The 10 Days of Christmas Break Continued...

To recap, Mac had 10 whole days off for Christmas break this year.  Usually he gets 7 days off, but thanks to Christmas Eve falling on a Friday, and thanks to the fact that he gets weekends "off" for the most part on this rotation, he had a nice long stretch of time to spend with the family.

On the first day of Christmas break we did lots of stuff, including helping with an outreach at a soup kitchen.

On the second day of Christmas break we opened presents- this was Christmas day!

On the third day of Christmas break, I can not remember what we did.  I do not know if we did anything special!  I know that Steven had a swim practice in the morning, and we spent the day playing with our new toys.  I can't remember going anywhere special, though. 

On the fourth day of Christmas break, swim practice was canceled due to high winds.  The kids swim in an outdoor pool which is winterized by being covered with a giant dome of sorts.  They nickname it "the bubble".  When it's too windy, they don't allow swimming because I suppose there is a risk of the bubble crashing down. 

Since we didn't have swimming, we went to a movie.  We saw an early showing of Tangled, which is based on the Rapunzel story.  It was really great!  Usually I'm bored out of my mind at kid movies, but this was very clever and fun.  Josie sat and watched the whole thing like a champ.  I think this movie held the attention of all the kids in the entire theatre, and I didn't hear any of the crying, fighting, yelling, talking, etc. that you might hear at any animated movie...  It was a very fun outing!  And that was the Main Event for the day.

On the fifth day of Christmas break, Steven and Isabel both had swimming.  The fun event of this day was shopping and eating out.  Isabel and I went to the mall to take care of some returns and do a little shopping, and then we met everyone else at the Silver Diner restaurant for the Family fun night.  Every Tuesday they have special entertainment for families, plus they give out free milkshakes to kids who are members of the "kids club."  Kate passed along her membership to Josie, who enjoyed her very own Chocolate Shake.  (Kate ordered an adult sized cookies and cream, so don't worry that she missed out!)  The special entertainment included crafts and coloring at a special table away from our own table, staffed by a restaurant worker, and balloon animals and face painting by a local man who does this stuff.  The kids had a lot of fun.  The boys had him make light sabers, and Isabel had a double-bladed light saber.  Josie had a wand with a special heart balloon.  Tragically, the balloon popped when we got home.  She told me with her little quivering chin "my heart balloon all gone."  Ahhhh, poor thing.  So sad.  Luckily she forgot all about it within about 30 minutes.  That's when everyone else's balloons started to pop and lose their shapes.

On the sixth day of Christmas break, Steven and Isabel had swimming practice again. That wasn't enough chlorine for one day, so we headed out to the recreational pool in the afternoon as well.  This was a great treat for Josie, who watches the older siblings swim all the time, yet she never gets to swim herself.  They are all in practices or lessons, and there's just not a lot out there for a two-year-old to do that doesn't involve ME swimming as well.  And poor Josie LOVES swimming.  She really does.  So we all went to a very big indoor aquatic center that is about 20 minutes away from our house to spend two hours in the pool.  Kate didn't go with us, but Steven and Isabel each brought a friend.  This aquatic center has big waterslides and little waterslides, along with water squirting features, and water buckets dumping water on your heads.  All sorts of good stuff for serious swimmers.  The "big kids" went on the big slides most of the time.  Luke took turns dragging Mac and me up to the big slides too, where we would "race" him to the bottom.  Mac and I also took Josie on the little slides.  She loved those.  Most of the time she didn't get dunked in the process, but when she did get dunked she was really good about it.  She didn't cry or throw up in the pool!  Anyway, that was a fun afternoon, and really tiring too!

On the seventh day of Christmas break, we headed in to the city to visit a museum.  Kate had to get up early to come along.  She wasn't too pleased about that, but what's a "family outing" if she's not there?  Anyway, we took the subway in to town and decided what museum to go to when we got to the mall.  We decided to go to the Museum of American History since it looked the least crowded and since I couldn't remember going there since the big remodel.  We got there just as it opened, and were able to see the flag that flew over the Baltimore harbor in the war of 1812.  It was really impressive!  We touched on all parts of the museum, but at a very fast pace.  We all enjoyed the First Ladies' dress exhibit.  It was so interesting to see how fashion has changed and reflected the historical times throughout the years.  Josie loved seeing all the dresses, of course.  We also went through the transportation display, which was a lot of fun, and the military history display, which was impressive.  We ate lunch there, and since Josie was really causing some trouble by that point, we left early to return home.  We were only at the museum for about 2 hours not counting lunch, and that was probably as much as she could tolerate for now!  She is much less patient than I remember Luke being (or even the twins for that matter) when touring the museums...  Maybe that's why we rarely go!

Here are some pictures of our trip downtown.  First we snapped a shot in front of the Washington Memorial.  We've lived out here so long and we've never been up to the top of that thing!  Someday, maybe...  Also, note to self:  Never start off a trip to a museum with a toddler NOT strapped into a stroller. 

That itsy bitsy person next to the sculpture is Isabel.  This is in front of the Smithsonian Museum of American History.



Luke, the clown.  So happy that Mom and Dad are buying a new car.

Mac and I were able to go out for a date later on this day.  Kate watched the kids and put Josie to bed.  Even though Josie is difficult to manage in a museum, and she is known to cry for 40 minutes or more without stopping which strapped into her car seat, she is still relatively easy to put to bed.  She loves her cozy blankets.  She just likes to be in her crib.  This is a fairly recent development, and I know that it will not last.  But...  we are taking advantage of her love for her crib for as long as we can!  Mac and I went to see a movie.  I cringed as he paid $11 per ticket to watch The Black Swan but ultimately we enjoyed the movie, I guess.  It was a strange movie.  It's not really exactly my style, but it was recommended by some of Mac's fellow residents.  Now he can join in at the conversation around the water cooler with the cool kids...  This was the first date for us in over a year!  Unless you count the work Christmas party that we went to.  Which I don't, even though it was a fairly entertaining evening...  Nonetheless, Mac and I, sans children.  I don't know if Date Night will become something we practice more frequently, but who knows!  If I plan it, I suppose it will happen.  But I'm not sure I want to plan yet another thing... 

On the eighth day of Christmas break, Steven and Isabel had a swim practice.  It was the last day of the year 2010.  We didn't have any big plans for the day.  Mac and I suspected that Kate would want to do something with her friends.  Even though she started out having no plans at all, by dinnertime she was debating between three different invitations to different get-togethers...  She chose a quiet sleepover with a friend who lives near to us.  I think she had a good time watching scary movies all night...  The fun event for the kids during the day was going to Toys R Us to spend their gift cards that Grandma sent in the mail.  Each of them had $25!  Toys R Us was pretty cleaned out, but the kids managed to find things to buy. 

Steven bought a couple of racing cars from the MarioKart product line (Luigi and Mario).  He still has some money left on his card and he wants to buy the same Pokemon card set that he bought Luke for the Secret Santa gift exchange.  We'll have to check in at Toys R Us another day for that one.  They were completely sold out of Pokemon cards!

Luke bought yet another lightsaber (it's red and makes noise) and a Nerf Football.

Isabel bought a gumball machine, a keychain sized gumball machine, and a skull toy that tells you the answer to any question you ask.  For instance, you ask the skull, "Am I cute" and it will say "Menacinely no".  So on and so forth.  Endless fun.

Josie bought an ice cream cone toy (not real ice cream- it's a stacking toy) and a Cinderella doll.

So, that was Friday, New Years' Eve, 2010.

On the  ninth day of Christmas Break, Steven had swimming practice in the afternoon.  This was New Year's Day.  He is able to say he went to swim practice on the last day of 2010 AND the first day of 2011.  It was a warm and sometimes rainy day.  After practice was done, we decided to go to Zoo Lights to see the Christmas lights display at the zoo and see some of the animals.  We brought Kate with us again, almost kicking and screaming!  Oh well...  Zoo lights was kind of a let down, actually.  There were some Christmas light displays, but nothing like the walk through display we did one year at a nature center, and not as fun as the drive-through display that is closest to our house.  (And, DRIVE THROUGH which can be very nice during the cold weather snaps.)  But we figured we should try it out...  The only parts of the zoo that were open to visitors were some of the indoor animal habitats.  We started out with the small mammal house, which is usually a hopping place full of all sorts of rodents.  We did see a very cute armadillo and some porcupines and a few squirrels, but the most active rodents were the mice that were sneaking into all the enclosures to eat the food the animals left behind...  The Ape house wasn't much better.  There was only one ape visible, and he just sat there staring at everyone.  He didn't even care about the mice crawling around the floor of his cage.  Hey, at least he was awake!  The only other ape (maybe a chimp) had covered himself up with a SHEET and was apparently out for the night.  Why did they give him a sheet to play with?  Anyway, we really didn't see many animals, and the decorations were underwhelming, but the kids really liked their dinners they ate at the zoo's cafeteria.  We went straight home after dinner because we'd forgotten Steven's insulin.  We brought an insulin pen, but it was empty.  Oops.  The insulin pen with insulin in it was left at home...  Anyway, now we can check Zoo Lights off of our list of community events to attend!  That leaves seeing the National Christmas Tree all lit up on the mall.  Brrrrr...  Saving that one for next year. 

Here are a couple of pictures from Zoo Lights.

Again, once Josie was freed from the confines of her stroller, she never went back in again!  Oh well.  I'm going to have to retrain her to enjoy her stroller before we go to Disneyworld in May...

On the tenth day of Christmas Break we gave Kate the day off.  She didn't have to go to a fun family event with us, but she did have to go to church with us!  In the afternoon Steven had a playdate with two friends.  Isabel tried to call her friends to arrange her own playdates, but they were all busy.  Oh well.  After the playdates were done, we went to Chuck E Cheese.  That place is wild.  Really wild.  We were very lucky to get a table, as we arrived just before a big rush of people.  We got the last open table in the place!  Anyway, we were less lucky with getting the pizza order delivered to our table.  They apparently skipped our order or something, because we were number "8" and Mac asked where our order was when he saw number "14" being served...  Eventually they brought out our order, about an hour after we placed it, and the manager gave us 100 tokens as an apology...  Anyway, the kids were playing games the whole time, so they didn't miss the food, but it did extend our time at Chuck E Cheese by a while...  Since we got these "free" tokens, Mac let me play the annoying game where you drop a token down onto a tray that is supposed to push the token against other tokens causing tokens on another tray to fall off the edge into a tray below.  When that happens, you will get tickets depending on how many tokens you drop into the bottom tray.  Mac hates the game because they are clearly using magnets to hold the tokens onto the bottom tray.  He's seen so many people just put token after token into it, and no tokens drop ever.  It's like playing the slots.  Well, anyway, we had all these "free tokens" so we played the game for a while, using up probably around 15 tokens.  And...  even though we didn't drop too many tokens off of the bottom tray, at one point the machine just started spitting out tickets.  Josie was standing right there, pulling just so as the tickets were being spit out of the machine.  She carried all her tickets over to Izzy who was feeding tickets into the ticket reader which spits out a receipt that can be turned in for prizes.  In total Josie got 248 tickets!  It was too funny.  I don't know why she got so many tickets, because we barely dropped any tokens, but...  Maybe the machine saw this cute 2 year old and just couldn't resist!  Anyway, after that we turned in the tickets for some cheapo prizes, and headed home.

That was the end of the ten days of Christmas break.  We made the most out of it, even though we weren't able to go anywhere big this year!

288 laps

On New Years Day, Steven went to a special swim practice.  I thought I'd signed him up for a regular practice, but I goofed and actually signed him up for the distance challenge practice.  Since he's only been swimming on the team since the end of October, and since the name of this thing was the "10,000 yard challenge", I thought it was way over his ability level to do something like this.  I emailed Coach Joe to ask if Steven would be way out of his element, but coach said that he'd have lots of "young swimmers" there and that the practice would be tailored to each swimmers' ability level.

As it turned out, there were mostly young swimmers there.  Steven ended up swimming for over 3 hours with short breaks every 20 minutes to check in with the coach and report the number of laps completed.  They did all the strokes, but mostly freestyle and butterfly.  (Butterfly is the most exhausting of the strokes!) 

Mac had gone to workout while Steven was swimming.  He came back to the pool after about 90 minutes, thinking it was a 2 hour practice.  As the practice went on and on he was amazed at all these little guys who looked exhausted but just kept going.  Eventually Mac told Coach Joe that Steven had to get out as we had things to do that day, and as Steven was tallying his last laps he realized that he was only 150 yards away from the 9 year old record for the team for the longest distance swam in one practice.  So Steven wanted to get back in and swim some more.  He did another 200 yards for good measure.  Every lap is 25 yards, and he swam 288 laps, which equals 7200 yards, or 4 miles.  Of swimming!

He was pretty exhausted after all that!  But he really gained a lot of confidence from the whole experience and is so proud of the long distance record he now holds.

The Second Day of Christmas Break

Christmas Day in our home.  Ahhh, the loveliness of five cherubs contemplating the meaning of Christmas, enjoying spending time together, and just glowing in thankful thoughts about Christ's birth. 

Well, that's not exactly how it works... 

We have tried over the years to get the kids to slow down and open presents one at a time, thanking whomever gave the gift.  We have tried to slow down the whole pace of the day, in fact.  But it just seems to get crazier and crazier as the years go by.

We live in a small townhome.  It wasn't too small when we bought it in 2003.  Even then, though, it was a bit of a squeeze for our family of 5.  The townhome started out with three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms.  A "half bath" for those who don't know is one which doesn't have a shower or a bathtub.  These are also called "powder rooms".  Over the years, we added a new full bathroom and a full room to our basement.  We also added two more kids:  Luke (born during the end of the first year of medical school) and Josie (born during the start of the second year of residency.)  Five kids, two parents, four bedrooms...  It's crowded.

Prepare to be underwhelmed by the size of our tree:

We know that our tree is small and pathetic looking.  This year we set it up next to an indoor plant to sort of make it look bigger, but the effect just makes it look sillier!  No worries, though.  The kids only seem to care about the presents...

When we first moved in, we were planning to get a regular sized pre-lit tree from Costco.  We waited too long though, and they were all sold out when we got around to it.  The other trees left in other stores were too expensive, so we just settled on a small tree "for that year only".  Since I was pregnant and not feeling great, and the twins were into everything, we were happy with our little tree.  As the years have gone by, we've spent most Christmases in Yakima with family.  We didn't really need to have a Big Tree!  We could just bask in the splendor of Mom's Big Tree!  The years where we have been stuck here in Maryland, we've just stuck with our little tree.  Honestly we don't have space for a big tree in our little house.  But as soon as we move to something more spacious, that will all change!  I'm sure our little tree will always have a special place in our hearts...

On Christmas Day, the kids start off by opening their presents from Santa.  He always leaves one for each kid, even Kate who doesn't even send a letter anymore.  It's nice of Santa to remember her, really...  She shouldn't be surprised if he forgets her one of these years though!  Here is a picture of Josie opening her Santa present.   

After Santa presents, we have a Big Breakfast.  Mac likes to make breakfast- pancakes, eggs, bacon...  After breakfast, the Big Wait for the rest of the presents. 

This year, the kids had to wait downstairs in the basement while Mac and I arranged the presents under the tree.  Well, the presents weren't exactly under the tree.  More like covering most of the floor in the living room area near the tree... 

After the space looked sufficiently ridiculous, we called the kids upstairs.  This is the fun part.  They sprint up with all the anticipation in the world, and then they all just dive in.  We have tried to institute order into this process, but really, it's pointless.  Too many kids with too much excitement.  We just try to make sure that Josie opens Josie's presents instead of everyone else's! 

Here are pictures of the kids opening presents:

Kate was happy with her ridiculous ipod...

Josie wants to have Christmas everyday!

Steven is really into the Warriors series.  These are books about tribes of cats which fight epic battles of good vs evil.  He loves them! It's GREAT to find books that he enjoys that don't feature cartoons.

Luke was Really Excited about everything this year.  It was hard to catch him in a picture at all!  This was his "chocolate Santa" year.  A "chocolate Santa" year, for those who don't know, refers back to the home video of our family Christmas years ago, when my little brother Nate was about 7 years old or so.  Nate received some chocolate Santas in his stocking, for which he squeaked in the most excited voice ever, "Oh boy ANOTHER Chocolate Santa!!"  He was so cute.  Nate hates that video, as I'm sure Luke will someday hate the video of his reaction to every gift this year!

We recorded the mayhem for posterity.  It took less than 9 minutes to undo all that wrapping!  Amazing.  The kids can work really fast when they want to.  It usually takes Luke over 20 minutes to set the table! 

Everyone was happy with their gifts.  We do Secret Santa gifts so that the siblings only have to buy one present, so I've made a note of what the Secret Santa gifts were too.  Here is a rundown of what everyone got:

Josie:  Baby Doll stuff, and an adorable princess dress from Kate (Josie's Secret Santa) that makes Josie feel the need to twirl and dance.  She also got some Little People toys, some books, and various other toys.

Luke:  Star Wars Galactic Hero At-At walker toy was the big hit.  He also got Pokemon cards, and Pokemon toys, and some video games.  Steven was Luke's Secret Santa and he got him a nice Pokemon card assortment featuring Pikachu cards from around the world.  Yes, there are different versions of Pikachu...

Steven:  Kung Zhu pets stuff, Pokemon stuff, video games, and the Warriors books were the big highlights.  Isabel was Steven's Secret Santa and she got him some Kung Zhu stuff. 

Isabel:  Lots of fun journals, dumb diary books, some Zhu Zhu stuff, a Pillow Pet (that was the Big Deal this year), and a cool reindeer webkinz stuffed animal from her Secret Santa, Luke.

Kate:  The main present:  a 64 GB ipod touch.  That might hold all her music...  She also got some books and some small stuff.  She got some Bath and Body Works Sweet Pea scented stuff from her Secret Santa, Josie.

Santa gave Steven, Isabel and Luke each a Webkinz, and they spent some time playing Webkinz on the computer.  They seem to enjoy that...  Santa gave Josie a baby doll that works as a motion detector too.  You walk by this doll and it giggles and moves.  The doll sounds like it's in distress, though.  It's probably as effective as a guard dog to deterring would-be intruders.  Santa gave Kate some sweater-style boot slippers.  She's worn them out almost completely.  I don't think they were intended to be worn outside, but oh well. 

I gave Mac some workout clothes and a weight belt.  I braved Walmart to buy him the specific belt he wanted.  THAT'S true love.  Mac gave me a nice little point and shoot camera that I can carry with me in my purse.  I have yet to try it out!  I'm sure I will, though! 

While the kids played with their toys, I made a Thanksgiving dinner.  We didn't have Thanksgiving at home this year, and Mac ended up eating Cup of Noodles or something like that.  The kids and I were out in Washington state.  We had a Thanksgiving dinner, but Mac missed out, so we redid it all:  turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, green beans...  We even had a pecan pie. 

Christmas was a chaotic day, but it was fun.  We did miss seeing the greater family, but perhaps another year!