Axel and I love Christmas. I like to decorate the day or weekend after Thanksgiving. This year was no different. Axel and I had a blast decorating the house together again. The only difference about this year versus last year is he doesn't think we have enough decorations and he wasn't as easy to work with. He has his own ideas of how things should go, but all in all we still make a good team :)
With the travels to Florida last weekend, this four day weekend for us was the start of our holiday festivities. On Friday after school, Axel and I build his gingerbread village. We always get it half off after Christmas and every year we struggle with icing that is a bit too dry. Axel is always a good sport though. This year was the first year that Axel did most of the decorating by himself. He was even able to do the frosting and break the ginger bread pieces. He was really proud of himself.
Phoenix really wanted to be in the action as well. She is a sneaky little girl and grabbed one of the pieces of gingerbread and was sucking on it. I knew something was up because she suddenly got quite!
Still decorating...............
For some reason when my children are tired they get up exceptionally early and struggle to go to bed. I am sure it is typical for most children, but it always amazes me. Luckily, Axel and I had talked about being tired and cranky and he decided after spending some time in his room for "not being nice" that he needed a nap. He proceeded to put himself to sleep in the pinball room. At first I thought he was pretending with his loud snore.
An hour later I hear him coughing so I went in to check on him. I then say him flip over onto his stomach. He then continued to sleep for another hour! I couldn't believe he napped so long. I was really excited because he needed to catch up on sleep and we were headed to a Christmas party that evening. It also allowed me to make 25 tortillas for him and 24 pigs in a blanket for the party :)
Keith came home from his ride Saturday with this awesome pine cone. It is not a fluke. It is from a family of pine cones that are called "widow makers". I can't remember the real name of it but someone has a tree full of them up on the top of Bohlman road, one of our local climbs. He worked really hard to bring it down the 2400 feet and was excited to show me and the kids. We are going to make it a center piece by sprucing it up.
Yesterday evening we headed to Eileen's house for her annual Christmas party. I decided to dress everyone up a bit more than usual. We had planned on going right on time in order to be one of the first guest there and to take a family photo. I have wanted to take a family photo all year. I purchased a nice 11 x 14 inch frame in May, during my maternity leave. I talked with our neighbor about doing a photo swap where we each take a family picture for the other family. Unfortunately, timing never worked out and here we are at the end of the year.
I was really excited to get a couple of pretty good photos. Not exactly what I had in mind, but at least we have something that I can put into the scrap books!
This photo was taken with our friend's iPhone. Cuter picture, not as good quality. Hopefully, with the holidays coming up we can get a cute photo that is good quality that I can blow up to an 11 x 14 and stick up on the wall!
Phoenix amazes me and fits right in with the other kids. I have said it before, but I mean it. She really doesn't want to be a little baby. She wants to be big and do big kid stuff. She did a great job of it last night.
She even managed to stay up until almost 8pm. It was a rough night because of it, but she was completely charming and slap happy at the party. The meltdown didn't come until 12am and 4am, but a little back rubbing and a bottle managed to get her back to sleep! She has been eating a lot more solids, but with her limited variety I believe she is still quite hungry. She appears to be growing because she is getting heavier to hold. Occasionally we get lucky and she will only get up once a night, but most of the time she is still getting up twice a night over the 12 hours she sleeps. I am still hopeful she will be sleeping through the night soon. Axel still gets up 1-2 times per night as well. Both kids get allergy testing tomorrow, along with Keith so we hope to get more answers as to where each child is at in their battle with food. Hopefully as Axel gets older he will get better about taking care of himself at night and letting mommy and daddy sleep.
Today Keith and I got to go for a ride together. This is about 6-7 miles from our house deep in Steven's Canyon. Here and at the bottom of Highway 9 are magical places that trap in the cold and our consistently 20+ degrees colder than the rest of the area. We thought this was a beautiful sight so we stopped to take a picture in the freezing cold. We climbed out of the freezing cold into 60+ degree weather. It is amazing the different micro climates we have in the bay area. Today's ride was the longest ride I have done in 1.5 years! I rode 3.5 hours! We only rode 37 miles during that time, but we covered 5300 feet of climbing. I was excited that I am at the point that I actually wanted to ride that long. Normally I am stressed about all of the things that I need to do at home and the time I miss with the kids. It was a nice change of pace.
We have more Christmas fun and another nice ride planned for next weekend. We also hope to meet Santa this week as well!
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