Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Christmas Fun - yeah I'm late.

I'm a little behind with posting the Christmas stories, but in my defense, it's been a rather busy month. Malia and I headed up to the parents on December 22nd and stayed through January 2nd. It was really nice to get to spend a lot of time with the family. I even got to do quite a bit of shopping and just hanging with my baby sister which I haven't done in a long time. Yes Kami, you are still my baby sister, even though you are married with 1 1/4 kids. haha The best part for me over the holidays was learning that both my sisters are having babies! I get to be an aunt twice this year. They were also thoughtful in including my brother and I in some fashion. Kami is due on JC's birthday and Krissy is due the day before my birthday. I hope they both enjoy their crappy miserable pregnant summers. =) Love you guys.

I've digressed as usual. So, the days preceding Christmas were mostly spent wrestling children and baking. I made caramels which kinda went wonky, but ended up tasting all right. I also made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and some sugar/butter cookies. I am pretty sure my mother nearly keeled over with delight after having some of the sugar/butter cookies because they tasted just like Lorna Doone shortbread cookies which are her favorite in the whole world. She even asked me for the recipe which tells you how much she liked them seeing as it's an understatement to say she does not care for baking/cooking. It's a necessary evil to her I think.

So, armed with much snackery, we had our family party Christmas Eve. We do all the family presents with all of us kids and our kids and significant others if applicable. Unfortunately JC, Carin and Zenock weren't able to come for Christmas because he just had to use his money/time to come back in August for some crazy dude's wedding. Oh yeah, that crazy dude just happens to be JCs best friend and who his son is named after. I guess that is okay. Just don't let it happen again. You're lucky it happened to be the same time as Malia's birthday so she settled for that. Anyway, we opened all the presents and to my delight Malia went crazy for her computer. She declared it the best Christmas ever and once I downloaded some games spent most of the rest of the holiday playing on her computer. Viva la eBay for finding stuff like this! The picture to the left pretty much sums up about 50% of her Christmas vacation.








The other 50% was split between playing with her cousins and playing with the presents that Santa brought her. Santa brought her some more magnetix and a cupcake baking set. Not one of those where you have to buy all sorts of pre-made packages of stuff, a real set with measuring cups, mixing bowls, silicone baking sheet and a recipe book. We made cupcakes Christmas Day. She was beyond excited to make cupcakes. I helped a little with the mixing and putting the batter in the muffin baking silicone, but she did most of it all by herself.






She also spent some of that time building stuff with her magnetix. She built a turtle and a hot air balloon for a mini-barbie that Haylee brought over.




















All in all it was an excellent Holiday vacation even though Malia wouldn't try my mom's WONDERFUL shrimp cocktail that she makes every year for New Year's.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Malia causes a ruckus

I apparently missed a good time at church yesterday. Firstly Malia (age 5 1/2) voluntarily shared half of her orange with her cousin Haylee (age 3 1/2) because her mom Krissy forgot snacks. That alone should be considered a sign of the apocalype I say. Her good behavior at school is starting to spill over into real life and I find I quite enjoy that.

Apparently Haylee was not happy about being in Sacrament meeting, so she threw a tantrum which resulted in her being taken out by her mom. As she's being carried out, she's kicking her feet. She's wearing slip ons that apparently don't stay on her feet very well so she kicks one off. My daughter, in an attempt to be helpful runs after them picking up the shoe hollering at Krissy that she dropped Haylee's shoe and chasing after them.

Even a day later, picturing this scene makes me giggle. Who knew Malia's newfound desire to be helpful could result in such entertainment.

Color Count from school last week: 2 green days, 2 yellow days and 1 yellow and green day (yeah, the teacher smokes something, I don't know)

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Yet another quickie

Rugrat has kicked off the new year on a good foot at Kindergarten. Yesterday, she brought home Green with four smilies! She ended the year well too with 2 greens in a row that last week of school, with 3 total that week. She hasn't gotten a red now in over two weeks of actual school. I'm really hoping that things finally clicked for her. That or my somewhat snotty note to her teacher asking for her to actually give me details on what the problems were so I could follow up with Malia made her realize that maybe she wasn't carding appropriately. I don't really know, but regardless, I'm happy about it.

I do think part of it is the newest deal we have going. I told Malia that if she got mostly green in January that when I got my tax return I would get her a Nintendo DS. Every time we go to Ryan's, he lets her play on his and she loves it. Also a ton of the girls at her daycare have them. I also agreed to buy her one of the Littlest Pet Shop games so she'd have at least one game. Also, each month she gets mostly green, she can get another game and $5 put in the spending money (for our vacation to DC in June to visit my brother and his wife and kid). I figure ~$25 a month isn't too bad to get her to behave herself. Mainly because eventually she'll get in the habit of behaving and the bribery will no longer be as necessary. The deal ends after school is done, so I'll probably have to come up with something fun for her to earn over the summer. At least I have a few months to think of something.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

I made it home

Yes, we made it home. After two weeks of basically not being online, I have returned. However, I am too tired to post anything. I also realized that I managed to take not one single picture the entire two week holiday visit to the parents. Yes, I am that horrible. Malia did take some, but they are on her computer so I'll have to pull them off so I can post them for you all. I am not even going to pretend that's happening anytime soon. It may be Valentine's Day before I get around to it. Anyway, a grand time was had by all and I'll give the whole story when it's not 6 in the morning and I've already been awake for two hours. Crazy dude upstairs apparently is arguing with himself. I am not sure but there may have been fisticuffs. I know there was at least some hammering which is what woke me in the first place. This dude is starting to drive me bonkers. I wish he could keep his crazy for when I'm not home.