Christmas Eve

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas - I know we did! For the first time since Natalie was born, we were able to stay home for the holiday. Luckily we weren't alone; for both Christmas Eve and Christmas day my sister Carrie and my aunt Linda were able to celebrate with us. Carrie arrived on Friday night, and she and I were able to get some sister time in by getting a mani/pedi on Saturday morning (Christmas Eve). Linda arrived around lunch time and we all hung out for a few hours. We then got ready to go out to an early Christmas Eve dinner at a super yummy local Italian restaurant. We took the opportunity to get a little bit dressed up, and take some nice family photos.

 I love being able to take photos like this, with three generations represented.

After we got home, the kids were definitely exhausted - Henry wasn't feeling great (just like last year - it'll be nice to have him actually healthy one of these years at Christmas!). After baths and pjs, it was time for Evan to read them "Twas the Night Before Christmas" - a tradition in his family growing up that he wanted to continue. Since this was our first year celebrating at home, I purchased a beautifully illustrated copy of the book for him and the kids.

Although I'm sad that Henry wasn't feeling well (he's mostly back to normal now, after Christmas, thank goodness), it makes him very snuggly. I love this shot of him snuggling on Carrie.

 Before Natalie went to bed, she helped us put out cookies and milk for Santa. The plate on the right says "Natalie's cookies for Santa", while the plate on the left is "Reindeer treats from Henry". So, Santa got a few cookies, while we decided that the reindeer would like min Nilla wafers. We also gave him a glass of some specialty milk from Wegmans: Mint Chocolate coconut milk. It's not the best, but it tastes a LOT better if you add some Baileys to it :)

 After both kids went to bed, we waited about 30 minutes and then Carrie, Evan and I played Santa and set out the gifts. Here's the end result: I think you can guess that the pink pile to the right of the tree is Natalie's, while the blue pile to the right of that, in front of the TV, is Henry's. The adult's gifts were in piles around the tree to the left.

Everyone made out quite well, as you'll see in my upcoming posts about our two Christmas celebrations - one on the 25th and again on the 26th with my parents.

Jingle Bells

Both of the kids love music SO much that we spend a lot of the time on the weekends with music on in the background - we love music too, and it's so cute to watch them dance around! Lately, we've been enjoying  some Christmas music; Natalie's favorite is Jingle Bells. She's got the chorus and whole first verse down pat! I think that's sufficient, as Evan is probably the only person I know who actually knows the second verse. :)

It occurred to me last weekend that maybe I should get out my flute and try to figure out Jingle Bells - it couldn't be that hard, right? I got the song down pretty well, and then Natalie and I performed it together. I apologize in advance for my playing; while not terrible, it's nowhere near to the level I'd like. I will chalk it up to three things: not having played flute steadily since 1995, not having played ANY instrument steadily since 2001, and the flute being 20 years old. Despite these things, both the kids and I had a ton of fun (even if my embouchure - facial muscles used to play - was aching afterwards!)

Happy Hanukkah!

Merry Christmas to all! I have so much to talk about from our first at-home Christmas, but I first wanted to say....Happy Hanukkah! That's right, we celebrate both in this house. And by "celebrate", I mean I absolutely love the tradition of lighting the menorrah every night, but it doesn't have any religious meaning to me (I guess the same can really be said for me about the traditions of Christmas). I like that the kids are learning about Hanukkah as well, even from just a tradition point of view.

Here we are celebrating the first night of Hanukkah. We decided a couple of years ago that there was no way the kids were getting 8 nights of presents AND a full Christmas (as well as Natalie's birthday being in December too!). Instead, the kids each get one on the first night, and then we just light the candles for each of the next 7 nights. Here are the kids helping me light the candles on the first night.

Then, it was present time! To entertain ourselves, we are teaching the kids that Hanukkah presents are brought by the Holiday Armadillo (if you don't get that reference/didn't watch Friends, click HERE to watch). Hee hee! This year, the Armadillo brought the kids cat-shaped flashlights, whose eyes light up different colors (white, blue, green, pink), and flash in each color as well. Very cool! They were a big hit.

I managed to get this action shot right as Henry dropped his. I love the light streams from the eyes!

I also finally learned how to play the Dreidel game. I purchased a set of two wooden dreidels from Wegmans for $3.00, including instructions. We then taught Natalie how to play with pennies. So much fun! She did great - she's wonderful at taking turns and doesn't mind at all when someone else does really well or if she's not winning. She had really good luck though - without us planning it that way, she won both games! At the end, we had her count up her winnings, and without us even telling her to she counted out her pennies in nice straight lines of 5. Something else she's learned to do at school! Such a smart bug.

Mid-December fun

Here's a hodge-podge of some things that we did this past weekend. I had the kids to myself Thursday & Friday as Evan needed to go to NJ overnight to help his parents. Thursday night was the birthday party at Pump It Up that I previously posted about; Friday night it was just me and the kids hanging out at the house. To entertain them while dinner was cooking, I blew bubbles into the sink. Henry has just recently gotten over  his fear of sitting on a barstool, so I popped both of them at the counter and we had some fun. I got this shot while popping around the corner and yelling "boo!". This made them laugh like crazy.

On Saturday, I had a really nice day with my girlfriends. Beth came over with her daughter Ellie before lunch; we put her & Henry down for a nap, and while they slept Evan stayed home with the kids while we met Kathy at a movie theater. I'm not too ashamed to admit that we went to see the latest Twilight movie. It's become kind of a thing with us - enjoy the horrible cheesiness that is this set of movies. When we got back to the house, it was time to take the kids & Calla outside for a walk. Evan grabbed this shot of the ladies and kids.

We then went back to the house and hung out for a bit, waiting for our babysitter to arrive. We all then headed over to the first of two Christmas parties for the evening. This one was down the street at Angie & Kevin's house, so easy to get to. Ellie joined us at this one, in her adorable party dress!

Since we were a little dressed up for the evening, I had a friend snap a picture of us.

After staying there for a little more than an hour, we headed about 30 minutes south of Leesburg to our friend Robert & Kristina's house (Robert is also Kathy's brother). They have an AWESOME house out in the woods - another friend for whom I now have house envy! It was a pretty great party, even if Evan and I failed miserably in our effort to answer Christmas movie trivia. We did win a fantastic last-place prize of a kitten calendar. I think I know who's room that will be going in!

Seeing Santa

One week ago we took the kids to the mall to see Santa. Natalie was VERY excited to see him and tell Santa what she wants for Christmas (a "bigger" vaccuum and a shopping cart are at the top of the list). Luckily, when we got there around 5pm there wasn't too long of a wait to see him. I really liked how they decorated the Santa area this year - everything was in blue, white, and silver, as you can see behind the kids.

I grabbed this shot of Evan and Henry just before it was our turn to see Santa.

Unfortunately, the visit with Santa didn't go as well as I'd hoped. Natalie got right up next to Santa to take a photo, but every time we got Henry even close to Santa he started screaming. So, no picture with Santa this year :( Natalie did get to tell him what she wanted thought, and then they received a candy cane to share, which helped in letting me finally spend my Macy's gift card that I received for my birthday. Thank you candy and mall-provided stroller!

Zoolights

With everyone dressed up for Natalie's party, we grabbed a couple of nice family photos. Here's Aunt Carrie with her niece and nephew.

I then snagged this great shot of Carrie and I. 

After having a quick snack, we changed into warmer clothes, bundled up the kids, and headed to the National Zoo to see the Zoolights. Apparently they do this every year, but we had yet to go. It's a free event (you just have to pay for parking) where they decorate the whole main path of the zoo with lights.

Here we all are at the lower entrance to the zoo; I asked a passerby to take this photo of us. I love the lights! The zoo did a great job. There are lights in every imaginable animal shape, as well as moving displays (such as birds crossing in the sky above you, snakes moving their heads, frogs jumping). Some of the lights are color-coordinated (such as this purple-wrapped tree we took a photo in front of, below), and some of them are just random. 

 This light display was very, very cool. I love these displays that are timed to music!

There was another one at a second point in the zoo, but it wasn't as cool - just 3 trees lighting up to Jingle Bells. Regardless, I am very impressed by the amount of effort put into the displays! It was a great event, and SO much less busy than when we were there for Boo at the Zoo. Definitely something to do again next year.

Natalie is 4: more info

 I realized while writing the previous post about Natalie's 4th birthday party that there were some miscellaneous things I wanted to include, and it was easier to just put them into a "wrap up" post than try to cram it all in with her party info.

Gifts: Natalie received some fantastic birthday presents, but luckily it wasn't the insanity of her party from last year! Her favorite gifts are probably the ones from us, her family (which makes sense, as we know her the best!), although her friends did really well too. Evan and I got her a Disney Princess kitchen, which she is loving. Aunt Carrie got her a pretend makeup kit, as she loves to pretend to put makeup on with me in the morning, and now she won't have to use mine to do it! Grandma & Grandpa Hoffman got her two Barbies she wanted: Sleeping Beauty & Belle (the first seems to be the current favorite). Grandma & Grandpa Macbeth got her a new dress up outfit (seen to the left) - she's definitely loving wearing it. A huge hit!

Doctor visit: Natalie's 4 year checkup went very well. Her stats are as follows.

Height: 40.75" (73%)

Weight: 32.3 lbs (26%)

So, tall and skinny, just as we know she is! Hence my needing to get her pants in the 4-6X section, as she needs the extra length in the legs. Her physical exam was great (no problems); for the first time they took her blood pressure (which she thought was really cool) and administered an eye test (which she also did well on, even though she didn't know what one of the pictograms was). The only negative was having to get 4 shots plus a nasal flu mist vaccine. She did pretty well with the shots; cried a little, but only really got upset with the last one, as it was the tetanus and I think we all know how much that thing hurts! The doctor's office gave us a sheet of "during the next year your child may start to do the following", and without sounding like I'm bragging too much, she can do pretty much all of them already. Her doctor was very impressed at how little instruction Natalie needed to do the things she asked; as we all know, one of her big strong suits is taking direction (at least from people other than Evan and I!). Very proud of my big girl.

Otherwise, let's see...I've already bragged about her school abilities, so everyone knows that. Her speech is absolutely amazing, and whether she knows it or not she's started saying some pretty funny things. Lately, the funniest ones are the statements that are unintentionally passive-aggressive. For example, if you're standing between her and the TV, she won't say "can you please move, I can't see the TV". Nope, it's "I can't see the TV." Not in a mean way, which is sometimes even funnier. In a second example, her favorite Christmas song is Jingle Bells, and she asked if I had a version on my iPod. I do, but only a very bluesy version by James Taylor. I put it on, and after about 30 seconds she says "this song is very...interesting." Way to be diplomatic, there, Talie.

But she's doing great (as is Henry; can't believe he's 20 months old already too!), and I couldn't be happier with them...even when she's refusing to nap or rest, and starts getting really whiny :)

Natalie's 4th birthday

Last weekend, on December 10th, Natalie turned 4! It seems so hard to believe. She's so obviously not a toddler anymore; the latest example of this is that yesterday, for the first time, I purchased her clothing in the Girls 4-6X section, not the 2T-4T "toddler" section. It's scary to think that she's outgrown that size clothing already! My big girl.

Luckily, this year her birthday fell on a Saturday, so we were able to have her party on her actual birthday. We rented out a room over at Ida Lee (where her preschool is), and had 6 of her friends as guests (including a couple of their younger siblings). I think everyone had a blast! The kids all had some pizza when they first showed up.

 ...and then after some running around we did our craft: making snowflake ornaments.

We played a couple of games at the party, including "freeze dance", which was a big hit with all of the kids. I liked this pic from the second time we played the game, as each of the kids grabbed the balloon tied to their chair and danced around with the balloons as well.

 Then, it was cupcake time! A coworker of my mom's made 3 dozen cupcakes for us - they were fantastic! The "icing" wasn't actually icing, but instead were cut-up marshmallows and artfully arranged to look like flowers (with added glitter sparkles, of course). The one in the middle of the picture had both purple & pink sprinkles; this was Natalie's special birthday cupcake.

 We did manage to round up most of the kids at the end of the party for a picture - the only one missing here is one of my friend Kelly's boys; the other one is hidden some behind Henry. I think it's a pretty good picture of the kids!

 Of course, right at the end of the party Natalie and her friend Sydney needed to go to the bathroom, so I took them at the same time. I absolutely love this photo I took of them running back to the party room, holding hands...so cute!

So overall, I think it was a pretty successful party. Natalie had a fantastic time, the girls all got to dress up in their finest tutus, and a lot of our friends and family came to help Natalie celebrate. Thank you to all who made the party so much fun!

Pump-It-Up parties

Last Wednesday (December 7th), Natalie was invited to a classmate's birthday party at a local business, Pump-It-Up. As the party was from 11:30am-1pm, I originally did not think I'd be able to take her (you know, with the whole working thing). However, I was in somewhat desperate need of a day off with having traveled for work the two days prior to that (14 hours of driving over 2 days), and needing to finish getting everything ready for Natalie's birthday party the following weekend. So, I took a day off of work and was thus able to take her to the party.

I hadn't been to Pump-It-Up before, although there are a number of similar places in the area (one called Jumping Jack Sports in Ashburn; another in Sterling I believe). There are giant inflatable "jumpy things" (as Natalie calls them, or bouncy houses as most of us know them), big giant slides, inflatable obstacle courses - everything kids could want. A big hit of the party was the giant slide...which of course I ended up having to go on as well! I'm not going to lie - both the slide and the bouncy house were really a lot of fun; I wasn't the only mom who thought so. :)

Below are just about all of the kids who were at the party; the birthday girl is sitting to Natalie's left. She's in Natalie's class; the little guy standing in the lower right is her younger brother. Their birthdays are within a week of each other so the party was really for the both of them.

Playtime was followed by pizza and cupcake time - probably almost as fun as jumping :)

Then, last night (December 15th), we returned to Pump It Up for another classmate's birthday party (the little girl to Natalie's right in the above photo). Since this one was from 5:30-7pm, Henry got to tag along to as well. Ironically, because most dads are home at night, none of the other moms brought their younger kids, whereas I had to bring Henry because Evan was out that night. So, for the first time, the other moms got to meet him! Natalie had a blast on all of the activities as before - in fact, I really didn't see her for the first 20 minutes or so as she just went up and down the slide over and over again. I was occupied with chasing after Henry. At first he was a little freaked out and fussy, but once he discovered this car, he was good to go. Even better, Natalie and her friend Lily had the best time pushing Henry around the second room so I didn't have to do it! In general, Lily was totally fascinated by Henry, and loved playing with him - I told her parents I was going to take her home with me to help! :)

We then got the kids together for a group photo; I grabbed this shot before all of the kids had come over, so even though everyone isn't in it I'm posting it because my kids look too cute :)

 And, finally, you can see what Henry thinks of all of this picture taking :)

Side note on the above picture: both kids think it's hilarious that they can roll their tongues like this and I can't. So, they enjoy doing this at me and laughing when I try and fail. Anything to make my kids happy :)

Preschool performance

One of the themes in Natalie's class this month has been learning about Native Americans. Natalie didn't go to school last Thursday because she had the stomach flu (it unfortunately has been sleeping through daycare for the past two weeks; so far in our house only Natalie has had it), so we missed the notification that there would be a performance at the end of class on Tuesday. I saw the notice when I dropped her off, but unfortunately couldn't get back to watch it due to work; luckily, Evan was able to get there and take these videos for us all to enjoy! Watch the 3 in order, as they show the entire song that the class performed. It is apparently an authentic recording of a Native American welcoming song.

Kathy's baby shower

On December 3rd I co-hosted a baby shower for my good friend Kathy at her house. Our friend Sarah did the vast majority of the planning and work, but as she lives in Arizona I was happy to assist with some things on this end that were easier to take care of locally. I headed over to Kathy's house a couple of hours ahead of time to help get everything set up. 

Kathy's decorating the baby's room in zoo animals, so to stick with that theme Sarah bought these really cute animal designs off of Etsy and used those for the decorations. She printed out and made the banner you can see below.

The living room, where most of the shower took place

A second view of the presents, including the fantastic diaper cake!

Here's the dining room (can be seen above through the living room door), with some more of the decorations and the start of the food.

Kathy's sister-in-law has started her own bakery business, and she agreed to make the dessert (the cupcakes) and the favors (almond cookies). It was all amazing!

The cupcakes were chocolate, with either peanut butter/chocolate icing, or caramel buttercream icing. That's the one I had...I'm not sure I've ever had frosting that good. It was amazing.





The cookies were as good - not only did they look fantastic, but they tasted SOOO good! They are vanilla almond sugar cookies, which I think are now my favorite kind. Kristina actually used the Etsy artwork to project an image onto the cookies and hand-piped the icing. She wrote how she did it on her blog, and you can read it here.

Sarah also came up with the cutest game/activity for the shower attendees: decorating onesies! She bought onesies (long & short sleeves, all different colors - lined up on the left in the picture below), and a wide variety of fabrics to which she attached iron-on backing. She also provided cut-outs in all different shapes for people to use as patterns, iron-on letters, and fabric markers. Everyone got to then make a onesie of their choice.

We then hung all of the finished onesies on a "clothesline" (mine is the orange long-sleeved one in the middle)

and Kathy got to go downstairs and see them when all were finished and choose her favorite one. Someone knows how to play to Kathy's preferences (she and Eric both played trombone). That person then won a prize.

I think overall the shower was a success. Everyone had fun eating, playing the games (including a quiz about babies that Sarah created, and a memory game that I did), watching Kathy open all of her wonderful gifts, and generally hanging out. I'm so glad I was able to be involved in the party planning - it was tons of fun, and such a fun thing to do for my wonderful friend!