Scenes from Christmas

Christmas is hard to write about. It's hard to capture the magic, happiness, and closeness. And there are never enough pictures to portray it either. But this is a start.

Together

What do you do when you want a Christmas picture of the entire family, but there is no one around to take it? Well, you put the camera on the tripod, set it for timed photos, and wish for the best.


Wait, Mom's not in that one... Maybe the next one...


Nope, Mom's not in that one either...


Okay, finally, all four of us. Roman, keep your hands down.


Almost. Look at the camera, Blaise.

Ahh, there we go.


Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Popcorn, a la Christmas

It feels that at this time of year, everyone is sharing snacks and recipes. There are blogs with recipes swaps. Even the female anesthesia residents had a cookie-recipe sharing party.

And I really want to participate. I do. But I don't really like to cook (I hope this blog hasn't given you any delusions otherwise.)

And I don't feel that sharing recipes I either make up (with varying success) and can never replicate, or those that come on the side of a Campbell's soup can or the back of a bag of chocolate chips just don't really work (or count).

But to get in the spirit of sharing, and cooking, I will share the recipe to a snack that I make every Christmas.

This recipe actually isn't mine. My very good friend in medical school, who is now doing her residency in California, shared it with me. But I don't always share that detail when people are telling me how much they like this.


Caramel Popcorn:
8 cups popped popcorn (salted)
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup (dark corn syrup gives a richer flavor, but it tastes just as nice with light corn syrup.)

You can also add 1/2 cup peanuts, but we never do.

Heat oven to 350.
Melt butter over medium heat. Add brown sugar and corn syrup. Bring to boil while stirring nearly constantly. You seriously do not want this to boil over. It is very hard to clean up off the top of the stove. Boil until the mixture starts to thicken. I'm sure there is some temperature that this mixture should reach, but I wouldn't even know where to begin. I just boil it until it gets just a little bit thicker and turns from clear to caramelly color.

Pour caramel mixture over popcorn (in a very large bowl) and stir to coat evenly. If you want peanuts, be my guest and add them now. Spread on a cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Check halfway through and stir ensure even cooking. Don't let it burn. This will result in frustration on your part and disappointment on your childrens' part.

Remove from over, place in large (heat proof) bowl and let cool.

We always double or triple this recipe. Because it is that good.


If you want to make caramel popcorn balls, let the caramel mixture cook longer. This will make it thicker. Pour over popcorn and let cool just a little. Coat your hands with just a little bit of Pam (or other baking spray. Although I'm sure butter or oil would work fine too.) Shape into balls. Let cool completely. Do not put the popcorn balls in the oven. The result is not good. Just let them cool on the counter.

There will be caramel popcorn in our house to munch on while watching Mickey's Christmas Carol and another bag in the boy's stocking, to enjoy Christmas morning and to buy us a little more sleep.

Holiday Baking

Why is it that every holiday seems to revolve around food? All the holiday treats weaken my will power and tempt my sweet tooth.

Not that I'm really complaining. I do love treats.

Despite the fact that I tend to avoid the kitchen, there is something about holiday baking that draws me in.

I love having Roman and Blaise standing on chairs on either side of me, taking turns dumping in ingredients (occasionally missing the bowl.) I love the floury hands, the attempts to be subtle while picking at the dough, the delight on their faces at placing the cookies in the oven, and their excitement when taking them out.


It also doesn't hurt that there are now cookies in our house.

In the past, we've done sprinkles. Which are not the most child friendly way to go cookies. As it usually involves incredibly vigorous sprinkling and then several weeks on clean up.

This year, we "painted" cookies.


I can't take any credit for this darling idea, as I found it here.


The boys created their masterpieces without needing my oversight. The mess was minimal.


The delight was endless.

Oh, Christmas Tree

I love Christmas trees. I could capitalize, bold, and underline the word love, then add two dozen or so exclamation points, and it still wouldn't be an exaggeration.

Putting up the Christmas tree, more than putting up the lights, baking cookies, or completing laps around overflowing store parking lots, marks the official start of the holiday season.

The tree gets put up (with only a little disagreement about what "straight" actually is). I wrap branch after branch with white Christmas lights. At that point, I think I like it best like that, and maybe this year we will only have lights on our tree.

But then I open the boxes filled with ornaments (all non-breakable, of course.) And then I let the boys decorate to their hearts delight.


Giant silver balls, small shiny gold ones, sparkly pears, glittery pine cones, copper wire stars, red and white (non-peppermint) candy canes.


Pipe cleaner wreaths, construction paper frames with smiling school pictures, a zoo of animals made from clay, puzzle pieces, paper, and Popsicle sticks.

Now, it is complete.


Well, almost.

All the ornaments are hung as waist height or lower. After Roman and Blaise are tucked in bed and sleeping, smears of Advent calender chocolate still on their faces, I rearrange and spread out the ornaments.

Our glittery, gold and silver tree is beautiful.


But then again, that's what I thought about our tree last year too. Poor little thing.

The glow of the lights fills the living room and twinkles through the window at me when I come home from work. The fresh smell of pine is subtle, but refreshing and homey at the same time.


And every 30 minutes or so, a Tonka truck, sword fight, or football reminds me of why I'm grateful for shatterproof ornaments.

Post-Thankgiving Reflections

Roman brought home his November journal on Friday. As I was reading through it, it was hard not to laugh right out loud. Sometimes you forget how observant children are.

For your holiday pleasure, I would like to share with you Roman's view of our house at Thanksgiving (trying to preserve the original spelling as much as possible.)

November 20, 09
For Thanksgiving my mom is going to bake a turkey. And is going to make a apple pie. Thoe they never have baked them. My mom made my dad make the pie becaues she was terufide (terrified) to bake one. They want to feel ecwle (equal).

November 30, 09
My mom didn't have to bake a turkey because we went to a friends hous and They baked a turkey. I saw teh drum stiks. We had a grate time. We had to eat a bite of everything we had on our plate.

I think that is probably the most insightful look that you may ever get into the workings of our family.

By the way, the bold, capitalized They above. His idea. Not mine.

Over and Gone

It's official.

My vacation is over.

I'm pretty sure those were the fastest 10 days of my entire life. I think they passed even faster because I was so worried about wasting one second of those 10 precious days.

Nothing makes a vacation feel more over than a 13 hours trauma surgery shift. That starts at 5:30 am.

The Thanksgiving leftovers are gone.

The Halloween candy is (finally) gone.

And it's supposed to start snowing any day, so I guess autumn in gone now too.

But it was not without wonderful moments.

Sleeping in until the sun poured through my bedroom window.

Having the time to cook breakfast for my family.

Finishing the Christmas shopping.

Discovering a new park.


Working on our next home project (here's a clue...)

Final project will be revealed, well, when it's done.

I love being home so much it makes me wonder how I can ever go back to work. The very idea of being away from my boys nearly makes me sick. But I wake up, at 4:40 am, and go to work. For them.

Thanksgiving

This was our first holiday away from family.

I had been approaching it with a mixture of homesickness, apprehension, and dread. The dread mostly came from the thought of having to cook a turkey. By myself. For the first time.

But I was rescued from this when some friends from medical school that also live in Iowa invited us to have Thanksgiving dinner with them. (Seriously, it is shocking how many people in Iowa are from Utah. Shocking.)

Having our little family of four expanded to a crowd of eight was wonderful. Dinner was delicious, company was wonderful, being rescued from facing an uncooked turkey on my own was heaven-sent.

Even so, I missed the loudness of Thanksgiving at home. Too many people in the kitchen at the same time. Turning around and finding new finger-shaped divets in the top of all the pies. Too crowded tables. Chasing children (and the occasional adult) away from the marshmallows on the top of the yams. The constant rumble of conversation.

Obviously, there is nothing like home.

But spending Thanksgiving with friends put the homesickness, apprehension, and dread at bay for some amazingly pleasant hours.


Not to mention, we have been enjoying what may truly be the best part of Thanksgiving.

Leftovers.

Free Time

Today marks the first day of my first vacation of residency!

Well, vacation actually started last night, after a much needed girls night out to see New Moon. It was great. No work, no kids. I haven't had that in a long time.

I go back to work on December 1st, at which time I start Trauma Service. This excites me about as much as being told I have a cavity at an annual dental exam. Or Blaise falling asleep on my bed without a Pull-Up on.

So my goal is to make the most of the next 10, now 9, days. They are going to be the fastest days of my year so far, that much I am certain. Already, I can see the end of vacation and feel myself whirling through time towards it.

We thought a lot about going back to Utah for Thanksgiving. This is the longest I've gone in my entire life without seeing my family. I last saw them in June, 5 months ago. I'm not "homesick" in the slightest, since I don't miss Utah or our tiny, dingy apartment for a moment. But I am completely "family-sick." I do miss my family a lot. Since I managed to get vacation over Thanksgiving, we initially thought it would be perfect to go back home. But the 1200 miles were just an obstacle we couldn't overcome, at least this year.

We thought about flying. We could drive to Chicago and fly non-stop from there. But there are four of us, and financially that put that option out of reach. We thought about driving. But that would mean driving I-80 across Wyoming in November. First of all, the trip itself would take at least 1 1/2 days, one way. Which would mean 3-4 days out of 10 on the road. Yuck. Second of all, have you ever driven on I-80 across Wyoming in November? A storm would probably come up and then we would get stuck in Rawlins, Laramie, or Rock Springs for 3 days. Seriously. This happened to someone I know.

So we've made the decision to stay put here in Iowa for Thanksgiving. Although some good friends from medical school have invited us to spend Thanksgiving dinner with them, so we won't be spending it alone.

Keith and I also decided this "vacation" would be a great time to get some more work on the house done. We're already halfway through a project. Which I will post. Later.

We are going to finish Christmas shopping, put up Christmas decorations, sleep in, read books, and watch movies.

But most importantly, I'm going to use these days to spend as much time with my family as possible. Games, stories, outings, arts and crafts, blanket houses.

And in between and during all that, just being together.

Trick or Treat!

This year is the first year we took the boys trick-or-treating door to door.

Blaise, the dragon, and Roman, the sheriff

Back in Salt Lake City, it was always so cold by the time Halloween rolled around that the thought of being outside for a moment, not alone a prolonged period of time, was unwelcome. Not to mention there may or may not be snow to contend with. Also, we lived in an apartment complex, which turns out to be a terrible place to trick-or-treat. The last several years, we took the boys to the mall near our house to trick-or-treat there. No cold weather, no wind, no worry about strange houses.

This year, however, we decided to introduce the boys to the real thing. We met up with some family friends and drove to a nice suburban neighborhood.

I initially thought the boys would love it. Turns out traditional trick-or-treating takes a little getting used to. Roman was very hesitant to go up to the doors. All the decorations "scared" him. (He would like to say for the record nothing he saw actually scared him. Just saying.) And he got cold fairly quickly.

Blaise on the other hand, would have nothing to do with it. Even in his ridiculously cute dragon costume, he refused to participate. He cried most of the evening, insisted on being held, and was glad to head back to the car. (And I'll admit, there was a little relief on our side as well. Blaise is 3, and not small for his age.)

So it wasn't exactly the joyous occasion that childhood memories are made of.

On the other hand, they are currently sitting on the family room floor, screeching for joy over their payload and comparing candy buckets. All thoughts of being cold, scared, or overly tired are gone. Maybe this is what the good memories are made of.

It's the Great Pumpkin!

Halloween is less than one week away.

My family didn't celebrate Halloween when I was growing up. I do remember, once, dressing up and going door to door with my parents. I was three, maybe four years old, little enough to still need a car-seat. And I was wearing enormous pink rabbit ears that prevented me from sitting up straight in the car, because they kept hitting the ceiling.

That was the last time we celebrated Halloween. We did have Harvest Parties, and fall get-togethers, but no trick-or-treating, jack-o-lanterns, or scary movies. Looking back, I don't think I really cared (even though I'm sure my mom will beg to differ, since I'm sure we cried about not getting candy.)

However, we have chosen to not continue that practice with our boys.

First of all, it is just too much dang fun to dress them up. They are the cutest things ever and thinking about putting them in bee, and cowboy, and firefighter costumes is too much fun for me to pass up.

It's not really about the candy. Especially since I was going through a cupboard last week and found a still quarter-full bag of last year's Trick-or-Treat candy. What can I say? We're good at rationing.

The thing that truly makes me excited about Halloween is the pumpkin carving.

For those of you who know us, you know that this is a VERY big deal. We love our pumpkin carving. It borders on obsession. Finding the perfect pumpkin, with a nice flat surface. Finding the perfect stencil.

And since Halloween is less than one week away, it is that time of year.

(Check out here and here and here for previous years' pumpkins.)

First, Roman's pumpkin. He picked out the pattern and transferred it to the pumpkin himself. And then because I'm still that kind of mom, I cut it out for him. This, despite the fact he thought 7 years old is perfectly old enough to be handling knives (funny how it is not old enough to make your own bed.)


Next, my pumpkin. Yes, I did a Twilight pumpkin. I know, I know.


Like always, Keith's pumpkin is the very best. Okay, technically, this is Blaise's pumpkin, since he requested the picture. But, like always, Keith did all the work. And absolutely amazing work it is.


I'm going to send a picture of the pumpkin to the guy who created the stencil.

Keith has yet to do "his" pumpkin. He's got the pattern, but between helping all the rest of us, his pumpkin, somehow, always ends up being the last one done. I'm sure that it, like the rest of his work, will be amazing.

A whole lot of sparklers

We actually did celebrate the Fourth of July. It has just taken me forever to get around and actually post anything. But since I have two hours before my next shift starts, I thought this would be perfect.

I actually had the Fourth of July off! For a new intern, this is a historic event!

The weather has been nice and mild for the last 10 days or so. But July 4th, we wake up to a heavy drizzle.

The rain wasn't heavy, there was no wind, and the temperature was nice, so we decided to set out and see if Iowans still have parades, even in bad weather.

Turns out they do.

The streets were lined with people. Guess a little rain doesn't stop anything here. As we were looking around, we noticed that all the other children had bags and trick-or-treat buckets. And as the parade started, those bags sure filled up fast with candy, popsicles, bottled water, and beads. Our boys didn't have bags, but we still left with more candy then they got last Halloween. Next year, we'll remember to take treat bags.

When the boys were drenched to their skin, we headed home.

We spent the rest of the day warming up over big bowls of popcorn.

As the evening came, the rain stopped and we enjoyed sparklers in the backyard.




(We would have done other fireworks, but sparklers were the only ones we could find for sale here. Much different than Utah, where every parking lot boasts its own firework stand.)

I was only going to post one video, but I thought that these were both so cute, I couldn't decide which one. So you get both. And sorry for the awful quality. I am still trying to figure out how to post videos from my real video camera.





After Roman and Blaise had gone through neary a dozen boxes (all without a single burn!) we went to watch fireworks.

The fireworks were being set off from a local park, and we watched them from a school field across the street. The field was full, but not crowded. There were kids running everywhere, bedecked with glow bracelets and necklaces, shrieking with laughter. Fireflies even flitted through the field. Families were sprawled out on blankets.

Everything was so relaxed, and low key, and so small town feeling. It was perfect. It felt like home.

I'm never sure how my boys will react to fireworks. Sometimes they like them, sometimes they don't.

Roman kept asking if we were going to get hit by a firework. Blaise kept asking if we were done. Between fielding those questions and "helping" Roman cover his ears from the loudest booms, there were plenty of "oooh"s and "aw"s.

We enjoyed our small town Midwestern holiday. Much slower paced than the typical holiday in Salt Lake City, but in so many ways, much more our pace.

Frogs and beaches and burgers...

In other words, we've had the perfect Father's Day weekend.

Since residency orientation starts this week, we've tried to slow down on the home renovations this weekend, so that we could enjoy some quality time together.

Yesterday, we went back to the fossil beds to see how the tadpoles were doing (and to look for more fossils).

We found both fossils and frogs.

Roman with his fossil find (look closely around his feet)

Little tadpole becoming a frog

Tiny little frog (you can still even see a bit of his tail)

Another tiny frog

Our plans for Father's Day were to go up to the lake, do some swimming and boating.

We woke up to pouring rain.

But as the rain turned into a drizzle around noon, we decided to head out anyways.

We are so glad that we did. The clouds rolled away, and we enjoyed the beach under a beautiful blue sky and hot sun.



When everyone was sufficiently waterlogged and then stuffed with watermelon, hummus, (and, um, soda) we went for a long pedal boat ride.

Soaking up the sun

The lake is so beautiful. The day was so nice. It was such a wonderful day together.


Now, if anyone is still hunger, I do plan on making hamburgers this evening. Or just telling people that there is a lot of left-over watermelon.

I would also like to tell Keith how lucky we are that he is our dad. Roman and Blaise are so blessed to have someone for a father who is truly invested in them, loves them fiercely, and wants every good thing for them.

Thank you, Keith, for giving the title "Dad" so much meaning. We love you.

(And you'll notice there are pictures in this post. Which means I (actually Keith) found my card reader. Which means very soon there will be pictures of our remodel posted here. Hang tight!)

Okay, now back to my real life

It has been one of the best weekends ever.

Friday: drove the hour down to visit my mom. During the afternoon, we took the kids and had a picnic in an orchard that was in full bloom. During the quiet moments between the squeals of delight, the air hummed with bees.



One of my cousins got married that evening, and the wedding was absolutely beautiful. It took place in my aunt's amazing backyard. The yard was surrounded by lilac hedges that were at their peak. The trees were filled with lanterns. Between the lights, the flowers, the scent, and the great company, it was just magical.

Saturday: My mom, my sister, and I cooked ourselves a Mother's Day Brunch. (Yes, we had to cook for ourselves, but it was worth it). We had delicious pear, watercress, and pecan salad, risotto, citrus chicken, and lemon-berry angel cake. Fantastic.


Sunday: woke up to sweet gifts. And did not cook or clean all day. After a "traditional" breakfast of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and orange juice and a long afternoon nap, we went to dinner at The Mayan. I could have chosen a restaurant with better food or a more refined atmosphere, but I really wanted something that would be fun as a family. And The Mayan fit the bill. Besides quite delicious fajitas and margaritas for Keith and me, the boys were awestuck by the surroundings. After all, isn't it every 6 and 2 year old's dream to eat in a treehouse overlooking a waterfall, surrounded by butterflies and tropical birds. Blaise could care less if they weren't even real. And the cliff divers? Well, it was hard to keep the boys at the table long enough to get two bites of food in. But we didn't worry about having to tell them to be quiet, sit down, stop squirming. Which is what I really wanted.

Ahhh....it was perfect.


Well, now back to Monday.

Best Mother's Day Gifts Ever

My boys have made today the most wonderful day.

Keith got me flowers (without even a hint from me!).


Blaise keeps coming up to me and saying, "You are my best fweind!"

And Roman gave me these.



Priceless. Each one.