Monday, December 24, 2012

Thanksgiving

I know we're just a few minutes away from Christmas, but I'm going to sneak Thanksgiving in!!  It was another wonderful Thanksgiving, with a few twists to the normal pattern. It was 4.5 days off of work jam-packed with lots of fun and so many reminders of all that we have to be thankful for... 

The O'Donnells came to our house for dinner on Wednesday night and I took exactly one picture.  It was so sweet seeing Ellie reading to the boys. We had such a great time catching up, cooking, eating and playing. 



The next morning, since we weren't all going to be together for Thanksgiving dinner, Stephanie had a great idea to have a Thanksgiving breakfast and watch the parade.  It was a gorgeous day and Grandma had raked up a huge pile of leaves for the kids to play in and we had a delicious breakfast to boot!  
















Check this out - he's in midair! :)!
After all of that fun and a nap, we headed to Uncle Harold and Judy's for Thanksgiving Dinner.  It's usually at Grams and Gramps', but since Uncle Harold and Judy were going to be in FL for Christmas, and they usually host Christmas Eve, we switched things up and had Thanksgiving in their lovely home.













The next day it was time for the 2nd Annual Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt.  This year we had a new neighborhood so the list was a bit different.  But it was just as fun!  

















I'm not sure that my heart could be any more full.  Life is so very good and I am so very thankful. Thanks to all who made it a great Thanksgiving and sure hope you all had a fantastic one as well!

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Santa's List

Block center in Jack's room is apparently closed for a while due to some spat over blocks or something of that nature, so Jack has come home every day with piles of drawings and such that he's made in art center, the 2nd best thing to block center.  It's so much fun to get him to tell you what he had in mind when he was drawing.  This one came home the other day and really gave us a good chuckle...


I wish I had recorded his exact explanation but it went something like this:

Jack: "See Rudolph and his harness?"
Momma: "Oh yes, look at that harness!  Well, what about his nose?  It's not red. Maybe it's one of the other reindeer?"
Jack: "Well, I only had a black ink pen Momma.  It's ok.  It's still Rudolph.  You can just pretend it's red."
Momma: "Oh! OK. He looks great Jack."
Jack: See my name?  It says Lion Jack Kenworth. It's not in the right place but Santa will understand."
Momma: "Oh yeah, are you going to send this picture to Santa?  I bet he will love it!"
Jack:  "Well, it was supposed to be Santa's good list.  See that G over there (upper left corner) and this B (flipping the paper over, sure enough, there's a B).  That's G for Good and B for Bad."
Momma: "Oh, so YOU'RE on the GOOD list, huh?  And did Skylar put herself on the good list too?"
Jack: "No, I did.  She's been good."
Momma:  "What's this name all marked out up here at the top?"
Jack:  "Well, that's Emmett.  He was on the good list but he's not any more!"

Momma and Daddy were laughing a LOT at this point.

Jack: "Momma, the people on the other side of the ocean are eating breakfast now."
Momma: "Yeah, that's about right."
Jack: "Momma, England is on the other side of the ocean, but New England is on this side of the ocean." 
Momma: "Yes, that's right..."
Jack: "But Santa can get across the ocean.  So it's ok.  He'll get presents to them too."
Momma:  "Oh of course buddy, don't worry about it.  He'll make sure everyone on the good list gets presents."
Jack: "OK, so can I watch some more of the Packers Bears game?"

This may have been the same day that in the morning, before school, I was having my usual standoff with Max about getting dressed and I might have raised my voice.  Jack marched in the kitchen and said "Momma, Buddy (our elf on the shelf) is watching you too you know!"  Oh me.  Yes, yes he is, isn't he?

Hope the season is going well for everyone and your shopping is just about done.  Be careful these next few days to keep yourself on the "G" list! 

Merry Christmas...



Sunday, December 9, 2012

Christmas Card

Enjoy...



Click here to see the cutest little dancers you ever did see...

Merry Christmas!

Monday, November 26, 2012

My birthday

Kenny is always really good at thinking of something special for my birthday that I usually couldn't think of if I tried, but I really love.  This year was no exception and will certainly be hard to top...

I came home from work to find Jack and Max giggling in the back yard.  They aren't usually home before me.  Our neighbors Chris and James were sitting on their front stoop and greeted me with a giant HAPPY BIRTHDAY.  Hmm...how did they know???  I walked around back and found 2 dirty toddlers and a dirty Daddy and 2 gorgeous blue hydrangea bushes planted in our new back yard.  There were more than a few tears.  Kenny and I had an enormous blue hydrangea bush at our old house that provided the flowers for the centerpieces for our wedding.  


Mom tried to take a few cuttings so we could take some of that bush with us but it didn't work out, so Kenny decided to start fresh and plant some new ones.  After all, it wouldn't feel like our anniversary if we didn't have some blue hydrangeas blooming!  So he picked the boys up from school a little early and they planted 2 bushes.   These new bushes will be even more special than the one at the last house since they were planted by my sweet boys.  I can't wait to see them bloom!












Kenny and I also had a great evening out to dinner and meeting up with some friends for a drink.  And the next day he had even more surprises.  I was warned the basement was off-limits.  I avoided it for a long time but at some point in my haste to get the boys out the door to the pumpkin patch, forgot and went down there.  I wish I'd taken a picture as I'm not sure you would believe it otherwise.  There were craft supplies scattered from one end of the room to the other.  Every sticker and foam shape and paint and popsicle stick that they sold in this town I think.   It was too cute!  I tried not to look at what they were making and just wait patiently.  Turns out, it was these really cute frames...

Meant to hold pictures of me and my boys.  All inspired by an email I'd sent Kenny weeks before with a link to this article (text also below because I am afraid they will take the article down and I don't ever want to forget it!) and a note about how I could have written every word and wanted to try harder to be in more pictures.  It was the perfect gift.  And I have been in more pictures...and I hope I never stop!

Thanks to all 3 of my sweet boys for another wonderful birthday!  You sure know how to spoil me!


Allison Tate

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The Mom Stays in the Picture

Posted: 10/06/2012 11:30 am

Last weekend, my family traveled to attend my oldest niece's Sweet Sixteen party. My brother and sister-in-law planned this party for many months and intended it to be a big surprise, and it included a photo booth for the guests.
I showed up to the party a bit late and, as usual, slightly askew from trying to dress myself and all my little people for such a special night out. I'm still carrying a fair amount of baby weight and wearing a nursing bra, and I don't fit into my cute clothes. I felt awkward and tired and rumpled.
I was leaning my aching back against the bar, my now 5-month-old baby sleeping in a carrier on my chest (despite the pounding bass and dulcet tones of LMFAO blasting through the room) when my 5-year-old son ran up to me.
"Come take pictures with me, Mommy," he yelled over the music, "in the photo booth!"
I hesitated. I avoid photographic evidence of my existence these days. To be honest, I avoid even mirrors. When I see myself in pictures, it makes me wince. I know I am far from alone; I know that many of my friends also avoid the camera.
It seems logical. We're sporting mama bodies and we're not as young as we used to be. We don't always have time to blow dry our hair, apply make-up, perhaps even bathe (ducking). The kids are so much cuter than we are; better to just take their pictures, we think.
But we really need to make an effort to get in the picture. Our sons need to see how young and beautiful and human their mamas were. Our daughters need to see us vulnerable and open and just being ourselves -- women, mamas, people living lives. Avoiding the camera because we don't like to see our own pictures? How can that be okay?
Too much of a mama's life goes undocumented and unseen. People, including my children, don't see the way I make sure my kids' favorite stuffed animals are on their beds at night. They don't know how I walk the grocery store aisles looking for treats that will thrill them for a special day. They don't know that I saved their side-snap, paper-thin baby shirts from the hospital where they were born or their little hospital bracelets in keepsake boxes high on the top shelves of their closets. They don't see me tossing and turning in bed wondering if I am doing an okay job as a mother, if they are okay in their schools, where we should take them for a vacation, what we should do for their birthdays. I'm up long past the news on Christmas Eve wrapping presents and eating cookies and milk, and I spend hours hunting the Internet and the local Targets for specially-requested Halloween costumes and birthday presents. They don't see any of that.
Someday, I want them to see me, documented, sitting right there beside them: me, the woman who gave birth to them, whom they can thank for their ample thighs and their pretty hair; me, the woman who nursed them all for the first years of their lives, enduring porn star-sized boobs and leaking through her shirts for months on end; me, who ran around gathering snacks to be the week's parent reader or planning the class Valentine's Day party; me, who cried when I dropped them off at preschool, breathed in the smell of their post-bath hair when I read them bedtime stories, and defied speeding laws when I had to rush them to the pediatric ER in the middle of the night for fill-in-the-blank (ear infections, croup, rotavirus).
I'm everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won't be here -- and I don't know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now -- but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.
When I look at pictures of my own mother, I don't look at cellulite or hair debacles. I just see her -- her kind eyes, her open-mouthed, joyful smile, her familiar clothes. That's the mother I remember. My mother's body is the vessel that carries all the memories of my childhood. I always loved that her stomach was soft, her skin freckled, her fingers long. I didn't care that she didn't look like a model. She was my mama.
So when all is said and done, if I can't do it for myself, I want to do it for my kids. I want to be in the picture, to give them that visual memory of me. I want them to see how much I am here, how my body looks wrapped around them in a hug, how loved they are.
I will save the little printed page with four squares of pictures on it and the words "Morgan's Sweet Sixteen" scrawled across the top with the date. There I am, hair not quite coiffed, make-up minimal, face fuller than I would like -- one hand holding a sleeping baby's head, and the other wrapped around my sweet littlest guy, who could not care less what I look like.