christmas

Christmas morning is still magical. Santa left some cookie crumbs and five stockings full of fun.

Lucy's stocking is bigger than she is (thanks Nana).

Santa heard Liam's request for a stuffed snake. (A stuffed snake? I guess it chases away the bad dreams.)
Lucy got some felt pens which she immediately used to draw all over the rug.
But her favorite gift was a cardboard box.

Joel gave me a lovely, lovely ring. Three pearls, one for each child. We said we weren't doing gifts, just stockings, but this conveniently fit in the toe of mine. I love it.

My dad drove down from Portland in time for dutch babies (oven pancakes) and bacon. Gramma and the Davises came over for dinner and it was total remote-control-car-ski-helmet-new-books-lego-sets-DS-and-Wii-games-twirly-skirt madness. The best kind.

busy busy

There's nothing quite like the days before christmas around here. We've been busy elves: crafting, baking, shopping, and making endless lists just so we can cross things off.

We decorated cookies for our local friends and neighbors...

We packed up cookies and jars of last fall's applesauce and tied them up with ribbons. Last night we bundled into the minivan with a thermos of hot chocolate and delivered the gifts to our friends while checking out the streets with the best lights.

Last night we also delivered a minivan-load of food and gifts for the family we adopted with our MICE friends. Our five families adopted a family from El Salvador, the Monjaras. Last weekend we spent a Saturday morning at Fred Meyer, buying everything from toothbrushes to pies to winter coats for the three kids. Just a few of us drove to their apartment last night, and it was truly the highlight of our holiday season to sit in their home and talk with them (in bad spanish) about their lives, and maybe make their holiday a little brighter. (No pictures of that adventure - it seemed kind of irreverent to document it.)

Tonight we finished our wrapping and sat around by the fire with some of the treats our friends have brought us. We read some of the christmas and solstice books we've collected over the years. The boys talked about whether Santa is real, and made an inventory of what christmastime means to them.
Liam's faith in Santa is very strong, but he's also practical about it: I think no one really knows, and it just matters what you believe. Milo is pretty sure the tooth fairy is us (probably due to the time we forgot about it...), but isn't ready to say he doesn't believe in Santa. Some excerpts from their musings on the meaning of christmastime:

Being together with family. -liam

Presents! - milo

Having dutch babies on christmas morning. - liam

Eggnog. - milo

Helping people who don't have very much. - liam

Sitting by the fire with cookies and hot chocolate. - liam

Cutting down and then decorating the tree together. - milo

We hope all our family and friends are happy and warm this holiday season!

advent

n [Lat., = coming] Definition: Beginning or arrival of something anticipated.

Turns out, three really is a charm. I got our advent calendar done this year in time for the kids to wake up on December 1 and find a shiny gold $1 coin apiece in the first pocket. I started this project two christmases ago. I'm glad the kids finally get to use it, but more glad that I don't have to look at it in my sewing basket anymore.
It's made from wool felt. Each numbered pocket contains two little gifts, one for each boy, and an ornament. The ornaments come out of the pockets and hang on the big star using tiny little hooks. The ornaments are little felted balls I ordered from someone in Italy via etsy.
We filled the pockets with dollar coins, chocolates, tiny little toys, and other sweets. We left Lucy out of it this year, but next year I'll be hard-pressed to find things tiny enough to fit three in a pocket!

Some pockets contain messages about activities we'll to together as a family:

bundle up and let's take a ride to see sparkly christmas lights

shop for a gift for a family who needs help this christmas

family game night by the fire with hot chocolate and marshmallows

chess

Milo and Liam have been going to chess club every Thursday after school. I have to say, I was skeptical that this was going to hold their interest, but to my surprise chess has become a big part of their lives. Milo entered a tournament a couple of weekends ago. He ended up in the top 10 (out of 48 in his age group). The boys challenge each other, their dad, their friends... I have never liked the game myself - too frustrating. But I hope they keep playing - it seems like a good balance to the soccer universe they live in.

my (un)glamorous life

Someday I will figure out a coherent to tell all my people about what I do for work, in a way that doesn't make everyone's eyes glaze over.

For now, a photo essay.

Me, in front of the Montana State Capitol in Helena. I was there last week working with the Montana State Department of Public Health and Human Services....

...with Kirsten. We are working on a project to help update the state's Immunization Registry System. Kirsten is my good friend from graduate school who I am lucky to work with now at Public Knowledge.

We visited immunization clinics in Helena, Great Falls and Bozeman. We used a lot of purell. There were 2 feet of snow in Kirsten's front yard in Bozeman. I flew there and back in a tiny prop plane. The day I left was lovely - clear and bright. The pilot said we had a view for 300 miles. We flew over the Bridger Mountains toward Seattle.

Next stop, Salem, Oregon!

growing boys

I took the boys to see Dr. Marks for their well-child checks last week. I'm not sure it was the smartest move to take two healthy children to a pediatrician's office during swine flu season. But I think Liam has already had it, and we're all feeling pretty healthy. (So far, no symptoms...)

Anyway, they're growing boys! Milo weighs 99 pounds and stands 4 feet 7 inches - to Liam's 76 pounds and 4 feet 5.5 inches. Liam doesn't seem to mind that his little brother is bigger - his response is, yeah, well, I'm smarter. (Hmmm...) Dr. Marks gave Liam a hard time for his picky eating habits, but pronounced both boys healthy, smart and well-adjusted.

We didn't get a flu shot or the H1N1 vaccine. Stay tuned for more on this topic in a later post.

Afterwards we went to Michael Jackson's This Is It movie. The boys were riveted, and I was nostalgic.

family dinner

When I was at U of O I lived in a giant old house with three other girls. We spent a lot of weekends cooking huge messy meals and feeding an assortment of boyfriends (including Joel) and other hangers-on. I lived with (the other) Melissa, who was the mastermind behind these dinners. When she comes to town now, we re-live the old days drinking copious amounts of wine while putting together a late-night meal.

Last night we made green chili corn chowder. (OK, I'll honest, my major contribution to the meal was in the area of wine drinking.) It was a much needed comfort meal for all of us: I was gearing up for a long business trip to MT this week, Rohanna was exhausted from a long weekend getting our littlest sister off to Australia, Jess starts chemo this morning, and Melis is heading north to deal with some family drama. The soup, and everything that went into making it together, was therapeutic for us all.
The little girls (Lucy and Lulu) helped by being extremely cute.

st. paul

This was not how Lucy traveled. This sweet moment constituted a total of 30 minutes of our 3.5 hour flight from Seattle to St. Paul last week.

This was actually how Lucy traveled: constant motion.

But the flight was worth it, because we had a wonderful time visiting family in St. Paul. I go to St. Paul every November for Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation board meetings. This year Joel decided to take off work and accompany me. I didn't want to leave Lucy for three days, and he wanted to see everyone.

We stayed with our "cousins" Trey and Megan. Trey and Joel grew up going to family reunions together, and now their kids will do the same. Teddy is 4 and Taylor is only three months older than the goose.

I say "cousins" because this family is so large now that beyond first cousins, no one really knows how they're actually related anymore. We're all cousins of some kind. We think Lucy and Taylor might be something like seventh cousins four times removed.

Trey and Megan are fabulous hosts and we had a wonderful time. Except for the flight home.

halloween

I did a great job this year NOT making halloween costumes. I feel mama-guilt every time this happens, but let's be honest, I needed to sleep this month and that would have been the sacrifice. Liam put together his own costume, a zombie clown, with Nathan's help on the scary clown face (later we borrowed a rainbow wig but never got a picture). Milo picked out an obscure outfit from the costume store. It was called "slayer," but I swear it didn't even come with any weapons. Later I googled it, and to my horror discovered that the costume was some character from the incredibly violent video game World of Warcraft! I may be the worst mother of all time. But he loved it.

Lucy Lu was a cowgirl fairy. Rohanna had made her this dress-up skirt and tiny wings for her birthday last summer. We threw on some pink cowgirl boots and voila! Cowgirl fairy.
We trick or treated in the rain, during the UO v. USC game, so porch lights were scarce this year. Afterward a crowd of boys sorted candy and watched a movie downstairs, while a good many of our friends ate chili and drank wine in our livingroom.

On Sunday the boys woke up with sugar hangovers and decided to trade in their massive candy collection for a couple of games for the Wii. We've done the "switch witch" thing before (this witch takes candy and leaves gifts in it's place), but the kids are getting a little too savvy for such subterfuge. So we decided to be above board this year and lay it all out on the table. Joel said: We don't really think it's a healthy choice for you guys to eat all of this candy. What's it worth to you? Apparently it's worth a couple of games and the time on a Sunday afternoon to play them. Done, and done.

eight

Milo is not my baby anymore. Even if Lucy hadn't usurped his status last year, by now I'd have come to this realization anyway. Milo is his own person. He has his own quirky sense of humor and his own way of being in the world. His head almost reaches my chin, and he outweighs his older brother by more than 10 pounds.

And he's eight! Old enough to have sleepovers and homework, and old enough to be a leader on the playground and the soccer field. We celebrated his birthday last week with a family dinner. His best friend Miles joined us, because Miles is basically our third son.
Of course Gramma made her angel food cake and Milo had a piece without frosting because he doesn't like frosting (he does not get that from me).

We celebrated with his friends at the pumpkin patch. There are no pictures of the corn maze where they spent most of their time because Joel was too busy keeping track of 12 kids and I was too busy hunting pumpkins with Lucy. But here's one of Milo and his friends with his newest treasure - a Pokedex. (Yes, that's an entire index of the pokemon universe. Wow.)

It was a sweet birthday weekend. We were exhausted by the end of it, but it was important to celebrate our brown eyed boy in style. Milo will never be overlooked as a "middle child" in our family - he takes up way too much space for that to ever happen. He has always been our easygoing boy, always the pleaser and the peacemaker. But he asserts himself too, and lights up our family with his infectious laugh and loving bear hugs.

decompressing

What a ridiculous couple of weeks! That cliche that when it rains it pours? Yes. Normally I don't use this blog like a journal, but I was looking back over my last few posts, and realized that I have been really skimming the surface lately. (Here's Liam's soccer team, aren't they cute. Here are the boys riding their bikes to school, don't they look cold...)

Anyway, there's a lot going on under the surface around here.

Our dear friend - who is really more like family - discovered a black spot on her lung last week that turns out to be cancerous. The same cancer she had beaten only months before. We are confident that it's all going to be fine, but this is a battle we were hoping she would not have to fight again. (She's starting radiation this week.)

Right on the heels of that news, my dad called to tell us that he has to have abdominal surgery to remove some masses in his large intestine. His surgery was scheduled during a three-day trip to Seattle for my company retreat last week. I met Joel and the kids and Rohanna in Portland on Friday to visit Dad in the hospital and help him transition back home. He's doing great now, and his pathology came back with the great news that the masses are benign. (I didn't take a photo of him in his hospital gown, but here's one of him from last winter. That's his senior picture.)

While we were in Portland, Rohanna and I decided to visit Buzzy, our step-grandmother. She is our mom's stepmom. Our grandfather passed away in 1995, and Buzz recently moved from their beautiful house in Cannon Beach to an assisted living facility in Seaside. There is really nothing good to say about assisted living facilities. Or Seaside. It was a hard visit. (And why do they crank the heat up so high in those places?) But she loved Lucy, and in the end we're glad we went.

Oh wait - did I mention that our downstairs flooded last week? Yep, the washing machine overflowed (for three hours). We had to remove the carpet and we've been living with industrial dehumidifiers for the past week in an attempt to save our drywall. Ugh.

But this week is calming down. I do feel like I keep looking over my shoulder for the other shoe to drop, but it feels like "normal" is in our future. Life is a series of peaks and valleys I've learned. Today I'm looking up at the nearest peak, knowing that there's a lovely view at the summit.

I leave you with an excerpt from the Tao Te Ching which a coworker sent me last week, which I am working on believing:

Be completely empty.

Be perfectly serene.

The ten thousand things arise together;

in their arising is their return.

Now they flower,

and flowering

sink homeward,

returning to the root.

The return to the root

is peace.

Peace: to accept what must be,

to know what endures.

In that knowledge is wisdom.

Without it, ruin, disorder.

To know what

endures is to be openhearted,

magnanimous,

regal,

blessed,

following the Tao,

the way that endures forever.

field day

Milo's third grade class is doing a field study of the Amazon wetlands in Eugene. Along with several parent volunteers and their teachers, all 24 of them walk to the wetlands twice a week to observe the different ecosystems in and around the wetlands, draw what they see, and research points of interest.

Last week I had the honor of being one of those parent volunteers. I was in charge of a group of five (mostly) sweet kids, including Milo. We spent our time down near the water, looking at bugs and plants from different vantage points. It's a big responsibility for these kids to keep their act together and their voices low for an hour in the woods. But as Milo's teacher Kathy said: "we are serious biologists and artists, and we can handle it."
Kathy has been a teacher for so long that some of Milo's friends' parents had her when they were in elementary school. She's strict and no-nonsense - traits that had me nervous when I first met her. But I've had the chance to get to know her a little over the past few weeks, and I am starting to form a much more generous opinion of her. She's clearly dedicated to teaching. Somehow she manages to be creative, while being a stickler about rules and keeping the behavior of her 24 students in check. Milo's a bit of a stickler about rules (and fairness) himself, so I'm starting to see this as a good match.

Celtic

Liam's U10 (that's "under 10") soccer team, Celtic (named after a Scottish pro team) is first in their league this fall, thanks to a 1-0 win over North Bend yesterday! The cool thing is that these boys are playing up a year - they're in a U11 league. Liam (top row, right end) has really risen to the challenge this year. His coach, "Coach Finn," is Scottish, and with a charming accent he challenges the boys to bring their best game to the field every day. Who knows if Liam will stick with soccer for the long term, but for now this is a wonderful experience.

walk and bike to school day

These are chilly October mornings, but the boys got up 30 minutes early today to ride their bikes to school for walk/ride/carpool to school day. (I recommended mittens, but it's possible that mittens are not cool...)

sisters from different mothers

Funny thing how one of the most important aspects of our family life for the past 10 months has not yet made it into the blog.

In January we embarked on a "nanny share" adventure with our good friends, the Taylors. Their daughter, Alice, is 15 months older than Lucy, so she's 2 1/2. She is a sweetheart, and I can't imagine a better companion for our daughter. The girls spend 28 hours a week together, with their nanny Megan. Two days a week at our house, two at the Taylors'. They go to Bounce (gymnastics), library storytime, the park, the petting zoo... They are like siblings - sometimes they don't share well, and sometimes they run around the house shrieking with laughter about something only they can understand.

It has been an amazing and rewarding experience sharing childcare with another family. It has required all of us to hone our communication skills, improve our calendaring abilities, and keep our houses cleaner than we otherwise would do.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend an hour with the girls after Megan left, and we went for a walk in Liam and Milo's old dualie stroller. I had forgotten what hard work it is to push two kids in that thing! And even though it was just for an hour, I re-appreciated (without nostalgia) the days when I had two small boys. Lucy will not grow up with a sibling close in age (thanks to Joel's recent "procedure") and I am so grateful for this time she has with Alice. Their sibling-esque relationship brings a dimension to her life that she would otherwise never know.

deschutes

We spent last weekend at a friend's cabin on Central Oregon's Deschutes River. No cell phones, no wifi, no responsibilities. Just good friends, great food, a beautiful river...

...a tire swing...
(did I mention good friends?)...

...some sweet moments...

...and three on three tennis in the weeds...
...with good friends.
A weekend that reminds us once again why we love being Oregonians.

Thanks for the photos Jess!