Christmas Eve

I wanted to do something fun for Christmas Eve, so for breakfast I used an idea I found in my email: Santa pancakes. I think they were a hit:

Well, after he finished his banana anyway. I actually think the kids didn't quite know what to do with them. 

That night we read the Christmas Story in Luke 2 and talked about the Savior coming to earth. Derek does such a good job teaching our kids the scriptures. He is really such a good daddy to them. 

After they went to bed (being reminded that Santa doesn't come if you're awake- and he always knows), they were sure to leave their stockings out and their shoes under the tree for the elves (a tradition carried on from Derek's family- if you leave your shoes under the Christmas tree, every night until Christmas if you were good that day you get a treat in your shoe!), Derek and I of course went to relax and let Santa do his job. 

When we finally came upstairs, we saw that he'd come and left a bounteous supply of gifts behind:

Santa knows how much we all like snacks and drinks just as much as we like presents, so he was sure to leave plenty.

And look! He left me a monofin! 

Thanks Santa! We couldn't wait till Christmas morning so the kids could see all the fun Santa had left for us.

Christmas from Avril

She couldn't actually wait till Christmas itself to give me (well, us) our present. She couldn't even wait until Derek got home from work actually. Right after school, she eagerly presented me with this envelope:

Inside was this card:

Inside the card was this loving note:

And finally our gift was included- a year long calendar with her cute picture and a sample of her adorable artwork. Our family is so cute :)

Christmas: Gingerbread Fun

We (Xandri, Roman and I) got together with our friend Heather for some festive gingerbread decorating. I'll give you three guesses who decorated and who ate the decorations. 

It reminded me of when I was a kid and every year my mom would help us decorate gingerbread houses. Mostly what I remember is how awesome hers always turned out. They were so cool-looking and detailed I didn't ever WANT to break and eat them! I remember she'd even do a little mailbox and the windows would be all pretty and scrolly and even the eaves had perfect little icicles hanging from them.

Mine didn't exactly turn out like that. They were a lot more gloppy. So I tried to cover them up with candy. 

Heather gave it to us to take home and enjoy, so that night we decided to get down to business. 

Avril had no problem eating our creation:

And then we all dug in, leaving not much in our wake. It was pretty good, but here's where I put in a plug for my mom's gingerbread recipe-- sooo much better!

I loved decorating with the kids so much I thought it would be a great preschool activity for them. I found these graham crackers that were made of gingerbread for that purpose exactly and thought, "What could be more perfect?" So I rounded up what random candy we had around the house (not much, truth be told), made some icing and we went to work.

That look of intense concentration isn't just for placing the marshmallow just so. It's just as much to not EAT the marshmallow just yet.

Even though Avril is in school during preschool hours, she loves doing the activities the kids do. This one was certainly no exception and she dove right in with finesse. And appetite.

Thanksgiving

Sucked.

No family.

Dinner at Schofield mess hall with people from work. Not that the people were a problem.

Mess hall holiday- never again. Or at least now I know what to expect.

Halloween

I had big plans for Halloween this year. I was gonna hit every haunted house/attraction I could find. Halloween crafts all week long, Halloween meals, jack-o-lanterns, fun kids outings, the whole bit.

Well, the month slid by... it came down to the last week and I hadn't hit a single haunted house yet. Derek's on one of his more annoying rotations that has him up at 5:30 and home at 5:30, so he's always tired and not interested in haunted anything.

And I find myself halfway through the week and my babysitters are all going to be at a Halloween party- together. Not that I expected to get anyone-- I mean, c'mon, it's Halloween. What kid doesn't have plans?

So at this point, I decide to pour all my Halloween effort into Friday and Saturday. Friday morning is Avril's Halloween book parade--- dress up as a character from a book and bring the book and march around the school twice while all the parents cheer their kids on.

Avril's costume for Halloween this year is a devil costume. Know any good childrens books about devils? Yeah, me neither. So we opted for the easier route-- a Cinderella costume which she already had for a Cinderella (ok, princess) book she already had.

Isn't my little girl beautiful?

I didn't use enough hairspray or something, because by the time her parade was to start (30 min later), her hair looked like this. Oh, well. She's still so stinkin' cute.

So that night my plan was to hit IHOP for their free Scary Face Pancakes for kids under 12 and then the mermaid show at the Princess Kaiulani Hotel.

Well, neither of those things happened, but we did miraculously find a sitter (a friend of mine hooked us up. How awesome is she?!), so we took advantage of a Halloween date night and got delicious sushi and went to Zombie Prom. Classic love story-- boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love. Parents forbid girl to see boy, girl breaks up with boy, boy commits suicide in local nuclear power plant. Girl mourns boy, boy comes back to life as zombie, campaigns for equal rights for zombies so he can graduate high school and take his girlfriend to prom.

If you ever get the chance to see it, you should. Definitely made for a fun date night.

Saturday morning we got up, made our own scary pancakes (the kind of scary pancakes that it takes about three guesses to figure out what it's supposed to look like and why it's scary) and got dressed.

Borders was "supposedly" doing a Halloween activity with scary stories, a puppet show, a craft and a parade. So we showed up all dressed up and made up and all excited....

and ok, an hour or so late... and of course missed it. I thought with all that stuff we might at least catch the parade by then, but no such luck. Maybe the wrong Borders? Anyway, I let the girls pick out a few books and used my coupon (40% off!) and went home, pretty let down and tired...

By the time we got home, Xandri was asleep, Roman was still napping, Derek was still watching football and Avril wasn't too happy because the day hadn't been fun enough yet.

So we discussed what to do with the rest of the time-- trick or treating and festival thing at Aloha Tower or jack-o-lantern carving and no more driving until the ward trunk-or-treat slash potluck. She opted for jack-o-lanterns and trunk-or-treat, so we got out the pumpkin and she designed the face and I cut it out.

By the time I finished, I was done with Halloween. I got my expectations up too high and tried too hard (well, ok, hard, but not hard enough since they fell through from my own lack of planning) to do all these extra special things that the kids didn't really care about. And then ran out of energy when the day wound down to what they really did want to do.

But I pulled it together anyway and we went to the trunk-or-treat slash potluck (about thirty minutes late which didn't improve my mood any) but when we got there....

"Look at the camera, Roman!"

Xandri made this face BEFORE Daddy said "Silly faces!"



Silly Faces

And why was Roman missing from the previous pictures?

Ahh..... here we go....

The sole picture I got of Derek that actually turned out. Hawaiian pirate. Meaning pirate top, bottom in flipflops and cargo shorts.

and found that we were actually quite fashionably late and it was an easy, laid-back affair (c'mon, where did I think I was? We're in Hawai'i!) I let it all go and enjoyed the potluck (I was a taker this time, I'll admit it) while the kids ran around with their friends and played on the playground equipment.

When it was time for the trunk-or-treat, there weren't many cars, but they had a lot of candy. By the time the kids were done and we left, I think every kid had gone around to each car at LEAST five times. Which worked out fine for us since that was pretty much the only trick-or-treating they got in this year.

All in all, Halloween was fun for the kids, which is the most important thing in my book. It was disappointing and stressful for me (except the things we actually did), but ended well.

So, if I DO have any lurkers out there, you know, you people who read my blog but never comment, I'm asking you to step out of the shadows and give me your ideas. What do you do to make holidays and birthdays special? What kind of traditions do you have for special days, any of them really, but Halloween specifically?...... Bueller?..... Bueller?.....

Derek's Birthday

So it was Derek's birthday on Monday- the man is back to a youthful three syllables at twenty-eight years old. He was king of the world for a day- even though he was studying for a test Tuesday morning. He picked his meals for the day: German pancakes with apple pie filling for breakfast, banana bread and smoothies for lunch (I learned that it's highly advisable to use the black bananas. Otherwise... it's just weird. It turned out white and a little mushy and way too banana-flavored. 'Course, I think I may not have cooked it quite long enough. But still.), and "spider pizza" for dinner. (This one turned out even better than the one pictured, but since I didn't take a picture this time, this is what you get.) Then of course, the usual as far as cakes go: Dark Chocolate with chocolate pudding "frosting".

Well, ok, maybe picking your meals for the day doesn't really make you king for a day. But I did give him extra back and head scratches (he's a very itchy guy) and back rubs. As for gifts, it was somewhat anti-climactic. Thanks to my dad and Ethan and Amiee (youngest siblings), he got a little pre-birthday something (a cd about Joseph Smith by Truman Madsen and some delicious snacks. He also hoardes snacks.). Thanks to Zan he got a weird rose card- which he then opened to read, "Ok, honestly, who cares what the card looks like? Just take your cash and be glad I remembered." He loved it.

So what did I get him? Well, first of all, we gave him a bag of fun-sized Snickers, some dark chocolate Cadbury bars and some other gourmet dark chocolate squares. Then I followed this up with a world map. Which begs a background story. We once had a world map. A lovely world map. It was mounted on this styrofoam-type mounting stuff (yeah, no idea what, can you tell?) and it was wonderful. Well, last year I started playing around with antiquing altered books and other things and thought it would be a good idea to try that on the map. Well, shoe polish did NOT work on this stuff. I ruined probably a good quarter of the map with it. About a month ago I started trying to mask the damage and used a stain- which worked perfectly on everything I hadn't already ruined, but did nothing for the damaged portion. So it's already ruined. What can it hurt? I took a match to the corner.

Well, I guess it looks... alright. But mostly weird. Not like a cool display piece. More like a weird burnt map that would need explaining anytime anyone looked at it. So I got him a new one. Frankly, I like this one better anyway.

Finally, I got him a new Lord of the Rings sword. He already has Anduril, the sword of Aragorn, which he reforged from the shards of Narsil; as well as the sword of the Witchking. I got him Herugrim, the sword of King Theodrin. Unfortunately, the sword didn't arrive until today, so it missed the actual birthday. In any case, he opened his package today and loved the sword. Here he is, weilding his new toy:

Meanwhile... what do you think was happening to the packing peanuts?







They had a ball. And then we spent at least 1 1/2 hours cleaning up the mess. It was atrocious. But I did figure out that you can eliminate the annoying static cling by spraying them with water. Amazing.

Christmas Break Part 1: The Trip Over

***WARNING: This post includes pictures of gross doggy vomit!***

So. The Break.

Well, suffice it to say it was an adventure. We opted to drive halfway across the country, 24 hours straight through. With two children, ages 1 and 3. With two black lab mix puppies, age 6 months.

Thanks to my dear friend Alana, the girls were relatively well-behaved and enjoyable: she lent us their portable DVD player for the trip. 17 viewings of the Little Mermaid later, we arrived at our destination.

Oh, wait. How could I forget to mention? The puppies... yeah, those little mutts... yes, we love them, yes, they are a part of our family, but honestly! We were this close to leaving them to explore in the wilds of Nebraska. Just as a warning, I will mention here that there are some rather disgusting pictures that I can't help but include in this. So if you've a weak stomach, you may want to discontinue reading... or at least close your eyes when you get close.

Why, you ask?

Well, it seems that about 30 minutes into our trip, I heard their telltale pre-barfing noise. I mentioned this to Derek, at which point he started making fun of me for thinking they had a barfing noise, and that I knew what it was. Then Something started to smell... we still weren't sure what exactly had happened (and by "we", I mean Derek) and I looked back there and Corporal was licking off his blanket. I told him what I thought happened.

"Corporal's eating his barf."

"Yeah, right, he's just chewing on the blanket."

"No, seriously, I'm positive he just vomited and is now eating it."

"Shut up-- how sure?"

"Honestly, I'm 99.9% sure that's exactly what happened."

Next gas station, we got out and upon closer inspection discovered that, (surprise!) I was right.
In any case, at least the little monster had the decency to do his thing in the corner and then clean up after himself. Kitty was less thoughtful.
Not 15 minutes down the road, we looked at each other in horror as the pungent scent filled our cramped car. We immediately found a gas station and pulled over.

This is the worst part. Well, first the funny part, then the worst.

We went to the back of the car to check the damage. We opened the back of the car and this is what greeted us:


Yes, that's Corporal's head covered in dog barf. Kitty was completely clean. They both looked up at us like, "Hey guys! What's up?"

So naturally, we let them out to see what the damage was inside. Once out, Corporal of course needed to clean himself off, so he shook. Chunks went flying everywhere- on our car, the car behind us... even on Derek. It really was a good thing it was such a funny sight, because I think Derek would have just driven away at that point otherwise. Fortunately for the pups, he was still laughing.

After he shook himself off, Derek grabbed a windshield squeegee (gross, I know) and squeegee-ed him off. The poor little monster was shivering something fierce, but he was happy to be clean.

Unfortunately for us, Corporal wasn't the only target. Kitty (and possibly Corporal had thrown up through the back of the kennel. So the blanket they were on was covered (and now in the dump). There was so much vomit, that Derek had to fork it onto a plate:


After that fiasco, they really didn't have much left to throw up, so there was just a little dry heaving- which is, of course, disgusting enough on its own- they had nasty, smelly mucous dripping from their mouths. And that was just 300 miles into our 1600 mile voyage.

As it happened, the rest of the trip went rather uneventfully. We drove safely and averted the predicted storm (which we would have hit should we have broken our trip into two days), arriving in time for the, what is it now, fifth? annual Derek and Adam Zickgraf Christmas Party?

To be continued...

Christmas Zickgraf-Style

This is how it works at my house. Melody is my muse. This is my composition. I can only hope that's a compliment.

Thanksgiving Celebrations

Thanksgiving this year was fun. You've already read up to Tuesday before T-giving, so continuing on...

My cousin opted to come out to visit up in our little podunk 'Ville because she wanted a low-key, quiet Thanksgiving break to study for a business test she had coming up. So that's what she got. We kept it low-key. So low-key I can't really remember what we did besides a couple of movies and Thanksgiving dinner. We also, of course, were sure to hit up Pancake City for their amazing pancakes and both opted for the same pancakes as last time- Georgia Peach for me Cinnamon Apple for Camas. Mouthwatering.

Anyway, so actual T-giving was really cool. I'm really proud of my table display, which was also inspired by Melody.

I think I did a good job glossing them over with Picasa, too. I bought a 5 lb. turkey breast and we cooked that instead of a full bird. We had honey cornbread, delicious mashed potatoes and gravy, yams and apples (which I've decided for good that I really honestly just don't like), this amazing chutney that Camas brought with her for us, nutritious salad, Passion Punch and our famous and absolutely amazing crumble top apple pie.

The secret is in the preparation of the apples and in the crumble topping. For the apples, it's very straightforward but takes a while. Just use a potato peeler to peel down 4-5 large apples and follow whatever recipe you have. I'm too lazy to post the one I have. Unless I get requests. It's just the consistency of those apples is amazing. And my favorite apples- Rome- weren't available this year, so we used something else, I can't even remember what. It might have been honeycrisp, but I could just be thinking of Katherine's blog on those.

Friday was also low-key. We made sure to watch The Office and Seinfeld. That's our classic hang-out mix: funny movies/shows and cooking. That's our special time together.

Love you Camas! Even though I know you won't read this because "who has time to read blogs?!"

And then Saturday came much too soon and I dropped my favorite relative off at the airport. Until next time...

Halloween: A Choose Your Own Adventure Tale

Option 1:

Halloween dawned bright and crisp. The perfect fall morning began early at our house-- but not too early.
Avril and I got up and I dressed her in her darling, hand-stitched princess costume I had completed weeks in advance. Her hair fell in perfect ringlets on her shoulders and was complimented by a gleaming tiara. Since it was chilly out, I insisted that she also wear her little fur shawl and muff- my little princess couldn't be cold at school, now could she?!


While Avril was at school, Xandri and I had an adventurous morning- we baked the morning away, making dozens of Halloween sugar cookies: witches, ghosts, skulls, goblins. Then we decorated them with delicious homemade frosting, all colored remarkably well. Of course, it wouldn't be a true holiday without the sprinkles, so while Xandri licked the frosting off her fingers and dipped her little fingers back for more, I smiled lovingly and gently wiped her clean.

We dressed up the puppies in their sweet little homemade costumes, Kitty was- you guessed it- a kitty, and The Corporal also dressed as himself in dress blues. We took them to a dog Halloween party in which they tied for first place in the costume contest. When Avril got home, we all went trunk-or-treating (Derek was able to come as well since school was canceled for Halloween), holding hands and skipping from car to car singing Halloween songs.


That evening, to the Halloween soundtrack I had spent the past month assembling, Avril helped me in the kitchen as we prepared a delectable Halloween feast, complete with spider pizza, ghoulish salad, bloody beverages, and snake bites for dessert. In between helping me, Avril would alternately help Derek as he carved out magnificent jack-o-lanterns to sit on our porch. After dinner was over, we had plenty of time to play tidy up the kitchen, clean the girls and puppies, put all of our costumes back on (Derek was an Army general and I was the spitting image of Lara Croft) and head out the door for a night full of trick-or-treating. The girls and puppies all behaved perfectly as neighbor after neighbor answered their doors with oohs and ahs. We finally arrived home exhausted, but full of candy and contentment as we tucked in our darling, tired little girls to sleep at 8:30pm, just in time for Derek and I to settle in for a romantic, but scary movie.



Option 2:

Ok, I don't even know where the morning went. Avril made it to school, dressed and with her hair in a ponytail. I still wasn't sure what to do about a costume, I had a couple ideas that hadn't exactly panned out and I was out of time. Somehow, though, the morning disappeared with none of my frantically laid plans actually coming to fruition. I wound up sticking her in a little dress that was much to small (pictured on Xandri in the beginning pictures) and some borrowed wings to be a fairy for the trunk-or-treat.

And Xandri wore Avril's ladybug costume-- yeah, Avril's costume, which she wore at 4 months of age, also fit my Xandri-- at just shy of 1 year of age.


However, I did manage to make some sugar cookies: all skulls and ghosts, since I knew how to make those without cookie cutters (don't ask me why HyVee didn't have any decent cookie cutters). They wound up being frosting-less since I didn't have any cream cheese and I refuse to make any other kind of frosting. Sadly, most of them turned out extra-crispy since I'm still getting used to how hot my oven cooks.


I also did manage to make a spider pizza and some delicious desserts called snake bites-- a layered dessert with creamy, yogurt-y layers with strawberry Jell-O layers. However, in order to have the time to do this (since I started late and didn't plan it out well), we missed trick-or-treating. For our kids at least. Everyone else in the neighborhood and everywhere else in town managed to knock on our door-- about every 20 seconds, or at least as long as it took me to get back in the kitchen to get my hands back in the dough yet again.


While I was cooking, though, Derek was, at the direction of Avril, carving emotional pumpkins-- an angry one, a happy one and a grumpy one (pictured in that order, left to right). It required pretty much all of Derek's creative juices to figure out how to differentiate angry and grumpy in a jack-o-lantern. In my opinion, it was a smashing success.

And the soundtrack that I'd planned on making? Yeah, I just downloaded 2 or 3 songs and we listened to them over and over until Derek made me turn them off.

The dog-costume contest I didn't know about until after OTHER people posted pictures of their winning pooches...

Anyway, even though we didn't go trick-or-treating (which Avril figured out was the keyword to getting candy from us), I still consider our Halloween a success. So we didn't go quite according to plan... We still had a blast and Avril and Xandri loved it.


And I picked up Avril's new costumes from Wal-Mart after Halloween. Who can beat 75% off? Like she knew the difference, anyway. She LOVES her new costumes (she also has a witch costume, not pictured. That's reserved for next year). (Oh, and confession... all the costume pictures of the girls were not taken on Halloween. No, they were taken over Thanksgiving break...)

Oh, and the scary, romantic movie? Yeah, actually it was The Invisible, which was more like an unintentional comedy. It wasn't that scary, it was ridiculously romantic and overall, we were laughing AT it, not with it in the end.

Also, the following pictures were taken the Friday before Halloween, when Derek and I attended something like a frat party for Halloween. All the med students (unmarried, that is) were there and it was my (naive, yes, I know) first experience at such a party. It was pretty much just like the movies. All my party education comes from the movies... how sad is that? No longer!

This picture I had to put up because in the other one I'm making a really weird face... like I'm trying to be tough but came out looking sick.