Come and gone

It looks like we have finally seen the last of Christmas in our house until it comes around again at the end of the year. My normal routine is to set up all things Christmas the day after Thanksgiving and take them down the first day of the New Year. Not usually hard for me because I don’t party that hard to ring in the new year, but this year I was feeling incredibly lazy after working with my husband for two whole days on our plumbing along with various family adventures co-mingled with not enough sleep. The time has finally come and I made myself just get up and do it.

It took me an entire day, but I got everything down and packed away from the people in the village to the star on the Christmas tree to the wreaths on the door to the lighted garland in the windows. Everything is down and now winter looks a bit more dreary instead of cheery. Now it’s just bad weather instead of a white Christmas. Now it’s less play and more work as we patiently wait for old man winter to go away and spring to arrive.

A little sad, but it will give my credit card time to recover from all the holiday spending and hopefully return to its normal size zero. I do hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to the new year with eager anticipation.

Christmas cards

I wanted to wait and post this after I had mailed all the Christmas cards out because I wanted everyone to be surprised by what they got. I worked really hard for about two weeks in order to get all of my cards done on time. I usually only make one or two handmade cards and then send out the store bought ones to the majority of the people on my list, but decided that I wanted to make them all special for this year.

There was no rhyme or reason to who got what card, except for my MIL who saw the majority of the cards I had made, so I made an additional one so she could be surprised as well. Hopefully she likes the new one as much as she liked the ones she saw. I made three of each kind of card and have finally figured out that the more simple the card is to make the better it usually turns out. So for all your enjoyment here are all the cards I made and I apologize in advance if you didn’t get one you liked.

Being Santa’s Elf

I know I have mentioned before how much I love Christmas and now that my oldest son is in school I have the pleasure of being able to volunteer when I can to help out and be a part of this foreign little world that exists to my son without me in it. So when the opportunity arises and the call comes for help, I try to fit volunteering at Jack’s school into my hard to manage schedule.

Upon learning that I would be helping out at his school, Jack told me that he “is getting used to me being at school.” I asked if he liked that I was there and he said that he did.  Although I didn’t get to see my son or interact with him apart from him walking by and waving at me on his way to lunch, I was at least there when they needed help. I, along with three other parent volunteers, hot glued together 62 graham cracker houses to prepare them for decorating on Friday by the kindergarten classes.

I must say that it was long and tedious work and after two hours of squeezing hot glue through a difficult little gun my right hand was left practically paralyzed. It was all worth it though when he came home and the first thing he said when he walked through the door was that he saw me at his school. He said it with a smile and I couldn’t ask for anything better.

So although I can’t be there for everything, I am at least trying and my son can see that. It puts a smile on his face and that makes me happy, even as I nurse my poor sore hand.

Christmas Parade

New Berlin had a little Christmas Parade this year. Last year they didn’t because of the lack of funds, but some generous soul who lives here decided that the city needed another parade and raised  enough money to make it happen. It was a small parade, there were more floats than what I have pictured, but it only lasted about 45 minutes to an hour. There were four different bands and lots of candy being handed out.

It was just the boys, myself and their Grandma Ann who went as Andy had to work the entire day (BOO), so we just found a spot in a church parking lot with a good view and watched from the warmth of the mini van. A couple of times we got out so the kids could go catch some candy or pet a dog or say hit to a person in costume, but we stayed in the van the majority of the time because it was just too cold outside.

Of course, at the very end Santa came and was pulled by two of his eight reindeer and we definitely got out of the car to wave to him.

After the parade we went to the fire station down by City Hall and got a stocking full of candy for each of the boys and Alex saw Bert from Sesame Street and was just amazed that he was there. He shook hands with him and stared at him in awe, but wasn’t so impressed that he would stand up right next to him for a picture. Jack has always been this way with people and has never let a costume dissuade him from the fact that it is actually a stranger inside. Smart boys. Fun day.

Snow much fun

We finally had our first snow and thank goodness it was a complete contrast to the first snow last year. Last year I was cursing Wisconsin because I didn’t have a snow  blower and the first snow was the very wet and heavy kind that is extremely hard to shovel manually. This year was a piece of cake with the light powdery snow that gently fell from the sky. I shoveled the driveway without the use of the snow blower and even though it just covered it up over the following two hours, at least I wasn’t sore from the cleaning. Later Andy, Jack and I went back out and cleared it away again with just the shovels.

Of course, with the first snow of the year comes the super excitement from the kids about wanting to go outside and play in it even though the temperature reads a balmy 23 degrees. So on go their snow boots and jackets and hats and gloves, the snow pants came out the next day after I found them, and out they went to enjoy their day. Jack stayed out longer than Alex because his “skin is made for the cold weather” and Alex takes after his Mommy and doesn’t like being cold, but hates to miss out on the fun.

I do not like the cold, but found that it is much more manageable when you have snow pants on that keep the wind from getting to you. Maybe I can go outside more this year with this newfound knowledge and build a snowman with my kids when the snow gets a little more clumpier.

On Sunday when Daddy didn’t have to work Jack helped his Daddy clear the rest of the snow and used it to create the beginnings of his fort, which he hopes to make a little bigger after each additional snow fall. It is just big enough to fit him and his little brother Alex.

We got the boys some new snow boots this year that kept their feet extremely warm, that plus the addition of the snow pants made the winter weather tolerable enough for Alex to want to stay outside and play with his sibling and Daddy in the snow.

Afterwards they came in and were toasty warm despite the cold except for their bright red cheeks which were so cute, but really difficult to catch on camera. You can just see it on Jack’s cheek how red they were.

Looks like the boys may like spending more time outside in the winter time then they do in the summer time. I bet they won’t be able to contain themselves when it comes time to go sledding, especially since we got an all new family sized sled we can all ride on at once.

Red Fox

Okay, so when I picture foxes, I always picture them like this one, as tiny little dogs about the size of a cocker spaniel. So imagine my surprise today when I was in my bedroom talking to my husband and playing with my three year old and I just happen to look out the  window, which has a fantastic view of my back yard, and see a large red dog running across my lawn. At first I thought I was seeing the neighbors dog as they like to let it run free (I don’t care as long as it doesn’t poop in my yard), but then I took a good look and this dog was much redder and larger than the neighbors dog.

“Holy crap a red fox,” were the words that came out of my mouth to my husband.

“Where’s your camera,” my husband said to me.

I ran to get my camera and in just those few seconds that wily little fox had disappeared to the side of our neighbors house. So I ran to the front hoping to catch a glimpse of him when I saw him across the street sniffing around another house. The pictures a little fuzzy, but pretty good considering he was a good four to five hundred yards away. See how much bigger he looks then the picture above? He is clearly well fed!

He was surprisingly large from what I imagined him to be. More about the size of collie. I know I am told time and again that nature is more prevalent here in Wisconsin then in San Diego, but it always comes as such a shock when I see wild animals in my own back yard.

In the summer, before they all migrated south, we had three rather large Cooper’s hawks that would leave our backyard a mess with all the parts of their captured prey that they didn’t eat. More than once I have had to get my gloves and pick up a little bird head and throw it into the woods so that my kids wouldn’t go out and find them and start playing with them. This is actually a picture of all three when they were in our back yard. They must have just snagged a kill because it was really rare to see them all together at once.

Besides these beautiful animals I have also seen huge amount of deer nearly everywhere and a bobcat crossing the street a half a block from my house as well as a coyote carrying what looked to be a rabbit in its mouth down the road a bit. My children are officially not allowed outside once the sun goes down. I’m sure this fox could have easily carried Alex away. I’m just joking… a little anyway.

Alex too

I thought we were going to escape unscathed , but it seems that whatever bug that took out Andy and Jack wasn’t done. Alex woke up this morning and started telling me how much his tummy hurt. He laid down for a bit on the couch and then was up and running around like normal so I didn’t think too much of it. About mid day when we were having Arby’s for lunch, he loves Arby’s, he started complaining again. I was escorting him to the bathroom to be on the safe side and we were around four feet from the door when the poor thing threw up all over himself and the floor. So now he is down for the count and was out by six p.m. Hopefully this will be just like Jack and he will wake up tomorrow feeling like himself again.