christmas, part 4

8:35 PM: I'm reminding Wesley for the 10th time to stay in his bed. He has taken two presents with him, one from Grandma Gottula and one from Aunt Nicole. I've sort of done some cleaning up and the dishwasher is marvelously running.

I'm reflecting on this December so far. I'm not going to lie, this month has been hard. I'm not going to address all the issues right now, but let's just say that I'm not feeling entirely festive this Christmas. That's not to say we haven't had our fair share of Christmas fun. I did do an Advent for the kids; we love the Advent. I think it's worth it but I'm not sure. Basically I have a string of 24 mini stockings and each has candy for both kids, an ornament for a baby tree, and a Christmas activity. I put a lot of energy into it, but we didn't end up doing all of the activities. Some nights we'd go to bed not having done the activity for the day, and no one was the wiser or cared. I suppose we could have fit them all in but we just didn't? Anyway, some of our activities this past month were:

1. Downtown Adventure....

We saw the gingerbread houses, rode the monorail, visited the Space Needle. It was insane. Laurel was in a TERRIBLE mood because she was somewhat sick slash sleep deprived. I decided to drive and not take the bus (which the kids usually love) because we had something at home that afternoon and I didn't want to be stressed about getting back. Turns out parking was AWFUL and I went to three garages that were full. I found a spot on the street but it was a 2-hours zone. Which made me stressed out somewhat, having a 2-hour time limit. Ugh.

The line for gingerbread houses was long; they estimated 45 minutes. I thought, what the heck, we got in line and ate our lunch while waiting. Of course, the line was longer than lunch and once they were done they were antsy. We ended up skipping out of the line, seeing the gingerbread houses from afar, and moving on with our day. Was it 40 minutes wasted? I don't know. We got to eat lunch, right?

Laurel was in a foul mood but this picture of her on the monorail was her only smiling moment. She really enjoyed it. Yay! We didn't even stay long at Seattle Center. They weren't interested in the trains, they whined at the Space Needle gift shop (I wanted to get a surprise gift for Wesley so I had to hide it in a bag and distract him while the cashier rang it up, then we ran out of there), and we basically just high-tailed it back to the car. We got there 10 minutes shy of the 2-hour limit and I was toast. It was alright, but not "fun." I think we all weren't in the mood. The only reason I went was to get Wesley his surprise gift from the Space Needle shop. We didn't even stick around and admire the Space Needle or run around or sit and enjoy it. Bust.

2. Gingerbread House Party....

We hosted a group of friends again this year to build gingerbread houses. I bought one $7 kit instead of making my own like I did last year. Next year I'll buy two $7 kits, haha. It was fine, but Wesley was getting on my nerves just wanting to eat the candy, lick the frosting, and smudge the decorations, sigh. Some of my friends were good examples to me of "letting go" and I think I need to be better about that. I love the kid. When I try really hard my attitude is better, it is.

Overall it was a fun morning. They're cute and they had fun.

3. Ward Christmas Brunch...

Adorable pictures of the kids in their PJs with Santa at the ward party. Loved it. Ate a ton. It wasn't as awesomely organized as last year (I'll never forget the food distribution system last year and if they ever put me in charge it WILL be that way again, it was so wonderful), but it was nice.

4. Lake Serene Fire Station Christmas Party....

The local fire station had Santa come in on a fire truck and they had a party for the neighborhood kids. I was thrilled with what a quaint group it was. Parents were supposed to drop off a gift ahead of time for each kid, and Santa pulled them out of a bag and read off the names. Laurel was a DOLL! He called her name and she ran up to the front squealing with delight. Everyone laughed. Oh man she is just so cute.

HUGE smiles.

Of course they got to sit in a fire truck after. It was a fun little morning.

5. Nativity Festival...

The Bellevue Stake Center hosted a two-weekend Nativity festival. We're talking like HUNDREDS of nativities. It was uh-mazing. Of course I was terrified the entire time that Wesley would knock them over, but instead he was just a little jittery but excited to read the little signs, "Please do not touch," "Please do not touch." He's learning to read and gets a kick out of when he can actually read something. Yes, I reiterated, please do not touch.

I asked the kids their favorites. Laurel liked the pretty glass ones (above), and Wesley liked the carousel ones with candles (my Mom has one she said she lit today!!). I liked several... the smooth wooden one, the Lego one in the kids' room. a frosted glass one, a hanging ornament one. There were so many. There was one made from shredded soda pop cans, one made of beads, hand puppets, Peanuts characters, on and on and on. It was truly amazing and so beautiful. I'll definitely go again.

6. Treats to Our Neighbors...

We love doing this every year. We had some leftover birthday treats and had just enough fun things around the house to make a nice assortment for the neighbors. I also invited them to our ward Christmas program. I don't think anyone came, and if I was a super good missionary I would have followed up and asked them to commit to come. Maybe next year. We did six plates to six neighbors, all of which we knew except for one family, but I know she just had a baby so I WANT to get to know her. Hopefully this breaks the ice. She did wave at me the other day!

Some of our advent activities were to check out Christmas books from the library and build a fort to read them (fun), get out the (Little People) Nativity and read the Christmas story for Family Home Evening, "adopt a sock" as a service project (we filled stockings for a local Boys & Girls Club with dollar store items), color Christmas pictures and send treats for missionaries/servicemen (the postage was SO HIGH and thankfully some people pitched in, sheesh, I'll think twice about doing that next year), and of course, set up the tree.

It was a fun month. I should be better about reading Christ scriptures with the kids and telling meaningful Christmas stories. My heart is just in another place right now. It's been a tough year and a tough month. I hope I'll have it together more next year.

I'm grateful it was a nice day, and the kids are in bed fed, healthy, and happy. They had wonderful surprises and I hope they felt love. I got to talk to both my brothers and my Mom, and that was just so wonderful.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

christmas, part 3

3:05 PM: I remembered Wesley had hidden a Christmas present for me under his bed. I asked him to go get it. As he retrieves it, I'm reflecting on this year's ornament casualties:

1. My Ocean City sand ornament. Somehow Laurel launched the ornament off the tree and it broke. Sand was all over the carpet and bookshelf. I rescued all of the little shells, tiny plastic pail, etc., and put them in a container. My mom said she'd mail me a handful of sand from the actual beach (not a China factory, so that probably improves on the original!) and I'll put letters on a fillable shatterproof ornament and fashion a nice replacement. My sad remnants....

2. My friend Michelle made me two matching ornaments several years ago, I believe she put paint on the inside of them and swirled them around. They're lovely. This year at one point I saw some debris on the floor and thought, 'hey, that looks like one of those ornaments?' and then I found one of the ornaments on the tree, half gone. So sad. Chucked the ornament. Luckily I still have one! The kids, um, have had a tendency to like, whack the tree like it's a t-ball stand. Not sure where they got the idea from, but it's happened a lot. We have a LOT of pine needles on the floor from this activity, as well as broken ornaments obviously.

3. Wesley brought home a "gift" for mom on the Tuesday before school was out. He insisted on opening it and would not claim it was a "gift" for me. It was an adorable handmade ornament with little snowmen on his handprint. It was made of glass and the teacher told him how fragile it was. We passed it back and forth in the kitchen just one time and promptly it was dropped. I handed it to him and probably let go a second too early before he had hold of it. It fell to floor, shattered in a zillion pieces, and he and I looked each other and both burst into tears. We were both equally to blame and we were both equally devastated. Luckily, I emailed the teacher and asked for the instructions to make a new one, and she said if I provided an ornament she'd have him make another in class. I scurried around that night and got a second fillable shatterproof ornament and sent it with him to school. This is great, because he made it Wednesday and then was home sick Thursday and Friday. I lucked out. (I'm volunteering to stock her supply with shatterproof ornaments for her families next year!) 

I opened the new ornament from Wesley. Just as lovely and just as precious as its deceased predecessor.

3:17 PM: Almost done with "dinner."

christmas, part 2

10 AM: Breakfast is somewhat cleaned up. I only half finished reading the newspaper.

10:45 AM: We're playing with toys from our stockings. We have Usborne dry-erase travel cards, which will be great for Church. We start putting together a few Mixels Lego sets, although Wesley gives up and it goes, half finished, into a Ziploc baggie. 

10:47 AM: Mom gives up and puts the gummies in a high cabinet. I don't have the capacity to let him eat whatever he wants. Sigh. I'm sure I'm creating bad habits for his self awareness as he gets older.

11 AM: Shane arrives and we tear into gifts. I have to try very hard to get Wesley to let other people take turns, and do one gift at a time. I seem to recall I was a good little gift opener when I was a kid... the Twinings had a good system. Not sure my child would tolerate such a protocol. 

Gift highlights.... Wesley got an LCD "Boogie Board" which is a technological step up from his magnetic drawing board. Thanks Grandma Gottula :-)  He also likes his Space Needle piggy bank slash gumball dispenser, weather books, baby radio boom box, and wooden Wesley letters puzzle (thanks Aunt Nicole). Laurel likes her wooden fruit to cut, pink BYU shirt, new dresses (thanks Dad and Aunt Nicole), shark movie ("Sea Level"), shark Legos, and new nightlight. Among many other exciting presents.

11:30 AM: Laurel has a Christmas accident. Too much excitement for a break for the bathroom.

12:15 AM: All done opening presents. The living room is a complete happy wreck.

1 PM: We Skype with Grandma and Grandpa Gottula. Laurel is excited to see Toby and "cut vegetables" for Grandma (with her new wooden vegetable set.)

2 PM: Wesley has a Christmas accident. Too much excitement to break for the bathroom.

2:10 PM: Ham goes in the oven for "dinner." Mom considers cleaning up, Laurel starts to watch her shark movie, Shane falls asleep on the papasan chair, and Wesley draws floods on his new digital drawing board. Most the the cookies we made last night for Santa are gone (culprit: me).

2:12 PM: I'm thinking about my Dad and how much I wish he was around for me to talk to this year. Shane's mom made a personal history of his grandfather, her father, and sent it for Christmas. I'm thumbing through it and I love all of the stories and pictures. It's absolutely precious beyond words. I'd love to do something like that to capture the life story of my father, but I am so very sad he isn't here anymore for me to interview. I need to write down his stories before I forget them. Mannheim Steamroller makes me think of him, luminaries make me think of him, chocolate and peanut butter chip cookies with M&Ms make me think of him. A friend of mine sent me a poem about Dad's first Christmas in heaven and I needed it today.

Of course I did have a wonderful Christmas plan to commemorate my father, but life got in the way and my time for craftiness was limited. Maybe by NEXT Christmas they will be done! It will happen. Or possibly by his birthday in March, or Father's Day, or his death date anniversary in August. I am cooking up a wonderful gift for my mother, brothers, aunt, uncle, and Grandma. 

This Christmas is a hard one for me. I'm glad the kids seem happy and it's somewhat business as usual. 

2:44 PM: Our lazy day continues. Now to make some mashed potatoes, green salad, and get the rolls in the oven. 

christmas, part 1

We're blogging live in the Gottula household today.

It's 9:49 AM. Laurel was up, screaming, at 8:15. She's mad about I'm not sure what. She's been a little bit sick and anxious and so bam, lots of screaming. She took a shower while Wesley went downstairs and started begging to eat candy out of his stocking. I told him he could eat whatever he wanted today and I wouldn't make a big deal out of it. But too much candy will give you a tummyache. I'll be sure to blog when the tummyache hits.

By 9:30 AM I had made eggs for breakfast, but no one ate any but me. They were full of gummy penguins and fruit snacks.

Santa brought an indoor trampoline. Awesome. Nice work with that Black Friday sale, Santa.

Kids are playing with stocking stuff and we're waiting for Dad to arrive to do presents.

Oh yeah, I've eaten so many cookies I have a tummyache. Oops. My "Dad" cookies I made last night turned out too perfect. They remind me of him and Christmas.

Wesley also realized we forgot to drive around and look at Christmas lights last night. He's right. It's the first Christmas Eve in years we forgot. I'm so sad. That's another thing my Dad always did when we were kids.

Better run. Things to play with. More later.

summer round-up: august

I wanted to finish "journaling" about August. 

I mentioned in my last post that I went to an overnight 11-year-old scout camp. It was fun to be with my friends and some nice ladies, but there wasn’t a lot I needed to do so I maybe didn’t even need to go. Maybe next year I can get out of it! It was cool to get away for a night. I like camping. I’ve liked camping ever since I was a kid. One of these days I want to sleep under the stars.

Here are the boys with their marshmallow shooters, haha.

And me and the other Primary presidency members who went. Love them.

The kids loved the beach. All summer we went to the beach a lot. In September, before school started, we were going to the beach every single day, for a couple of hours. I’d bring a camping chair and a book, and the kids would wade and throw rocks and laugh. It was divine.

Every year in the summer the local municipalities host these “Night Out” events centered around crime prevention, healthy living, happy communities, etc. We’ve gone to Edmonds Night Out for the past couple years, but this year we missed it. Luckily we could hit Mukilteo Night Out, haha. The best parts were a booth telling you not to speed, where kids could take a softball and throw it and this monitor thing would tell them how fast the ball flew – it looked like one of those things that tells you how fast you’re going in a school zone, you know? Anyway, that was fun. 

Wesley did the bouncy activity, which put him in a Velcro suit and encouraged him to stick himself to a wall like a fly on flypaper. It was funny! He jumped! Check out the video, haha!

 

This is them eating otter pops in a vintage 1960s community transit bus. About 10 second later Laurel spills her whole otter pop on the floor of this very-important-historic-vehicle. I was mortified. And found some paper towels, stat.

Cuties in the cop car...

Laurel got all suited up to skateboard (thank you YMCA), but then chickened out and didn’t do it.

We had free hot dogs and chips. Wesley spun a wheel and won a HUGE gift bag from Walgreens which included a – ta-dah! – pedometer! Which provided us hours of fun and the fastest pedometer death to date. He left it outside overnight two days later and it got wet with dew and was toast.

We also did a downtown adventure. Seattle art museums have a Free First Thursday every month, and I like to take the kids every once in awhile. I like to encourage them to think about the art, notice the pictures and shapes, talk about what they think. It doesn’t always work but sometimes it does. Of course we also rode the bus – a double decker bus!! – and played in the Westlake community center. They do special stuff during the summer I guess for families like us. We visited my old company on the 32^nd floor and Wesley got ahold of my phone and took some pictures! 

I love hanging out downtown. Of course we hit the bakery, too, and got some gigantic cookies. (Not pictured. But believe me, they are gigantic.)

Obviously it was a wonderful day if this is how he looks after.... we love that he takes the cordless phones to bed. We use them as intercoms (no house line), so he just plays with them. It's funny.

The next day was Friday and I went to book club. The next day was Saturday and my father died. I’m kind of looking back at my life in a “before August 9” segment and “after August 9” segment.

When we left for Maryland I had to cancel a lot of our plans for August, so there was a decent list of things we didn’t get to do this year that I’ll try to fit back in next year. Summers are wonderful and I love spending time with my kids.

• Taste of Edmonds… I like to get in during the early free admission part
• Evergreen State Fair
• Camping with the Cub Scout pack
• Playing in Lake Goodwin and spending the night at our friend Vicki’s cabin
• Kids Bowl Free
• Free Parks Days at any of the State of Washington parks
• Greenlake wading pool
• Picking blueberries
• Regal $1 movie or movies in the park
• Canning 50 lbs of peaches…. Bummer to miss that, haha!

It’s nice to think about happy summers during this cold winter. Well technically the first day of winter is Sunday! It’s going to be a long one, I can feel it.