little levi

finally got to meet friends' kelly and brian's little man levi. what a cutie :)



kelly & i (and our friend amanda who also got to meet levi at kelly's parents' house) have been friends since we were kids. it's hard to believe we've transitioned from training bras to proms to college degrees to husbands to kids. starting to feel old. and i've noticed i'm not getting carded anymore when i ask for a beer at a restaurant (but i won't go into that now).

anyway, levi was so sweet and not surprisingly incredibly adorable.

so glad i got to meet him and catch up with old good friends.

merry christmas

merry christmas to those who celebrate :)

yay!

thank you to my brother for calling me (ten minutes before our sister's play was about to start) to inform me that A Smoky Mountain Christmas was starting in ten minutes. woo hoo!!!! i'm DVRing it right now, and periodically watching a scene or two (and i'll admit, singing along). jacob's friend amanda called to tell him it was going to be on the CMT channel, so thank you to amanda. i haven't seen this movie in several years but i just love it. it's totally hoakey and this year makes it 20 years old, but it is a classic by my standards. i wish it would come out on DVD. it's something like $40 through amazon, yikes. i plan to never erase it from DVR :)

i tried to get the kids to watch it but they think they have better things to do. someday i will convert them though. they will be dolly lovers as well.

ahh kids =)

today dori's son cooper was over and after having an oreo, he looked at me and said sincerely,"You have a really pretty house." too cute. "That's very nice of you Cooper, thank you." and then a pause. Cooper: "Yeah, and it's really messy too. It's always really messy." awwww. but then he added, "It is a pretty house."

you just never know what'll come out of those cute little mouths!

getting there...

i'm finally making some progress with the holidays. sending boxes, the cards are going out today and tomorrow (i said this before but next year i really think we'll be sending holiday cards in july instead, much less chaotic. and who doesn't like to spread the holiday joy out a little?), wrapping everything up.

and if you're reading this and you're not on our card list and you'd like to get a card and letter from our goofball family, post a comment. i think i printed out some extra this year.

kieran's home sick, barking like a seal. he smiled devilishly when i told him he could stay home from school, it's the first time and now i'm worried i opened a door into fake-sick excuses.....we'll see.

hope everyone else is well :)

Name That Movie

1)
"We figured there was too much happiness here for just the two of us, so we figured the next logical step was to have us a critter."

2)
"All right ya' hayseeds, it's a stick-up. Everybody freeze. Everybody down on the ground. "
"Now, what's it gonna be young feller? You want I should freeze or get down on the ground? 'Cause if'n I freeze, I can't rightly drop. And if'n I drop, I'm gonna be in motion."

3)
[about the balloons he just bought] "These blow up into funny shapes and all? "
"Well no... unless round is funny."

Thank You Mom

I'd like to take a moment to thank my mom for this beautiful watercolor painting of Kieran she painted for our home. It was a year ago today that we moved into the house we built and in some ways it seems like we've barely been here at all and on some days it seems like we've always been here (especially if you check out all the carpet stains we've managed to accumulate in only 365 short days). A year ago we were huffing and puffing and moving everything into this house, not knowing how long it was going to take to start feeling like home. Would we ever forget the sensation of walking through our first home, moving from room to room, sensing each corner before it came, each floorboard squeak before it happened? Does anyone really forget those sensations though?

At first it felt like we were on some kind of strange vacation and that eventually we would return to our old house. From time to time Kieran would tell us he missed it. We would think about all we invested in it, time, money, labor. Painting, re-flooring, gutting rooms, adding a deck, and on and on. We remembered bringing our babies home to it. Having parties in it. Visiting with neighbors in front of it.

But slowly our new house has also become home. After a year it doesn't feel like we're on vacation here, and we don't accidentally turn onto our old street anymore. We have painted and drywalled and done many of the tasks we resented in our older house, but we've found we're still fixer-uppers :) We still know the feel of our old house by heart (and maybe we always will) but we know this one too.

So a year ago we moved here. And on Christmas Eve my mother gave us this painting of Kieran at the pumpkin patch for a Christmas/moving in gift. It's so much more impressive and lovely in person, a reminder of our sweet boy and also a reminder of one of my mother's many amazing talents. It was such a wonderful gift and it warmed our new house like no other art and I don't think I've ever properly thanked her, as mere words simply don't seem enough for something that she worked so hard on and gave us so unselfishly (I know you wanted to keep it for yourself, mom!) Recently the painting was gone from the wall as mom took it for an art show and we really missed it-I almost posted a few weeks ago about it, an "ode to this painting" post, as we were so happy to have it back! We know that in the future there will be an Andie one as well, but we're waiting patiently, good watercolor paintings take time you know!

We're so fortunate to have had such a great year, filled with family, friends, a new home, lovely art, good health. The works. So lucky.

ugh. i haven't really made much progress since my last post.

i think i might just spend the rest of the holiday season intoxicated.

at least i won't be a giant stressball.

ahhh the holidays

does anyone else get so busy at the holidays they want to scream? i still have soooo much shopping to do, pictures to take for our card, card and letters to assemble, address, and send (no small feat as my main method of organizing addresses is to rip off the return address on cards sent to us and sticking it in a drawer, although i never remember which drawer so several drawers contain hundreds of these little ripped envelopes that flutter around throughout the year and aaron doesn't know this elaborate system of mine so unknowlingly throws many of my "address files" away as garbage), mail packages to those that live far away, attend holiday parties but first run breathlessly through 3 different stores the day of each event in search of something decent to wear, knowing that the Gap has already moved onto their Spring line and won't have anything for we last minute holiday party-goers. and i won't even get into the shoe and panty hose plundering, nightmare! and we have yet to visit Santa, something that kieran is really looking forward to this year and i'm sure andie will hate, aaron and i have yet to narrow down what santa's getting for the kids, and somehow plan a trip without them to look around for ideas (we are now smart enough to know not to take them to the store asking "so, which of these toys would you like?"). and then there's the wrapping. ugh, the wrapping. one of my most dreaded holiday tasks. i'm horrible at wrapping and no matter what i do the gift always ends up looking like a pre-schooler wrapped it, paper transplanted to an area where i cut it too short-surely uncle steve won't notice-or obviously folded and re-folded in several different spots as i miscalculate the folding somehow. at least i can offer, "kieran wrapped this one". hee hee.

this weekend

everyone's an artist

if i have to scrub crayon off of one more surface in my house i'm going to scream. or teach my children how to windex.

andie has now written on aaron's desk, the hardwood floor, the wall (she managed to color on our vaulted wall-vaulted!), the island countertop, and probably a couple places i just haven't discovered yet. she hoards crayons and then attacks with them when your back is turned or you exit a room. a friend insisted they must be washable, but alas, not the kind i have. don't ask why but i have a drawer neatly filled with a dozen boxes of Rose Art (unwashable) crayons. i have to scrape the wax with my fingernail and then windex the spot.

i have visions of screaming like joan crawford, "NO MORE CRAYONS!"