Frohe Wiehnachten!

Im Deutsche, bitte:


Einundzwanzig (21) days until Christmas, brought to you by Otto the German Shepherd



Please fraulein, do not think about pulling my ears or trying to climb up on me!



Otto: 21 days until I get a day of peace and quiet from these kids!



I'd rather have the marker, thank you

Counting down in Swahili...22 days!

Opulence, Christmas has it...

My little comrades:

Glad my trusty $10 Russian army surplus hat came in handy...

  

Advent Calendar 2011

It's December, so it's time for the advent calendar! This is the fourth year we've done it, and I decided to add a twist to it, because it's getting harder to come up with numbers made out of snow, candy canes, toys, yarn, etc. So here it is, I decided to do each day in a different language. This way, I can look like a pretentious snob and also fulfill my tiger mom duty by forcing a new language on my kids every day for the next 24 days, when in reality, I'm just googling "Swahili numbers" and writing it down on a piece of paper.

Without further ado, I present the Advent calendar language of the day, Spanish:



Veinticuatro - 24 days until Christmas!



Hey look, the Imaginext guy wants to play with the frogs!



And my dear, dear friends from my 1995 trip to Tijuana. These little dudes were sitting in a little bodega covered in dust, so I've left them in their original form. Because what college student doesn't want a set of two taxidermied frogs nailed to a piece of wood playing ping-pong in sombreros and ponchos?

They adorned the bar in room 211 in Sanctuary Hall for two years, lived through countless apartments in Chicago, and made the move to Iowa. They may have lost a sombrero along the way, but they are still going strong!

Feliz Navidad, Dudes!

99 Problems and a Greer Ain't One...

Some video game is using that song in its ads, so I've had to change the words for Alex because he started singing along. He also started singing the "Real Men of Genius" jingle from Miller Lite, and I have no idea where he got that one? Parenting fail on our part, apparently...

Anyway, in conjunction with Alex's birthday party, little G-dawg turned 7 months old! She's full of fun and surprises - crawling like crazy all over the place, trying to stuff dog food in her mouth, pulling herself up to standing. She says "ma-ma" now, eats puffs like crazy, sits in the regular bathtub without her baby tub, and in a few more pounds, should move into the bigger car seat in another month or so. Best of all, she loves her big brother and is completely mesmerized by his antics!

Turkey Time!

Before we dig into the Butterball variety, I made turkey for Alex's birthday celebration at school on Monday. Since he was born on Thanksgiving, I always like to do something kind of festive for his class treats. A trip to Hy-Vee at 6 a.m. on Monday morning and a venti coffee to fuel my dream of Oreo turkeys was all it took...

The supplies: candy corn, Double Stuf Oreo (you must use this variety!), frosting, Rollos (substituted for mini-peanut butter cups) and chocolate-covered raisins, which I did not end up using.

I originally started out stacking one Oreo on top of another, but I quickly realized that my poor math skills caught up with me again, and I didn't have enough. So, I saw a version with the top of the Oreo taken off for the base, and I did that instead. The Oreo halves left over without the white filling, I simply used vanilla frosting on and they turned out fine. I recommend NOT doing this first, and assembling the body and head before affixing it to the base.

 

Make the turkey body - stick candy corns in between the cookies, push lightly (cookies will break easily) and not too deep.

 

Making the turkey heads - first, take a candy corn, remove the tip of it, apply it to the Rollo with a dab of frosting. Take black icing and add two eyes.

Gobble, gobble! Here are the finished turkeys! You can make a more detailed one with arms and feet (using more candy corns). I didn't feel like it and thought this turned out really cute.



Yellow Angry Bird Cupcake Cake

My son loves Angry Birds and wanted a birthday cake with the theme for his party. He originally requested the bomb bird, but I had visions of kids with mouths stained in black frosting and told him I could do the yellow bird for him.

I decided to make it as simple as possible, I would do a cupcake-cake, since he is turning five and there would be a bunch of kids. It worked out great, every kid got a cupcake, and other than a little initial arguing about who would get the other "eye" cupcake (Alex got one), they loved it. This cake uses 21 cupcakes, so make two dozen and you'll have a few extra to munch on!

Due to time constraints, I used a yellow cake mix from the box for the cupcakes. I did make the frosting, and used Martha Stewart's vanilla buttercream frosting recipe. I NEVER use the 6-8 cups of confectioner's sugar that is recommended. I stick with about 5 and it is more than sweet enough!

You've gotta fight...

For your right...

 To PAAARRRRRRTTTTAAAAAAYYYYY!

The scene: Alex's 5th Birthday Party

The location: Backyard Adventures in Urbandale

The backstory: 15 kids ready to tear it up on a Friday evening

The motivation: Blue drink, candy, cupcakes, pizza and unrestricted play time

The outcome: FUN!

These are the only pictures I got, as I was running around most of the night, talking to other parents, checking on Greer, getting food and treat bags. No matter the age, everyone had a great time!

Catching up with fall

Lots of fun stuff going on the past few weeks, Beggar's Night, Halloween and the First Snow of the Year!

If you haven't seen the Saturday Night Live "Harry Caray Hotdog" skit then you are probably wondering why the baby is wearing a pair of oversized black glasses with a hotdog costume...

Little Hotdog and the Green (Boomerang) Angry Bird

Re-using the Angry Birds decorations from Trunk or Treat

First snow on Wednesday, November 9. We still had carrots left in the garden!

     

                                 

Get Trunked

After two years of Montessori, we decided to jump into the fray and enter a car in the Trunk or Treat event at school. We figured, "Why not? It's Alex's last year there, we've had a chance to check out how it's done." Plus, the ultra competitive side of me wants to win the decorating contest...

We chose Angry Birds for the theme, because Alex is in love with the game, especially the green "boomerang" bird that no one else on Earth likes. It's because it's the hardest bird to control, and you have to wing it like a boomerang and if you don't get it just right, it can crash into the ground, and now I'm going off on that ridiculous, addictive game. Anyway, you can't buy a costume of the green bird, so we made it out of poster paint, cardboard, Sharpies (pronounced with a Boston accent - "shaawwwpees", and a mother's precious, precious love.

Once the costume turned out so well, it lead to the car theme, and a weekend spent painting, cutting and cursing large pieces of cardboard. Friday through Sunday was kind of a blur and I'm not sure what else happened, but I think a Libyan dictator with Jheri curl was killed and the Bears had tea and crumpets with Queen Elizabeth and Albert Pujols hit a bajillion home runs.

Matt put together a large child-sized slingshot, no, not actually to fit a small child, but about the height of one. We'd use one of our cornhole/bags boards to have the kids try to slingshot a stuffed Angry Bird into the board hole. We made a pig face on it. We downloaded a DJ's remix of the annoying theme song of the game. I would be the red bird, Matt would be the pig king, Alex the green bird, and Greer the blue bird. We had all of the pieces in place for sweet victory.

Convinced that we would triumph over all of the other Montessori parents, I drove my parent's borrowed Navigator into the school parking lot. I felt like Caesar returning from the Gallic Wars...until...I...saw...the...moving...truck. Holy shizzz...someone rented a fricking moving truck? What are they doing? Omigod, they are totally having a haunted house up in there! How can I compete with mere cardboard and dreams? WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THAT?!?

Okay, they didn't have a haunted house, it was actually a pretty display of mums, haystacks and gourds. Very cute and harvest-y. But we definitely dodged a bullet with the moving truck. And most importantly, we had a great time and enjoyed watching the kids play the game and get excited when they came over. It was especially fun to see kids Alex has gone to school with for nearly three years now and their parents. It was just lots and lots of fun!

Six months and eight years...

Two days ago we had two celebrations - Greer turning six months old, and our eighth wedding anniversary. Greer is just over 17 pounds, and I'm not sure of her height yet, but she is much lighter than her brother was at this age! We are still using the baby carrier and Bumbo seat. She is crawling like crazy around the house, and sits up well. She is eating all kinds of pureed food now, and in control freak fashion, likes to grab the spoon and feed herself. Most importantly, she is a healthy, happy little baby and our family is so blessed to have these two happy events to celebrate!

Miss Mobility

She's crawling! Miss G started getting the hang of it this past week and is officially mobile...yikes!

Fall Fun

Look! Mom didn't bring any real toys for me at the park, so I get to play with whatever "safe" stuff is in her purse...like a brush, bottle of vitamins, fuzzy yarn, crinkly baby wipes package!

Painting on the deck