Halloween

For Halloween this year Conan wanted to be a ninja.  Not just ANY ninja, but specifically the character Zane from the Ninjago cartoon (Yes, the Lego ninja toy line has an animated show.  It's really pretty good.) 

 Zane is the white-and-gold-costumed ninja with Ice Power and the ability to talk to birds.  Actually, later in the show it turns out he's actually a robot, programmed to think he's a human, but I digress...  On to the costume!  

I modified a basic kid's halloween ninja costume pattern to incorporate the key elements of Zane's attire: gold trim "kimono" style wrap front, triple golden shoulder armor wings, golden hood ornament, and of course, a golden three-pronged circular shuriken.  (You have to add the accompanying ice blast with your imagination.) It turned out great.  Conan has been loving wearing it since I finished it, including on Halloween.

Cousin Chloe was a purple fairy princess this year.  We met up over at Grandma & Grandpa's house for early trick-or-treating and pictures.  Then we headed over to the Ericson's for dinner and trick-or-treating in their neighborhood.  Kiah was a princess and Moira was a witch.  The three of them made a pretty classic trio as they roamed the streets looking for candy.

The loot was plentiful and everyone had a great time.  Conan was completely exhausted, the girls are enough older than he is that the endurance gap was noticeable.   There was no way he was going to get left behind and miss out on candy though!

Easter Eggs

Masterpeices, every one.

Santa

We met up with Santa, unexpectedly, at the toy store this evening. We had gone to get presents for a few of Conan's preschool friends who have invited him to birthday parties in the coming weeks. The store was nearly empty, so even though we didn't want to get pictures Santa invited Conan to come sit in his sleigh and talk to him. When Santa asked what he wanted for Christmas, Conan immediately answered "Flowers." Santa looked a bit surprised and asked "What kind?" Conan firmly said "Daisies." That's my boy! You can bet there'll be a pot of daisies (or mums, or something like that) under our tree Christmas morning.

Thanksgiving 2012

We hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year.  Conan was very excited to have ALL his grandmas and grandpas and GG and cousin Chloe and Uncle Jon and Uncle Brian and Abby and Nikki come over for a party.

 

A few years back I got a dinosaur muffin pan.  Turns out, dinosaur ice cubes for the punch bowl are even better than dinosaur shaped muffins.  They were a hit with all ages. I may never make muffins in it again!

 

Mom and GG had come over and helped with two days of cooking, and everyone else brought dishes to contribute as well. We had a great feast.

The menu included:
Turkey (salted and roasted in a traditional style - delicious)
Stuffing (with bacon and turkey drippings)
Grandpa Dave's vegetarian stuffing
Turkey gravy
Brian's Vegetarian gravy
Cranberry sauce (with lemon, rosemary and pears)
Oven-fried Red Snapper
Butternut Squash with browned butter & thyme
Parsnips with Pears, Apples, rosemary & Maple syrup
Mom's Homemade Rolls
GG's Apple Sauce
Abby's Roasted Sweet Potatoes (or are they Yams?)
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Anita's Macaroni salad
Nikki's Potato salad

 

And that's not even counting the 6 pies we had for dessert.  It was truly a feast.  Everyone had a great time, it was a great group of people to be thankful with.

 

After dinner and dessert, the kids changed into their PJs for a 'jama party and stick dragon rides.

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all!

Fireworks

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not-Quite-The-Fourth Party

With the fourth falling on a Wednesday this year, it seemed like a good idea to have a party the preceding Saturday. It was a wet and overcast day, but the rain cleared off just around 4 so we headed outdoors and had a great time despite the gloom. Hard to believe it's almost July, with the coats and rainboots, but we're adaptable.

I roasted a leg of lamb (tandoori-yogurt marinade was amazing) and we had lots of delicious sides. The kids particularly liked the unattended chip bowl.

 

A brief sprinkle of rain after dinner drove everyone onto the porch, but luckily it didn't last too long.

 

Our porch really is a nice place to hang out on a damp day. The beer cooler being on the porch might have had something to do with it too.

 

Hey, is he getting out some FIREWORKS?!

 

The little kids had a blast, as usual, running through the colored smoke from the smoke bombs. The grown-up kids had nearly as much fun lighting them.

 

Nothing like running through some who-knows-how-toxic purple smoke for a good time.

 

After we ran out of smoke bombs, the kids played for a while in Conan's "beach" - also known as the worlds tiniest sandbox. Apparently it's got room to fit more kids than we estimated!

 

Devious Kiah made off with the sand dollars. I didn't actually see what she was doing when I snapped the picture, but it does explain why I found a cache of sand dollars hidden on the porch the next day.

 

Finally it got dark enough for the REAL fireworks. I didn't get any pictures of them, but they were IMPRESSIVE. The kids stayed up until after 10:30, when they turned into pumpkins and just couldn't keep their eyes open any longer. Grown ups sat around the fire much later than that, enjoying the first taste of summer (really! it's summer!) we've had this cold wet June.

Easter Weekend

We had a great big busy weekend and lovely warm spring weather for Easter, so there are lots of pictures. 

Friday night Gabe and Morgan came up from Olympia, so we had Saturday morning with them. Conan and Morgan had a great time playing together. They read books, jumped on the bed, rode trikes and bikes outside, and even practiced hiding and finding Easter eggs around the house.

 In the afternoon we all went to Acme for Vicki Sue's 1st birthday party, which was a fun outdoor affair. Lots of friends both young and old were there to mark the occasion. We ate BBQ and cake, caught up with friends while enjoying the spring sunshine and the kids' rubber ducky hunt.

 And as if that wasn't enough fun to pack into one day, we had Grandma Debbie, Grandpa Poppy, and cousin Chloe over for dinner and playtime in the evening!

 Sunday morning we headed out early to GG's house because we heard the Easter Bunny had delivered a basket there for Conan, as well as one for Chloe. Sure enough! After the kids had opened all the plastic eggs in their baskets and blown soap bubbles off the deck for a little while, we went outside for the first of many egg hunts in the yard. Odessa arrived and joined in for the big final egg hunt.

 It was a perfect spring day, and as usual GG's garden was beautiful with all the spring flowers. We ate a great big Easter dinner with all the family, and enjoyed visiting with the whole family until late in the afternoon, including comparing the baby bellies of both Jess (6 weeks to go) and Svea (9 weeks to go). It's incredible to think that next year we'll have two new little ones joining in the fun!

Conan fell asleep in the car on the way home, all tuckered out from a long weekend of fun. He did not wake up for dinner, and in fact slept in late the next morning - achieving about 15 hours of sleep in all.  I wish I could sleep like that!

Conan's Pink Star

When we decorated our tree, we found we didn't have a good topper. So I suggested to Conan that we ought to make a star. I grabbed the construction paper, and pulled out a couple sheets of yellow and orange paper. Conan eyed them skeptically. "No, Mama" he said. "It would look better made out of pink." Now it was my turn to be skeptical, but I went ahead and complied. We traced out a star-topped cone on the pink paper, and Conan helped me cut it out. Then we got out the sticker box to choose some stickers to decorate it with. I thought the dinosaurs would be nice, but Conan went straight to the pink fuzzy alphabet stickers. I was still pretty skeptical, but his design really came together in the end, and looks great on the tree.

 I will treasure it for ever.

Fourth of July Fun

We had a fun time at the Ericson's blowing bubbles and setting off little fireworks in the warm sunshine - Saturday was first day this year that it really felt like summer!  Then on Sunday we met up with my mom and dad at the Imagine Children's Museum in Everett, which is an amazing place for kids to play and explore.  We had a great time and totally wore Conan out - to the point where he almost fell asleep over his lunch at a nearby cafe.

Today we're taking it more slowly, enjoying a nice day at home getting caught up on yardwork and other chores.  Unfortunately, today Conan got his first bee sting while playing outside.  A kid's first bee sting is never fun, but Conan took it to the next level by getting his first sting on his face, right below his right eye. He was very brave about it and recovered after a half hour of cuddling and watching cartoons.  Poor little guy!

Egg Day

We had a lovely gathering at Grandma Joy's house. Conan, Chloe, and Odessa had a lot of fun hunting for eggs hidden by their older cousins Hazel and Hannah. The kids had candy and bubbles and new toys and books to play with, and the grown ups had a lot of fun watching the kids and visiting. The only downside is that I stubbed my toe badly on a chair leg and may have broken it. I went to the doctor yesterday, she advised that there was no need for x-rays to determine if it was really broken or not because the treatment is the same either way: elevation, taping, and ice packs. That's right, I broke my toe at Easter Dinner. (I'm just so hard core!) I managed not to drop my plate or curse loudly, so I'm kind of proud of myself for that.

Holidaze 2010

Whew, we have had a fun time the last couple of weeks. I took the week off between Christmas and New Years so we had lots of time to do fun stuff.

We started with a trip to Plain and had a great Christmas with Grandma Debbie, Poppy, GG Joy, Jon, Nadege and Chloe. My mom got both the kids and herself matching striped Christmas jammies which made for great pictures, and both the kids got beautiful wooden rocking horses as well as lots of other fun stuff. There was lots of snow in Plain and we had a great time building a snow horsie (which Conan even got to ride) and a snow man in the yard.

We came home on the 28th and settled in for a couple of nice, mostly quiet days around home. We had the Pazo clan over for dinner, went Bowling with a large group of friends (Conan's first time!), had the Davis family over for a slumber party, and helped Great Grandma Marjorie celebrate her 91st birthday before heading down to the Ericson's for New Year's Eve. We had a great time, as always - eating, drinking, playing games - all the good stuff to start 2011 off right. I can hardly believe it is actually 2011, but there it is. There's just no stopping time!



All this on top of one of the most momentous of parental milestones: Conan's first big-boy haircut. I'll sure miss those baby curls, but it was time. He's still extraordinarily cute, but it's different now...

Holiday Cookie Baking

Making cookies with Conan was a lot of fun. Worth the mess!

Conan really enjoyed cutting out the cookies. He made stars, diamonds, flowers, bells and snowmen, as well as some abstract designs produced by using more than one cookie cutter on the same cookie. (See below, far left on the cookie sheet for one such creative design.)

After we finished cutting out and baking the cookies, Conan helped frost them as well. Masterpeices, every one.

And here's some video:

Santa

Santa didn't upset Conan at all. Any trepidation he may have felt vanished the moment he saw the candy cane...

Thanksgiving, with Snow

We got 5 inches of snow on Thanksgiving day; it turned our yard into a beautiful winter wonderland. Although I worried for a bit that the snow would keep our guests away and we would end up facing a whole turkey ourselves, Eric & Miriam braved the drive from Olympia and Dave and Anita brought Great Grandma Marjorie and Anita's friend Ann out from Bellingham so we had plenty of help with the eating.

Conan worked up an appetite riding around the yard on the "snow boat" pulled by his only-slightly-less-excited-about-snow Papa.

We don't have any real sledding hills available, but it was a lot of fun anyway. With his warm winter coat, snow pants, fuzzy hat and big boots Conan was ready to make the most of the unexpected snow bonanza.
Sadly, the temperatures rose in the night, the snow turned to rain and there wasn't a flake left by the next morning, so we didn't get a chance to make any snow sculptures. Next time!

The food, of course, was delicious. We had smashed potatoes, roasted squash, ginger glazed carrots, vegetarian stuffing, bread, turkey & gravy, and pies for desert.

For the turkey I got a little creative and went with a recipe from Cook's Illustrated that promised over-the-top glaze, crispy skin, and tender juicy meat. I'm pleased to say it delivered.

The hard part was butterflying a 21 lb turkey. The turkey came from my buddy Ben Wiley, who moved back to Plain and raised a few birds for friends and family this year. We didn't necessarily need such a large bird for our group, but it was the one I got so there it was. It was a delicious, flavorful bird with great meaty texture and good muscle tone, so much better than the flabby pale meat from a supermarket bird. It took a good bit of wrassling to get the backbone out and break the breastbone in preparation for roasting, but in the long run it was worth it. The turkey cooked evenly and the glaze (apple cider, cranberries & molasses, reduced on the stove-top - now THAT smelled good!) adhered beautifully. Mmmm!

Birthday Story

Tomorrow is my birthday; I'll be 35 years old. Last night we had a bunch of friends over for a dinner party that was lots of fun. We're in the midst of a early-season nor'easter, with c-c-cold snowy winds blasting straight down from the Fraser valley, so I was impressed at the number of friends willing to make the drive over icy roads and celebrate with us. I really am blessed with a great group of friends.

It got me thinking back through the years, to other birthday celebrations. Some years I've had big parties, some years small gatherings, some years my birthday's an afterthought to Thanksgiving, and some years it is the the main event. There was the time - when I was 13 or 14 - when what I REALLY, really wanted (and got) for my birthday celebration was to take my two closest friends to a chanting workshop with some visiting Tibetan monks. (It was neat, if not particularly eventful.) Of course I'll never forget the year that I got an engagement ring from Cary for my birthday - that was a shock. I had no idea what he was planning, and he'd gone to the trouble to wrap it up inside a bunch of nesting boxes, with the outside one being a couple feet square. ("Oh, haha, the old box-inside-a-box trick" I said.) Opening that final box and seeing the ring is the only thing that has ever rendered me literally speechless.

Of all the years I've celebrated though, my favorite one was in my mid-twenties, when I was living at the Apple Farm. I can't say for certain what year it was, probably around 2000. It was one of those years where my birthday landed perilously close to Thanksgiving. My family was gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving at my Grandma Joy's house, so Cary and I drove out there around noon or so. We had a great meal, lots of visiting and catching up, and then a few presents for me, all very nice. Cary, however, kept checking the time and making it known that he really wanted to head back to the farm. He had some weak reason, I don't even remember what, about why he wanted to head home, but I knew he just didn't want to stay and visit longer with my family because he was a selfish jerk.

Eventually, I gave in, we said our goodbyes, got in the car and headed back home, and I let him have it. "I hardly ever get to see my family! We see your family all the time! It's not fair! You must not really understand/love/respect me if you can't spend time with my family without wanting to leave early!" etc. Cary took my increasingly hysterical rantings about his problems dealing with my family with characteristic stony silence, which only made me even more convinced that I was hitting right at the heart of the matter.

It's about a half-hour drive between Grandma Joy's house and the Apple Farm, and I kept at him the whole way home. I was merciless. I was going to make him SEE! I was right, and he needed to know it!

And then I walked into the house to find we were late for my surprise birthday party.

I don't remember much about the actual party (I'm pretty sure it thoroughly rocked), but I do remember apologizing to Cary and realizing - not for the first time, but perhaps more deeply than before - that he was a real keeper. Happy Birthday, me.

Tickee Teet! Happy Ween!

Halloween weekend was a lot of fun. On Saturday we went with the Lease's to downtown Bellingham to trick or treat. All the downtown merchants give out candy and it's a lot of fun for the little ones, a good daytime practice for more advanced neighborhood trick-or-treating later. It took a little while for Conan to get the hang of it but he was soon charging right up to the candy bowl and saying "tickee-teet" and "happy ween" with the best of 'em. We ended at Boundary Bay for beers and food and finally some well-deserved candy. Conan's mouth was bright blue by the time we left, and he and Olive were bouncing off the walls, the chairs, and the legs of the very patient waitstaff.

On Sunday we went and visited Great Grandma Marjorie at Highland nursing home before going to the Columbia neighborhood for some really amazing trick-or-treating. We were accompanied by Brian, Abby, Chloe and Grandpa Dave, as well as some other friends. Brian had a really amazing Chewbacca costume, and Chloe was the cutest little Ewok. After trick-or-treating we went back to the Mapes place for apple pie and ice cream, and of course ate some more candy.

4th of July

Some pictures from our 4th of July celebration with the Ericsons. Watermelon, smoke bombs, black snakes and pop-up pagodas were are BIG hit with the kids! Tombi's grill-smoked BBQ beef and custard fruit tart were big hits with the grown ups. The weather was cool and drizzly, but we had a great time sitting around the fire and watching the fireworks over the rooftops.

Memorial Weekend

We were lucky enough this Memorial weekend to host two of our favorite out-of-town families for a couple fun days of catching up and watching the kids play. It was quite a full house, with 6 adults, 4 kids, 4 cats and 2 dogs all sleeping under one roof. And then on top of that we had two more families over for dinner on Saturday, including two very fresh little babies, Bellatrix (2 weeks) and her cousin Riker (7 weeks). I somehow didn't get any pictures of baby Riker, but we did manage to get the other 5 kids all on the couch at one time, not crying, and facing the camera!
Despite the continual rain, we had a great time. The kids entertained one another and mostly got along and shared their toys very well. Kiah and Conan are interested in the same things, and they were really cute playing together. We did manage to get outside a couple of times when the rain broke, but it was super wet so it was never long before we had to go back inside to dry off and warm up, and of course eat some more. I think we must have eaten about 14 (delicious!) meals in three days. Good times. :)

It's Trishmas!

Today is the day, we're throwing a gigantic 35th birthday party for Patricia. Pictures and story later, this is just a placeholder post!

Chloe turns One

Today was Chloe Skywalker's first birthday. She wore the most beautiful little party tutu, and underneath she had special birthday bloomers with her name and the number 1 embroidered on them. She was even more stylishly dressed that Conan, although he was looking pretty sharp in his party shirt as well. We've got some good-looking babies in this family! There were lots of kids (and adults) there to help celebrate, and so very many presents. Little Chloe had a BIG pile of loot by the time they were all unwrapped. Conan enjoyed testing out some of the new toys, and as always balloons are tremendously fun. There was cake with strawberries for desert, both of which Conan finds delicious. He was super worn out by the end of the party, he fell asleep in the car almost as soon as we drove away. That's the sign of an excellent party, I guess!