Vintage Treasures!

This last week was a walk down memory lane as we went through more of my Oma's things.

She had great taste and loved shopping! Her collection of shoes, purses, coats, dresses, belts and handkerchiefs was impressive! I think all of us ladies inherited her love of shopping and pouring over her meticulously stored collection of vintage goodness was bittersweet! (It would have been so much MORE fun for her to have been with us telling stories about each item.)

During this process it was interesting to note what characteristics each of us has inherited from her. Evie and Bethy both definitely have her sense of style. Bethy is meticulous and I store. Sadly, I did not inherit both of those together... But I am ever hopeful that I will grow in this area!

Evie - relaxing and enjoying our time together!

She saved EVERYTHING! Here is her highschool hat that she made with her friends from highschool. All of their names are embroidered on it. It was so cool!

Surprise!

Christmas with kids is so much fun. The anticipation of what I will receive is replaced by the preparation of surprises. And seeing their expressions was priceless!

We spent our Christmas Eve preparing sausage balls (a long-standing tradition in my family), doing the advance prep for Chocolate Cinnamon rolls (that, plus a 5:30am wake up time to start the rolls = too much work and WON'T be a tradition for this mama). We ended the evening with inflating this cool gift for the boys from Mima and Pa!

There was quite a bit of sharing going on as the boys swapped toys. Xander was gracious enough to let Keegan 'pretend' to ride his big-boy bike!

Evangeline and Trey were also enamored with their gifts!

With my mind totally focused on the kids, everyone caught me by surprise when they all chipped in for this! I was so surprised and excited that I just sat there and cried...

They all found it very ironic that my old camera bit the dust, just days before. And then two days before Christmas I also told Rich that for my birthday, I would love nothing more than for everyone to pitch in and get me a really good camera. He didn't even bat an eye and merely gave a half-interested shrug. Sneaky.

Merry Christmas!

...from our family to yours!

It has been BUSY over here. Between getting ready for Christmas, enjoying all this wonderful season has to offer and precious time spent with the One who it is all about, I have not had much time for anything else. So in case I don't get on here before Christmas, I wanted to just say that I hope you have a very blessed rest of the year celebrating the One who is the Light!

Thanks goes to our wonderful friend Luz for the great family pictures!

A Free Ride...

For those of you with small children living in the Phoenix area, I wanted to make sure you knew about the grand opening of the Metro Light Rail. On Saturday and Sunday, they will be hosting all kinds of fun activities and you can ride the metro for FREE.

I thought it might just be a boy thing, except that my sisters and I have VERY fond memories of riding the metro in DC when I was a girl. In fact, in the early years, we enjoyed that more than any of the sights in Washington DC. Sad, I know.

With Keegan's current obsession with trains and Xander's past infatuation with the DC Metro, we'll be there. I'm not one for crowds, so we may just head down some day the following week because you can ride FREE through the end of 2008! But who knows, maybe we'll be brave enough to strike out this weekend!

14 month old Xander at the start of his metro infatuation!

Desert Snow!

We live in the hot, hot desert. Despite that, people flock here simply for October-May because it is so beautiful during those months. There is also minimal raking of leaves and no shoveling of snow.

But as a kid, there are some things that you can't help but feel you are missing out on. Snow being at the top of that list!

But that is a thing of the past...

A couple of weeks ago, while surrounded with palm treas and balmy 70 degree weather, we went sledding! I love the fact that you can "manufacture" snow. The boys loved their special treat and the chance to go sledding with Oma and Auntie!

Today, we had a snowball fight right out our front door! For two wonderful hours today, we romped in two piles of snow in the school parking lot across the street from our home! It was the remnants from a party the day before!

Nothing to rake, no shoveling. Just the fun part!

Sadly, our camera broke yesterday, so no pictures from our snow romp today...

9 months

Nine months ago, today, my beautiful blue eyed baby was born!

This guy is a bundle of energy. He wants to be a part of the action and is chasing those brothers of his already! This little speedster coasts, crawls, climbs with amazing speed and enjoys going after whatever Keegan is playing with, books (so he can eat them) or his favorite - the dog bowl. Unlike his brothers, he skipped over that peaceful period of sitting and playing with toys and went straight for the exploring part! Thankfully, he seems content with crawling for now.

At this age, I have still not found a food he doesn't like. Although he is quite vocal about wanting food and wanting it NOW, he is otherwise a pretty happy, friendly baby. He is currently into playing peek-a-boo with blankets or hiding behind chairs. He also loves clapping and waving. Even the third time around, I never tire of these fun stages...

One of the fun things about babies is playing the guessing game on who he or she looks like. Sometimes they clearly resemble someone, other times it is not quite so clear. I was never sure on Treyton, but over the last couple of months, my mom has claimed that Trey looks like my mother-in-law. As I was telling her this when we were back in St. Louis, I remembered that there was a picture of her as a baby in their hallway. Sure enough, they look a lot alike. It's the beautiful big eyes!!!

Trey: 20 lbs/10 oz; 28 in

A Good Place

The last couple of weeks have been challenging on the mommy front. Challenging is an understatment some days. While it feels that not much is getting done around our home and that patience with little one's is running thin, I am so thankful for times like this because it brings me to the end of myself. And that is exactly where God wants me - recognizing my need and depending on him.

I was encouraged this evening as I read this post from Holy Experience.

"The pounding surf of raising children, the fiery furnace of mothering, leaves me with little to physically hold at the end of the day. But are the most significant things in our lives things we can tangibly touch? Visibly see? Won’t the majority of our work, the laundry, the housecleaning, the meal-making, while necessary acts of service, just too burn up?"

My focus should be on what will last. And so I'm driven to prayer and feasting on scripture. God is always faithful and I'm in a good place...

"So a mother kneels. So a mother gets up and works and prays, prays and works. Because the prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire.

Aren’t the prayers of our days more important than the products of our days?"

Advent Reading

As you all know I LOVE COUNTDOWNS! So for our Christmas countdown this year, I collected all of my Christmas books and snagged a bunch of great one's from the library and wrapped up one to be opened up each night before bed! It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to gather enough books and make sure that I could keep them long enough before they had to go back to the library. Maybe next year, I'll do a 12 days of Christmas book thing. The boys love taking turns opening a book each evening and reading it. [Correction: they don't like the taking turns part, but are getting used to it.]

Tonight, we unwrapped one of my childhood favorites: Santa, Are you for Real? (Of course, only the original 1970's artwork will do! I had to find my copy on ebay!) Although we don't plan on celebrating the Santa Claus part of Christmas, it permeates our society. I want our boys to know the real story of St. Nicholas and also to be sensitive to other families who are doing Santa Claus.

Xander, being dad's grandson, interrupted the story to inform me that Nicholas was a golfer. It took a bit of explaining to get him to understand that St. Nicholas and Jack Nicklaus (the golfer) were in fact two different people.

His follow-up question: "Does Nicklaus (the golfer) love Jesus too?"

Magical Play and Trains

One of the benefits of having family in other parts of the country are the availability of different experiences. Here in our desert, you have to drive to find forests, elk, etc. There, they are practically right outside their back door!

While back in St. Louis, we were able to indulge Keegan's fascination with trains, by visiting the "Train Museum". According to the Smithsonian it is "one of the largest and best collections of transportation vehicles in the world." It was a chilly day, but still fun to climb in and around a slew of old trains! It was so interesting to see how trains changed over time. This will definitely be a must-visit again in a few years when the boys are older!

One of Rich's favorites reminded him of the name of his fantasy football team: The Shortbus Window Lickers. Strange name, I know. Here he is next to a 'short' school bus that was converted into a train engine!

We also enjoyed a trip to the Magic House, St. Louis' children's museum. We LOVE the Children's Museum of Phoenix, or as Xander calls it, the "Playseum". The Magic House had the same allure for the boys! I love watching my boys explore and learn in such a fun and painless way.

This was probably one of my favorite areas. You could pretend to work on a car. If it hadn't been so incredibly crowded, you probably would have found me on my back, under the car, pulling off and putting back on the velcro-ed car parts. I guess that's one of the perks of being a parent. You can play with the kid stuff and not look like a total dork...

So although we wish we could see you guys more often, we are enjoying the perks of visits to a different part of the country!

Thanksgiving

Yikes, I'm so far behind... Between a crazy week and a computer that hates me, I'm just now getting to this...

We had a wonderful week back in St. Louis. The only downer of the trip, was that Treyton didn't sleep well - AT ALL. But other than the joy of an almost 9mo acting like a colicky 4 week old, it was all good.

The boys LOVED playing pinball and shuffleboard on the vintage machines my antique collecting father-in-law owns.

There is never a dull moment at their house, as there are nooks and cranny’s everywhere in their sprawling home and interesting “things” inhabiting every corner! Just imagine being the kids in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe exploring the Professor’s house… My personal favorite this year was discovering that the 40’s-ish old wooden telephone booth with original phone in their basement still worked. I had fun calling Rich on the old rotary phone and the boys enjoyed opening and closing the doors to make the light go on and off…
The weather was beautiful. The air was crisp and the skies sunny! We enjoyed spending time exploring the woods in their backyard, playing golf and riding the trike and firetruck peddle car.

We actually "needed" the hats and mittens back there! :)

The cousins loved seeing eachother for a whole week!

We had the perfect finish to our week back there when we woke up on our last day there to find snow!!! The boys loved making snowballs!

And the baby loved trying to "eat" his snowball. Since he's my third baby, I didn't worry too much about how dirty that snow was...

And of course, no trip anywhere is complete without me forgetting and leaving something behind. This year was record setting in value - both monetary and sentimental. I left my wedding rings there... They are on their way to my very lonely finger.

(Of course, as a typical blame-shifter, I'm pointing my ringless finger at Keegan. He decided to chuck a matchbox car into the opening for the stereo speaker about an hour before we left and I took my rings off so I could fit my hand inside and retrieve the car. I guess I can also blame Treyton for leaving me in a severely sleep-deprived state and thus forgetting to put my rings back on... But really, I have a long track-record of leaving things behind.)