A Birthday Girl

This doesn't seem like it was that long ago.

But it was!  Look at her now!

We had a small celebration.

Rhett was eager to help Lucy open her presents.

Chocolate cream pie stood in for the birthday cake.

We didn't even make it through "Happy Birthday" before Lucy was sneaking a taste.

 

I think she liked it.

Happy birthday to Lucy!  This has been the quickest year of our lives, and one full of more joy and love than we could have ever imagined.  We love this girl so much.

Timber! May 4, 2011

We like trees.  We do.  We had a huge oak tree in our front yard, as well as a tall pine by the fence leading to the back yard.  The pine was casting a shadow on our garden (and it was kind of ugly), and what we really wanted was fruit trees.  So the big trees had to go.

Our across the street neighbor, Guillermo, who last year gave us raspberry and strawberry plants (which did awesome this year) and who continues to be generous with his farming resources and expertise, happened to have a logger contact who came and cut down both trees for us.  Neighbors are awesome.  We are so blessed.

It was quite a sight.

The boys loved the tractor, obviously.

 The missionaries came to help.

The tree falling:

We had a lot of help cleaning up, for which we are very grateful.  (Who knew trees make such a mess when you cut them down?  Not me.)

Now we have three nice little apple trees out front (Jonagold, Honeycrisp, Freedom), as well as a peach.  I know it will be a few years before we harvest much from them, but I'm really excited about it.

Bathtub Art

 With a forecast of major snow heading our way, Paul opted to take our 4-wheel-drive vehicle to work, just in case.  Since that's the car I usually drive the boys' car seats were inside, leaving us home bound for the day.  Something I really need to work on is being more creative with activities for the boys at home.  I too often fall back on PBS Kids games online for lack of better ideas.  But knowing we'd be home all day, and also that I couldn't remember the last time either child was bathed, I pulled this idea out of the cache in my brain (and my crafty bookmarks folder) and tried it out.  It was an overall success, but I'll tweak the recipe next time.

 

Can you tell what the boys' favorite colors are?

Cleanup was simple (even though I still had to do most of it) and even left the tub a bit cleaner than before (definitely a plus).

The basic recipe in the link is this:  Mix 2 T. cornstarch and 1/4 c. liquid dish soap with a few drops of food coloring until smooth.  Then add 2-3 T. water and start painting.  Next time I'll leave out the water so the paint stays on the walls, or add only a tiny amount if it needs it.

Suggestions for other indoor (hopefully non-messy/non-baking) activities would be greatly appreciated!  (I have come to just admit the fact that I have almost zero patience for cooking with small children.  Maybe I'll be better when they're 12.)

Christmas Wrapped Up

In an effort to just get it done, I decided to post about all of our remaining Christmas things all at once.

For starters, this is the gift we gave to Paul's parents this year.  A custom family memory game.  Not incredibly hard, but more work than you would want to do last-minute.  In other words, if it's something you want to try, don't procrastinate.  I learned that Mod Podge wants to dry (cure) for a long time.  Days.  Weeks maybe.  I kept having the picture tiles stick together, which would have been avoided with more time and patience.  But other than the stickiness, I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

 

Next, here is our first family meal at our new (to us) dining table!  This has been a month of trial for us in several ways (nothing majorly traumatic, but a post for another day), but the blessings given throughout have been unmistakable.  I consider this one of those blessings.

We have a great next-door neighbor name Elaine.  Ever since we moved in she has been looking out for us and rendering unexpected service.  A couple of weeks ago the doorbell rang one evening and I answered it to find our real estate agent's mother bearing a tray of  Christmas cookies for us.  (That may sound random, but it's not really.  Our agent's parents live a street behind us, and are next-door neighbors to our back-door neighbors, who are in our ward.)  After delivering the cookies and wishes of a merry Christmas, she said that she had heard from Elaine (who she has known for many years) that we didn't have a table.  (We've been using a folding plastic one since our DT days.)  She said that she and her husband had one sitting in their garage waiting to be got rid of, and asked if we would like to have it.  Simple, unconditional, generous.  A blessing.

So now we have a real dining table that more than fits our family.  We can have dinner guests more comfortably and the food can actually be on the table, not on the kitchen counter.  And plates and things won't slide toward the center of the table, although when you have a child (or two) who spills his milk on a regular basis, that feature can be kind of nice.

Third, simple pleasures.  We had a family movie night watching the Muppet Christmas Carol.  The boys love to watch the popcorn popping.  It's such an easy diversion (and snack!) to keep little boys entertained.

Fourth, playing by mama's feet.  It seems like 80% of my time is spent in the kitchen, and about that same percentage of the boys' play occurs right behind my legs, no matter what I'm doing.

Christmas Eve.  I hope we haven't set a precedent for ourselves with the late hour we finally went to bed, but it was fun to get things ready for Santa knowing that one little boy in our house would really remember what he found in the morning.

Santa answered the call for more train tracks, and even set them up ready to play when the boys woke up.

Paul's sister and her family gave us this Nativity as part of their Christmas gift to us this year, and we love it!

The stockings were hung and filled with fun things, including letters to the boys from Santa himself.

Benjamin eagerly asked all day long if he could get the cookies ready for Santa.  When it finally came time, he carefully selected each gingerbread man to go on the plate and was very concerned about not forgetting the milk.

I suggested leaving a little note for Santa, and this is what Benjamin wanted to write:

We finished off Christmas Eve by taking treats to friends and neighbors, delivering Secret Santa surprises, watching the Nativity video with the boys, and completing our Christmas ornament advent from the Friend magazine.

I couldn't sleep all night because I was anxious about the boys getting out to the living room before I woke up.  Luckily Paul woke up before the boys did and we all went out together.  The train tracks were well-received and we had a fun time discovering what Santa brought.

The boys were delighted with their letters from Santa.

Benjamin eagerly handed out presents, and Rhett was content to play with one or two new things and didn't show much interest in anything still wrapped.

I haven't taken a picture of it yet, but Paul made me a spice rack that I love!  It has made a huge difference in the kitchen by freeing up an entire counter top that used to be home to most of my spices.  Now they're neatly on the wall and out of the way and I am so happy with it!

We ate Christmas dinner with our friends the Katschkes and had a great time visiting and playing games.  Benjamin helped me make some Christmas cards a few days beforehand, and this is the one he made specifically for the Katschkes.  He picked out the paper and told me just where to glue each large, red sequin.

He even signed his name on the back.  (A huge achievement, since we know he can do it but rarely will because he gets frustrated when it's "not very good.")  When I reminded him that the E only needed three lines out to the side he said, "Well, this one has four."

And that's it!  It was a great Christmas at home, and we're only disappointed that there was no snow.  Now we're looking forward to the new year, although I'll be spending another lonely New Year's Eve while Paul is at the stake dance.  (Prayers for a blizzard would be appreciated.)

Reindeer and Remodeling

One of the activities in our countdown to Christmas was making candy cane reindeer, which the boys thought was fun (except that I wouldn't let them eat the candy canes--I'm so mean).

 I tend toward the traditional (red nose, brown antlers)...

but not everyone else does.

Benjamin chose red and red (of course--thank you, Lightning McQueen) and Rhett went with a bit more eccentric: purple nose and orange antlers.

Then it was off to the bathroom to help Dada with finishing the shower.

 

 

Halloween!

It has been a busy Halloween weekend at our house.  The church trunk-or-treat on Saturday night was a big hit and the boys had a lot of fun.

Here is our costumed duo:  Benjamin went as a fireman (red shirt made by me, most of the rest pieced together over time from Goodwill) and Rhett was the dalmatian (white shirt from Goodwill, pants, hat and spots made by me).

 

No pictures of the trunk-or-treat because it was so dark.  The costume pictures are both from afterwords. While Rhett looks happy, he put up a major fight when it came time to don his costume.  Even during the construction stage when I was trying to fit the white pants on him he acted as if it was major torture.  I finally got it on him, painted his nose black when he was strapped in his car seat, and when he refused to wear the hat I told him he couldn't have any candy unless he wore it.  Worked like a charm (much to my surprise).  While his costume wasn't difficult to put together, it had been too long a day, and I had spent too long sewing on spots to have people think he was a cow.  The ears were a must.  (And only one person asked if he was a cow, even with the ears on.)

For last year's trunk-or-treat Paul had a great time putting together a real door for kids to knock on at the back of the car.  This year he wanted to come up with something equally memorable.

Can you guess what it is?

It was definitely a project, but something that's we'll reuse year after year (we'd better).  I wish now that we had taken pictures of the process but at the time of assembly things were stressful enough that I didn't want to bother.

 Basically, it was made with a structure of PVC pipes shaped by pouring heated sand through the tubes until they bent freely.  (Try it sometime, it's pretty cool.)  Then we pieced together a few bedsheets (part thrifted and part from home) that had been spray painted orange (because dying them didn't work well enough) and taylored them to fit the pumpkin form.  Paul used some window screen material for the face so that he could see through while inside, which was the most fun part of the whole thing.  Inside the pumpkin Paul attached a hard hat at the top so he could wear it and walk around in it and hand candy through the nose.

 

He got some great reactions from people at the trunk-or-treat as he walked amongst the crowd.  I wish it hadn't been too dark for the camera.  Tonight he set it up on the front lawn with a light inside to attract trick-or-treaters since ours was the only of the four houses that wasn't dark and people weren't bothering to come down our street.

 Benjamin had fun opening the door for the trick-or-treaters and was even caught calling out to the empty street  for more trick-or-treaters to come to our house when we had a lull.  I found myself having increasingly thin patience for the teenagers that would come dressed as nothing and asking for candy.  To them went one piece each of the worst candy we had.

Finally, our Halloween dinner: chili in a pumpkin and pumpkin cornbread, finished off later with some pumpkin pie.  I decided last year during the holidays that we don't eat nearly enough pumpkin pie this time of year, so we decided to start early. 

And that was the Duersch family Halloween 2010!  (So glad it's done!)