New Family Traditions

It was a fun Christmas, filled with holiday cheer. We had Christmas Eve dinner with our friends, the McCombs. No pictures. But imagine 6 children ages 6 and under putting on the Nativity, and you'll know what a wild time it was. Anya, the mom, is Danish, so she made some traditional Danish Christmas dishes. Yummers.

Christmas morning, I awoke with end-of-pregnancy insomnia at 4:30 am. Joe followed, waking up at 5:15. We started our day watching "A Christmas Story" while our kids slept. It was kind of like a date, a very early one. Our kids were surprised at 7 when we were actually awake before them.
I think this is the first year that my kids really got into Santa Claus. It's because I've been indoctrinating them with various Christmas movies, since I've been doing a lot of movie watching in my end-of-pregnancy woeful state. The kids got pillow pets from Santa, which, as you can see from the above picture, were greeted with enthusiasm and immediate adoration.

Other present hits: an 8 doll Disney Princess collection, and a puzzle. Elliot's obsession with puzzles is amazing. I think if all I got him for his birthday were 3 puzzles, he would be ecstatic. He basically did the same puzzle over and over again yesterday.

Dottie put on a fashion show for me yesterday. She dressed up in her Disney princess dresses, got her dolls, and I took their twinner pictures. There were more than this. Also, she received princess shoes for Christmas that match some of the dresses, as you see in the Cinderella picture.

A funny Christmas story that almost became a sad Christmas story. Joe and I were getting ready to make fondue (two pictures below), not paying attention to our children. Elliot runs over, "Mom, my nose hurts." I tell him to get a tissue, knowing he has a runny nose. I wipe his nose, he keeps on fussing. I go about my business, ignoring my son. So, he approaches his father, "Dad my nose is hurting!" Joe looks up his nose, and what does he see? One of these beads, a red one:
It was wedged so far back in his nostril, we couldn't even tell it was one of these beads. I still don't know where it came from, because I'm not a bead crafter. Nonetheless, there it was, stuck far up our son's nose. He wouldn't blow his nose. He insisted over and over, "Take me to the doctor!" I get panicky, call my mom, knowing she's had kids stick things up their noses before. She laughs and laughs, the only advice she gives is to have him blow his nose. Thanks Mom . . . we've already failed at that multiple times. My dad calls me, saying to try a band-aid, on the outside of his nose, thinking it will have the effect of a Breathe Right strip, opening the sinuses. Doesn't work. Now I'm really thinking we're going to have to take him to the ER, on Christmas Day. Nightmare of nightmares on Lackland AFB, so I've heard. We could be waiting for 5 hours.

My dad calls again. Being the spiritual man that he is, he decided to pray about how to get the bead out. Why that didn't dawn on me and Joe, I don't know. But he received the inspiration that we should try mouth to mouth on him, plugging the other nostril with our finger. So I hold his nose, Joe does the mouth to mouth, and after 4 or 5 attempts, out shoots the bead.

This is almost as good as the Dottie dime story, is it not? At least it came out, and we saw it, unlike the dime.

Here we are, enjoying our Christmas fondue, after the crisis was averted. Last night we had cheese fondue, today we had chocolate fondue. I say this is definitely a keeper for Hansen family Christmas traditions.

The above picture looks like Halloween, right? No, this was this morning. Dottie had a tea party with her Disney princesses. Elliot wanted to join, so he dressed up like a tiger. Why not? Tigers and princesses, they go together so well.

Hope you had as fun and exciting of a Christmas as we did! Minus the bead incident, of course.

It's Beginning To Look Alot Like Christmas

This Christmas is our first Christmas alone as a family, without driving or flying to be with our parents. It feels weird. So I'm trying to be as Christmas-y as possible. I've been making a lot of cookies: 4 batches of sugar cookies and 3 batches of Dutch Cheese cookies (I would have made more variety if I hadn't been burned out by making 11 batches of rolls for a Young Women fundraiser).

Dottie and Elliot were very helpful in making the Dutch Cheese cookies. Dottie rolled them into balls, Elliot rolled the balls into the crushed corn flakes, and I put the jam in the middle.
Showing their goods:

Monday night, we went and saw the lights on the Riverwalk. We've heard a lot of hype about them. They were pretty, but they've got nothing on Temple Square in SLC. I needed a little more color variety. But I did like how they were on weeping willows, drooping over the river. That was picturesque.

My camera was making me mad this night. It only takes decent pictures with the flash, and you can't see the Christmas lights with the flash on. So we got several blurry ones like this:

And finally one semi-decent one where you can kind of see the lights. Some day, I'm going to get myself a decent camera.

So Feliz Navidad! By the way, that's my kids' new favorite Christmas song. We hear it a lot, living in San Antonio. I frequently hear little voices singing, "I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas . . .". Dottie, with her experience from Spanish class, rolls her r's the whole song through. Oh, and when I say goodnight to the kids at night, they say "Merry Christmas and Feliz Navidad, Mommy."

Giant Ruby

5 lbs. 15 oz. at 34 weeks! GAH! I'm scared. But at least the doctor agreed to not stop labor if it were to happen now . . .

No Crib for a Bed

Sometimes, my son doesn't sleep well. He cries for no apparent reason, and the only comfort he wants is me. Well, my hair. But that's a different story all together.

I have recently purchased a body pillow for all of my pregnancy aches and pains. It has greatly changed my life. I don't know how I survived my other pregnancies without it. However, when Elliot joins me in bed, he tends to push me out of the body pillow. His little body loves to snuggle in the crevice of the pillow. Usually, I'll allow him to sleep like this for a few minutes, then sneak him back into bed. He was lucky this night, because it was only 9 pm, and I was still awake. He got extra time in the funnel of coziness.

Now, the big question is, what am I going to do in a month when I have another baby? Where will "Baby" Elliot go?

Logs on the Fire Fill Me with Desire

I've always thought that the words to that Carpenter's song "Merry Christmas, Darling," were a little weird, particularly the line "logs on the fire fill me with desire." What's that supposed to mean? Desire for what? And how can logs on the fire possibly put you in a romantic mood? I'm not quite sure. But I think my husband has created some meaning for that line because of our recent Christmas tree experience.

We were very fortunate this year to receive a free fresh Christmas tree through a FedEx program on base called Trees for Troops. My husband was one of the first to receive a tree, and so, of course, he thought, the bigger the better. Well, turns out bigger isn't always better. The tree was too tall for our house, and the trunk was too big for our tree base. And the only tool we own to make the tree smaller length and diameter-wise is a hack saw. After hours of chopping away, we got the top of the tree shortened, but the trunk still did not fit the base. Joe gave up temporarily. Yesterday, I borrowed a real saw from a friend, and we got the tree to fit in the base last night. However, our puny stand could not handle the girth of this tree; it simply weighed too much. I was begging Joe to get a new stand, but he wouldn't. Again, he was ready to throw in the towel. He said we should just buy a fake tree. Here is where "Logs on the Fire" fits in. Joe would literally been ecstatic to see the logs from this tree on a fire. Do you think that was what Karen Carpenter was referring to? Maybe.

Anyway, I was . . . quite frustrated. I love real trees. Fake trees break the Christmas spirit for me. So, to appease his tightly wound wife, Joe came up with a different solution: anchor the tree to the wall. We got the tree in the stand, it was just a matter of it staying up. The anchor was the solution. Then, we finally got the thing decorated. We kept our kids up until 9 last night because of all of the tree fanangling. But they were SO excited to decorate it. It's a beautiful tree, even if the majority of ornaments are in one small bottom portion of the tree. That's what happens when you give your kids unlimited decorating power.

This is the tree before we got it anchored to the wall:
Joe in the process of anchoring. He's trying to look happy. By the way, this is the clothing I see him in most of the time, but for some of you, it may be the first time you see Joe in military gear:
Finished! The kids love it.

Oh, and this past weekend, we went to a Christmas party on base. Santa gave them REAL presents, like Littlest Pet Shop and a game. And Joe won a $25 gift card to Buffalo Wild Wings. I'm telling you, the perks of military life are quite outstanding. Here's the kids with Santa:

Ma and Pa come to visit

I am sorry I haven't blogged in so long. After Halloween, my husband left for 10 days, and I got really sick, so nothing eventful happened in our lives really. Then, Joe came home, he got sick, I got sick again, and I prepared for my parents' visit. 5 days of bliss. I think you know by now that I am probably overly attached to my mom. I have spent more than half of a year living with her, so not seeing her since August has caused me to go through withdrawals.

So, we had a fun-filled time while my parents were here. I took them to the Riverwalk, the Alamo, Seaworld, Mission Francisco de la Espada, and of course, we had Thanksgiving followed by Black Friday shopping. My mom has put the full gamut of pictures on Facebook, so check there if you're wondering what else we did.

Guenther House in the King William District: it's a mansion and a restaurant.

This is a most impressive gingerbread house at the Guenther House. It took 150 hours to make, and it's amazing.

Then, we went to the Alamo.
And there, my mom and I made a new boyfriend:
This is us on the Riverwalk boat tour, which we had never done before:
The next day was Thanksgiving, which turned into quite a cooking adventure. I have strong dislikes about my current house, namely the cockroaches, things constantly breaking, and the plumbing issues. Wednesday night, after a full day doing the aforementioned activities, we walk into a house with an oven missing, and tools left behind by the maintenance workers. I called about oven issues on Monday, and they were now just fixing it, on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, at 9 pm. The maintenance men did come back, tried to fix the oven, and failed. So, on Thanksgiving, I cooked the meal in my vacant neighbor's home. No one has lived there since June, so the maintenance men opened the house up for me. Good times. They have since put in a new oven, but I am ready for these headaches to be over. Thankfully, we are moving into a new house on the main base in March. Hurrah!
So here we are: the food did get cooked, after many frantic moments of running back and forth from house to house.

Friday, my mom and I shopped with my friend Natalie for Black Friday. It was crazy, but fun, and tiring. We were gone from 3:30 am -11 am. Afterward, we lounged around and watched TV, then finally took the squirrely children to the playground. Oh, and we ate out. That was a main theme: eating out. We ate out every day but Thanksgiving.
And then of course, Seaworld. We broke down and bought passes. It just made sense since it's hot most of the year, and they have a very fun waterpark for kids.
At a 4D show . . .
And with an acrobat from Azul, one of the shows.

Oh, and I am very pregnant if you couldn't tell from the pictures. I went to the doctor today, I'm 31 weeks, and the baby already weighs 4 lbs. 6 oz. I think I'm going to birth a giant.

Halloween?

Halloween this year was a little weird. Trick-or-treating was on Sunday, which I have never experienced before. In our effort to keep the Sabbath day holy, we didn't go trick-or-treating. And amazingly enough, our kids didn't even notice! It's all thanks to late church. We didn't even get home until 7:15 due to choir practice, so trick-or-treating was already half over in our neighborhood. There are many vacant homes in our neighborhood, so we actually didn't get a single trick-or-treater while we were home. My kids are still oblivious to the whole thing.

Now don't think that we skipped the candy gorging all together. No, no, no. I value my kids' candy too much (for myself). Saturday night our church had a trunk-or-treat. So they got plenty there. Once again, as in Halloweens past, I have no pictures of the actual event. I think I was overwhelmed by the general insanity at the church. I don't think I've ever seen so many people at our church before. People came out of the wood work for candy. So no pictures.

The pictures below are of Dottie in the Kindergarten Halloween Parade, and of Elliot this morning. I just dressed him up again. But I do think my princess looks pretty spectacular. It's kind of a let-down after all of that hard work. I think I should make her wear the dress every day so I feel like my effort was worth it.

Note the tail. That's my favorite part.