Luke and the tree

Here's a cute one of Luke helping set up the Christmas tree earlier this week. We turned it into a card and e-mailed it to family. Brian picked a 7 ft. Noble fir for our tree this year and the boys put 900 lights on it.

A family Blog, eh?

I realized that too many of my friends have blogs for their families, and I just don't. So here I am, on a sleepy Sunday, ignoring the kids as they watch Mary Poppins and I create another blog.

Santa visited and brought minimal gifts. We like to keep everything low-key, since we have too much stuff anyways, packaging just fills up garbage heaps, and the kids aren't materialistic. Luke did get his wish- he asked Santa to bring him Super Mario Brothers 2, so he and daddy got to play a new game for their Nintendo. It was like 1985 all over again. Daddy got some movies and a certificate to CD/Game exchange. I got new cookie sheets and the latest Narnia DVD.

AnnaMae got a Groovy Girls doll and some toy food for her kitchen. Laura was kind enough to make her potholders, so hopefully AnnaMae will know what to do with them (besides throw them at her brother). They both got clothes and a few toys from their grandparents. I'm glad it wasn't much. When kids get too many toys at once they don't appreciate them.

For a good half-hour I tried to get a good photo of her in her new christmas dress that grandma and grandpa gave her, but nope. she was having a wiggly day. All through the 3rd hour of church she was running and giggling and playing with another baby her age. 18 months is only 3 months away (I'm not counting, really!) It seems like she and Luke are always trying to antagonize each other in new and invigorating ways. Toys are communal no matter how much Luke would like to think that all toys are his. I'm glad that she has a kitchen and Luke has too many legos so missing a few really won't kill him.

I did get some photos of her de-populating the tree. All our ornaments are at 3 ft. and up. We have plastic ornaments this year and yesterday I stocked up on more plastic ornaments at the sales, then I came and decorated the tree with more un-breakables. Grandma & Grandpa W. made the mistake of inviting us over with their tree done all in glass ornaments at baby-height. It took her only a few minutes to run to the tree screaming "ball!!!" and grab one and promptly break it. When we came back for Christmas Eve they had prudently moved all ornaments above her reach. Way to go! You can teach old grandparents new tricks :) The real trick will be to see if next year they remember.


Then AM tried to share the bounty of her toy kitchen with her favorite friend, Chicken Dance Elmo (his batteries are running down so he sounds posessed. It's really cool). "Elmo" is one of her favorite words, and I'm always finding her trying to shove Elmo videos into the VCR, since she knows that her furry little friend comes to life through the VCR.

I'll leave you with a few more photos of the kids and I'll try to update this every so often. Have a great Winter Break! I'll be teaching a workshop at the Eugene Library to teens on Tuesday afternoon, and on Friday I'll be giving a lecture on the history of Manga as part of the First Friday Gallery walks. AnnaMae and the first snowstorm of the year. It was 18º when I took the photo, so we were out for a total of 5 minutes. Then her mitten fell off and she touched the snow and started to cry.

Here Luke was dressed up like a character I drew in a Children's Book Illustration class I took about 8 years ago. He really looks like the character I drew way back when (I'll try and find the artwork for that somewhere).

Also, congrats to Dan and Carina! They had a new little Juliet Rose on Tuesday. She was a healthy 7 lbs, 9 oz. Now they get to enjoy a messy house with no sleep for 18 years.