The Adventure Continues

So after a nice restful night in our fancy pants hotel room...wait. Hotel room, with kids. Yeah, not so restful. Let's just say once it became light outside again, we ventured off on more of our adventure in paradise. By the light of day it was much easier to see the view from our room:

Alex really liked it:

And now you can see the pools in all their daytime glory:

After a yummy breakfast of cinnamon rolls we made our first stop at the beach. Where else would you go when staying at a beach resort? While Grandma, Grandpa and Cousin Fred wandered down the beach:

the kids entertained themselves in this delightful pile of sand:

Ella preferred posing on top:

While Alex preferred tunneling through it:

And of course his favorite beach time activity:

Eating it.

I was trying really hard to get a picturesque photo of Ella with the ocean behind her and she was just not cooperating.

Come on Ella. Turn around.

Fine, mom. Cheese! Are you happy?

Are we done yet?

What? You wanted me to smile?

What was that? Fishy lips?

OK, I posed, now can we be done?

She's such a goof and that's why I love her.

Now you didn't think you'd get away without a pretty beach picture did you? Here you go:

Those would be my grubby flip flops and Gods great ocean. Great pair.

And how's this for a pretty picture:

Man, he's good looking.

After the beach we headed over to where all the shops and restaurants were:

It was very quaint. However, our purpose for being there had nothing to do with shopping and everything to do with this:

ICE SKATING!!! I love ice skating. And ever since watching a Madeline that had ice skating in it Ella has been wanting to go, so of course at the first opportunity I had to take her. Seeing as we live in the south, this was the first and probably last opportunity. It was the smallest little rink ever, but perfect for the first timer. Ella was a little nervous at first, but pretty soon she and daddy were doing jumps:

I had Ella duty most of the time and Anton had Alex duty:
Alex actually hated it, but hated being left out even more. So he endured the skating just so he could be with mommy and daddy. I think he secretly learned to love it in the end. He also did consent to letting Grandma hold him for a bit so Mommy and Daddy could have a break:

We had so much fun! But after Anton and Ella took a spill together we had to call it quits. She wouldn't go back out on the ice and us adults had the sorest feet in the world.

So there you go. That's how you manage to get the beach and ice into the same day. We grabbed some lunch afterwards then headed back home. The kids were too tired and cranky to do anything else. And now we are back at home planning for the next big adventure, which will be hosting all the extended local family for a New Year's Eve party. I can't wait. Wish me luck.

I couldn't help but leave you with this. Argh! He is too cute!

Arrival of the In-Laws

Well, they are here. After traveling all day Christmas day and spending the night in a hotel, they finally made it to our house. They hadn't been here more than 5 minutes before they were already busting out gifts. Ella and Alex got the cutest jammies and blankets made by Grandma and Aunt Sarah respectively:

I love the colors on them:

Anton and I got gift cards and money, the always appreciated gift:

Anton got his dad a hat with the name of the ship that he served on when he was in the Navy:

He's worn it everywhere and I wouldn't be surprised to find him sleeping in it. He really likes it. We got Anton's mom a light to use when quilting:

She really likes quilting so hopefully it will get good use.

The next day we took Grandma and Grandpa to the Aviation Museum. They had never been before, but since we have been a million times I'll will spare you all the airplane pictures all over again and show you only two:

G&G enjoying the displays.

And Ella and Alex playing with the toys. Ella threw quite the fit when we made her leave. I'm sure people thought I was kidnapping her the way she was screaming "DADDY!!" Over and over again. Oh well.

Anton has a cousin that lives near here and he works at one of the local beach resorts. He hooked us up with a room last night so we could go and enjoy the beach close-up. It was a posh place. It had a full kitchen:

We got our own room:

And it had a fabulous view, though at night all you could see was the pools:

Ella didn't really care that we were staying in the lap of luxury. She would much rather have spent all her time playing with her new LeapPad:

At least I know she likes her present. But we did manage to drag her away for some hotel exploring. It's a tradition I have, that whenever I'm staying in a nice hotel I have to go wander all over it, from top to bottom. Sadly, since these are actually condos and not a real hotel there wasn't as much to see. But we did wander around the pools:

And out onto the beach, where since it was dark there wasn't too much to see. But I used my camera to light things up a bit.

Once we got the kids in bed, we left G-ma to make sure they didn't die in their sleep and Anton and I went and sat in the hot tub and swam in the pool. It was so nice. Then finally we headed in the general bed direction ourselves.

Oh yeah, and we had dinner earlier in the evening at this BBQ place that was so deliciously fabulous that I ate myself almost sick. It was sooooo good.

Tomorrow I will continue with the trip adventures, and I will leave you to ponder what kind of day could involve both beach and ice. Because that's the kind of day we had.

Merry Christmas!

I can't believe that Christmas has come and gone. We've spent a busy past 3 days celebrating like crazy. On Sunday night we drove to a house near here that has over 250,000 lights over 3 acres. It was really cool. It was also really cold outside. All we needed was a little snow to make it perfect.

We only had our old cruddy camera with us, so not the best pictures. But take my word, there were a lot of lights. I also snapped a couple just for fun shots:

This was a tree made of signed CD's and lights.

And these were plastic cups with the lights shoved through them. Both really cool ideas.

We spent our Christmas Eve with our friends Andre and Tonia. We all pitched in together to make a huge and fabulous meal.

I ate so much it hurt. But it was oh so good. We had a honey glazed ham that was to die for! We all sat around afterwards just talking and watching Christmas shows on TV. And since their family was all so cute in their matching outfits I had to take a picture of them:

It was so much fun. Thanks Andre and Tonia!

We came home afterwards and finished up all the gift wrapping and helped out Santa with getting the gifts arranged. I made a deal with Ella that if Santa gave me the gifts to bring into the house, he was allowed to come to our house. She is so afraid of Santa. So after doing my part of the deal this is how it all looked:

I could sit in the dark for hours staring at lit Christmas trees. I love it. But it was after midnight at that point so we headed to bed for a long winter's nap.

The kids slept in until 8. They really don't get the whole presents thing yet. I was wide awake at 6 something debating if it was normal for a mom to wake their kids up on Christmas. I think I was more excited than them. What I wanted to see most of all was their first reaction to the presents, and I got some pretty good ones.

Ella is saying "LOOK!!" She had just spied her LeadPad and settled straight in to playing with it.

Alex also saw the LeapPad and could have cared less that he had a giant yellow Tonka truck to play with.

What a cutie!

We had gotten them a box full of band instruments, and Anton had to bust them open to keep Alex from stealing all of Ella's gifts.

He was satisfied with that. He really did want every gift Ella opened. I think he played more with Ella's Little Mermaid cell phone and Dora doll than any toys he was given. I tried so hard to get him boy toys and he still wants the girl ones. What am I to do?

After doing the Santa gifts and stockings we moved on to the second most important part of Christmas morning, breakfast.

Now my mom makes homemade cinnamon rolls every Christmas morning. However, I am completely baking dysfunctional when it comes to anything with yeast in it. So I'm all about the Pillsbury canned cinnamon rolls. Yum. Bring it on.

Then after that short intermission it was back to the ripping and tearing open of the gifts.

And this continued on for a short while. I made it a point to drag it out as long as possible. We opened all the toys and assembled everything then let the kids play for a bit. Just so the whole thing would last a bit longer. I didn't get many pictures after this point because I too was opening gifts so you will just have to picture it in your head.

My main gifts were a microwave, since Anton had broken the rotating plate in my old one and it was almost as cheap to just get a now one than replace the plate, and a day spa package to get a massage, manicure and pedicure. My hubbie is so good to me. I also got all sorts of other little things.

I got Anton running stuff. A running magazine, a running mp3 player, running headphones, running ID, etc. He's really into running. He even went running today just to try it all out.

Ella got the largest gift by far.

This was from Grandma. She absolutely loves it. She takes her LeapPad in there with her Disney Princess book and sits forever. I may have to relocate it to her bedroom though, it clashes with my living room decor.

Alex got lots of trucks and doesn't care a bit about them. Silly boy. I also got him a pound-a-peg bench, which Ella has played with more than him.

Looks like I got all the wrong toys for the wrong kids. Oh well. They share amongst themselves anyways.

Then, sadly, it all came to an end. It always ends too quickly. And you are left with this:

I love it. Christmas messes are the best. It's almost like getting gifts all over again when you are cleaning up and find something buried under all the paper. "Hey! I forgot about this one!" We ate leftovers from last night and it was just as good as having made the whole meal today, but better since I didn't have to make it! I think this whole Christmas Eve dinner is the way to go.

And now we have spent the rest of the evening playing with our new toys and getting the house ready for the arrival of the in-laws tomorrow. They will be here for 10 days. Anton is planning all sorts of wild adventures. But that will be another story.

We wish you all the very best Christmas and a wonderful rest of the holidays!

My Favorite Christmas Tradition

So you might think that opening presents, or making baked goods would be my favorite Christmas activity. However, you would be wrong. My absolute favorite thing to do at Christmas is to build gingerbread houses. I'm not so fancy as to use real gingerbread, oh no, I go ghetto all the way and use pure graham cracker goodness. I think it makes it much more of a challenge so that when you make a true masterpiece you can say, "And yeah, I made it all with graham crackers." And since the more people you have creating candy piles the better, we invited our friends Tonia and Andre over.

We had soooo much candy:

Everyone was intently crafting away:

And of course eating candy all the way too:


After much graham cracker crumbling, frosting sliding, and house collapsing we all ended up with some fabulous creations. Even Ella got in on the action, so first off is Ella's, um, thing:

She did most of it by herself.

Anton made a post hurricane Florida beach house:

It was held up with pretzel stick stilts, but they just weren't doing their job so the base got boarded up.

Tonia went the festive direction with Santa's Workshop/Country Church:

Andre went all the way and broke out the big guns:

See before you, Hogwart's Castle! Isn't that fantastic?

Now for the piece de resistance. For many years I have been making some sort of house other than the typical everyday gingerbread house. I've made lighthouses, tree houses, White Houses, doll houses and more. This year I made this:

The tepee. Complete with Native American and horse:

Crackling fire and traditional pottery:

And the day's kill hanging out to dry:

This was so much fun!

And since we were having so much fun we decided to cheat and open some Christmas presents early. But not too many, just the ones we gave to each other.

We made Andre and Tonia open theirs first. I love the reaction we got!

Here's what we gave them:

I was sneaky sneak last week while I was babysitting their kids and took some pictures of them then had them printed and framed it. I wanted to keep it myself it turned out so cute!

Then we dug into our gift from them. Ella did the ripping honors:

And we got:

The Cities and Knights expansion pack for Settlers of Catan! Hooray! You hear that Emily and John? I hearby challenge you to a match when you get back!

So after much sugar ingesting and some great gift giving we called it a night. And what a fabulous night it was too!

My Favorite Christmas Cookies

Of all the cookies my mom ever made while I was growing up, the mint filled chocolate cookie has to be my favorite. They were only made at Christmas, because quite honestly they are a pain to make. But once a year it's worth it to pull out all the equipment and just go for it. The recipe came from my Great-Grandmother, and not to let the heritage recipe die, I of course have to make them every year too.

There is a very essential piece of equipment that I own solely for making these cookies, and that is the cookie press:

I asked for one for Christmas a few years ago as visions of these cookies danced in my head. It's quite the contraption, but without it I could never end up with cookies that look as good as this:

Now these cookies are quite good all by themselves, but what sets them apart from your average boring chocolate Christmas cookie is this:

The mint frosting. You take a big dollop of this stuff and slap it between two of the cookies, and voila! You have the perfect Christmas cookie.

Don't they look divine? They actually get better the longer they sit because the frosting hardens up while the cookies soften up and you get the perfect soft, chocolaty, minty cookie combo that makes you eat far more than is truly healthy for any one person. And these cookies can be deceptive. Since there are two sandwiched together you feel like you are really only eating one cookie for every two you actually eat. That gets dangerous. We had to hide these to make sure we had some to give away.

Now since I know you are all craving these delectable delights I have condescended to share my recipe with you. Aren't you pleased? Here it is:

Mint Filled Chocolate Cookies
3 squares unsweetened baking chocolate 2 cups flour
½ cup butter 2 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar ½ tsp salt
1 egg ¼ cup milk

Melt chocolate. Cream together butter and sugar. Add chocolate, then egg. Add dry ingredients alternately with milk. Roll out dough and cut out with cookie cutters or use a cookie press. Bake at 400ºF for 8 minutes. When cool sandwich two cookies together with mint frosting between.

Mint Frosting:
2 T butter, melted 3 cups powdered sugar
½ tsp vanilla 1/8 tsp mint extract
4-5+ tsp milk

Blend melted butter and powdered sugar in a bowl. Add vanilla, mint and milk and mix until of spreading consistency, adding more milk as needed. May tint frosting with green food coloring.

Make these. You won't be disappointed.

And not to leave the rest of my second favorite Christmas confections unrepresented, here is a sampling of the others.

Mmmm. Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Soft, chewy, with crunchy chips. Sooo good.

The Magic Cookie, aka Almost Candy Bars. Everything sinful about dessert wrapped up into one neat little yummy package.

The butter toffee. Butter, sugar and chocolate. How can you go wrong?

And last, but not least, the sugar cookie. We don't normally make these, but I thought Ella might have fun decorating them. I was right.

She liked to make very large piles of frosting in one place on every cookie she decorated.

Takes after me I guess.

So now that I have you all salivating and craving cookie goodness, go forth and bake yourself some Christmas goodies before it's too late!

Christmas Photo Shoot

So just to rub in the fact that we don't have any snow or cold weather down here, we decided to take our Christmas photos on the beach. And because we are too cheap to hire a photographer and none of our friends were available to drag to the beach we figured we would do it ourselves. As long as you've got a tripod and a timer no problem right? Well our first attempt didn't work out so well:

"Come on guys, hold hands. Look at the camera! Hurry up the camera is going to go off!"

After a couple more not so hot photos we actually managed to score a pretty good one.

Can you believe that everyone is actually looking at the camera at the same time?!? Alex isn't smiling but I'll take what I can get. I made up our cards already and ordered them, but I'm not going to put it on here just yet. Just so those who are actually getting a card from us can see it in real life first. And if any of you want a card email me your address!

But just in case the family photo didn't turn out I was snapping pictures of everyone individually too. Alex, of course, flashed his trademark face:

And Ella struck the model pose:

And then one of the boys:

Then Ella started getting goofy:

I wonder where she gets it from.

While I'm running around snapping all these photos Anton is doing this:

Maybe for the Christmas video card? Who knows.

I tried getting the kids together, but that ended up being harder than getting the whole family together. They just didn't want to hold still:

Wait! Alex! Come back!

Then we headed down to the water to play a bit. It was a little cold, but that didn't stop Ella:

She was loving it! She ended up VERY wet.

Silly us forgot to bring an extra change of clothes for anyone. Alex wasn't a big fan of the water.

He stood just out of reach of it and acted all whiny and squeamish. Silly boy.

I let Anton have free reign of the camera for a short while, so amazingly there will be pictures of me on this blog.

Of course, only the ones I deem good enough. I left out all the ones that showed my double chin. Yuck!

Isn't my little boy the cutest thing in the whole world?

Both my boys are.

After finishing with the serious photos we let the kids play in the sand.

Ella did a good job of rubbing sand all into her wet jeans:

And then making sure her head was thoroughly covered too.

Rascal.

And of course I got a whole slew of pretty beach pictures never intended for a Christmas card.

I tried to get a picture of all our feet, but it just wasn't working out.

She is so cute! And throw a beautiful ocean behind her and it makes for the perfect photo.

Abandoned shoes.

And last, but not least, the striped beach:

They had just graded it and it matched the pier perfectly!

I was actually brave enough to take my big expensive camera out onto the beach. I'm glad I did because we got some fantastic shots!

So for those of you stuck in the middle of the snowstorm, we're thinking of you, but not really wishing to be you. We'll take our white Christmas on the white sand beach, thank you.

The First Christmas Gift

For some time now my pajama pants have been getting frailer and frailer. They've led a long and productive life, but their time was drawing to a close. One day they got a small tear in them. Slowly over the next few days the tear kept growing larger and larger until this was the result:

Oh, poor pajamas! You have been so good to me. But the time had come for a replacement of the pajamas.

Now, having been on the phone with my sister while she was shopping for my Christmas gift, I happened to know what it was. So I called and asked her permission to open it early. Permission was granted and Christmas was officially begun.

I carefully slit the tape and peeled back the paper to reveal the cutest pair of white flannel pajama pants that a girl could ever have.

(Anton tried to take a picture of me changing into them but I threatened him. He changed his mind.) See how cute they are with snowflakes? And they also have a silver pinstripe to them. And the pink ribbon draw string is fabulous.

So thank you Andrea for my first Christmas gift of the year! They are wonderful! And now you might be asking yourself, whatever happened to the trusty old jammies? Well, they went the way of all the world.

The Marathon

This weekend Anton ran the Baton Rouge Beach Marathon. While I don't understand the appeal of running 26.2 miles, I'm supportive of him and his crazy ideas of fun. Since Baton Rouge is quite a ways from home we drove up the night before. We spent the evening driving the marathon course. Along the way we saw this interesting sight:

Hundreds of birds were gathering in the trees just in this one section of the lake. I had to get out and snap a few pictures. What's odd is all the black birds are in the tops of the trees and all the white birds on the bottom. Strange. But it also looked really cool with the sunset behind it:

Baton Rouge sure does have nice sunsets:

I got my cuties all posing in front of it too:

Some people conveniently turned their car lights on right as I was taking the picture so Ella was nice and lit. Anton wasn't so lucky, I had to use the flash for him:

And Alex, well he just wouldn't hold still:

And see his face? That's what he gets for eating the sand! After our bit o' beach fun we headed back to the hotel.

Alex wanted to go out and play with the elevator more. He was so tired. We all went to bed around 9:30, late for the kids, early for us. Of course I slept terribly since it wasn't my bed. Plus we had a king size bed and all they gave us were a million little bitty down pillows. They were awful. Like sleeping on mini marshmallows. Not fun.

The next morning we got up at 5:30 AM. Yuck. Luckily the kids were too tired to complain. We got one of the last parking spots in the close parking lot, thankfully, and Anton began warming up. Finally it was time for the race to begin. But wait. Where's Anton? Oh there he is:

In line for the bathroom. Nothing like leaving the essentials to the last minute. But he managed to get to the starting line in time. And then it was, on your marks, get set,


GO!!!

People running everywhere! And of course I couldn't manage to get an in focus shot of Anton starting the race:

Who looks that happy when they know they have 26 miles left to go? Crazy boy. This was an absolutely beautiful place to hold a marathon, though. The course went around a big lake by LSU:


And around the lake are all sorts of southern plantation style houses. You know, the ones with the columns and wrap-around porches and such. Here's one I managed to snap a picture of:

I think this was actually a frat house. Rough living. What a beautiful place. And if forced to run a marathon this would be the place to do it. But anyways, back to the race.

There were a couple spots around the course that we were able to walk and see Anton running.

Here he is at about 1.5 miles. No sweat.

Here's the 5 mile mark. Still looking good. The sun was just staring to peek over the trees and such about this point. The kids were being so good. I guess the tiredness hadn't really kicked in yet.

Alex hasn't learned yet that you don't stare straight into the sun.

And Ella? Well she's never one to turn down a photo moment. Model in the making.

We headed back around to the starting point to catch Anton at the end of lap one. (It was a 2 lap race.)

Look how happy he is! Does that look like someone who has just run 13 miles? I would've been dead long before. He was doing so good! Back around the lake to our other viewing posts.

Mile 14.5ish.

Mile 18. At this point he told me he was starting to feel it and felt like he had a blister on his foot. Uh oh. But he pressed on.

While waiting for Anton at the finish line Andrea and her kids showed up to help cheer Anton on. The kids found this light post very amusing:

Around, and around, and around. Even after Clayton took a flying leap off of it and cut his elbow.

After waiting for about a half hour after I calculated Anton should be finishing the race I started to get concerned. Where was he? Time kept passing and more people kept finishing and still no Anton. An hour after when he had planned to finish I was about ready to send a medical team out after him when I finally spotted him coming around the final corner. He was barely jogging, but was determined to see it through to the end. And finish he did:

I am so proud of him!! He finished in 4 hours 32 minutes. Right about mile 23 him muscles all started cramping up and his arms went tingly. He needed sugar. He ended up walking the last 3 miles. Poor guy. But he came through victorious anyways. Here's a video of his finish:



You can hear Ella yelling "Go Daddy!" I had to teach her to yell it loud because she kept whispering it. She had it down by the end. I really wanted her to go run the final stretch with him but she wouldn't. Oh well.

We took Anton back to the hotel to shower. Then we whisked him off for more activity. No rest for him. He could barely stand up or walk. We got some lunch then headed over the the destroyer the USS Kidd:

It was used during WWII and onwards. They let you climb all around and inside of it. The kids were having a blast. They kept climbing up in all the bunks:

Alex thought the ammunition was more fun:

Anton managed to find the only soft chair on the whole ship:

To get from one level to the other you had to climb up and down these really steep sets of stairs. Andrea opted out of the upper decks due to her fear of heights, so trying to navigate the stairs with 4 children and only one whole adult (Anton wasn't much help) was a bit of a challenge.

Alex kept getting really mad that we wouldn't let him do it himself.

The early morning was kicking in full force now.

Ella had all sorts of fun playing with the helmets that had laying all over the deck:

She even poses in military garb. Lane got in on the action too.

And I couldn't resist taking a shot at Anton while he was down for the count:

Poor crippled guy.

And after all the fun and kid wrestling we said goodbye to Andrea and kids and we all headed home. It was a long sleepy drive, and I was forced to do it all myself. I made Anton put on a movie to keep me awake. But we finally made it home, and a lot of pain killers later and some good sleep and Anton can finally walk down the stairs, as long as he goes backwards.

Good job baby, I'm proud of you!!