Life Is What You Wake Of It: January 2009

Monday, January 26, 2009

7 Years...

...and not one itch!

Happy anniversary to us!

(This post is a week late. That is how we do things around here...)

Monday, January 12, 2009

Sweet Advice

This made my day. I hope it makes yours...
(turn up the volume on your computer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAjZ8mfoYw

Monday, January 5, 2009

For those of you who don't know, Jon was born and raised in Holland. Amongst many fun and interesting traditions and holidays the Dutch celebrate is the holiday of Sinterklaas. Each year around the end of November, Sinterklaas (kind of like Santa) and his elves travel on a steamboat from Spain to Holland. Sinterklaas observes the children for a week and then determines if they deserve gifts. Every year on December 5 (the actual day of Sinterklaas' visit) we get together with Jon's side of the family to celebrate. This year we also celebrated Bobby's return home from serving a 2-year mission for our church earlier this year. It was the perfect time to update the family pictures!

At the end of November, we picked eachother's names for a gift exchange. As part of the exchange, we get to wrap the gift to represent the person in whom we are buying for. We also write a poem about the person and sign the letter from Sinterklaas. It is such a fun tradition (and if I wasn't out of town right now I would post some pictures of some of the fun wrap jobs this year. Maybe when I get home!). Another fun tradition is that the kids all put their shoes on the front porch. During the festivities, Sinterklaas comes and fills the kid's shoes with candy and knocks on the door. The kids run to the door to see what he left them. The kids LOVED it! I am excited that we have some of these fun traditions to carry on in our family to represent Jon's rich heritage.

See...I Told Ya!

On an earlier post in November, I mentioned that my sister-in-law, Meghan, was going to be taking Santa pictures. Look at how awesome these turned out!!! I am SO HAPPY that we have a happy picture of Chloe with Santa. She not only isn't crying, she actually looks like she is friends with the guy! It was fun because we are friends with "Santa" and so he really knew my kids and called them by their names.

Since everyone was in town for Sinterklaas, it was a perfect time to get a group shot of all of the cousins with Santa. 7 kids and Santa??? That takes talent! I hope she does it next year because it was totally worth it. Thanks, Meghan!

Snow Day

I know...I know. I am SO belated on this post! In the middle of December it snowed. Seriously snowed. It snowed and snowed and snowed AND it stuck! It was so much fun! We, however, were not prepared for it AT ALL. Poor Beckham. The curse of having a big sister and 2 older aunts. The only real snow gear we could find was either purple or pink!

The day after the big storm (well, it wasn't really THAT big), I took the kids to the park to play in the leftover snow. Chloe ran over to a big pile and got down on her hands and knees and started digging. After a minute I asked her what she was doing. She looked up at me and said, "Mom. I am trying to find the snow seeds!"

Uncle Weston kept making snowballs and throwing them at Chloe. It took her a few minutes to "get" that throwing snow at one another is fun. When she did, she put socks on her hands (no, we didn't have any mittens!) and threw some back!

My little sister, Elizabeth, was happy about the snow because the school district decided to cancel school because of the snow. Seriously??? It was like the city had never seen snow before. Kind of funny, but it was so much fun!

Christmas Eve

This year, we had all of my siblings in town for Christmas! It was SO MUCH FUN! Weston just got back from serving a 2-year mission for our church in October and so it had been a long time since we had all been together for a major holiday (Halloween didn't count!). For Christmas Eve, we ate the best chili ever. (I will post the recipe later!).

For as long as I can remember, my Mom has ALWAYS made clam chowder on Christmas Eve. It was a family tradition. Her Mom used to do the same when my Mom was growing up. Tradition. Hmmm.

Well, last year, we had Christmas at a cabin up in Duck Creek. My grandparents from both sides came up to celebrate. On Christmas Eve, I decided to make chili. When we all sat down to eat everyone, including my Clam Chowder Making Grandma, ate the chili. I asked her why she wasn't having the clam chowder and she whispered, "I don't like clam chowder."

Everyone laughed and that ended that tradition and began a new one...chili. Anyway, after the chili, we made sugar cookies for Santa and washed carrots for the reindeer. We gathered around the Christmas tree and opened our secret Santa gifts.

The kids opened the traditional Christmas pajamas and then we made sleeping arrangements. While growing up, the kids ALWAYS slept in the same room on Christmas Eve. We would drag all of our sleeping stuff into one of our bedrooms and hang out and talk and laugh and anticipate Santa and Christmas morning. We tried the same thing this year. It didn't work so well. We ended up splitting the kids up into different rooms and then the adults stayed up to "help" Santa put gifts together and wrap. Thanks to Weston for putting together Chloe's kitchen (3+ hours) and Beckham's parking garage (1.5 hours).

Beckham has become obsessed with trains. He received this Thomas train and even when he fell asleep, he didn't want to let go. He runs around the house with it and yells, "All abow!" I love it.

Christmas Day

Christmas morning was magical! The kids didn't wake up until 7:30. A record in the Brown family. The pictures don't look like they were taken in the middle of the night! It was fun seeing all of the kids interact with eachother. It was sweet because they would tell eachother what Santa brought them and the other kids would get so excited!

Chloe's big gift was a new kitchen. She loves baking with me and so it was fun to see her bake me "treats" using her own kitchen. Beckham actually uses it as much as she does.

My parents bought a Wii system and so we spent the whole day playing tennis, bowling, baseball, racecars...

LOVE THIS GAME! Ticket to Ride. Get it here.

Springs Preserve

We took the kids to the Springs Preserve to look at the lights and ride the train! We went after Christmas was over and so it was somewhat anti-climatic. Santa had returned to the North Pole and the park was pretty much dead. Perfect line for the train, though. Hardly any wait! We met up with my family and took Jon's nephews along too.

The correct way to use the machine

Beckham's interpretation of how to use the same machine.

Beckham's whole Christmas season was made by this one train ride. "All Abow!"

PARTY!!!

Every year, Jon and I try to make plans for New Year's Eve and every year we are disappointed. We decided not to bother this year. Instead, we had a cousin sleepover! We invited all of the cousins over from Jon's side of the family for dinner, movies, popcorn, games and fun!