The cousins

My parents grandchildren in one place. First and only time to dates. Pretty cool.

the youngest: Hudson the early walker, happy-go-lucky, early riser, bruiser of a thing.
Remick: the never stop talking, cute as a button, full of personality from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, pistol
Kaylee: the inexhaustible, Lady and Tramp-loving, limber, always saying something, incessantly climbing sprite
Makili: the easily wonder-struck, sunny, often-whiny, gear-obsessed, artsy, love
Jenna: the ultra-competitive, quietly stubborn, arm around her younger cousins, champ
Casey: the chatty, excitable, sensitive, introspective, eyes-wide-open, darling
Austin, the perpetually positive, painfully sweet, exceedingly curious, open-minded sprout
And the oldest, Brittany: the soft-spoken, easy-going, family-loving, beauty
And the newest cousin: Ege, the garrulous, generous, kind-hearted, messy, Turk!

So many pictures, it's overwhelming

I have so many pictures from our trip it is actually overwhelming. Fun too, but overwhelming. These are two of our favorites from San Francisco. My mom, sick as a dog, played tour guide, her favorite role. We took Ege to the Golden Gate bridge, and down Lombard Street, and then of course to my favorite place, China Town. He couldn't get over that really truly every sign was in Chinese. I got my fill of cheap stuff that is super cool. Until next year that is:) And a bonus of having an exchange student is that they can take family pictures for you:)

(surprise) reunion

Whole family together for the first time in 3 years (with 3 new members since that time!) So lovely, despite sickness, jet lag, etc. So worth it!

About photography.

I find that as my children grow, it is harder to photograph them. When they were babes like this sweet friend, Vita, their genuine beings just show through. They just are without effort.
Remick still is on the cusp of this age, so earnest about every emotion. And sometimes he'll hold still long enough for a photograph, but still not into the soul like with babies.
And with Makili, there is the camera behavior:

And besides he's just always moving so fast and in so many directions it is impossible to in any way capture what is going on with, his obsession at the moment with learning math, or winning, or drawing in his diary, or "doing homework." How he loves Diego, and learning about animals, and ice skating, always ice skating, asking every morning if we are going to skate today. He can't hold still, even in bed for the moments he is awake before he nods off. He wiggles and squirms, and breaths in your face. But I take pictures sometimes anyway, and sometimes, the texture of his skin and pout of his lips and his disheveled hair make me weak even though I know I'm not capturing "him."
And sometimes in his camera silliness, I see what his real joy looks like in the background and some tiny part of my boy is captured, without any of the complexity of his being and our relationship.
And then there is poor Ege. I just take pictures of him doing laundry:)

My favorite thing about winter

My favorite thing about winter (if you can call it that this year) is the stark beauty of the world around us. Last year our sledding trips at the gold course stand out in the same way as the frozen pond with dramatic skies. It's like our Big Sky time of year.

teaching friends' kids to skate.
while some of our other kids lay on the ice together to talk in the background.
and around us the Big Skies watching our children, reminding us of our small part of the big world we live in.

A few pictures from the phone

In December, I dropped my iphone in the toilet. And got a new fancy iphone. I was super-careful with my phone when I went in the bathroom, so that it wouldn't fall out of my pocket again, and left it on the stove one day. When I came out I went to make coffee, and turned on the wrong burner, and essentially cooked my phone, which shockingly survived minus one of the cameras. So that sucks.

Here a few old photos though. The back of the house at the beginning stages of building the mudroom, which is now there, though not sided yet. But, we now have a door! And we're working on insulating it, so if there ever is snow we can put our boots in there:)

And in December I went to NYC with my kids. Here's my Ege with Lady Liberty.
and dinosaurs tails gifted to my boys by my dear friend Mary, who moved away:( and I need to call:)

I actually downloaded new pictures to post (shocking I know) and for some reason I can't get to them from bloggeR???

Time together

I don't really know what to say about the frequency of my posting lately. I just can't seem to get into a groove. Can't seem to pull out the camera as often as I should. Can't seem to do a lot of things. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't time to put the blog aside for a while, but I so love to look back at my previous writing and pictures that I can't bring myself to do that. The truth is that my children are busy and exhausting and don't sit still for photos like they did as infants. And I'm busy too with my many jobs and the endless house project, and did I mention those busy children? Maybe I need a goal for myself. Like two posts a week or something. I don't know. I need to work on this.

I can't even say that I've been a particularly good mother lately. I have my moments though. These pictures are from an early morning walk Makili and I went on together one day at Ann's when he was up to early and threatening to wake the whole house. Sometimes it is difficult to get Makili to go outside, as he is so content to play with legos or cars or draw or whatever, but that day I made him. It was nice to have the time just the two of us to sit by the side of a creek and watch the water go buy, talking about where the water goes and where it comes from. Very philosophical I know.

Family skate plus

We spend an awful lot of time this time of year on ice skates. Last weekend it was so cold, that we couldn't even take the free route and actually paid money to skate. We met up with some friends - the McCalls and half of the Lawrence family to skate in circles.
Ege drew smiles as he went against the flow of traffic. I'm being nice by not posting a picture of him laying on the ice:)
Remick was awesome as usual, though started complaining about being cold after about 10 minutes and then he was out sidelines referee as the other kids came around to check in.
Here are the check-ins relating how many people were not wearing helmets
accounting for close calls,
and generally looking for encouragement.

Makili for his part thought that he needed to try to skate as fast as he possibly could for the entire hour and 15 minutes straight. He crashed a few times, but for the most part it was actually difficult to even get him to slow down enough for a picture. He is really good.And then of course, there were the sillies.

In these parts,

In addition to a certain mom who had a few nervous breakdowns this week, there is a certain member of the family inclined to wear too-big tap shoes around all day stomping out the rhythm of love (or something like that).

Simultaneously, I have another child who, when he is not skating (he skated like 4 hours/day all weekend), is extremely anxious to try out some cross-country skies that were gifted to him by some friends. He's tried out the rug and the grass and determined that in fact, snow would be better.Sometimes these two join forces to entertain together.
I'm just trying to hang on this winter. I've been calling it the winter doldrums. It might also be PMS, I suppose.

Before I forget

I'm running a bitt behind, and I'm trying to get my mojo back, but I don't want to skip important markers of time, so

Before I forget to record them, these are some of the highlights for me of 2011, in no order except the order in which they hopped into my mind, and because I'm playing catch up, I'm sure I've forgotten some:

• Fabulous, wonderful, magical gala wedding of Chris and Emily.
  
• surfing with my cousin Caroline and her boyfriend Jake.
• hitting NYC with 30 exchange students and my friend, Kirsten
  
• pond hockey at the Moffats last winter.
• meeting Ege
• more focused success with the flowers
• short, sweet visits with Nancy and Michael (who apparently play lacrosse) and Sarah and David (and Freddy in utero:)
  
• Prescott Park concerts on the boat with farmer friends.
  
• impromptu bonfire with the Fifields.
• watching Makili ride bikes with Dre.
• moutain biking with Raph in Vermont:)
• Remick's unbelievable independent skating
• flowers
• seeing siding, some trim and a few doors put in their place on our lifelong house project
• meeting Hudson
• bamboo bike building with Gabe.
• Suzanne letting us drop in on the Branford house for dinner with 6 extra people for a perfect sunset dinner
• getting lost in the town forest with Makili and Remick
• mushroom hunting with the Russians
• getting to see Tuan when he came back as a college student.
• watching Remick in his certainty that he is a big kid ALL the time. ie. trying to swim with no help and no life jacket.
• Makili going through the chute at Barters' Creek for the first time with Caroline
• running in the fountain on a HOT day in NYC with Gabrielle and Sam
• a really nice unplanned back porch dinner at the McCall's.
• thrifting with my sweet friend Mary.
• eating Mary's homemade from their own cows frozen yogurt.
• meeting my brother and his family for stolen moments in a deserted park in West Virginia
• flying kites at the top of Agamenticus.
• hiking with Morgan, with holes in her boot in February
• water gun fights in the yard
• Raph's homemade slip and slide.
• Makili's amazing growing skills in the greenhouse.
• Mitchell school playground
• making saurkraut with Mary
• discovering Mackey Skate Park
• a lovely, restful trip to Pittsburgh in November in which train spotting was an actual activity
  
• my parents introducing the kids to the Washington Monument in Washington DC.
• Common Ground Fair
• a really late night trip with Becky to hear Blue Grass with Camille and Stephane.
• Nutcracker with Makili and Ann.
  

Sequins and glitter, balloons and a union

Raph and I brought in the new year at a gorgeous sparkling wedding with candlelight and sparklers and music and glam. We spent the weekend without children, being pampered and glamorous like all the rest of the clan, and watched two people for whom we care greatly commit themselves to each other. What better way to bring in the new year than a celebration of love.

A family trip to the movies.

My parents are in town, which has been lovely. We went to the movies last night to see We bought a Zoo, which I loved. The 4:20 movie was sold out, so we had to wait for the 6:45 movie, which might have been a bit too late.

During the previews, both kids screamed each time on ended. "Mom, is it over? What happened?" For every preview.

Then my dad bought the giant trough of popcorn, which immediately demanded the full attention of the children, particularly Remick, who ate twice his body weight in popcorn. Raph took him to the bathroom twice trying to ward of the inevitable, which came near the end of the movie, when Remick started screaming, "Will you wipe my bum?" At this point Makili was asleep on my lap.

So Raph took Remick, and when we found him again after the movie, Remick was at the video games, with his socks pulled up to his knees, with his little tush hanging out holding a bazooka.

I eventually couldn't carry Makili all the way to the car, so I put him down and he was walking, but I realized after he ran into a door frame really hard that he was walking with his eyes closed.

It was pretty funny.

holiday elving

Nevermind that the mess is overtaking my life. We're making stuff together! We have had such a fun time this year elving. Raph figured out that there were 24 spaces between the ballusters on the railing (who sits there and counts that?), so we made pom-poms for our advent calendar. I'm going to fancify it a bit more next year, with glittery clips and ceramic numbers, but I have really enjoyed the pompoms. And then, there are the ornaments! Salt dough and wood mostly this year. Total love.

Moments at Grammy and Opa's house.

We had a really great time in Pittsburgh with my parents. We visited a bunch of museums where we say dinosaurs, dug for dinosaurs, made our own collection (which happened to be dinosaurs that were red and yellow.)

We had mellow mornings together
Evenings of Dora and snuggles
And lots of attention for both my boys, so that their momma could put her feet up:)

All in all it was a terrific visit.

Hmmm

Makili just asked me how to spell "All drains lead to the ocean."

I was really pondering where he might have heard this, and it just occured to me it was probably Nemo, which he hasn't even seen lately.

Sort of how I feel at the moment

I complained enough about my missing cord that Raph went and pulled out the card reader he was going to give to me for Christmas. But I mean really, I'm a month behind on pictures. Pittsburgh, Thanksgiving, December.

This is Makili in Pgh doing a project where he tries to recreate a famous painting. Clearly this was hard work for him. That's how I feel lately. I feel so unproductive, and yet I never feel like I have any time. Viscious cycle. But I'm excited about many things too.

About the Holiday

I so struggle to walk the line of enjoying Christmas without overdoing the materialism of the holidays. Today we decorated our tree. To start with, I struggle with the tree. I know they grow the trees for the purpose, but it still seems awful to cut so many trees down for a holiday. We tried using a live tree one year, that we would later plant outside, but it died, and we still had the needles all over the ground anyway. So we got a tree this year at a farm stand of a guy we know. I don't know where he gets the trees, but he's a nice guys and works tirelessly, so I guess I felt okay about forking over the $30 for our tree. Last year's mini $5 tree was pretty awesome, but I guess that what you expect when you buy your tree a few days before Christmas. The tree we bought is already dropping needles like Makili drops changes of clothes all over the floor, but who's counting. Decorating it was SO much fun for the boys, and since we've had this tradition of each of us making an ornament for the tree since 2007, it was very fun for the boys to open the ornaments up and have us talk about why we made what we made. They loved it and were immediately obsessed with making more ornaments so their contributions would be noteworthy. I was pretty into that. The boys and Ege discussed the best distribution of ornaments, and where everything should hang. It was really cute.

I've tried to get the boys into making gifts for other people though and I haven't been as successful. As soon as I show Makili something that he could make for someone else, he immediately wants his own, and every time he does a good job on something, even a drawing, it is officially his. Every time I buy a gift for someone, wrap a gift for someone, and include him, he is immediately completely obsessed with what he is getting, where his gifts are. Which of course prompts me to use the old Santa wild card. "Santa won't bring you gifts unless you're good." And that sort of feels yucky to me, even if it does work. The truth is I enjoy getting a really thoughtful gift for someone, making gifts for people, but I don't know how to balance that with really disliking my children's obsession with MORE.

Cute

I find it really endearing that I am listening to Raph who is downstairs reading aloud The 5 People You Meet in Heaven to my 18-year-old exchange student, stopping to make sure he understands what is being read in as sincere a way as he does with Makili.

Can't Touch This.

I can't find the cord to download picture, so I've been rather lazy. Plus I discovered cookies that you roll into dough and slice and I can't seem to control my self.

Anyway, last night, Raph is putting the kids to bed and I listened to the following conversation:

Makili: Dad, will you lay with me?

Raph: What are you going to give me?

Makili: How about that pillow?

Raph: I don't want any material things.

Makili: What are material things?

Raph: Things you can touch.

Makili: Okay. How about a sharp knife?

Raph: I can touch that.

Makili: How about a really high window in the sky?

Raph: You're going to give me a really high window to the sky?

Makili: How about the moon?

Raph: You can't give me the moon!

Makili: How about the dirt under the dirt.


This seriously went on for half an hour. It was awesome how many things Makili came up with that Raph couldn't touch.