Christmas, New Years and everything in between.

The spread on Christmas Eve.



Complete with Christmas-themed jello.



All Lily wants for Christmas is her two front teeth.



I flew to San Diego late Christmas night to attend my grandma's graveside service. She had passed away two weeks before and it was great to gather with cousins and aunts and uncles to honor her and find joy in her being reunited with my grandpa.

The fact that my in-laws live there and I got to spend a couple of days with them was an added bonus. That, and the 70+ degree weather.

The spread on New Year's Eve:



The annual New Year's Eve big-screen slideshow of 2011 pics and videos.



Goodbye 2011. Bring on 2012!

Family visits.

We visit family more often than my blog would indicate - we just don't take a whole lot of pictures because we're enjoying each other too much to bother. My parents and sister came up a few days before Christmas. Among other things, we went ice skating. As if taking pictures of people ice skating wasn't hard enough, my camera batteries died within minutes on the ice.




Grandma, in characteristic style, always brings a little something to entertain the kids. They enjoyed Christmas bingo before bedtime.



Thanks for coming, guys - though the pictures scarcely prove you were here!

A Joy School Christmas. Take six.

Out of six years of Joy School, I've managed to teach during the holidays four times and hosted the Christmas party five times. I should be better about awarding myself a bonus for being the "CEO" and take a year off.
Instead, the kids gave me a bonus this year and sang all three of their songs all by themselves. Bravo, kids. Your parents don't want to hear me sing anyway. It was adorable. Rachel made a beautiful Mary and Eve got in on the action as the angel. You wouldn't have known (but for her size) that she was not a Joy Schooler herself - she played the part so well.

Family picture 2011.

I procrastinated this year on family pictures (among other things) and waited until mid-November to tromp my kids out to Kathryn Albertson Park for a photo shoot. You can't tell by our noses, but it was freezing. Thankfully, the girls mostly cooperated and our friend and photographer managed to get some real gems. Aren't we cute?

Gingerbread houses.

I've got some serious catching up to do. Every year (at least the years we visit my side of the family), my mom breaks out every candy known to man so the kids can decorate gingerbread, er, I mean graham cracker houses. Here's a few shots of the action in 2011:

Birth control.

I still toy with the idea of five children. I've not closed that door, though it's safe to say we are leaning heavily toward quitting while we're ahead. Every once in a while, like this morning at Anna's 3rd grade holiday music program, I spy a sweet little baby girl and am reminded of the baby phase with a wee bit of longing. Babies bring so much joy.

Other days I get whiffs of that phase that take me in another direction. Like when I decided to brave the post office this past Monday with a stack of boxes and cards and two little kids in tow. At lunchtime, no less. They held up pretty well, actually. That is, until it was finally our turn and the two decided that scaling the counter and running circles around the work island made a whole lot of sense. Combine that with the noise they generated in screams and giggles and protests as they tackled one another and we gave a whole lot of line-waiters a bit of bang for their buck. Those times remind me that I used to tackle such tasks with not two, not three, but four kids age 5 and under.

Add to that the fact that I've been up in the middle of the night every night this week nursing some ailment (or figment of someone's imagination). And I wonder if I could still be called sane if I wanted to hit the reset button.

Ah, maybe.

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo. How 'bout you?

This past Saturday we went the the zoo. It's not the first time we've gone in the dead of winter, but the wind and cold often beckons us elsewhere. Like someplace indoors. Saturday promised sunny skies and minimal wind so we packed up the kids and enjoyed the afternoon with the animals. The zoo is a completely different place in the winter. There might have been about 10 other people there. Animals that sleep the summer away in response to the heat are ready to rock and roll when it's cold outside.

Take the snow leopard, for instance (affectionately called "Tai Lung" by me and the girls). Tim played a few rousing games of hide and seek with him. He(meaning Tim) hid behind the poles and then jumped out to surprise the little fellow, who came bounding down from his own hiding place in the bushes and crashed into the glass with his paws, growling and clawing all the while. The kids loved the show. But I started to feel like he was getting a bit agitated and put a stop to the whole thing, as entertaining as it was. Fortunately, the zookeepers assured us that it truly was a game for him and that his teeth-baring, menacing behavior was still within the playful range. Still, I was grateful for glass that day. Wish the camera batteries hadn't died so I could have gotten some footage. I'm not sure who was more entertaining - Tai Lung or Tim acting like a five-year-old. Still I got a few pictures of the girls.

The corner.

This is the mending pile. We affectionately call it "the Corner". If something ends up in this pile - there's good reason to believe it will never resurrect. My goal for this winter is to eradicate "the corner" from its current state. Last weekend I rescued two shirts, two dresses, and two holey pairs of jeans. The pile looks about the same as ever. I'm not sure who to blame for the overwhelming state of the pile: the kids, for their, shall we say, "active" nature; myself, for my procrastination; or China, for making cheap clothes. Today, I think I'll blame China. And save the corner for next month.

Sugar. Honey, honey.

My Joyschoolers are singing a song in their Christmas program that goes like this:

The very best part of Christmastime, the very best part I know
is not the tree and not the treats and not the lights that glow.

Wait a second. Back up a bit. It's not the treats? You sure? I beg to differ. You see, if there's one part of the holiday season I am compelled to never, ever omit, it's the treats. I just can't help myself.

Even when I was 6 months pregnant with my firstborn, was working forty hours a week and topped it off with a 30 hour a week performance/rehearsal schedule for Savior of the World in Salt Lake.

Even when I had a 4 week old baby (and two toddlers) keeping me up all hours of the night... and day.

Yes, even when I was in charge of the Relief Society Christmas program, teaching Joy School, and hosting the Joy School Christmas party (within the same week and a half).

Treats are important, people.

This year's plate brought hand-dipped mint truffles, caramels, toffee, peppermint bark, sugar cookies, gingerbread men, and pecan bites. I had another 3 delights on my list but at 2 in the morning on a Saturday night, I called it quits.

Maybe next year.





P.S. If you didn't make the short list for the Egbert Christmas goodie plate, all you have to do is move to my street, serve with me(or my husband) at church, teach Joy School with me, or join my book club. See, it's easy!

Lily's idea of eating right.

There is one area of parenting in which I find myself a complete and utter failure. Okay, there are many, but I'm trying to limit this post to 10,000 words or less. My kids are rotten eaters. One takes the cake (no pun intended), but they all(except the blessed two-year-old) are exasperating at least once a day when it comes to eating their vegetables.

When the girls make their lunches in the morning, I don't even enforce any rules about packing anything green because I know it's going to get tossed. I just make them eat the healthy stuff in the limited hours they have at home. It's not an ideal system, but trust me when I say I know who I'm working with here.

The kids are indoctrinated in the ways of healthy eating. And, as most kids want to know the whys of eating greens, they've been taught the relationship between sugar and sickness and what one's poo should look like when they're eating right (which, inevitably, it never does). It's not as if I'm not trying.

Failure is inevitable, I've decided. With two parents who boasted less than stellar records at trying new foods as children, I shouldn't be surprised at how mine turned out(we're still holding out hope for Eve!). Still, it's demoralizing.

Anyway, just the other day Lily was for the five.thousandth.time asking me why she needed to eat her vegetables, I set aside the textbook answers with which my food science class in college had equipped me and told her that it is a commandment. Our bodies are a gift from Heavenly Father and he expects us to treat them well. If we do, we are blessed. If we don't, they go to pot. Simply put.

So tonight, here's what she came up with for our Family Home Evening treat. In her words, "Mom, since we're trying to take care of our bodies, I thought it would be better if we just had a little treat." They're called rainbow cakes. AKA: smashed Skittle sandwiches.



I had to beg Tim to suck it up and ingest one.

The halls are decked.

All my memories are of fake Christmas trees. By the way, I don't care for the word fake in regards to Christmas trees - it is often said with such disdain. I fully understand the merits of real trees. The smell alone is enough reason to fork over the cash year after year for a mess-making machine. Did that sentence adequately profess my allegiance to said "fake" trees?
Anyway, I grew up overseas, and though I can't be sure that there weren't real Christmas trees to be had, I'm fairly certain that fake trees are the only ones made in China. So fake it was. Tim's family didn't adopt the real Christmas tree tradition until long after he left home.
We bought our first fake tree at at 70% off after-Christmas sale at Target the year Anna was born.
The girls single-handedly assembled the Christmas tree at the beginning of December. It took us about two weeks to string lights and ornaments on its fake boughs.
Now it's December 28th and I'm finally posting pictures. Enjoy.