Monday, January 26, 2009

Aaaaahhhh...


Angela and Dan, Kuaui 2009

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Christopher's Christmas Tree

It feels like Christmas all over again around here since Nick's birthday. What a haul! He's unwrapped all his gifts but he'll be opening them for the first time to play with something new for two weeks! So it's not too late to post Christopher's Tree. He really wanted his own tree for his room. We have desktop artificial ones for each child, but he didn't want a fake one -- he wanted the real deal. Turns out he wasn't to greedy. After Dan trimmed a few branches off our tree so it would fit in the stand, Christopher went "shopping" and found the tree he wanted. He found a base from a piece Dan cut off our tree's trunk. Dan drilled a hole and Chris put it together.

Today it went in the trash. But it was a good tree. Christopher really loved that tree. He really wanted to save it until next year. But even good trees have an end. Especially when mom is cleaning and getting organized and wanting everything in it's rightful place. Like the trash. Then it sat for a week in the laundry room because I couldn't bear to throw it out before taking it's picture because... It was a good tree. And Christopher really loved that tree.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Nicholas is 4!

Our littlest guy is four years old today! I've been very sentimental today and yesterday seeing my baby so big!!

We had his birthday dinner last night and he requested steak. Yep, definitely growing up.


Nick's was an easy, fast birth -- my nurse ended up delivering him because my midwife didn't make it on time. Dan was a little nervous, but I was elated! Yea! It's almost over! I didn't care who caught him, I was just glad to get him out! The only bad part was he was pretty banged up in the quick process. 9.2 lbs has to do some serious squishing to get out so he was black and blue. The Nursery nurses even told me in all seriousness to warn the night crew he was purple from the delivery or else they'd panic when they saw a blue baby in the crib! His hospital picture is a little scary.





We've had a tradition of celebrating 1st birthdays at the zoo -- Courtney's 1st was at the Buenos Aires zoo in Argentina. Marty's at the Bronx zoo. Christopher in balmy L.A. in March. Nick was in Salt Lake in the dead of winter. Everyone wanted to change the tradition since it was so cold, but I insisted! So we bundled up and saw a few animals. We sat on a freezing bench and took off our gloves to eat a cupcake and then got the heck out of there. It was freezing!




Nobody can remember what we did for his two year birthday and we can't find any pictures. Oh yeah, that was the year I was PTA President. No wonder! So sorry youngest child!



Last year we rode the train and went sledding. Talk about THE best birthday!

Nicholas loves his trains and has been a big Thomas fan! He's sharing the love with Geo-Trax this year because they go by themselves and with a "controller." He's played with his new trains all day today. He also loves to paint and draw. He has a much longer attention span for all things artistic than my other two boys had. We colored with Sharpie's together today -- getting to use the "Mom" markers was super fun for him and him saying, "you're doing a good job, Mom" was super fun for me. Grandpa brought over a small pirate's chest to paint tonight and Nicholas opened it right away and painted the whole thing -- even informing us that blue and yellow make green.

His older brothers and sister are so sweet with him and he loves being a "big kid" now -- even tagging along on some playdates with some of Christopher's friends and VERY kind moms!

He's got such a sweet, easy-going personality it's tough to get too mad at him even when he gets into all kinds of mischief.

We love you Nick! Glad you're part of our family!

Friday, January 02, 2009

Happy New Year!

One of my resolutions is to remember kind greetings... I've found that often I just start composing e-mails without even beginning with the person's name I'm writing to. And I don't say "Hi" or "Thank You" or "Happy New Year" -- I just start barking out commands. I've also noticed that when people in stores, for instance, say "Have a Good Day," I'm usually half-way out the door and at worst grunt in return and at best say idly, "O.K!" So I'm trying to remember my "Thank you's!" And my "Have a Good Day's!" And right now my "Happy New Year's!"

And while I'm being introspective... I received a package from Aeropostale just before Christmas. An exact duplicate of the package I ordered 2 weeks before. I checked the order numbers and they were the same. I checked my credit card receipt and was only charged for the first package. Somehow the second was sent by mistake. I'm honest, so I called the online customer service, explained the problem and asked how they'd like me to return the second package. She said she'd e-mail me a UPS label so I could return it. She checked my information and when details were complete asked, "Is there anything else I can do for you?" I mumbled, "No, thank you" and hung up. But what I was thinking was, "Yes! You can say, "WOW! Thank you for being honest!!" And I began to wonder, am I honest because I'm honest? Or am I honest because I like the fanfare and pat on the back that comes with it... "WOWEE! You're SOOO honest!! THAAAANK YOU!!!!"

So much to work on in 2009!!