Third blog post of the year, third month of the year, talking about things that happened three months ago... see a theme developing here? I'm been unmotivated, that's what the theme is!
Despite my lack of motivation my personality remains unchanged, so I can't just jump in and start fresh where we are right now. NooOOOoooo. I have to cover everything that I've been neglecting up until this point, whether it's truly of consequence or not. (Lucky you!) Most of the stuff I will post about will just be because it struck me as amusing, some of it will be things that were more eventful than that. I will likely ramble on too much about most of it. If you were looking for meaningless reasons to avoid dusting those tall bookshelves and alphabetizing your spices, then this blog will be the place to be (for the next few posts at least), or until I decide to take another 3 months off.
*inhaling deeply* OK, here we go.
For by BILs birthday he asked his mom to make
Baked Alaska for dessert. Matt remembered from the time I made it that the ice cream had become kinda soupy, so he suggested putting the cake/ice cream layer in a cooler with dry ice to help make sure it got nice and firm. Well, they did just that. For four hours. It was so firm they couldn't even cut it with a hot knife. They had to use a rubber mallet and a butcher knife to get through it! It was really funny though, and tasty (albeit extremely cold!) by the time Matt and his dad got it chopped up.
Ready to serve!
This was Amelia's first Christmas, and she was very eager to help with the gift wrapping. Whether I felt she was really all the helpful is another thing entirely.
At least she left me some toys to play with!
Claire enjoyed neatly arranging her noodles in a row.
I showed Melanie how to unroll the noodles quickly by holding one end and letting them unroll on their own, she really liked that.
Helping grandma unroll noodles
Playing in the flour when the noodles were all done was probably the best part!
It was certainly the messiest part!
The aftermath
This year was our first attempt at having the girls pick out gifts to give to Matt and me. When Matt asked the girls what they wanted to get me they wanted to get me gloves (for the garden) and rubber spatulas, so Matt helped them find some colorful ones on Amazon for me. When I asked them what they wanted to give Matt all they would talk about each time I asked was how they had picked something out for me but they couldn't tell me what it was because it was a surprise (Claire did eventually let it slip that gloves were involved somehow) so I had to be a bit more helpful in deciding. Since they had enjoyed the balloon animals from the Christmas party carnival Matt's employer puts on, Matt and I had discussed how balloon animal making would be a good skill for parents to have for birthday parties and such. This resulted in them choosing (with lots of help from me) to get Matt a "How to Make Balloon Animals" kit and "How to Juggle" kit.
Matt's first balloon animal, made right after he opened his gift, totally "free-form". Not too bad for a first try!
(Whatever it is ;D )
Over the summer when we were getting to know my SIL Katie's boyfriend (
now fiance') Matt B. I was chatting with him about how much he enjoyed grilling and his arsenal of spices for his masterpieces of charred meat. I jokingly asked if he needed a BBQ holster, to which he responded, "No, I'd prefer a
bandoleer." Katie warned him he shouldn't say stuff like that around me because I'll remember it, and what do you know, I did! We ordered a bandoleer with large enough pockets to fit some glass spice bottles in it and picked out some spices at the
Spice Merchant that were a bit out of the ordinary (like jalapeno salt) but would hopefully be useful to them (including Katie and Matt's signature red pepper flakes).
While not quite as funny as when (my) Matt
gave John Brawndo! a couple years ago, it was still pretty funny to me. And now I've spent entirely too long talking about it. Moving on.
This is just a sweet picture of Claire with her godmother, Aunt Katie. I love the special relationship between kids and their godparents. It makes me smile.
The guys all got small Nerf guns in their stockings so one of the big activities on Christmas Eve was teaching the girls how to aim and shoot.
Melanie got pretty confident and started aiming with one hand on her hip. It was pretty cute!
This year's Christmas morning crazy hair.
Had to share it to be sure she has reason to dislike me as a teenager. If she's going to gear her teenage angst induced anger towards me anyway I might as well do something to deserve it, right?
Amelia opening her stocking.
Unfortunately her first Christmas wasn't very much fun for her, she had her first ear infection. I had her in at the doctor's office two days before Christmas to get some medicine for her, but she was still feeling pretty crummy on Christmas day. Her poor ears were bad enough to throw off her balance, so she couldn't walk and had to be carried everywhere. Poor cranky baby :(
Claire's favorite toy from St. Nick was a Baby Jaguar Beanie Baby from Go Diego Go!
She had him climbing up and down the new picnic table on an adventure with Diego. Mreow! Mreow! (because we all know jaguars don't just say "meow")
Silly sisters
How Matt and I felt Christmas day after being up multiple times Christmas Eve night with Amelia.
A pre-bedtime sled ride.
This is the most use the sled has received since they got it. It's been an incredibly mild winter around here.
A couple days after Christmas we went to Illuminations at Botanica with my parents and Nana. The girls really enjoyed seeing all the Christmas lights.
My dad wanted to be sure my grandma didn't miss out on anything, so he took her down the rainbow pathway in the children's garden. He's such a big kid!
Family picture time!
Amelia messing with Nana's hat
Monkey Melanie
Next year I'll remember the tripod
(Ok, no I won't)
Over break some friends whose babies were born within a month and a half of Amelia were here from out of town, so the girls got to have their first playdate together. It was fun to get to see them!
Babies from L to R: Amelia, Gabby and Ava
And the final piece of randomness for today's installment:
Amelia has gone from feeling like this about baths in the "big" bath tub...
... to feeling like this! (She's actually much happier about it than this, but her sisters always managed to get their naked tushies in the shot, so this is the picture you get to see for the sake of modesty)
Stay tuned! More randomness to come!
