How big is a blog?

Well, if I had remembered to take a picture of it, I could show you. The blog printing process was thoroughly frustrating for my husband. We went through many cartridges of ink and about 100 pages of photo paper. Add spiral binding and priority shipping and my Grandpa S.T. 's "simple" 102nd birthday gift quickly became the most complicated and expensive of the season--at least on my side of the family. But that's ok. I love my Grandpa. He just sent the four of us $10 each for xmas with express instructions that it be spent at Kmart. My dad managed a Kmart for nearly 30 years and since he died, I can hardly bring myself to go in one as I harbor quite a bit of resentment towards the company. But Grandpa is more open-hearted than I am, so today we made the pilgrimage across town to Kmart, stopping on the way to mail Grandpa his hard copy of the blog. Hope he enjoys it. This picture is from his 100th birthday celebration two years ago--I was pregnant with Michael at the time.

Train morning

We had to send daddy off to the office for one more day of work before the long holiday break. With no school for Luke and a chilly rain outside, we broke out the GeoTrax trains. This is a set that I love in theory, but it is so big that we can't have it up all of the time and it is almost impossible to store because the pieces don't break down very small. It takes up a giant storage container in the crawl space. However, because the kids don't see it all that often, they really enjoy it when we bring it out. I am track-retarded and can't seem to get all of the pieces together, but somehow today I managed to make a pretty big track. They sat dead silent and completely mesmerized with their remote controls for over an hour. It was kind of scary, actually.

Christmas Party #2

Today the moms' group had its Christmas party. Our friend Ali is gracious enough to host us each year. The boys looked cute, but neither would pose for me, so you have to settle for a picture of Michael from the back, but at least you can see the sweater vest that Nan bought him. Don't worry, he'll be in the same outfit in Toronto next week and I'll take better pictures. Last year during the moms' requisite pic, Ali and Shelly announced their pregnancies to gaurantee that we would all smile. No announcements this time, but thanks to Kendra, Steph, Jennie and Allanya, there will be no lack of new babies in the group in 2009.

Christmas Party #1

Last night we celebrated with our ODU friends. Amazing to think that when we moved here, none of us had kids. Now, of the original 3 couples, there are 5 kids and 1 on the way. And this year we added a new colleague and his wife who have 4 kids and are expecting their fifth. Needless to say, our get togethers are a little more chaotic than they used to be, but still lots of fun and the food is tasty. Michael thinks "Auntie" Joyce makes the best chili ever!

Maria, Thomas and the boys thought the fridge was the place to be!

Luke told everyone the story of Jesus and the Octopus.

Catherine and her sister Isabel are two of Luke's favorite new friends.

Gavin vs. Chef Boyardee

Does Gavin have some horrible injury? Is that some kind of a rash on his head? Nope. It's pasta. I left Michael sitting in his chair for 30 seconds too long and came back to find the carpet and dog covered. Serves Gavin right for begging, serves us right for buying a house with carpeting under the only eating area. Sigh.

Lukism of the day

On the way to school . . .

Luke: I'm a teacher and I teach all of my students.
Me: What do you teach them
Luke: About Spiderman and that he shoots webs and castles and how to drive batmobiles.

If the blog looks strange . . .

over the next couple of days, it's because we are trying various versions of printing it out from oldest to newest, with and without sidebars, etc. We are going to bind it and then mail it to my Grandpa S.T. who turns 102 next week!!

Trying to take the Christmas card photo

That time of year again, the dreaded Christmas card photo. Here are a few attempts. Did we ever succeed? Watch your mailboxes to find out.

Our Elfyourself

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

ODU Christmas Party

ODU had its tree-lighting ceremony and Christmas party tonight. My pictures suck. It was kind of crazy with a choir concert inside, then outside for the lighting, then back in for snacks and Santa. It was freezing outside and boiling inside. I felt like all I did was repeatedly put on and take off coats, gloves and hats, which is hard to do while taking pictures! I think the kids enjoyed the McDonalds stop on the way to campus more than anything else. Neither one cared about Santa--really glad we didn't wait in line at a mall!

Looking at the big Nativity "action figures."

Luke only got close enough to grab the candy cane Santa offered.

Michael just liked climbing on the furniture.

The girls

Driving home from work yesterday, I remembered the box in the crawl space mysteriously marked "GIRLS." When I was in college, I dated a guy who was into collecting Star Wars and other action figures, so I started my own collection. In case my friend Kendra (whose husband is an avid collector) reads this, I had them out on display in my dorm room and they were never mint-in-box, so they are not at all valuable. Many of you may think that's geeky, but my recently-obsessed-with-superheroes three-year-old thinks I am the coolest mom ever. He did not care that all of the action figures are female. In fact, he now claims that Poison Ivy is the "best mean hero" of them all.

Painting trees

I actually let Luke break out the paint yesterday. He made some Christmas trees. He put so much paint on them that some of them are still drying 24 hours later.

Christmas decorations

The inside Christmas decorations have been up for a few days now, although the weather has not cooperated with Matt's schedule for the outside lights yet. We were able to move our huge entertainment center over enough so that we could squeeze the tree in the corner. B.C. (Before Children)--Matt and I started collecting Fontanini nativity figures and we have a quite a collection. It requires bringing up an extra table. I love having it out, especially now that Luke is old enough to play with the figures, but I will also be ready to put it away at the end of December. It always feels like I get a brand new huge house!

Christmas Past

Once again, Poppy pulls through with the scanner. Here is the picture of my Nana wearing reindeer antlers. I think this was at my aunt's house in the mid 90s. What you can't tell from the picture is that she was yelling "I'm ready for my close up, Mr. Demille" a la Sunset Blvd. as she was coming down the stairs.

And because my stepdad never scans just one photo, he also sent this one of my mom. Her jammies look an awful lot like Michael's xmas jammies from last year. This must be Christmas '74 or January '75 because my mom says she was a few weeks pregnant with me at the time. Not that you can tell, she was such a skinny mini.

Lukism of the day

Luke was being very quiet at church this morning.

Me: Luke, you're being such a good boy right now. I'm very proud of you.
Luke: I'm proud of you, too, Momma. You're being very quiet. You're a good girl.

Later . . .
Luke: Momma, tell me the story about Jesus and the octopus.
Me: What story is that?
Luke: The one where Jesus uses his octopus to fight the mean guys that wanted to hurt him.

Must be one of those apocryphal stories that didn't quite make it into the canonical Bible.

Michaelism of the day

Michael loves breakfast. Every morning he gets up and starts wandering around the house. Inevitably he ends up in front of the fridge yelling "EGG! EGG! EGG!" until I come and make him one.

Uncle Chris and Auntie Katie

Well, at least we hope she'll be officially "Auntie" Katie very soon! Matt's youngest brother and his longtime girlfriend made the drive from Toronto to experience American Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping. We had a great weekend. It was the first time in a while that they have visited and I haven't been either pregnant or breastfeeding and I probably enjoyed myself a bit too much by staying up too late and drinking too much. Three nights in a row. We're pretty freakin' tired about now and we have dinner plans tonight. What were we thinking?

Chris bought a new electric guitar and had a jam session with the boys who used our Guitar Hero guitars.

We went to Wildlights at the zoo on Saturday night. Luke was very content to stay bundled in the wagon.

Michael, not so much, he wouldn't even hold still long enough for a picture. Here he is running behind us.

How we spent the evenings after the kids were asleep--turning the old Ponesse home videos into drinking games.

Thanksgiving

I have only a few pictures from yesterday. It turns out that cooking a 21lb turkey plus fixings for six adults and four kids followed by chasing after those four kids does not leave a lot of time for photography. But we had fun! This was the third Sperle-Ponesse Thanksgiving and probably our last since they will be moving next summer. Sad, but we are so thankful to have had such wonderful holidays with them. Matt's youngest brother, Chris, and his girlfriend, Katie (yes, that's two Katies in the family) also made it in from Toronto just in time for dinner.

Hey look, I actually got in front of the camera before our guests arrived.

The adult table.

The kids table--used as a shuttle landing strip and for jumping off of, but not for much eating.

A train whistle serenade by Sadie.

Luke and Eli, Thanksgiving 2006.

Luke and Eli, Thanksgiving 2008.

Lukism of the day

Me: Tomorrow we are going to Nolan's to play. The next day will be Thanksgiving.
Luke: The day after Nolanday?
Me: Yes.
Luke: What do we do on Thanksgiving?
Me: We get up and have hot chocolate, watch a parade on tv and make yummy food. Eli is coming over and Uncle Chris is coming to visit.
Luke: I thought Thanksgiving is the day when somebody is GIVING us something.
Me: Well, we do give something. We give thanks, but we don't give presents. We give thanks that we have food to eat and warm beds to sleep in and friends and family to celebrate with.
Luke: Some people don't have beds to sleep in.
Me: That's true.
Luke: Thanksgiving is after Nolanday and then it's the day where we give the hearts.
Me: Hearts? You mean Valentine's Day?
Luke: Yeah, Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is the day after Thanksgiving.

I Want a Hippopotomus for Christmas

Today I played this song for Luke. It is one of my favorite Christmas tunes for a couple of reasons. First, hippos were my favorite animals as a kid and I used to have a hippo collection. Second, my Nana, who passed away in 2000, was a Christmas freak--and Christmas will always be synonymous with Nana in my mind. One of the last Christmases we spent together, probably in 1998 or 1999, I can remember her sweeping the floor and singing this song in her super-low-always-mistaken-for-a-man-voice. Somewhere in Colorado are silly Christmas pictures of Nana--including one with reindeer antlers, I think (hint, hint, oh kind stepfather).

For now I'll make do with this family picture of my Nana, my grandfather Bo, my mom and dad c. 1980. Check out my Strawberry Shortcake jammies. This must have been taken with a timer and I think it is quite goofy.

By the way, Luke's reaction to the song was: "Mommy, I think I'd like an alligator for Christmas."