Visions of sugarplums

I told you in my last post that we were going to the Gingerbread House decorating competition last night at church. Last year, I couldn't get my kids to participate with me (plus I forgot to pre-pay for a house and I think they ran out, so I guess it was good they didn't want to do it). But, this year, I remembered to plan ahead and I didn't give the kids an option. I just told them that was what we were going to do.

We had a great time decorating our house. I was determined not to get all control-freaky about the whole thing. I just wanted it to be fun for the kids. I did control the frosting and contribute a few ideas, but mostly I let them have a lot of creative license. (We did have to stop Pressley a couple of times from putting heavy candy on the roof, but that was more about structural concerns than aesthetic value.) It turned out a LOT better than I expected. I thought it would be kind of a disaster, but it turned out pretty cute. And, GranNan and Poppy hung out to help us and take photos, respectively. So, it was all good.

Well, it was all good until we had to sit around for a long time waiting for the judging to happen. The judging took a while because there were about 40 houses and lots of people BRING IT to the gingerbread competition. They bring outside supplies (like pre-prepared trees that I can only imagine were upside down ice cream cones covered in green frosting), and one lady even brought a airbrusher-paint-gun-thingee. So, it is serious business in some of the categories.

The kids got a little antsy during the long wait, but even that wasn't so bad. But, then. Then. They handed out the prizes to the winners. (There were several different categories and 1st, 2nd, 3rd place and such, so there were 12 prizes in all for 40 teams.) I always knew we would not win a prize, and like I said yesterday, we were just in it to make some memories. But I guess I did not convey this knowledge to the youngest member of my family who burst into tears when she realized the presents had all been handed out and she did not get one.

I really don't think the sudden outburst of emotion was about the losing. I think she had no idea there was competition involved. The words she blurted through her tears had nothing to do with winning or losing. The words were, "I wanted a presennnnnnt. I really, really wanted a presennnnnt!" And it was late. So she was tired. And she was all hopped up on sugar. Poor baby.

And what did the poor baby's mommy do? Well, in my defense, it took me totally by surprise. So, I gathered her up into my arms and hugged her tightly while I silently stifled my laughter in her hair. Seriously. I did not know how else to react. I was caught completely off guard. It really never occurred to me that she would get upset.

I did finally gather my thoughts and control my laughter and explain to her that our prize was our beautiful and special house that we would get to take home and show to daddy and enjoy throughout the season. She wasn't really buying it, but she calmed down eventually. Today, I think all that remain are the happy memories.

The post-script to this entry is that Pressley's reaction (and those of several other 3 and 4 year olds who had the same reaction) has sparked quite the cyber-debate on Facebook today about whether it is appropriate to give everyone a prize for participating to keep the pre-school set from melting down at the end. I totally get the argument that in life, you don't always win and we need to teach our kids to deal gracefully with defeat. I also get that a 3 year old doesn't yet have the capacity to really understand winning and losing and there is some merit to giving out prizes for participation to compensate for that.

I think the best solution is probably to let families with pre-schoolers opt out of the competition part altogether so we can just gather our finished houses and leave before any presents show up and get handed out. If Pressley had never seen the presents, she would have been fine with the house being our "only" prize.

It must be Christmas time in Atlanta

It must be Christmas time in Atlanta...because everyone from Atlanta knows that nothing says Christmas like riding on a little pink train, shaped like a pig, residing in a giant white tent in a mall parking lot...right?

I have NO idea when or why this tradition was started. Actually, I do know when. It was 1953 according to the signs attributing historical significance to this tradition. But, why? Well, good question. All I know is that when I was a kid, we would go to the Rich's building downtown and ride the Pink Pig that was suspended from a monorail on top of the building, freeze our fannies off, and receive a sticker that said "I Rode the Pink Pig" for our troubles. Don't know why, but I always thought that was fun. When I was a kid, it looked like this:

Clearly that was before the childhood obesity epidemic, because looking at it now, I can't figure out for the life of me how anyone ever got into that thing. Now the train is on a track in (like I said before) a big white tent on top of the parking garage at the Lenox Mall Macy's. You still get a sticker that says "I Rode the Pink Pig", you still freeze your fanny off, and well, the kids still think it is big fun. Here are Evan and Lil P waiting for the ride to start. (They said they didn't need daddy OR mommy to ride this year, so we didn't have to cram ourselves in there with them.)

Pressley was much more concerned about buckling her safety restraint than about having her picture made. Why they need safety restraints for a ride that goes approximately 1 mile per hour in a circle (and not on top of a building) is beyond me. Actually, I'm an attorney. I know exactly why they have those restraints. Nevermind.

And here is the whole caboodle of kids who belong to our Sunday school friends (sans Landon because he was having none of it), because for the second year in a row, we made it a fun family outing for the whole class. It really was a lot of fun. And we herded all the kids down the mall (and 3 escalators) to the food court for dinner afterwards. You would think walking from Macy's to the food court would be easy enough, but try it sometime with nine kids aged 2 through 6. Who knew such a short walk could be so stressful!

Tonight, we're off to church to participate in a Gingerbread House Decorating Contest. (Note: I carefully avoided saying we will compete in the contest because my children are 3 and 5 and don't get enough candy at home (in their opinion), so the chance that any of the decorations will actually make it onto the house instead of into their tummies is slim to none. I don't have high expectations, but I will try to remember to take the camera just in case. We're not trying to win any awards, we're just out there makin' memories.

A pipe dream

Saturday, my "status update" on Facebook said the following:

"Amy is is headed to a park near my parents' house to see if my dad can capture some good pics of the kids frolicking happily in their Christmas finery on this 43 degree day...at naptime. What could possibly go wrong?"

I knew that outdoor photos in December would be a bad idea - even in Atlanta, but I just thought if I put enough layers under their clothes, that maybe we could get a few good shots. You see, our house was not yet decorated for Christmas and I didn't want all my photos to be taken in front of my parents' Christmas decorations, because as nice as they are, they are not ours. So, the plan was to take the kids to the lake at Henderson park and let them run around and point at ducks and look adorable. We got to my parents' house, got them dressed, bundled them up (from underneath) and took some indoor shots to start. Then, we decided to go outside at the house for a minute before we left to go to the park. We took a few shots of the kids sitting on the brick wall in front of the house (my idea) and some of them in front of the holly bush in the back (mom's idea).

This is how those turned out:

My personal favorite is the one in front of the holly bush where you can almost see Pressley's teeth chattering.

Since there was already much complaining (by kids and adults alike) about how cold it was, we ditched the park idea entirely and got some pretty cute ones inside the house in places where the decor was not too specific to mom and dad - or where there was no decor in the background.

Overall, I'm happy. But next year, I may have to get my act together a little earlier in the season so we can take advantage of the very late Indian summer around here and photograph some happy outdoor frolicking, dangit!

Ring the Bells

I have been helping teach pre-school music at church this fall on Wednesday nights. And, by that I mean that I help put the appropriate DVD in at the appropriate time (which you would think would be easy enough, but I manage to botch it up a good bit of the time), I play bad cop and threaten to put instruments in time out if people are playing them instead of listening to Ms. Lisa, and I occasionally (ok, once) fill in and do the whole shootin' match when Ms. Lisa can't be there. It has been a lot of fun. (Seriously.) Especially considering that both of my kids are in the groups that I "teach."

Ms. Lisa is due to deliver a baby really any second now, so we went ahead and scheduled the Christmas program for last night so there would be a higher likelihood that she could lead the thing. We have spent the last few weeks trying to nail down a couple of songs we've been working on for a while and trying to teach a couple of Christmas songs for good measure.

Last night's program was, well, it was. Lisa had made me a CD of all the songs we'd be performing in case she went into labor at the last minute and I had to step in. We decided it would be easiest to use that CD even if she did make it because then everything would be in one place (and I'd be less likely to screw it up). When I arrived at church at the appointed hour, there was no Lisa in sight, so I grabbed the CD out of my purse and threw it into the player. It spun for a second and then said "Er", which I presume means error. I tried a couple more times and then went down the hall to procure another player. That one didn't work either. Luckily about this time, Lisa shows up (thank the good Lord), but she didn't have all of the back up CDs she'd used to burn my copy. Her mom was with her and went back to her house to get the back-up CDs and it did work out. Except that I put the 2nd song in first and then couldn't get the 4th song to play at all - due to the fact that I'd turned the volume all the way down to make a new ending to song 3 since we never could get the kids to learn all three verses of Away in a Manger. Considering all my puddle wallering and car-interior-soaking activities earlier in the day, I should have expected that things would not go smoothly - at least where my involvement was required.

I keep telling myself that no one really cared about our technical difficulties. There were only parents and grandparents in the audience and fully half of them were seeing their kids perform (and I use that term loosely) for the very first time. So, they got what they came for despite the glitches.

Here is a video of their last song: Ring the Bells. Please note the preacher's kid on the back row on the right side of the video (starting about half way through). He really got creative with ringing his bells. I would have uploaded some of the others, but the video quality is poor and, well, I'm just not into punishing you any more than necessary. Enjoy!

On a slightly different note, I have managed to stay on my feet and out of trouble today (and I am in for the evening), so I am in a much better mood today. I haven't even cried all day. Maybe I'll get into this Christmas season after all. Talk to me again after my next foray into the shopping arena and I'll let you know where I stand. I will, after all, have to go back out since yesterday's excursion only procured one gift.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, er, monsoon season

I started my morning this morning at the DMV. Because who doesn't want to start a rainy, gross morning with a trip to the DMV with a 3 year old? I had to get a replacement decal for my tag since I discovered a couple of weeks ago, when the nice officer pulled me over, that I never received it in the mail back in June and have been driving on an expired registration ever since. That errand was as easy as pie. We walked right up to the counter, paid the $8 replacement fee and walked out - into the rain - with a new decal.

The next stop was the Macy's at Lenox. I had seen an ad yesterday that convinced me to get out and purchase the very first Christmas gift of the season. I immediately located the item, secured myself a friends and family discount, and generally felt pretty good about the whole experience...UNTIL....

Pressley and I were on our way back to the car to head to the parcel pick up. Did I mention there is a monsoon here in Georgia today?

[As an aside, I realize that we have just very recently come out a some pretty serious drought conditions here, and I'm supposed to be very thankful for the rain. Blah, blah, blah. But, I am OVER it. ENOUGH with the rain, already.]

Anyway, while I very protectively watched Pressley navigate through a puddle to make sure she didn't get her feet too wet, I turned my ankle (as has become known around here as "pulling an Amy") and tumbled headlong into a puddle as deep as my bathtub. And considering how wet I was when I got up, I apparently wallered around in it a bit. The front of both pant legs were soaked from the knee down. And the back of my left leg was wet from waist to ankle. I seriously felt like I'd been swimming. And I was cold. And embarrassed. Well, I would have been embarrassed if anyone had seen it, but I think (but for this blog entry) it would have been mine and P's little secret.

Now, mind you, I've still not retrieved my purchase from the parcel pick-up. That was another whole ordeal. I didn't want to get P out into the rain again, so I left her in the car to just pop in and let the good customer service folks I was waiting for my purchase. I waited inside (soaking wet and cold) for approximately 10 minutes without any luck getting anyone to pick up the phone at parcel pick-up. All the while, I was nervously pacing to the door every couple of minutes to look out and check on P. About the 10th time I checked on her, I decided to use the nifty little device on my key chain that allows me to roll down the windows remotely to just roll down the window for a sec to ask her if she was ok. She was. But then I realized that the nifty little device would not roll them back up remotely. Of course! So, I had to run out into the rain, get into the car, crank it, and roll up the windows. As I'm doing this, it dawns on me that I'm getting wetter than I anticipated I would. That is because the sunroof had also opened with the oh-so-helpful little doohickey. For crying out loud.

I did finally find one helpful person who actually let me return to the car to sit with Pressley and then delivered my package to my trunk. So now I'm back home - out of the wet jeans and into my stretchy pants. Dry and almost warm. I've never been more grateful for my seat heaters, by the way. But you'll have to forgive me if I'm feeling a bit like the love-child of Scrooge and the Grinch. If only we could really just focus on Jesus' birth, and time with family and friends, and not all the other insanity, I'd be just fine.

The one bright spot here is that Evan has a playdate with a neighbor today, so I don't have to go to the bus stop. Which means I can stay in my dry stretchy pants until time to go to church tonight. And, I can take a nap with P today. And you better bet your britches that I will be doing just that.

Perhaps after my do-over, I'll have enough Christmas spirit to get me through the kids' Christmas program at church tonight.

Empty suitcases; Full heart

We are back from our annual whirlwind visit to Kerry and Kate's home in Rosendale, NY. We have finished unpacking, but are still reveling in the memories. Typically, we stay in Atlanta for Thanksgiving day and then spend the long weekend in NY with the McCarthys. But this year, my friend Stephanie was getting married here in town on Saturday night, and not wanting to miss her beautiful wedding, we tweaked the trip a bit. We left on Wednesday (yes, we flew with two kids on the day before Thanksgiving) and came back on Saturday just in time to take the kids to my parents and get showered and changed for the wedding.

The first note-worthy report from the trip is that our children are now officially civilized travellers if this trip was any indication. Despite flying on the busiest travel day of the year, the trip went awfully smoothly. We arrived at the airport two hours before our flight, took the park and ride shuttle and proceeded to security with all of our stuff since I'm not into paying the airline to check my bag. I had read that none of the rest of the country is into paying for that particular "service" either, so I should expect looooong lines at security. However, we walked right up and barely had our shoes off before our bags were being x-rayed and we were being ushered through the metal detector thingee. We got to our gate (D1A - just in case you thought you couldn't be any further from ticketing than D1...they've added a D1A, apparently just for folks traveling with 2 kids on the busiest travel day of the year) and were nearly the first ones there, allowing us to snag a spot in a corner with a plug for the DVD player. The kids sat quietly on the floor with the new-to-them DVDs I rented from the blockbuster for $1 each for the week-best $5 ever spent-and watched until it was time to board. When we arrived in White Plains, the bags arrived promptly, we had no trouble locating the shuttle to our hotel, and despite the fact that we arrived there at 8:30 (which was our scheduled arrival time), we were in our room before 9pm. A-mazing!

The trip home was similarly civilized, and for that, I am eternally thankful.

While we were in Rosendale with the McCarthy clan, we had just a lovely visit. The preparations were underway by the time we arrived on Thursday morning from White Plains and, aside from a little understandable Turkey-day stress when you are feeding 15, it was a really nice, relaxing day to visit with family. And the meal was delish - as usual.

Friday morning we participated in our favorite new-ish Thanksgiving tradition - the breakfast buffet at Mohonk Mountain House, followed by some hiking and otherwise enjoying the grounds of this grand old hotel situated in the most beautiful setting you can imagine. This year we tried out an evergreen maze for the first time, but also made time to hike up to the lookout tower at the top of the mountain. Then, while Lil' P and I were hanging inside by one of the many fireplaces, Corin and Evan tried something else new--the rock scramble. Typically, the rock scramble is closed when we are there because it closes when the conditions are the least bit icy. This year, conditions were a bit less frigid than they usually are, so they were able to try to scramble. Although, when they finished, it somehow came to Corin's attention that children are supposed to be at least 8 to try the rock scramble. Good thing we didn't know that ahead of time, because it was Evan's favorite part of the trip this year.

Here are some photos to prove how gorgeous it is up there at Mohonk. (I secretly have a dream that we will spend a week there some summer and the kids will canoe, and swim, and bunny hop, and carry a watermelon to where the staff has its dance parties, and then at the end of the trip we'll go to the talent show where we'll sing a song about Kellerman's and someone will say "No one puts Pressley in a corner." But without all the extra-marital sex and unwanted pregnancies.)

Now that my mom is all appalled that I said sex and unwanted pregnancies in an otherwise lovely and family-friendly post (Please at least tell me that most of you got the Dirty Dancing reference. It wasn't subtle. Forgive me. I'm a child of the 80s.), I'll shift gears and tell you that we also had a lovely post-Thanksgiving-Thanksgiving with my family on Sunday after we returned.

My mom did the hosting and almost all the cooking this year with the exception of the crock pot mac and cheese that my sister brought and the yeast rolls that I slaved over (read: picked up from O'Charley's). Everything was delicious and comforting, and we had a lovely time seeing my Granny for any real amount of time for one of the first times since all her health problems over the summer and seeing my cousin's daughter who has grown into just a lovely young woman since the last time I saw her. And, of course, there was the cousin lovin' and chaos that always ensues when my kids are together with their beloved Will and Abby. This year, the cousins found my old doll house up in the attic and insisted that my dad dig it out from behind all manner of boxes and bins so they could play with it for exactly 4-1/2 minutes before they decided they wanted to play outside and see the neighbor's dogs.

Granny with the kids:

Kids playing with my dollhouse in the attic: (It might be nearly time to bring that treasure trove of memories to find a spot in my own home. Though that will be easier said than done.)

I would love to tell you about Stephanie's wedding, but I fear I have likely lost your attention by now. So, I'll save that for another day.

Farmers and Ninjas

Last Friday was Pressley's Thanksgiving program at school. She was supposed to dress like a farmer. Still not really sure why...but, given the fact that the child does not own anything but dresses (her choice) and refuses to wear pants, this was sure to be a problem. But, I tried. I went to The Target on Thursday and picked up a denim skirt for $7 on clearance. I made sure to keep the receipt, in case she refused to wear it. My plan was two-fold: first, I'd be really excited about the super cute skirt I bought just for her today, and second, I'd promise she could wear her tights and her boots with the skirt if she wanted to wear it to school the next day.

Last year, I would have never thought any two-pronged plan that involved tights would ever work. That is because last year, if we tried to put tights on the child, she acted like we were trying to break both of her legs. I'm not kidding. But, now, she prefers tights to socks. It is a wonder we ever get out the door in the mornings. The rules are constantly a-changin'. But I digress.

My plan worked and she wore the $7 denim skirt to school with the brown boots and looked just a teeny tiny bit like a farmer (well, not really, but at least anyone who knew to look would see that I tried). She knew all the words to Harvest Time, despite the fact that she only goes to school two days a week and they presumably practiced it five days a week. She even said "Happy Thanksgiving" at the end, which appears to have been in the plan for everyone, but I don't think anyone else said it. Just in case you didn't get to go to a children's program during this Thanksgiving season and you were worried that your holiday just wouldn't be complete without some unintelligible poem-reciting by some cute kids, I've included a video clip just for you: [Edited to add: I tried and tried to upload the edited version that is about a minute shorter, but I am technically challenged. Sorry about that. If you want to skip the first 45 seconds, it won't hurt my feelings.]

Then, on Saturday, Evan had his first karate test. He's been taking karate lessons since August, and this was the end of his first session. So, we all trekked on over to the Dojo on Saturday morning to watch about a hundred kids test for either stripes for their belts or animal patches. Evan is apparently still too new to be ready for a "rank" test, so he did one of the animal tests. His particular animal test was the crane test, which is about balance. He learned a series of move involving wings and beaks and shrieks and then had his test. He earned his new patch. I'm very proud of him, but not very excited about having a new patch to sew on the uniform. After all, last time I injured myself by jabbing the dull end of the needle underneath my fingernail trying to force the silly thing through all that thick fabric. Did I mention that sewing is not my strong suit?

I've included a couple of photos of Evan posing for me before the test and kneeling to receive his patch after the test. There are tons of photos of the warm-up and all the crane maneuvers in the November album. There was even a video of some of the warm-up, but it was really boring - even in the eyes of a mother - so I deleted it. Does that make me a bad mother or a merciful blogger -- or both?