Pre-Birthday, Birthday Cake

Tonight my twin brother, Shem, came over for dinner and we celebrate our 31st birthday. I made grass fed beef spare ribs. It was delicious. My sister in law raved about them which makes me love her all the more. She in return made us two incredibly delicious birthday cakes. She is a fabulous baker. With every bite I felt each hour slaving love she poured into it. It is supper special when someone suffers in the kitchen for you. Don't you think? I am crazy lucky that I have such an awesome family and that they choose awesome spouses. 31. Yeah, we look like a couple of middle aged people - all old and sad. Sometimes when I lay down a little funny, I get up all old lady like. Sigh - hello 30's. Dang we look alike. I never thought we looked more alike then any other sibling in my family, but in this picture we look a lot alike. We applied to the Amazing Race together a few months ago. Can you believe that they never called us back? I can't. We would be perfect. I would love to do a wild and crazy race with this guy and be forced to hang out and build more memories. Sigh. Thanks Shem and Ruth and cute baby Asher! We loved seeing you!!

Related to Famous

A couple weeks ago we went to see my niece Sadie's play. She is Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Can you believe it? This is a school production that takes in 3 different schools and grades 6 - 9. She is in 6th grade and landed the lead - Charlie. This school must have some serious fundraising because they had a budget of 12,000$ It was a fabulous production. Sadie of course was in gobs of scenes, gobs of lines and had a whole song solo. She did amazing. I couldn't be prouder.

I took the boys and they loved it too. It was all so special. The play was over 2 hrs long and Soren and Xander started to get wiggly but they did great overall.

Here is Charlie and her sister. This family is full of drama and singing talent.

Sadie was so famous. Signing all these cute fans cast list.

After the show they meet a bunch of cast and Soren in particular loved meeting everyone. He was so cute and he walked around and shyly spoke and shook hands with all these famous big kids. Way to go Sadie. We love you!!

Valentines - Boy Style

We made some homemade valentines this year. They turned out great and the boys had a good time making them. I thought they would like valentines in the shape of weapons and superheros. BoyT was I right. After we were done they got to play with the rest of the supplies and came up with their own love weapons.

Soren made a love gun

Xander made a love spiky bomb.

Getting some love from one of my valentines. Xander is definitely a lover. He hugs and kisses me many, many times a day. If I do something he likes, (ie: make a meal he likes, give him a gum ball, tell him we are going to the park ect.), he is suddenly over come by love and lunges to give me hugs and kisses wherever he is (and also usually uses a baby voice with made up words of joy to celebrate). I love it (the hugging and kissing part) and hope he never grows up.

Bunny Lovin

For Christmas I got a bunny. She is a holland lop and is adorable. She is an indoor bunny and she is suppose to run around being happy and good. However I seem to be terrible at potty training her so she is sadly limited. My boys adore her though........poor bunny. We got her as a baby in hopes that she would think it was normal to be malled by children. She is a good bunny but does bite occasionally and can poop everywhere at times when she is out. Yesterday as I was at work, I called to check in at home and Ryan declared, "I want to kill the bunny! She is very bad." If Ryan didn't have a history of killing my pets I might have given a chuckle to such an extreme comment. Apparently she bit Soren quite hard, but in her defense, Soren, no matter how frequently I tell him to stop because bunnies does like that, he tries to bouncer her up and down like a fussy baby. I think it is a good thing that the boys get feedback about what the bunny will tolerate. Unfortunately Xander heard how Ryan felt. Today Xander was telling the neighbor, "My Dad wants to kill the bunny. I like killing bunnies too." Awesome. I am a little worried for the next time I go to work.

They really do love her. Surely she won't die right?

See, isn't she cute. How could anyone want to kill her?

Red Wagon

By 3pm on the icey day of the snow storm a few weeks back, my family had had enough of each other. If action wasn't taken soon bodily harm was going to occur and since the roads were so bad, I knew the medics would have a hard time getting here. So I brainstormed a way to prevent such an act of violence and knew we need gross body movement to steam off energy. So I began calling friends. "If we walked to your house, would you let us in?" I half begged half joked in a fairly desperate voice. I quickly found a taker. This friend was 1.5 miles away and half of it was down hill - which meant walking home might be painful. I decided to take our sled so that if situation arose we could sled down, but really it would allow me to drag the kids up the hill in a worse case scenario. Then I realized I forgot my sled at my sisters house. We had purchased this awesome red wagon just weeks before on a great super sale. I was so excited about this wagon. I had purchased it for several reasons. One being to help facilitate the boys doing more yard work. They can't really manage our wheelbarrow, but they could drag all sorts of things around the yard with a wagon. I thought it might work as a substitute. So off we went, bundled up and toting a shinny new red wagon. It worked well on our street, but once we got the hill, it had been plowed so the sides were not smooth enough for a wagon. I decided to ditch the wagon off the road under a tree. There was no one out except some cars so I thought this was safe enough place. Xander on the other hand felt I had bad judgement. "Don't leave the wagon there! It will be stolen." I tell my kids all the time that their stuff will be stolen - but that is just because I am trying to motivate them to put their things away.

"It is not going to be stolen Xander." I protested.

So we continued on our journey. I had told my friend to expect us in 30 minutes if every thing goes well, and an hour if it didn't. But as we continued and Soren would gather every 3rd icicle, I knew we were on the 60 minute path. It was snowing and quite magical. The only real problem was we started at 3pm and it gets dark around 4:30 this time of year. I kept crunching the numbers, but no matter how short we stayed at our friends house, we were guaranteed a walk in the dark........a detail that the more I thought about, became a worse and worse idea. By 4pm we were about 4 blocks away, but my rational self got the better of me and I turned us around - as failures. But were we really failures? Every single one of us had all our limbs and all our pints of blood. The boys surprisingly took it well. On the way up the hill we took a couple breaks as I told them tales of Narnia and the White Witch. Towards the top of the hill Xander was slacking a bit. I promised him a ride in our wagon the rest of the way if he could just reached the top. As we approached Xander says, "Mom, it is gone. Someone stole the wagon." Mid rebuttle I stopped cold. "Oh my gosh! You are right! Someone stole it!!" I said in horror and disbelief. "See I told you Mom." Xander said half smiling. It was almost worth loosing the wagon to be right over his mom it seemed. He kept saying it over and over again. "I told you not to put the wagon there. I knew someone would steel it......" blah blah blah. In frustration and anger I spat out, "Your right Xander. There are evil people in the world who just want to steal your stuff." I sort of felt bad after saying that but it kept Xander quite so it seemed worth it at the time. A block more down the road there was a older man out shoveling his driveway. "You kids enjoying a walk in the snow." "Yup" I replied with no joy in my voice. Then Xander informs the the guy, "Someone stole our wagon."

"How did someone steal your wagon?" inquired the man with a confused look on his face.

Then in true Xander form, he tells the man a whole long story that you can barely follow about our walk and how we ditch the wagon and walked forever then came back and then the wagon was gone. He pipes in, "My mom left in under the tree and I didn't think that was a good idea." The man chuckles and say, "Well I guess you were right."

Then without missing a beat Xander says, "There's evil people in the world you know."

I giggle a nervous giggle but the man full on laughs.

"Yeah, well my wife says I am one of them." he adds.

As we cover the last few blocks we try to make ourselves feel better by imagining scenarios were people need a wagon so badly they steal it. I think we decided it was a Dad with lots and lots of kids that he needed to take places in a wagon because his car broke down.

Farewell wagon. Enjoy your new owner.

I woke up today and Soren had already made his lunch.

So today, Soren will be eating

Tortilla jam and honey sandwich ( said he couldn't find the bread that was right there on the counter.)

tortilla chips

dried apricots

and for desert a taco shell drizzled with honey and a layer of chocolate chips and seaweed.

He is really excited.........and we will revisit nutrition tomorrow.

Christmas 2011

We had a busy Great Christmas this year. First we did a gift exchange with the Thompson's at my house earlier in the week. Then on Christmas Eve we went to Zaron's house and enjoyed a lamb dinner - Christmas dinner New Zealand style - I love it. Reminds me of Dad. The boys loved being with their cousins and palling around. They did lots of dress up and play. We did the Christmas story with a flanel board and sang some Christmas carols. The boys got to open up their new robes on Christmas eve. They both loved them but as I guessed, Xander in particular was huge fan. He loves clothes and accessories of any kinds - more then toys I think.

Then we had Christmas morning at my house with my in-laws. I did a yummy breakfast with puff pastry, and eggs benedict. Erica and Theo couldn't make it but Todd and Kari did and that was nice. My favorite gifts were the wall hangings Howard made for the boys. I am sure I love them much more then the boys. They are just such beautiful works of arts. And of course i love anything home made. We finished off the day at my in-laws for dinner where we saw the whole family. The boys were had gifts all day long. In fact they were opening up gifts all week long. It got to the point that whenever they saw a human they would ask where their gift was. Hmmmmm, seems like a flaw. Something to think about.

Well it was a fun, festive filled day. But know that the true season is to celebrate Jesus Christ and I am so grateful for his love and sacrifice for all of us. Happy Birthday Jesus.