Snowball Fight

Photos: December 19, 2008

We had some nice snow for a couple weeks here in Redmond. Jonas convinced his dad to go out and play in the backyard. They had big plans to make a snowman but, like last year, the snow was too dry to stick together. They had to settle for making some dry-ish snowballs and throwing them at the fence. After awhile Jonas remembered hearing about having a snowball fight and decided that would be fun. The snowball fight consisted of Tony making a snowball, handing it to Jonas and then pulling his stocking cap over his face so that Jonas could peg him with the snowball at point-blank range in the head. I was watching most of this out of the kitchen window and at one point I saw Jonas fire off a snowball, again from point-blank range, right at his dad's groin. Nice.

The wind-up...

...and the death-throw.

Our Christmas

Photos & Video: December 24-25, 2008


We spent Christmas Eve with my family again this year. I actually can't remember the last time we weren't with my family for Christmas Eve dinner and present opening. It's become a tradition and we really enjoy it.

Aunt Connie suggested that Jonas open the gift from her and Uncle Pat right away so he would have some new entertainment while everyone was visiting and snacking.



Jonas loved the huge set of blocks and it did keep him entertained until it was time to open more presents.

Auntie and Big Uncle gave Jonas a really cool Poingo book set. It has a pen that you point to different things on the book with and it "reads" the book out loud. Amazing.

Grandma Rose wrote out this poem for Jonas to read and then go find his gift:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Look out in the garage,
For a present
For you.

Out in the garage Jonas found an painting easel that Grandpa Jim made. I took a video of him going out and finding it but something went awry and it won't load onto the computer. And, for some reason, I didn't get any other photos of the art station. Most likely because he wanted nothing to do with it since we wouldn't let him set it up and start painting at 9:00 at night. But Big Uncle got Jonas to model the apron that Grandma Rose made to go with the painting station. It's awesome. (Notice that Big Uncle tied it nice and close to Jonas' neck...don't want to get any paint on his cool flannel shirt.)



Even though it was not a Christmas present, Jonas convinced Auntie and Aunt Connie to play a riveting game of Cootie. Did you play Cootie when you were little? Scott and I played Cootie a lot and we constantly left some of the pieces on the (brown shag) carpet and they got sucked up in mom's vacuum. Oopsie, sorry mom.

Christmas morning at our house we each had a stocking to dig through and find a few cool presents in. Jonas got a candy cane (among other things) in his stocking and I was very surprised that he never asked to eat it. He just immediately hung it on the tree.

Tony helped Jonas open his gift that made it all the way from Alaska from Uncle Jeff and Aunt Deb. He was so excited and I was, too. It's an awesome gift.


I love that Jonas was so excited to watch his dad open his stocking present. (It was another hideous Christmas ornament to add to our collection.)
Later in the morning we went over to Tony's parents' house to open more gifts and eat more snacks.

Love this action shot.

Jonas got (even) more Thomas the Train sets from Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Frank this year. He was sooooo excited. These next few photos may look familiar as they are pretty similar to what was going on last Christmas. More directions to read. More pieces to find. More questions of an impatient little boy "Is it done yet?" There are so many pieces of track that now they can reach all the way across the living room, through the dining room and kitchen, and back into the living room. Or they can just head on down the long hallway. I think by this time next year there will be enough to go into every room in the house!

Men at work.

After looking at this sample of Christmas photos it might seem like, for us, Christmas is all about the presents. That could not be further from the truth. Presents are fun, especially for our little boy and opening presents makes for great photos. But, for us, Christmas is truly about celebrating the fact that Jesus came to earth so that 33 years later he could make the ultimate sacrifice for us. Now that is something to celebrate! Best. Gift. Ever.

Christmas Decorations

Photos: December 4-7, 2008

I have been tempted in past years to buy a gingerbread house kit and I finally gave in this year. I decided at 4 years old Jonas would be able to do quite a bit of the decorating and have a lot of fun making the gingerbread house. He was so excited when he came home from grandma's house to find his very own gingerbread house assembled and ready for him to decorate. He picked which house he wanted to make his look like from the box kit and we did our best to duplicate it. I'm not the best at following directions for crafts...I like to say that I'm creative and go off in my own direction...but...really....I just don't read things thoroughly. So we have a one-of-a-kind gingerbread house and it's fantastic.


It was exciting to have the Advent Tree and Gingerbread House to add to my (sad) winterscape that I make on our old Magnavox record player (circa 1965). Jonas loved admiring his handiwork on the gingerbread house. He started off each day by adding a new star to the Advent Tree. These were two Christmas craft projects that were definitly worth doing.

Our oddly-shaped Christmas tree was a lot of fun to decorate. We put on some Christmas music and hauled out two big tubs of decorations and went to work. As usual, the majority of our ornaments are super-heavy and the wimpy limbs would not support them. As a result, many ornaments had to be hung on the sturdy part of the limb. We realized, when we finished, there was a line of ornaments down the trunk of our tree. That just added to the eclectic/ugly theme that we love.


I was trying to get a few good shots of Jonas in front of our tree in all its glory, but he just wanted to drum on the limbs with his improvised drumsticks.

Jonas took a short break from decorating to show off his Christmas Love dance moves.

Christmas Program

Photos and Video: December 11, 2008

I'm surprised that preschool Christmas programs are not a much-anticipated-standing-room-only event. I think they are incredibly entertaining and extremely hilarious. And it's not just that I think my kid is funny and entertaining, I think all the kids there were super cute and funny. They're just being themselves and it makes for the best free 11 minutes of entertainment I've seen all year. Definitely an Oscar-worthy performance.

Act 1: Jingle Bells



Act 2: Away in a Manger



Act 3: The Story of the Candy Cane
The white is for purity.
The red is for the blood he shed.
The J is for Jesus, who died for our sins.

Dentist

Photos & Video: December 4, 2008

Here's a sneak peek at the level of excitement that occurred on our vacation: Jonas playing Dentist with mom and dad as patients. Awesome. I thought it was super-funny while I was taking the video of Jonas and Tony (as you can tell from the camera shaking and laughing) and I was simply cracking up while playing the part of the patient in the second video. I have re-watched both videos several times and still laugh out loud every time. Good stuff.


Tony and I both had dentist appointments on the same day and we took Jonas with us to try to get him used to the idea. Our friend Dawn is the hygienist that cleans our teeth and she was so nice to Jonas. When it was time to leave she made him a Dentist Kit with stuff to play dentist at home. My personal favorite is the mask. I have a feeling that this scene will be played again and again over the next few months. As long as the patients have enough patience.

Christmas Tree Hunting

Photos: November 30, 2008

We have been on vacation since Thanksgiving. It's another one of those "stay-cations" that you hear more and more about. Even though we didn't have any grand plans for our vacation we tried to get out of the house and go do stuff to keep things interesting.

Last sunday we went w/ a group of 35 people to cut Christmas trees. We drove up out of Sisters past Camp Sherman a ways and found a spot wide enough to park our convoy of 7 vehicles before setting out on foot in search of the Perfect Christmas Tree. A few minutes before we turned off the main highway Jonas drifted off to sleep (above) and took a little power nap before embarking on our adventure.

Jonas followed Tony around for several hours all the while asking "Is this the perfect tree Dad?" as he points at every stubby, deformed or burned pine tree we passed.

Here's a shot of just part of our huge entourage for the tree hunting expedition.

As dusk was nearing, Tony finally spotted what seemed like the Perfect Tree and got busy sawing that puppy down. After getting it home we realized that it was not, in fact, the Perfect Tree but I'm beginning to believe that perhaps the Perfect Tree is just a myth and that we will just have to be content with this strangely-shaped-too-tall-too-widely-spaced-branch tree. Tony hacked a couple feet off the bottom and another foot off the top and we drug it into the house and plunked it in the stand. Perfect enough for us.We did find the Perfect Boy out in the forest. Ok, maybe not Perfect, but he's the Perfect Boy for us.

Advent Tree

Photos: December 2008

Christmas is well on its way and most evenings you can find me in my (cold) office upstairs crafting away. I've been thinking about making an Advent calendar for the last few years. Of course I could buy one and just be done with it but nooooooo, I have to craft it with my own two hands. After looking around on the internet at other people's ideas and creations I came up with something all my own and it cost me $0. Free is a very good price.

First, I used Photoshop Elements to crop photos into a star shape with a nice black border. I've found that a fat black line makes cutting out so much easier and if you don't get all the white paper off the edges you can just fill in with a black marker. I turned all my photos black and white which makes them seem more timeless, I think, and not so busy looking. After I had already printed the sheets of star shaped photos I decided that I wasn't so excited about the plain white backs of the stars. I put the paper back in the printer and printed out some digital patterened paper onto the back. Much better. If I had planned better I could have just printed my star photos onto the back of patterned scrapbook paper and I would not have wasted so much ink. Live and learn, that's the crafters motto.

Next I cut out all my stars and punched a hole at the top and added a string. {I truly love white string and (sadly) could not live without it.} I punched out small circles and stamped numbers on them 1 - 25 and added them to the bottom of the stars.

After thinking long and hard about how to make something to display the stars on, I finally came up with this: 1 metal bucket + a few twigs ripped off the dead tree in the burn pile + a couple handfuls of river rocks from our yard = 1 Advent Tree. I think it's fantastic and best of all Jonas loves it. He was thrilled to find out that he gets to find the next numbered star and put it on the tree every morning. It's the first thing he says upon waking, "Mom, today I get to put on the 4 star!"

Best. Craft. Ever.

If you're interested in doing your own version of this Advent Tree you could use photos that you already have (good way to use up leftover photos) and just use a template to cut them into any shape you desire. And you could adhere patterned paper to the back so that you wouldn't encounter the dreaded Plain-White-Back syndrome. Then be brave and go in your yard (or come to mine) and forage for sticks and rocks. Go ahead. Get your Craft on.

November

Photos: November 2008

What happened to November? It just flew by without so much as a single post. Oopsie. Well fortunately I did take some pictures during the month and here's a recap:

Now that winter is here we're into puzzles. This Wiley Coyote and Road Runner puzzle is from Tony's childhood. The wonderful memories of him putting it together hundreds of times came flooding back as he helped Jonas put it together. I'm pretty sure there was a tear in Tony's eye as he and Jonas worked on the puzzle. I don't know if the tear was from remembering the sweetness of childhood or out of frustration from being asked "Where does this piece go, Dad?" at least 1000 times in the 20 minutes it took to get this round beauty together. Maybe a little of both.

I was lucky enough to get to go on Year Three of Girls Weekend with my friend from high school. I am very blessed to have Lorissa, Dawn, Kelly and Rachel still in my life after all these years. We stayed at a condo out at Eagle Crest this year and spent a long weekend together. There was a lot of scrapbooking, snacking, and being pampered over the weekend. We were able to go shopping out in Sisters one day and to a wonderful spa in Bend and even more shopping the next day. Below is showing off our fabulous pedicures which are wonderfully complimented by our gift of fuzzy slippers from Rachel. (Thanks Rae!) We had an excellent time and are already looking forward to next year.

Pre-Thankgiving Leftovers ala Tony. We watch a lot of Food Network here in the Cook household. Jonas will actually request to watch Good Eats whenever possible. After watching a show on Thanksgiving Leftovers the weekend before Thanksgiving, Tony was intrigued by one recipe for making a stuffing cake (like a crab cake or a potato cake) and including it in your turkey sandwich. I think he had to pan fry the turkey as well. This was such a crazy-huge sandwich that I couldn't help but take a picture. Maybe we should send it in to Alton and see what he thinks of Tony's creation. Oh, and Tony say: "Best Leftover Turkey Sandwich EVER!"