Christmas Recap

I headed back to work today. Luckily, the students don't start until tomorrow, so I had time to be productive in my classroom (although I probably would have been more productive if the heat had been working...). As the break is officially over, I figured I should recap all the wonderfulness that is was.

We had a total of SEVEN Christmases over the course of the break, and I guess you could say Ian got spoiled (he is the only grandchild on both sides...). Luckily my grandma had hers when we were there for Thanksgiving, or there was no way all of the presents would have fit in the car on the way back from Iowa. It was great spending a week back there with our family. We're not able to spend that long of a stretch back there, and really enjoyed seeing everyone (although we were ready to come home and sleep in our own beds). Instead of doing a big recap of each Christmas, I'll just share our favorite pictures from break.

Ian visits Santa at Darrin's work
Ian realizes he got cars in his stocking- he actually gasped and whispered, "Cars!"
Having fun playing cars on the Cars rug
Celebrating with his godparents
Putting his godchild ornament on the treeGetting lots of puppy kisses
Ian wearing his new Collins Packer jersey- which will get worn A LOT!!!

Helping Grandpa wash the dishes
Playing cars (and trucks, and trains, and tractors, and bus) with Grandpa on his new table
Kissing Mr. Potato Head goodnight
Getting some Grandma love
Playing Elmo piano after he'd just finished playing with his new end-loader
Sporting his "Someday I'll drive a BIG Case tractor" shirt
Playing with his little Case tractors. He calls them "Grandpa" tractors because that's what both grandpas drove and collect.
Wrestling with Daddy and cousin Mckenna

That was quite a few pictures, but considering we took over 300 during one-week's span, that's barely a sampling. Ian was definitely more into Christmas this year than last, when he was more interested in the paper. This year he tore into the presents and wanted each opened right away. He learned that Santa says, "Ho-ho" and could identify him in pictures. He also loved looking at all the lights. I can't wait to see what changes will show up next year.

Where did my son go?

We've been back a for three days now from spending time in Iowa, but I'm pretty sure we've brought the wrong kid home with us. Sure, the kid who's here loves to play with cars and run crazy, but it's definitely not Ian.
Reason #1: he hasn't cleaned his plate since we've been home. He left Cherrios in his bowl- he NEVER leaves Cheerios in his bowl. Today for lunch, he only ate the cheese from his sandwich and didn't touch his bread or sweet potatoes. This is not Ian.
Reason #2 this isn't my son: he won't lay still for diaper changes, no matter what we promise he can get or do after it's done. We could always get him to lay still if we read him a book while being changed or promised a snack, but that's not working
Reason #3: We had to take him to the car twice because he was misbehaving in public. Last night we went out for dinner for Darrin's birthday- he threw a major tantrum, so he and I headed to the car. Today at Target, he wanted something, we wouldn't get it for him; Darrin took him to the car this time. Aside from these major tantrums, he's having a lot of small ones, too, and is whining about things that have never bothered him before.

The boy home here with me is doing a pretty good job of imitating Ian, but there's enough weird stuff going on to let me know it's not him. I hope the real Ian comes home soon. He is a much happier boy, making me a much happier mommy.

Happy New Year

Well, 2009 has arrived. I actually don't look forward to New Year's as it means my days of staying home with Ian will be over soon as I return to school. It's the same with Fourth of July- summer is half over when it arrives. We did have a good time at our New Year's Eve "party". Marlena and Noah came over. They were gracious enough to bring dinner, as we had just gotten home that afternoon from spending a week back in Iowa (recap of that to come). Marlena and I scrapbooked in the new year. I began working on an alphabet scrapbook for Ian. It has pictures of him doing something or with something for each letter (i.e. E is for Eat, H is for Hat). I've got a few pages done and it's turning out really cute. I can't wait for it to be finished and have him look at it.

As for my goals this year:

• Family: We do a great job of capturing moments on our camera, but I want to do a better job this year of capturing Ian on video. I also want to go on more dates with my hubby. As for extended family, I want to do a better job sending pictures and cards to my grandparents.
  
• Health: stop drinking pop and start drinking water, reduce my snacking, and be more active.
  
• Quilting: Complete all the "small" stuff I bought on the Iowa shop hop trip, learn how to hand quilt, and make the tree skirt I've been meaning to make the last 5 years.
• Scrapbooking: Complete Ian's 1st and 2nd year albums.

We'll see how that all turns out I guess. Hopefully I'll stick to them more than in years past since I've written them down.

Merry Christmas from our Home to Yours

Most of our family received our Christmas card today, and if not, they should be getting it tomorrow. Here's what they received:
I took the idea from Tracy and modified it a bit to make it work for me. Merry Christmas from our family to yours.

Family Pictures

Noah and Marlena came over on Tuesday night and Noah took some family pictures. He's going to school right now for photography. I think they turned out great, although it was difficult getting Ian to sit still with all his toys around. We finally figured out that if Marlena held a "cookie" (yogurt melt) on top of the camera, Ian would say "cookie" and Noah would snap a picture. Didn't work the best, as he was trying to get down to get the cookie, or reach out for it, but it worked enough and we got some good ones. We just need to decide which one to use for our Christmas card now. Here's some of our favorites:

Productive Saturday

This Saturday was quilting Saturday with the girls, and it was one of the most productive Saturdays we've had in awhile. Quite often we're so exhausted by the time Saturday rolls around we barely get started before lunch and we leave before dinner. Not this Saturday, though. I was quilting by 8:30 am, though I didn't make it to Sara's until 10:30. I was busy sandwiching my Dick and Jane quilt before I left. I had to sandwich the morning of because the night before I was finishing my Christmas ornaments. We exchanged ornaments this year and I paper-pieced a present ornament from a pattern Carol Doak offered her yahoo group. I also gave them each a spool of Aurifil thread, in the hopes of converting them.
I didn't take a picture of the others, but Sara hand-stitched mittens out of felt/wool, Virginia made Santa Clauses out of fabric, and Marlena painted a clear glass ornament with stained-glass paint. They're all beautiful and as unique as their creators.

I worked on quilting Dick and Jane the whole time, stitching in the ditch around the small pinwheels. I got about half of the pinwheels done. It took a little while to figure out how to hook the walking foot up to the Janome, but with Marlena's assistance, we got it working. It was nice being able to quilt on my own machine, as in the past I always had to borrow Marlena's or Virginia's. The Janome worked beautifully and I'm so glad I made the switch.
While I was busy working on that, Sara was hand-appliqueing a quilt with an interesting story. The quilt was worked on by her grandmother and her aunt, but after her grandmother died, it was packed away for about 10 years. It was recently pulled out and Sara's aunt asked her to finish it, making it a 3-generation quilt.
Marlena began the day working on fabric books to give as Christmas presents. Ian is getting a Rudolph book to add to his expanding collection of cloth books. When she finished up those, she moved on to a wall-hanging she picked up on our Iowa shop hop. It's a Schnibbles pattern called Nash.

Virgina had an equally productive day, piecing together a tree skirt and a Christmas wallhanging.

I only wish I was caught up with school work and Christmas shopping so I could continue the productivity of that day here at home.

And just because he's the cutest kid in the world (in my humble opinion), here's picture Darrin snapped of Ian today before we headed to church. I broke down on Friday and bought some clippers. After dinner, I gave Ian a haircut, and he screamed the whole time. It didn't turn out too bad, though I've got to figure out something to do about trimming around his ears. At least it has 18 days to grow in before Christmas...

Thanksgiving Weekend

These last four days have been wonderful. We had three Thanksgivings filled with delicious food, and time spent with family we don't see very much. We took off from Omaha Wednesday night and spent Thursday noon eating with my dad's family. Ian shocked everyone with the amount of food he can eat, and he had a great time playing tractors with Connor.
After eating with dad's family we had Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's family. My grandma has 24 grandkids and 6 great-grandkids, Ian being the youngest of them. We alternate years of all of us attending either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Because most of us (and all of the great-grandkids) won't be there for Christmas, we had Christmas early. Christmas at my grandma's is an epic event, and I wouldn't change it for the world. It begins with Santa stopping by and delivering presents to all of us, and ends with opening the presents grandma and others have for us. Ian got about 12 presents to open, and he quickly learned how to say the word Santa, although he didn't want to sit on his lap. This year he learned to pull the paper off the presents, but he still wasn't obsessed with figuring out what was in them. He got lots of books, play-doh, a "laptop," some clothes, and some vehicles.

We spent the rest of the weekend enjoying time with extended family: eating breakfast with my dad's parents, lunch with my grandma, celebrating Brittney's birthday for dinner, and going to a cousin's engagement party for desserts.

We left after breakfast on Saturday, and after Ian's nap, we worked on putting up the tree. Ian had more fun playing with the ornaments on the floor, and he didn't want us to put them on the tree. He put one of them on there, but after that, didn't really want to touch the tree. Judging from his reaction, he doesn't like the feel of it. Our lights are on a remote because the plug is hard to get to, and Ian was a bit scared when we would say, "Lights on!" and the tree would turn on, and then we said, "Lights off" the tree turned off. We finally had to show him the remote and let him play with it to figure out what we were doing. Now whenever he sees the tree off, he wants it turned on.
We spent Sunday shopping for a few Christmas presents (a new vacuum and some Wii games for Darrin and me) and watched the Packers lose yet another game. We had our last Thanksgiving meal for the year on Sunday night for supper. Marlena and Noah had dinner at their house with Marlena's mom and grandma. Even though we'd had so much turkey already, we were up for eating more, and it was so yummy.

This weekend was great, and I can't wait for Christmas break to spend more time with our families.