Pick Six

It's tagging time. LIAYF tagged me with an easy one this time. All I had to do was to go to My Pictures and find my sixth picture and post about it. LIAYF posted a cute pic of his son and I couldn't wait to see which one of my little angels was in our sixth picture. Our photography consists of 99% kids and 1% accidental shots where I blind myself with the flash.

Since our digital camera is about two years old, I was expecting a trip to the past to see how much our kids have changed in just two short years. And now, without further pomp and circumstance, for your enjoyment, our sixth picture. Drum roll please....brmbrmbrmbrmbrm....Ta Da!

As you can see, we took this picture when Number One Son was enrolled in his Hibachi class for second graders. Actually, October 14th is Lady Di and my anniversary date. We had taken the kids out to eat at our first Hibachi restaurant. I see from the picture that we ordered chicken, steak and vegetables. The onion slices look like they are ready for the chef to turn into a steaming volcano. It was a memorable anniversary because our chef enjoyed performing and making the kids laugh. The climax of the show was when the chef reached for a small wooden doll, that lowered it's pants when it's head was pressed, and sprayed out the flaming onion volcano.

Well, even though our sixth picture didn't have the kids in it, it still reminded me of the fun we had with them that day. I'm sure glad we took a picture of our food. I wonder what the chef thought.

The hardest part of these tags is deciding which people to pass the challenge on to. And since I am too lazy, I will let you decide if you want to do it or not. If you do, let me know and I will certainly visit. Go ahead, find your sixth pic tell us what you had to eat!

I Remember That Christmas

I think we finally have finished all of our Christmas celebrating for this year. This may be remembered as the year that Christmas wouldn't end for our family. We started on the weekend before Christmas at Lady Di's parents home in northern Minnesota and ended on the weekend after New Year's at my folks' place in South Dakota. We've done a lot of driving, but thankfully, we hadn't had any blizzards to drive through.

This year will already be remembered by Number One Son as the Christmas of the Wii. Sweet Pea will probably agree, but her Easy Bake Oven is a close second. She is very excited to bake her first treat for her parents. She asked if she could bake something in the van on the drive home.
We definitely cut back on the Christmas presents this year. The kids got less than half of their usually number. But they didn't seem to mind. We didn't hear any complaining. Perhaps the Wii made up for it. Or perhaps, presents aren't what are really remembered from year to year. Family dinners, sledding and snowboarding, going to church and other family oriented activities will be remembered long after the toy batteries die.

I will remember this year for Lady Di running in her first 5k race on Thanksgiving. It was also SP's first year to hold her own lit candle at our church's candlelight service. I'll also remember N1S playing three Christmas piano pieces for his elementary's assembly.

These memories mean more to me and that's probably why they will stay with me for many Christmases to come. I hope to add many more of these kind of activities to our memories. I think de-emphasizing the importance of gifts will help strengthen our holiday spirit.

But I guess I probably will remember this year for Guitar Hero too, for a few months anyway.

Merry Christmas from SP, N1S and the SD Cousins

And here is a Christmas leftover. Every Christmas Eve we read The Night Before Christmas as a family before bedtime. Since Sweet Pea has become such a strong reader, we let her read it this year. Everything was going great until she read the line, 'And laying a finger inside of his nose,'. The rest of us started to snicker which upset SP so she didn't want to finish the story. We finally convinced her that we weren't laughing at her reading and she finished. But I think we have another Christmas memory.

Wii Wiish You a Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone had a festive and safe holiday. We enjoyed a quiet day at our home with just our family. We spent most of our Christmas Day jingling bells, roasting chestnuts on an open fire and spreading peace on earth and goodwill to each other.

Actually, you can probably guess how we really spent Christmas Day by the title of this post.

We broke down this year and finally got a Wii.

For years, we have been fighting against the X-Boxes and PSP's of the world. We had seen too many young and not-so-young brains turn to mush playing Mario Bros. for twelve hours at a time.

Here is how our road to mush started.

After the kids opened all of their other gifts from Santa, we had them open a wrapped Wii remote. It took about ten seconds for them to figure out why they only had remotes. Once they checked the TV for the game consul, you could see the realization on their faces. For the next few minutes we heard many shouts of something about the greatest day of their lives. We then officially surrendered our TV to the kids for the day.

Number One Son bowled a 216 right off the bat. Both kids quickly ran through all of the Sport games before starting the Guitar Hero rock off. Lady Di then had to step in just to see if the game was working correctly. After the kids scored more points than her on Livin' on a Prayer, she decided something must be wrong with her guitar.

Here is Sweet Pea perfecting her slide steel guitar technique. She is dressed in her rock star pink, froggy, footie pj's.

N1S is rocking out a little more conventionally. Maybe camo thermal pj's will catch on with the rock and roll crowd.

At lunch time we forced an intermission on the kids from the game. Lady Di prepared a monster Christmas banquet and we all indulged to excess. We were all feeling a little groggy after eating so the kids suggested that we get some exercise to work off some of the turkey and stuffing. So we played some baseball, bowled a few games and boxed a few rounds.

That is one good thing about the Wii. At least we get more activity out of the game besides just our thumbs.

After playing for a while I asked the kids if they wanted to get some real exercise and help me outside. They just popped in the Wii snow shovelling and floor sweeping game and said, "That's OK. We'll just work in here."

Toward the end of the afternoon, Sweet Pea was asking for some gel to put on her back.

"Why do you need gel?", I asked.

She answered, "Look at my back. Every time I move my arm, my back hurts."

Her first Wii-related injury. We may have to invest in the Wii Athletic Trainer game in case we need to virtually wrap an ankle or rub out a cramp.

God Bless us, everWii one!

Better Late Than Never

Just like all of you, we have been busy trying to get all of our holiday duties done before Christmas. Unfortunately, blogging duty has been pushed closer to the bottom of our to-do list lately. So I am finally getting around to answering Father of Five's challenge to show your crib. I'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone by combining his challenge with his other challenge to show your holiday lights.

With my apologies to FOF for its lateness, here we go.

You can tell by the photo that I don't know how to take night pictures. We decided to use red, green and white for the house and white lights everywhere else.

Inside we have our three trees up. One white, one blue and one multi-colored. You'll have to look at last year's pictures of those, since I was unable to squeeze their photos into the schedule.

I don't know how many more years I will be dumb enough to get up on the roof to put up lights. I'll have to trick Lady Di to start doing it soon.

See you after Christmas.

Long Live the Queen

We recently had a break in our cold weather. We awoke Saturday morning to temps in the thirties. This time of the year, we aren't used to such balmy winds. We usually have to wait until the end of March or April to get warm enough for snow to stick together.

We decided to take advantage our good fortune by going to our favorite sledding hill. When we last visited our hill, it was coated with a nice thick layer of ice which Sweet Pea's airborne chin greeted abruptly. I assured her that this year the snow on the hill would be much softer. Currently, our hill is half snow and half mud. Which slowed us down just enough to ease last year's fear of flying down the hill. Hiking up the hill, of course, was just as laborious as last year.

When we were muddy enough, we went home to build our first snowman of the year. Sweet Pea did all of the rolling. Number One Son was too tired. SP informed me that she had built a snow queen. That gave me an idea. A snow queen needed special royal robes, so I found some teal colored Christmas lights and dressed her up. SP found a flat piece of ice for her crown. I added a lighted tree topper, inherited from my Grandma Peg, and our queen's crown was complete.

Since our warm weather was going to continue overnight into Sunday, I was doubtful that our queen's reign would make it through the night. Especially, since the Christmas lights were burning themselves into her as well.

And sure enough, by ten o'clock pm, she had toppled.

She was beautiful while she lasted. I'm sure she will rise to power again come March.

And just so Mother Nature could keep me on my toes, the temperature dipped to 8 degrees by three o'clock pm on Sunday. So I was standing out in the frigid wind, pulling tangled lights out of a block of ice, instead of something productive like an afternoon nap.

Son of Snowhill

The weather lately has just been cold. Yesterday, our weather was upgraded to fun. It's still cold, but we finally have snow. Not a lot of snow yet, but enough to shovel, sled and snow angel in.

Past winters have provided us with enough snow for the snow plow to build a mighty mountain in our cul-de-sac. The kids really look forward to that hill. So far this year's hill is acting like the sequel to a really great movie, which is never as good as the original. This year's snow hill has a slow start compared to the last two years, but the kids still know how to have fun.

Sweet Pea and her friend were determined to make the snow hill bigger by adding more snow to it. I offered the girls all of the snow they could shovel from our driveway. Instead, they decided to borrow the snow from our neighbor's driveway. So much for tricking them into shovelling our own snow. After ten minutes of hard work, the girls abruptly changed their plans to include sledding in our back yard.

In this picture, they are coming straight for me and I did almost lose my shins.

That left Number One Son with the snow hill to himself. When I was half done shovelling our driveway, I walked over to see what N1S was doing. He was digging a tunnel through the snow pile. He had gotten close to halfway through using only a child size snow shovel. He needed more power, so I gave him a spade and garden hoe to finish the job.

Once SP and her friend saw N1S's accomplishment, they wanted to mine their own tunnel two inches to the right of N1S's tunnel. After I relocated them a couple of feet to the right for safety reasons, they commenced their burrowing. The snow was flying as they dug like crazy for fifteen minutes. When their tunnel still hadn't materialized after that time, they drew faces in the snow instead.

So even though our snow pile is starting out small this year, we have one and half tunnels to enjoy until the next snowfall brings the plow around.

Weekend Warriors

Well, we certainly got our money's worth out of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I'll start with Thanksgiving morning. At 8:20am Lady Di ran in the Turkey Trot 5K race in Minneapolis. She ran with over 5000 other runners. Thirty-four minutes later, the kids and I were cheering for her as she finished strong. Even though it was cold, watching the kids give Lady Di a big hug after the race gave me a warm feeling. Way to go Lady Di!

We then drove back home to start the turkey and the rest of our meal. Our nephew, Kubes, stopped by to celebrate with us. Before the meal, we had to play a game of Life. When starting the game, you have to decide if you want to go to college first or start a career. Since Kubes hadn't played in years, he couldn't decide where to start so he asked Sweet Pea what his best strategy would be. "I'm not sure what to do. How should I play this game, Sweet Pea?", he implored.

Sweet Pea answered, "First, you spin the spinner. Then you take your car and move that many spaces. Like this...one, two, three, four,..."

He decided to go to college first.

After the game we scrambled to the table to see how much food we could eat. I went around the table asking for preferences for white or dark meat. Sweet Pea requested a turkey leg. "You can't have the whole leg." (that's for Daddy), I admonished.

"Yes I can.", she countered.

Well, at least I got the neck and giblets. And she completely cleaned that leg.

Once we were miserable and in our food comas, Lady Di brought out her homemade pumpkin cream cheese pie with homemade whipped cream. There's always room for pie.

After dinner, Kubes found a nice comfortable spot on the floor while Lady Di and I cleaned up. We spent the rest of the evening joking and watching football.

Friday night found us in Minneapolis again. This time for the Hollidazzle parade. We even got to wave to Lady Di's favorite weather man at the WCCO television building. This is our second year seeing the parade with our friends from LD's hometown. They have kids close to our kids' age and they got along very well. On our way back to the hotel after the parade, two horse drawn carriages were waiting for us. We couldn't resist taking a 15 minute ride through the cold streets, bundled up together with a warm blanket.

Our horse's name was DJ. Sweet Pea wanted to take him home.Lady Di and Sweet Pea enjoyed their snuggle.

After a restless night in the hotel, (Sweet Pea's stomach had had a little too much excitement.) we went to Macy's to view the Christmas display they have every year.

At lunch time we had a small brush with fame. We got a booth at Hell's Kitchen restaurant and were just getting our drinks, when local politician Al Franken walked in. I just about elbowed Lady Di out of the booth when I saw him sit down with some friends two tables away. Lady Di knew just what to do. "Number One Son!"

This election year saw many political ads and N1S was very interested in them. He knew exactly who Al Franken was. When we visited Mr. Franken's political opponent's booth at the State Fair this summer, N1S son said, "Thanks for the sticker, but I think I'm going to vote for Al Franken." He asked the waitress if she knew who was sitting next to them. She said, "Sure, he comes in all the time. Would you like to meet him? He's very nice."

That's all N1S needed as he marched over to Al's table. Followed closely by his little long haired shadow, Sweet Pea. We watched N1S introduce himself and shake Mr. Franken's hand. He then introduced his sister. He then kept talking, about I don't know what, and seemed to go on and on and on. When he came back he said that Al Franken's wife said they had very good manners. He couldn't remember much of anything Al said. I think SP said something about losing three teeth this year.

Regardless of your political views, it was kind of exciting to actually see someone who has been on TV. It was also nice to see the kids use appropriate manners to initiate and hold a conversation. Who knows, if Mr. Franken ends up in the Senate, the kids may end up with an invitation to Washington.

Sunday passed rather quietly. I got a couple of our Christmas trees up and not much else done.

The weekend must have been too much excitement for my stomach too, because Monday morning found me with the stomach flu. Since this post is a bit long, I will save those details for a later post.