story goes, John was driving home and he saw this monstrosity sitting on the side of the road in front of a nice house. He immediately pulled over. He walked to the door and a nice women answered. He pointed to it and said "Can I take it?" And she said "Oh yes, please do" (as any housewife with half a brain would!) and so he put the beautiful pink beast on top of the scion (that would have been a truly award-winning picture) and drove home. Hysterically laughing all the way.

I love my husband. He will never grown up and I like it that way.

PS The gorilla now lives at Aunt Cec's house.

Halloween 2009

With the kids not really being into Princesses or Spiderman this year, I was finally able to see my idea to fruition. My obsession with Dr. Seuss goes public!!! :)

I have talked about the beautiful change that has occurred with my beloved girl this past 6 months.

No need to discuss it again. But if I were to, (I can't help myself)

I would say that she has changed into the cutest, yummiest, sweetest little thing.

She will ALWAYS be Charlotte, and I love that about her.

But now there is so much sweetness, that the occasional vinegar is much easier to digest or even ignore.

But anyway.....how cute is she right? Oh man.....so cute.

And as you probably know, I don't touch up my photos at all. Sorry. I probably should. I probably will. On second thought maybe I will repost this later.

But for now this is my cutie a la natural.

And she's four. Thought you should know.

Strut it if you got it girl! :)
I hate to break this to you sweetie, but this is the last year for topless tricycle riding.

 And if it isn't, just don't tell me please!

Isn't he precious?

Isn't he lovely? Isn't he wonderul? Isn't he precious? Less than one minute old.....

Okay fine, so I really like that Stevie Wonder song. So sue me.

But seriously....when he sleeps like this and I capture it in a picture, it takes me back to my happy baby

memory place.

The place that is far, far away from memories of marathon nursing sprees,  4 hour long doctor visits, and dirty diapers, dirty diapers, dirty diapers.

This place, the place that smells like newborns.... is full of smiling babies, stacks of clean diapers, freshly laundered baby blankets, giggles, and cute slobber kisses. I like it here, even if it's only my imagination.

architecture

Because I love cool architecture or house design stuff whipping out my camera while in line in a bathroom did not strike me as odd particularly. Ok, maybe a bit. But anyway, we were at Oakglen apple farm & they just redid their bathrooms and I love what they did with the open beam, super tall ceiling & pine paneling with the dormer window. Very Scandinavian. I love it mucho.

Bubble Klingons

We had bubble Klingons in our bathtub.