I think this might have been our best Christmas yet. It just seemed...easier, somehow. I'm not sure why, but the aggravations that usually come along with the joy of the holiday season were few and far between. We did, however, have a minor episode with holiday lights that nearly brought me to tears. You would think after three children I would have no problem understanding the female/male plug coupling requirements, but alas after stringing 12 strands of lights, somewhere in the middle I reversed the order and couldn't plug them into the outlet. As always, John saved the day (and my sanity). But other than that the holidays just felt right and simple. The pictures for the Christmas card were no trouble and we actually had too many to choose from, no stress, no tears, just fun.
Loretta and Caroline decided they needed an Elf on a Shelf and after John and I put it off long enough they volunteered our Dopey who was an excellent stand in. Loretta received an Ipod from Santa and Caroline got her pink kitchen. Sam loved his motorcycle and rides it in the house non stop. All three kids loved going shopping with their Christmas money from Grandma and Grandpa and we got to spend Christmas day at Grandma and Grandpa T's with Ed, Sharon and the kiddos. Baby Tanner is such a sweet little baby.
John and I attended a Christmas party with all of our old Shrewsbury friends and we had a tree decorating party with Becky. All in all, I think it was a wonderful holiday season with little drama and much love. I can't say as much about New Years Eve/Day, all three kids were terribly ill and I followed shortly there after, but I won't dwell on that. We are all looking forward to the exciting things that will happen this coming year. Loretta will turn 7 and begin 2nd grade, Caroline will turn 5, begin kindergarten and hopefully learn to ride a 2 wheeler, Sam will turn 3, hopefully potty train and maybe begin pre-k. John and I will celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary and there will be trips to Ohio, The Cape and hopefully Mississippi.
2011 was very good to us and we are so thankful that we are healthy, that John and I have jobs that we love and that our kids are thriving. Welcome 2012, we hope to make you proud.
Just wanted to pop in and share a few pictures of our Fall shenanigans thus far. We've had some leaf pile jumping, indoor soccer playing, swimming (but NOT jumping off of the block), movie nights with friends, practicing writing our names, birthday partying, cookie baking, crazy days.
We spent a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving with Mom and Dad T and then met our sweet baby cousin Tanner, followed by a parade and sleepover with the big cousins. We even had a professional photographer (aka Becky and her new awesome camera).
John has had a sudden influx of Christmas spirit and Loretta got tired of waiting for us to buy an Elf on the Shelf so she assigned Dopey the Dwarf to the job. Becky helped us decorate our tree and we're all ready for Santa's visit in just a few days.
They have been busy, fun filled days which is why this post is so sort on words, but heavy on pictures. More to come soon, I promise!
Posted to my ever faithful Facebook friends on 10/28/2011 and re-posted here for my non Facebook friends amusement.
Thank you for inviting me to be your friend on Facebook. If I am a new addition to your list, please allow me to set some expectations for you. When I post it’s typically directed to one of two audiences. The first is what I’ll call Core Family & Friends. These are people who are genuinely interested in me and my family’s day to day life and vice versa. These are the people, who if they are far away, I think of and miss dearly and just want to remain as an active part of their life as possible. The second audience is local friends, old and new, who I’d like to stay in touch with, get to know better, and actually hang out with in real life. All others, I consider the frosting on top of my cupcake, rainbow jimmies and a cherry.
Please know that 99.9% of all updates are about me, my children, their shenanigans, my husband and exercise. Silly antics, goofy pictures and basically the sometimes predictable sometimes not of being a mother of 3 little monsters. While I can’t promise you that I won’t post about bodily functions occasionally these things come up, especially during naked run around time. If this is not what you were hoping for when you friended me, please defriend/unfriend me now. It won’t hurt my feelings and it will save you frustration later.
Now a few things I will and won’t do on FB. Please accept that while I may elect to not do these things on FB it in no way implies judgment if you do. Actually, the fact that you do is often what makes my time on FB amusing (they are often my jimmies and cherry on top).
While I don’t try to make my life out to be better than it actually is on FB, I am a positive person and highlight the good and downplay the bad. I don’t look at FB as a place to pour out my woes, cry in my (3rd cup) of coffee and hope for “hang in there” replies, it’s public for god’s sake. Take it for what it’s worth.
I have a strict policy about not getting wrapped up in political or religious debates on FB, although this does not prevent me from liking posts. If you were to actually track my likes you’ll see I have liked religious, anti-religious and political posts on a variety of contradicting view points on a regular basis. Some of my favorites are church signs that are written in such a way that they imply some sort of sexual act or criminal behavior. I don’t care who you are, those are funny!
If a post begins or ends with “Post this if…” I probably won’t post it. I love my children, my husband, my life, blah blah blah and don’t feel the need to prove it by posting some prewritten (and let’s be honest) sappy message to prove it. I will however ALWAYS like anything related to causes I care about, like the “It get’s better project” or equal marriage rights. Also, I realize that by not posting that I have accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior on FB I may actually be denouncing him, so be it. Don’t worry my Bible belt friends, God and I have an understanding, whoever he or she may be, and it doesn’t include FB declarations.
I also have a strict policy of not posting chain letter type posts, with the only exception of those breast cancer awareness posts where I can imply some sort of sexual deviant behavior just by posting where I like to keep my purse or store my shoes. For those, I’m totally in. You may be seeing a trend here, but if not, I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy, there I said it.
So there you have it, with me as your friend you won’t get a steady stream of interesting articles from all over the world, hysterical YouTube videos about cats or that guy who can belt out Queen like nobody’s business or political rants (not that I don’t love getting those from you). NOT that there’s anything wrong with that. But, hopefully, you’ll get a few gems along the way that make you smile.
We were so lucky this fall. We had Grandma and Grandpa visiting for 2 full weeks and Uncle Paul here for several days as well, and we had an amazing time. I won't talk about the Rugged (again) but focus on other highlights of the visit. Paul, Mom, the kids and I went to King Richard's fair, which was a ton of fun. I hadn't been in probably 8 or 9 years and it was surprisingly...the exact same. It's pretty amazing how many people really get into the Renaissance time period, visitors in full garb and dialect.
Dad got in several flying trips and Mom got her visit to the Norman Rockwell museum which I think was enjoyed by Dad too. Mom gave Sam his very first haircut (it's tradition after all, Superman cape and all) and he was an excellent little customer. Caroline wanted to get her ears pierced but in the end she chickened out and Loretta got hers done. One of the funnier moments was asking Sam to point out all of grandpa's facial parts (lips, nose, eyes, eyebrows) and then when I asked him "where is Grandpa's hair?" him looking on top of his head and craning all the way around until he found hair on his back, "Der it is!". For some reason Loretta decided it was funny to call grandpa an "old hag" the entire time, which of course was completely encouraged by us all.
Each night after I picked up the kids from daycare we would be driving home and a few houses before ours Sam would start cheering "Yea Grandpa's home!". And for their entire visit, each night at bed time, after goodnight kisses downstairs, the kids and I would head upstairs for teeth and night nights and Sam (as is his habit) calls out each person before he kisses them... Daddy, Mommy, Loretta, Caroline.....and GRANDPA! then I would say, "no silly, you already kissed Grandpa", then he would yell out GRANDMA! This little scenario played out every single night for weeks after Mom and Dad went home.
I'm pretty sad I won't be seeing everyone over the holidays this year, especially Chris, Trish and Jordan because it feels like eons since I did, but there is a possibility we'll all get together in March and I'm clinging onto that little life raft. This will be the first holiday ever, if I'm remembering correctly, that I haven't been home for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't just had this fall visit with Mom, Dad and Paul I would be a complete basket case by Christmas Eve.
a few pictures...
We have a dear friend, who will remain nameless, whose wife would often tease is “just gay enough”. I can tell you, it is a most sincere compliment. He is one of those guys that loves setting a beautiful table, using place mats and buying accent pillows (for his bachelor pad at the time), but is still a sports loving, beer loving, all around guy.
Before I started having babies, John thought I was pretty tough, mostly due to my constant TKD training. I had reached apprentice black belt before stopping because I was pregnant with Loretta. Back then I would practice my self defense and sparring techniques on John and he once said to me, “that’s great, but you couldn’t really take me down if I didn’t want you to.” Let’s just say, not only did I take him down, I nearly dislocated his shoulder. I never went back to TKD however, due to the expense, distance and truthfully bad hips from all of those round house and tornado kicks (tornado kicks were the best). And while I remained active and lost the baby weight running and swimming, I have never felt as strong as I did then. Probably never will again, but I was regularly hearing my husband call me “cupcake” and I knew he was right and I’d had enough.
I signed up for the Southwick 5k Rugged Maniac and somehow convinced John and our friend Becky to do it with me. We had an amazing time. The event took place at a motor cross racing track, completely hosed down for maximum mud effect. There were 16 obstacles including 3, 5, 7, and 15 foot walls to scale, mud pits, running through tires, mud slides, water obstacles, and my favorite – the super hero jump. It was a steep hill you ran down and at the bottom a wooden platform that you had to launch yourself off of and try to clear a mud pit below. I’ve heard there were at least 2 broken bones from that one and they closed the jump down for a portion of the race due to injuries. It was closed when John went through about 15 minutes before Becky and I, but open for us and HELL YEAH, we took that jump.
John completed the race in 36:20. He was amazing, which was no surprise to me, but I think he might have surprised himself a bit. John is naturally athletic, but he also works very hard to stay in shape and that hard work paid off, because he didn’t actually train for this race specifically. Next year he hopes to shave 2 minutes off his time.
I completed the race in 52:09 and I’m good with that. I did train, push ups and running the trail runs around the office building. Jumping up on benches and running along the curbs. My coworkers thought I was crazy, but it helped. I did every obstacle on my own with only 2 small pushes from friends to get up on the taller walls. I ran the entire race, except for when the terrain didn’t allow it. And, I finished strong. Always finish strong.
Becky finished the race at 52:10. We ran the entire race together and even took the slides together. It was so great having her there so we could motivate one another, but yes, I might have pushed a little harder at the end to beat her, I can’t help it, I’m competitive that way.
My mom, dad and little brother Paul were there to cheer us on. Because of them we were able to bring the kids along too. Paul made up these awesome shirts for everyone to wear. They were so excited for us and cheered and yelled. It was amazing seeing them all on the sidelines, having the kids watch their mom and dad get muddier than they have ever been and not being afraid of doing something tough, and having fun doing it. My dad almost ran impromptu, but it didn’t work out. I’m hoping he’ll join us next year.
I’ve shown pictures to coworkers of us at the race. I get two reactions, one is along the lines of – that’s amazing! Good for you! The second is pure confusion as to why anyone would ever want to put themselves through it. All I can say is that it took John a few days of recovery before he decided he would run again next year. Becky too, I think. But I had decided before I even crossed the finish line, smiling with a huge goofy grin. I may not have my black belt and I may not run iron man triathlons or the Boston Marathon, but I am a Rugged Maniac, and for me, that’s just rugged enough.
