Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve at the farm. It is every bit of tradition. Jeremy loves this day, everyone at the farm loves this day. To Jeremy this is Christmas. Christmas at the farm reminds me a lot of what Christmas was like when I was a kid at Grandma and Grandpa Benezette's house. Tons of kids, lots of fun and a wonderful time with everyone, too many presents and amazing memories. This year was a bit different was everyone had one eye to the weather. After all Santa only comes to your house Christmas morning.

Every year Aunt Carrie buys matching Christmas pj's for the kids. Every year with the exception on last year we had a crazy idea of making them pj's. We were smarter this year and did not do a repeat of that adventure. Taralyn is the oldest at 9 and Maddie is the youngest at 2 1/2. A lot of kids in a few years.

Ah, the presents are coming out.

your present space, my present space.

We all manage to claim a space in the living room to open our presents. Lined up like trains in some cases.

Poor Gwynn was almost buried alive in her presents.

Grandma Char got a new camera for Christmas. We all hope she likes this one!!


We finished opening our presents then headed out to load the car. That was a shocker for me. There was snow everywhere. It was blowing like crazy and it was cold. It was sort of a shocking moment for me because I really thought it had not snowed that much or that long. It had not snowed that long but it had snowed a bunch. We headed out with Aunt Carrie and kids right behind us. We left the farm at 9 and made it home at 12 with a short pit stop to get Grandma Ann in Belton. It was a drive with lots of stops but worth every second, which is easy to say since we made it home nice and safe.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Christmas Weather

Well it is official. We did get snow for Christmas. A lot of snow or a little bit of snow, that is the question. That question can only be answered depending on where you are standing in the yard or driveway. It blew like no other storm I have seen. I have seen snow drifts but this was something greater then drifting. I will be the first to admit I was a weather doubter. I never think this college educated highly experienced meteorologist know a thing. There is like some sort of bubble around Kansas City that causes us to miss significant snow. It has been like this my entire life so I never think they will get it right. Well Gary Lesak got it right this time. I started to pay closer attention on the weather after the fore mentioned umbrella incident. We were going to be traveling at night with two small kids and Carrie would be right there with us. I turned on the news to hear everything was lining up for some great snowfall totals after a few hours of sleet. Sleet!! Yuck I hate sleet. Timing was going to be important on the way home from the farm!!
We drove to the farm just fine, in sleet and twenty mile hour winds. It hurt when we got out in Platte City to get gas.
The consensus was we would move Christmas celebrations along instead of pacing things out due to the weather. We watched the news before we started the festivities and this is what we saw:
Oh crap the red is coming to us. We are going to be in the red. Blue is sleet and red is snow. Hmmm, getting home could be no fun!!

The time came to go and when I opened that door to leave I could not believe it. There was a lot more snow then I thought, it was snowing hard and it was blowing. I mean blowing. We heard on the radio a few minutes later it was 40 mph winds. Oh crap. Trust me I cleaned up that language a bit for blog purposes!! Carrie, Taralyn, Hunter were all behind us in the truck and we were determined to make it home to Raymore. After all Santa only knows to come to your house!

The details of the drive don't matter. We stopped a lot to clean windshields we scraped and chipped ice off wipers and three hours later we made it home. We made a short pit stop to pick up Grandma Ann so we could all be sure she made it over for Christmas.

The snow is beautiful though!!

Holiday times

Tuesday night Taralyn and Hunter got to spend the night. I did not have to work on Christmas Eve. I appeared to be the only one that did not have to work Christmas Eve which made it extra special for me!! The plan was to take Jeremy to work the next morning and then pick him back up in the afternoon so we could head to the farm in one vehicle since the weather folks told us we would have snow. It was a party all night because we can just put sleeping kids in the car. Eventually Hunter came and asked if he could go to bed. I guess no nap during the day was catching up to him. We eventually all ended up asleep with much excitement for the next couple of days.

Before we could head off to get Uncle Jeremy from work we had to make our neighborhood deliveries of baked goodies. I made cookies and bread and purchased wine for some of our neighbors. It was raining and not too cold so I decided in order to focus some of the excitement energy that Taralyn and Lucas had they could play Santa's elves. They were of coarse more then happy to take on the role. I sent them out with their coats, goodies and an umbrella. They would go to one house and come back for more then head back out. Everything seemed to be going great until they came back yelling....there is a situation.....a bad situation. Oh no, a broken wine bottle, dropped bread,,,,hun? What is that, what was that? Oh my goodness, the umbrella. Their face was worth a million laughs. They were half scared and half hyped on Christmas cheer.

A strong wind gust came and destroyed the umbrella. It really was my first sign that this storm may actually amount to something.

'

So much for the Royals umbrella.

Snow storm 2009???

Could it be? Could KC really get snow for Christmas? I just heard this morning the last time KC had an inch of snow on the ground for Christmas was some time in 196X.

The weather folks are telling us it is a sure deal to get snow the only bad thing is that we are to get rain, sleet and ice of coarse first.

I hope that we do get snow, lots and lots of snow. I love snow. Heck everyone in this house loves snow!!

Here is crossing our fingers that the snow comes, the ice stays and nothing falls from the sky until I am tucked in my bed Christmas Eve night.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Christmas baking and Cookie decorating

Every year we bake for Christmas. Exactly what is baked varies from year to year but the cookies, they always remain the same. Chocolate chip, sugar and ginger bread. The kids love to help and for the most part is nice to have their help.
As you can see Addie Jo was extra excited to wear her apron.

Yep, raw sugar dough with flour on it has yet to be tasty but Luke tries every year.

Such dedication

The intensity

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Car wash help

One problem with living in the Midwest is that one must wash their car on a regular basis during the winter or your car will turn against you and make your clothes dirty as you get in and out of your vehicle. If you don't fear that there is always the fact your car will crumble from the underneath out. Well today was my day to wash the car because I was too lazy to do it yesterday. I love, I mean love our drive through wash here. They clean every inch of the house boat and dry it perfectly. I handed the nice gentleman my debit card as I pulled my vehicle perfectly onto the track, placing the vehicle in neutral of coarse. Another guy sprayed down the car, I got my debit card back as well as my air freshener and moist towelette to wipe down the inside of my vehicle. I start to wipe down everything inside and note if it was not so cold outside I should vacuum out the inside and get rid of a bunch of the junk I am hauling around.
Ahhh, Ahhh.
Bad word, another bad word, a worse bad word, well crap roll up the window already. Yeah you guessed it. I did everything as one should do at the easy peasy car wash except roll up my stinkin window. Good grief. I spent the rest of my trip down the car wash wiping soap of myself, my coat, my various vehicle parts.
Here is my tip of the day..............don't over look the simple things in life. Roll up the stinkin window at the car wash.

Pickle and pickle and pickle and pickle and pickle

I have hidden the Christmas pickle no less then 75 times since Sunday night.
Who's idea was this anyway??
I would consider hiding the pickle forever if there was not so much joy on these little faces every time they find it, even if there is not a present to open.
I do love this time of the year.

Christmas Pickle

Every year since Lucas could walk we have done the Christmas Pickle. It is a German tradition where all the children in the house try to find the pickle on the tree and receive an extra gift when that lucky child does. Well no one in our house is German but I do love traditions and games even more then traditions so I knew this one was going to work out well for us.

The hard part comes in the fact you have to try and find the pickle in here.

It is getting more and more fun now that Addie can really participate. Last year it was sort of a give me since she could not get past the fact she was allowed to be close enough to the tree to touch.

This year we gave Addie another head start. She looked and looked the tree over three times before we would let Lucas have a shot at it. I know you are in suspense to see who found the pickle...............


Yeah, not much of a shocker yet but in a couple of years I bet I post this picture first....


Shocking enough Addie Jo was able to find the pickle seconds after Lucas pointed to it.

And this year's pickle prize was....Nerf basketball set. Yippee.

It did not seem very fair to only open one gift so we let the kids each open one present. It was their new backpacks. As you can see they were very excited. New backpacks in December? Yeah, Spongebob did not last very long. Good thing Santa's helpers knew to stock up when they went on clearance.

Oh my goodness, there is something inside them.....

Books, and not books from the library. Sweet mom....

Plaza

Every year we take the kids to the Plaza to eat a nice dinner and then walk around and see the lights. It is nice to enjoy some peaceful time with the kids and remember how awesome they are. The Plaza has a special place in my heart. I love being their during the holiday season with all the lights and stores open late. I use to love to be down there when the lights came on, now I am mostly over that. It is on TV, my house is always warmer and well there are very nice and very crazy people that go there.

These are my favorite buildings on the Plaza.

The kids made sure they were all bundled up. Addie insisted on ridding in the stroller. It seems to be her new thing. Now that she is almost three she finally wants to ride in the stroller. Guess that walking thing is not all it is cracked up to be.

This is one of my favorite stores. Not that I can even dream of owning half of the things in there but it is so beautiful to walk around and look at everything and then the Christmas decorations they have, oh my goodness. It makes a little piece of droll come out of my mouth.

Halls also decorates their store windows every year. I will admit these are not my favorite but they are beautiful for Christmas.

Lucas is becoming very opinionated on the windows. He was disappointed that there were not any people (manacians) in the windows. Lucas loves to look the manacians to see if they have hands or faces or smiles or any color on them at all.


This is the carriage we always ride in, well since they started having Cinderella's carriage on the Plaza. This year it was drizzling and we missed our window of no crowds so we will have to go back for the carriage ride. Everyone was happy to pass up the two hour wait for a promise of a ride another day.

Look daddy more lights.

2nd Grade performs

Thursday night was Lucas Christmas Program at school. Every 2nd grade class had a different theme. Lucas class was depicting snow flakes. Lucas takes every roll on very seriously. They were to dress in white and Lucas made sure he was dressed head to toe!! That required him to wear shorts that night. To be honest I had no fight in me on the reasons this was a bad idea so we went with the usage of sweatpants to cover ones legs on the way in and out of the building.

Lucas was the best snowflake in his class!! He loved acting like the snowflakes they were holding were dancing and falling from the sky. Actually he liked that a lot more then the singing part.


It's the hap, hap, happiest time of the year..................



Getting ready for their snowflake dance and song......

The good life

I tell you. This looks like the life!! I wish I could cuddle up in my favorite chair, have ice cream or a drink and watch some TV. Ahhh, the life!!

Gingerbread House 2009

Every year we do up a gingerbread house. I thought Addie would participate for the first time this year. That did not work out so well. She has no interest so maybe next year. Lucas and I did all the decorating. He chooses the layout and I do the dirty work.

It is really a fun time after the hard work of getting the house to stay together is done. Here is Lucas design for this year.

The front of the house had a couple of trees, a couple bushes, a porch, sidewalk and pond. This family decided to put Merry Christmas on their roof this year. Every year Luke pretends there is a family that lives in the house.

Here is the back of the house. As you can see there is a walk way between the ponds, more trees and another porch with a bench.

Luke took a couple of pictures of his favorite part of the house. He said this was the most awesome part to do.

Santa 2009

Saturday was our annual trip to see Santa. Every year the local Lion's club puts on a breakfast with Santa and it happens to be at Luke's school which makes it even more awesome for us to attend. I was a bit nervous on how the entire visit with would go for Addie. We don't make a huge deal out of Santa around here but Santa certainly brings some nice gifts so we better visit him. I am happy to report both kids made it a wonderfully memorable visit.

Luke was kind enough to remind me yet again this year that it really is not breakfast with Santa because you go through Santa's village and then into the cafeteria to have your breakfast. This year Luke said they should call it breakfast where Santa is. Hummm, almost catchy.

Lucas shared his list with Santa. It is quiet the list. Front and back. The front has our customary cut out pictures so we know EXACTLY what to buy and the back was written out additional items he could not find pictures of.



Here is the part I was nervous about.
The approach:

Addie Jo starts to talk to Santa. I think oh ok, this is going to be just fine. What I was not prepared for was Addie's ten minute speech to Santa. This is a plus to this trip, Santa will take his time with the kids. Addie did not stop talking the entire time. Addie summed up his entire wardrobe for him. She fell in love with Santa. She told him he had boots just like her mom did. She said his belt was really too big and he had his hat on inside. I suggested she go over his list with him. Maybe it would have been a shorter visit because then she went over the color of the dolls she wanted and not to forget boots like his.

And more talking. Honestly, I am not sure what she was on by this point in time.

Hey, Addie Jo can I take your picture? Can we get a picture of you with Santa. Oh sure she says, turns to get a picture. I think Santa did not pick her up because he was afraid he could not get her down.

She loved him, just loved him. This is her holding her list. She went over every item. As she was getting down Santa took her list. Nothing was said of it so we off to breakfast. All of a sudden we were eating pancakes and she remembered her list was gone. Total freak out. We had to go back and ask Santa for her list back. She said she still had to look at it he can't take it. This very nice lady from the Lion's club tried to explain Santa needed it to get her her things on the list. She told that very nice lady he can't take it. It is her list.


Breakfast:

The excitement!!

There are a couple of clowns there to keep everyone entertained as you wait to see Santa and then to get your breakfast. Luke and I don't really care for clowns. Actually truth be known clowns scare us. Addie on the other hand is far more out going and friendlier and found chatting with the clowns fun although she did not find them funny.

Here is Addie Jo trying to understand Santa is not going to bring her pancakes.

It was a very awesome morning!!