Nathan's Birthday

Ugh, the lagging with the blog posts. I do not like this. Better late than never, I guess. Anywho, Nathan turned 6 (what?!) back on January 14 and we had not one, but two celebrations!

We tend to stick with family parties for the most part because it's really just easier that way, but now they're getting to the ages where they want friends and lots of fun things to do at their parties. We were terrible parents and flaked out on giving Aiden a friend party (I was uber-stressed due to school and it just didn't happen. Aiden was quite upset), but wanted to make sure that we got one pinned down for Nathan.

But first, the family party. We had the family party with grandparents, great-grandparents, cousin, and aunt the weekend before his birthday. He loved showing off his new keyboard to everyone, and I showed off my new violin!

The day of his birthday was mid-week, so we had a fun family night at home. We made burgers and milkshakes. Yummy! (No pictures - I was too busy eating!)

Then the weekend after his birthday, we had the friend party at Out of This World Pizza. However, two days before the party, John got REALLY sick with the flu. It turned out that I was left to pick up the cake at Costco with two giddy boys and do the party all by myself as a single parent. This also meant that the date night we had specifically scheduled for the evening after a noisy kid party had to be canceled. Not cool.

I was quite stressed out being on my own, but of course my mommy friends helped out and everything was just fine. 

Aiden and Kahlan. Kahlan INSISTED on wearing her fancy dress to Nathan's party. She kind of adores Aiden and Nathan.

It turned out that the only people who didn't show were non-preschool friends, which meant it turned into a preschool friends party. Nothing wrong with that, of course!

Nathan and his "girlfriend" Rachel. They tell us that they're going to get married when they grow up. To have extremely blonde children, obviously. :-)

It's downright impossible to get pictures of children at a place like Out of This World since they are never sitting down, so I ended up with zero pictures of most of the children. Oh well. It's the memory that counts, right?

 I think Nathan had a fantastic time. We ended up with WAY too much cake and massively hyper children. And even though I was on my own, it worked out fine and I really enjoyed not having to clean up afterwards. Paying someone else to do it is very much worth it! And yes, John and I had a date night the following week.

Teeth, Unlimited

We have been keeping the tooth fairy massively busy lately. Within the last two weeks, we've had three teeth whose time had come.

First, one of Aiden's VERY stubborn teeth finally came out (translation: I sat on him and pulled it out).

Then last week, he lost another tooth at school.

They get a cool tooth holder from the office when they lose teeth at school.

Then in the middle of the night last night, I was awoken by a squealing Nathan next to my bed. He was shouting "My tooth came out!". Sure enough, he had woken up and his tooth fell right out of his mouth. I don't think I showed much enthusiasm at the time, but once it was a reasonable hour of the morning we celebrated his very first tooth lost. He is extremely excited to get a visit of his own from the tooth fairy tonight.

However, the tooth fairy has a been a bit flaky lately, so she really needs to remember to actually leave money under a pillow tonight. Not mistakenly hidden elsewhere, where Mommy just so happens to find it while the child is at school. Silly tooth fairy.

Check In

A few months back, I posted "When Parenting Sticks" about mine and John's struggles with gaining some weight/not being particularly in shape since becoming parents. It all really started once we had Nathan, although I'm not blaming him whatsoever! I had gotten back in fantastic shape after I had Aiden and John had lost a lot of weight from college. Then I had Nathan and the addition of one more child made working out feel impossible. John started a new job and switched from being on his feet all day to sitting at a desk all day. So the flab/weight struggle began.

Anywho, Christmas was going to be my check in point for our journey but I never had a chance to sit down and blog. So I'm doing it now, two weeks late.

John has lost 10 pounds. Working out ceased for about two weeks for Christmas and New Years chaos, but all in all he's done a wonderful job sticking to his routine of working out three nights a week. Because work can get very busy for him, the weight loss might not happen super fast, but it's a great start and I'm very proud of him.

Me? Nothing has changed. I took a break from attending ballet class to finish up the school term from hell, but plan to return this coming Sunday. Working out never really happened during the fall, although you could say that pushing 200 lb carts full of books at the library is a bit of a workout. I'm ready to actually work on myself and hopefully tone up the "gut" that continues to make fitting into my jeans a problem.

Our diet has changed a lot over the past year and continues to evolve into healthier, real food options. Lots and lots of fruits and veggies, a lot more organic options, fewer and fewer packaged food, and we are in the process of eliminating high fructose corn syrup and food coloring from our food options.

I'll (hopefully) do another check in around Valentine's Day. I look forward to seeing if we've made any more progress by then!

A Very Merry December

Christmas is still a day away, but our December has been very busy and Christmasy indeed! Warning: Lots of pictures ahead! These were all taken with my phone and some under very questionable lighting, so they're not all super wonderful, but they captured the moments and that's what I needed.

We started December off like we always do - getting a tree from our favorite U-cut tree farm. It has no name, so I can't tell you much about it. It's just some guy's property with lots of trees that he charges $20 a pop no matter what the size. It's out in Sherwood somewhere. This was our 5th year, so we're some of his "regulars" now.

Nathan had his very first piano recital! He's been taking lessons since September and he is OH SO CUTE. He's doing very well and I can't wait to see the look on his face Christmas morning when he opens his new full-size keyboard with stand and seat. He's been practicing on a $25 child's play keyboard that's missing a key, so it's definitely time for an upgrade.

John and I had our December evening that we look forward to every single year. John's company Christmas party! (Ignore John's crazy eyes. Apparently that's what happens when you have a co-worker take your picture). This year the party was a the Hotel Monaco in downtown Portland. They rented out the entire hotel restaurant and paid for everything - even our room there that night. It was so gorgeous and quiet and relaxing and child-free...... It is wonderful to get super dressed up and spend time with other adults.

 We took the boys to see our friend Erin Charles as Belle in Beauty and the Beast. It was beautiful! They loved every minute. At one point, Aiden turned to me and said, "I'm going to have to check the DVD when we get home to see if Erin's name is on it, because she sounds JUST like Belle in the movie. She has to be the one doing the voice!". We paid a little extra to do the cast meet and greet after the show, and it was very worth it.

Yes, I got in on the picture with Lumiere. He's my favorite character in the movie!

Nathan's kindergarten class had their Christmas concert. Nathan is the one with the un-tucked white shirt.

My child loves performing. He ate up every little bit of attention after the concert.

On the first day of winter, we woke up to a letter from our Elf on the Shelf, Piper. He had brought the boys new pajamas and had a letter that said:

"Dear Aiden and Nathan, Santa has an adventure for you today. You must wear these pajamas, and have your mom and dad drive you to this address:

110 Railroad Avenue

Hood River, Oregon

It will take a long time to get there – almost two hours! – so please try to be patient for the long car ride. You must be there around 6pm. Once you arrive, tell your mom and dad to give their names to the people there. Follow their instructions, and something special will be waiting for you.

Have fun on your adventure today! I can’t wait to hear all about it from Santa when I see him tonight!"

Aiden said it felt strange to follow directions from an elf, but we loaded up in the car a little after 4pm and headed out to Hood River.

Once we got there, we went into a station and gave our names. The person handed us golden tickets for The Polar Express! The boys were thrilled! Aiden said, "Are you kidding?!? We actually get to ride on the Polar Express!!"

John and I had bought the tickets back in November and it had been SO hard to keep this a secret. We weren't exactly sure how we were going to pull the whole thing off, but we finally decided a few days beforehand that our elf would be the one to get us the tickets and send us off on a secret adventure. I'm so glad Aiden still believes in Santa and the elf this year. It brought so much extra joy to this event.

We were served hot chocolate and cookies, and the conductor came through and the punched the golden tickets! (The train was wobbling super bad and caused a terrible picture, but at least I got one. He moves fast!)

Aiden had questioned whether or not we were headed to the real North Pole (it was pitch black outside, so they couldn't see where we were going), but once the conductor announced that we had arrived at the North Pole and would be picking up Santa, who we could see if we looked out the windows on the right.....Aiden believed. He saw Santa outside and said, "Oh, I was wrong! This is the North Pole!". I nearly cried. He was so happy.

I had gotten us tickets in coach and didn't think that Santa visited with the kids in coach - just handed them a silver bell as he came through. So imagine my surprise when Santa boarded our train car and sat with every single child, posing for pictures and talking with them about what they wanted for Christmas.

The boys asked for very reasonable things from Santa, so I went out last night to buy what they had asked for, even though I had finished their shopping two weeks prior. I know this will be Aiden's last year believing - he's questioned it so much already this December that I wasn't sure we could pull the belief through Christmas - so I want to go all out for him. We have a plan in place for when he questions it after Christmas has passed: A letter that explains why we encourage belief in Santa. I found it earlier this year and I knew it explained it exactly the way we wanted to. We'll probably have to word the beginning a little differently, but the rest works perfectly.

(I wish I knew who to credit for this, but I have no idea!)

So that's our December in a nutshell so far. Have a wonderful Christmas!