A Hard Life

As the Christmas season is fast approaching, I'm reminded of a funny Holly thing from a few years ago. At the tender age of 6, Holly and I had been having a discussion about how "hard" I was on her. :-) You know, all that making her pick things up and keeping her room from being declared a disaster area is just beyond what a child of 6 should be expected to do. I, ofcourse, was greatly amused by this since she actually lives quite a cushy life and has no idea what "hard" is. Holly informs me that I just don't understand and that she wished I could live her life for one day so that I could see how hard her life really was. I think she stomped away at that point but it was hard to tell through tears of laughter. This was right before Christmas and on Christmas Eve, Jack and I do the Santa thing and I fill his and the kids' stockings and he fills mine. Well, this year Jack decides to be funny. Holly fully believed in Santa at that point (she still does actually) and knew that you did not want to wake up and see coal in your stocking. At that time, she also thought that Santa filled all our stockings, mine and Jack's included. So Christmas morning we're infront of the tree opening presents and we start to get into the stockings. In the top of mine is this crudely wrapped hunk of something. Jack is about to pee his pants holding in laughter so I know something is up with this "package". All eyes are rivited on me as I unwrap this massive chunk of..... COAL!!! and Holly's eyes go as wide as saucers. She gets this solomn look on her face and says "See mom, I told you that you were being too hard on me". Jack (I still want to kick his behind for that) is just dying with laughter and I'm not about to let Holly continue to think that Santa gave me coal so I tell her that Daddy was just "trying" to be funny and that he put the coal in there. "But I thought that Santa put the things in our stockings" (Oh Jack, you are a dead man) "Yes honey, he does but Daddy snuck in here this morning and put the coal on top. Santa didn't really give Mommy coal" (Stupid Jack) Thankfully she finally believed me, probably helped along by the fact that Jack was still laughing like a hyena. I still need to think of a good way to get back at him.

San Fransisco

I mentioned a few parts of our trip with the pictures below but thought I'd tell a little bit more about the trip and post a link to more pictures.

We had a fabulous time! The kids did really well on the flights. We rented a dvd player and dvd at the airport for the long leg of the trip both there and back and it was wonderful to have that thing.

Once we got to SF, the first thing you notice are the massive hills! I could never drive myself around there. It's like you're on a never ending roller coaster. The first full day we were there, we rented a car and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge on our way to Muir Woods which is a beautiful redwood forest. Those redwoods are amazing. After we spent some time there, we continued driving on past cute little towns and these historic ranches with cows standing on those ever present hills out to the Point Reyes Lighthouse. There's a stairway down to the lighthouse that's equivalent to a 30 story building so the kids and I stayed up at the top and tried to see through the fog (also ever present) down to the lighthouse. Then we headed back to San Fransisco and took a quick turn down Lombard Street (the really crooked part). That was fun. You have to go very, very slowly down the curves though. We turned our car in after that and just used the cable cars and streetcars to get around. The kids loved the cable cars. We rode those the most.

Our favorite place to spend time was at Pier 39 watching the sea lions. They were noisy and hilarious. A few of them would stake claim to a floating platform and then knock off any other sea lion who dared to hop up on their domain. Otherwise they liked to pile up on each other to sleep. Boy, those are some cranky animals though. Woe to the latecomer who decides to disturb an already comfortable pile.

We decided not to try getting over to Alcatraz. I didn't think the kids would really enjoy it but I'd like to go if we ever get back over there.

On the way back home, we got to take an unexpected little trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park when our plane was cancelled in Denver. They put us up that afternoon in a hotel so we decided to rent a car and drive over to Estes Park and go into the Rocky Mountains. We didn't have a whole lot of daylight left once we got there but it was just so wonderful to be there and we got to hear groups of elk bleating at each other in the darkness. That was cool, and a little spooky. Jack and I had been to Estes Park the Spring before Holly was born so we were really happy to get a quick chance to go back there. I think we'll be heading back there for a longer stay when were ready for our next big trip. It's one of our favorite places.

Click here to see more pictures

ROAR

Holly was finally old enough to participate in the Junior ROAR this year. She had a good time doing it and made us very proud. They had some pretty complicated moves to learn and long practices but she did very well and it was so exciting to see her out on the field for the halftime show. I can't wait for her to do it again next year!

Click here to see more pictures

An Introduction

We were at a get together at a friend's house and Zachary decided to introduce me to a little boy he had just met. When we walked back over to the little boy Zachary says, "Hey Chad, this is my mom. Her name's Mommy". That cute little thing. I could just eat him up everyday.

Superman and his arch nemesis Spiderella

Here are the kids in this year's Halloween costumes. Zachary wanted to be a super hero and picked out Superman. I tried valiantly to talk him into the cool Batman costume which was also on sale but I guess Batman just wasn't cool enough. Holly decided she wanted to have a scarier costume than usual so she chose Spiderella. There was this gorgeous spirit costume that I tried talking her into but she was stuck on this one. I even tried "If you really loved me, you'd pick this costume".....didn't work. *sigh* I liked it better when they were too young to voice their opinions and I could dress them however I wanted. :-)

Trick-or-treating was fun. We went to Publix first because the kids like to go around to all the stations they have set up in there for Halloween. They got to paint pumpkins this year. That was neat. Then we went to a friend's house that's in a popular neighborhood and trick-or-treated from there. The homeowners come out and camp down at the end of their driveways and hand out candy. Some of them even turn it into a party. The kids had fun collecting candy and of course, we couldn't end the evening without something funny from Zachary. All night long people kept saying "Hi Superman" whenever they saw Zachary. Well, Zachary finally had enough of that and said in a voice thick with irritation, "I'm not really Superman. It's just a costume" :-)