December in Rhode Island

Well we made it to December, just barely!  A quick glance at our calendar for the month soon showed us we had over scheduled in a BIG WAY!!  Right off the mark, the town we live in (Jamestown) had a big weekend celebration to welcome Santa and Mrs. Claus by boat, 

a tractor-ride up the street to visit with them and pose for pictures 

and a tree lighting ceremony AND two birthday parties - all on the same day!!  Oh yeah, Jim and I had a Holiday ball to go to that night!  

So it was just your average typical Saturday for us (HA HA HA).  And just because we had a whole extra day to play with we decided to go look for a Christmas tree at one of the local farms after we had our picture taken (AGAIN) with Santa Claus at one of the local mansions.  So we got the kids dolled up in coordinating outfits and hit the road.  Well seems we got some bad information because Santa was a no-show that week.  Apparently the paper had the dates wrong, thanks!  Did they know how hard it was to make this happen?  Do they care?  So off to the tree farm.  It wasn't our day.  No trees made the cut.  So we thought we might get some potential Christmas card photos of the kids.  

Not bad for the first effort

Going down hill

This is a more accurate depiction of what I was getting

Nope.
I did get a few funny ones at the "face in the picture hole" boards the farm had set up near the store.

But I couldn't talk Jim into considering them seriously.  Back to the drawing board.

So another week goes by, no tree, but another chance to have our picture taken with Santa!  This time I called and yes, he was truly going to be there.  So we headed over after church expecting to have to wait in line forever and ever.  SURPRISE!  No line - what?

Is this the best we can do?  Maybe we should try again, cause there is still NO LINE! 

OK, now we are just being greedy.  We have all had cookies, eggnog and candy canes (twice).  Let's try to get a family shot and get out of here before our luck runs out.

Why is Jim holding Ben like he is a ventriloquist dummy? Why is our 6.5 year old sitting on Jim's shoulder like a parrot. Why am I palming our oldest child's chest? Why does everyone have a pained look on their faces?  Because it was PAINFUL!  The whole thing was very very painful.  Search for Christmas card photo still very much alive.  Oh well, at least we got our tree that day.

We ended up with two trees.  Not only did we get both of them in the house and in the tree stands, but also managed to string the lights!  One small one for the kids upstairs to decorate with all their homemade ornaments and colored lights 

All lighted up!

and a GIGANTIC one downstairs for Jim's white lights and our family ornaments. 

This sucker is HUGE!  By far the biggest tree we have ever had.  WOW!

There were a couple of things on our New England bucket list that directly involved New York City.  One of them was to go to the US Open.  Didn't get to do that, one day it will happen.  Another was to go see all the Christmas sights in the city.  You know, Rockefeller Center, ice skating, looking at the store front windows, and who can forget the Rockettes!!  So we pulled the kids out of school a day early and took off for the Big Apple.  We were planning on staying one night in a hotel and the second night at Aunt Kaki's (Mary Catherine) apartment.  She, wisely, had made other plans for that weekend and we would have the place to ourselves.  She was able to meet us at our hotel on Thursday night and have dinner with us after giving us a quick tour of her neighborhood.  
After that we were on our own!  First on the list was seeing the Rockettes!!  

They were FABULOUS!!! There were lots of non-Rockette things happening on stage in order for them to change costumes but the performance was truly amazing!  One of the scenes was a Nativity with live animals (even Camels - that is CAMELS as in more than one).  The kids were pretty much entranced for the entire show.  Afterwards we decided take the subway over to walk through Central Park on to the Museum of Natural History.  

Here we are in Central Park, all of us, including a banana apparently

The kids had seen "Night at the Museum" and wanted to see the real deal.  Lucy said she wanted to see a real dinosaur!

It being the Friday before Christmas, the museum wasn't that crowded, once you got in the door, which was horribly understaffed.  I mean, seriously, that whole system needs to be re-evaluated asap! Of course Lucy got lost.  I swear that child does it on purpose!  We had already had "the talk" about how everyone had to stay together and there were millions and millions of people on this one little island, blah blah blah, but apparently that talk was for the other two children, not her.  We had decided to take a bathroom break and she ran ahead then something caught her eye and she stopped while the rest of us continued on.  I found her, but not after some tense moments.  She didn't even know she was lost.  That pretty much sealed the deal for me.  I was ready to leave.  

So we hop back on the subway to head back to our hotel and then Jim had the brainstorm to go by FAO Schwarz first.  Of course the kids were in full agreement.  We went in with a plan this time.  Jim would take Ben and I had the girls BY THE HAND.  We decided 1 hour was plenty of time to walk around a toy store in which we had NO INTENTION of buying anything, note that I said intention.  I kept the girls together as we wandered over half of the store before they started begging for a toy.  I reminded them that Christmas is in 3 days.  I am pretty sure Santa is going to take care of anything you might want, so there will be no toys bought.  Especially the $80.00 stuffed animal that Lilly was salivating over - WHAT?! 
So we link back up with Jim and Ben and the girls were working him over HARD!  He finally relents and says they can have one thing under $20.00.  HA!  So that pretty much equates to a pack of gum!  Nevertheless we split up again and search for something that meets that criteria.  Ben and Lucy are successful but Lilly is still holding onto the pipe dream that is the $80.00 stuff animal.  We reconvene and Daddy holds firm to his limit (yeah Daddy!).  He says that she may go look for something else quickly because it is time to get out of this store.  Unfortunately, Lucy interpreted this guidance to Lilly as being a license to bolt - and before we could turn around - she was gone.  AGAIN! This time we escalated to full on search mode immediately, since there were about 10,000 people in this store and it WAS New York City!  Finally, after about thirty minutes of alternating standing by the door and searching, I decided to go back upstairs and who do I meet coming down - Lucy.  With a giant doll in her arms.  Part of me was tempted just to buy the damn thing, relieved that she was OK, but the other part of me was sooooo mad that she had slipped away for a second time within a six hour period that there was no way she was getting ANYTHING (much less some giant waste of space such as this doll).  Well, after we scolded her (again) for disappearing on us, we broke the bad news about the doll.  She took it pretty well and instead picked up a $14.00 dinosaur she promptly named "moonbeam" and all was good.  I can't even tell you what the other two ended up with.  Seems like Ben got some paper airplanes and Lilly chose a dog or something.

By this time it was WAY WAY WAY past needing a drink time.  So we head directly to our hotel to pick up our car.  We get there and they tell us it is going to be 45 minutes for our car.  45 minutes!  Where did they park -- in New Jersey?  We had dinner reservations near Mary Catherine's apartment so we called and cancelled that, because that was not going to happen and started to try to find something kid friendly in Times Square.  We tried just a pizza place first, how bad could that be right? Bad, very bad.  Then a few diners, also bad.  A really cool looking, highly rated place, not kid friendly and no tables.  So we ended up at Ruby Tuesdays.  That is right, Ruby Tuesdays!  Ha! Jim was mortified.  I can't believe we are eating at a Ruby Tuesdays in Times Square, NY with 1000s of restaurants within a mile of us.  Get over it Jim, we are eating here.  We had to wait (shock), and couldn't use the salad bar (Lilly was mad about that) but I got to have a drink so how bad was it really?  Pretty good!  Jim tried to make me promise it wouldn't make the blog, but who are we kidding.  How could I NOT mention that we were in NYC and ate at a Ruby Tuesdays!?!  Classic!!

So we get our car and head down to Mary Catherine's apartment. Again, she wisely was out of town, so we had the place to ourselves.  We circled her block once and found a pretty close spot so we parked.  As we were unloading our stuff the guy behind us was leaving so Jim decided to back up.  I am not entirely sure why he wanted to do that, but whatever.  So the next morning we get up, have breakfast and our day is going to be filled with checking out the fancy Christmas windows at all the traditional stores.  They did not disappoint!  Some of them weren't really geared towards children and surprisingly most of them showed lots of New Years scenes, but still they were impressive.  We also took a quick side trip to the Public Library.  I have always wanted to go in there.  We walked in the antechamber and Ben asked "If this is a library, then where are all the books?"  Nothing gets past him.
Here are some random shots from our 24 hours in NYC, cause when you have our kids that is about all you can stand - ha ha ha

on top of Aunt Kaki's building. 

With the characters in Times Square, right before they hit you up for a "donation." Warning:  if you ever go to New York, do not do this.

Who I would rather have my kids photographed with if I have a make a donation.

Near Central Park

Chinatown

Rockefeller Center

Subway

By far their favorite thing was riding the subway

We decide we need to get on the road so we start making our way back to Mary Catherine's to pick up the car.  As we are nearing her block we stumble upon a Christmas parade!  She lives right where Chinatown and Little Italy intersect so it is a pretty interesting cross population of cultures.  So this parade has a full up mix ranging between Chinese Dragons and drums to

floats with giant cannoli's dancing to Christmas music.  Surreal!
 

So we are just casually walking past this parade and suddenly Jim and I look at each other because we have noticed there aren't any cars parked on the sides of the road and we are on the street where Mary Catherine lives.  I can't repeat what we said to each other almost at the exact same moment, but I am sure you can imagine.  Jim sprints ahead a few blocks to discover this:

I swear that sign WAS NOT there the night before.  If he hadn't backed up, we totally would have been fine, but since he did we were in the first legal space on the street.  If the car had been towed we would have been so up the creek without a paddle!!!  I don't even want to think about it.  We took that as a sign to get out of New York and head back to Jamestown.  We hadn't lost anyone or gotten the car towed, so we are putting this trip in the "win" column.

Good Lord, this is a long blog.  Doesn't it seem to go on and on?  I haven't even gotten to Christmas yet.  Are you still awake? I promise I am almost finished.  

So we roll back on in time for Christmas Eve eve (you know the night BEFORE Christmas Eve) and since we haven't done ANYTHING we thought we would put together a gingerbread house.  Yes, you read that right, a gingerbread house!  My BFF's mom had sent us a kit a few weeks earlier.  I am not sure why she was mad at me, but apparently she was and she wanted to punish me by making me assemble the kit with the kids.  Everything was going smoothly until wrecking ball (Ben) decided things weren't "right" and well, the end result left a tad bit to be desired.  They were happy and that is all that mattered.  I wish I could say we were able to enjoy it as a center piece throughout the rest of the holiday but almost immediately all the candy was picked off and little by little it began to resemble a house in a less-than-desirable-section of town.  Santa took it back with him for the elves to use as a "fixer upper".

The kids "performed" in the Christmas Pageant at our church.  Lilly and Lucy were angels (ha ha ha) and Ben was a dog in the manager scene.  I suggested he would be better suited to portray the donkey, but I was out-voted.  What a shame - he would have been a natural.  Lilly had a speaking part.  She got to give a much shorter variation of Linus' speech in the Charlie Brown Christmas special.  We practiced and practiced for weeks!  They all did an excellent job.  We are so proud!

Still looking for that family photo for the card

 We rushed home and got ready for a few friends to stop by and socialize for an hour or two before getting down to the real work of putting the kids in bed.  Then and only then did all the magic start to happen.  All month our elf Kringle had been entertaining the kids with his antics.  He did take a mini vacay for a few days while the kids were really rotten.  Seems Santa instructed him to leave a note stating he would not be "allowed" to return until their behavior improved.  Santa doesn't like to waste his elves time.  That Santa, who knew he was so concerned with man power cost.  Behavior improved and Kringle was put back to work.  Well Kringle had a few more tricks up his sleeve and he made sure the kids didn't try to get to all the presents without at least making them work for it.  He crepe papered them into their rooms and out of the living room.  Oh that Kringle.  He is a rascal!

Suddenly, it was Christmas morning and Jim was in over his head trying to keep the kids out of all the presents!!

Furbys all around!

 It took them longer than I expected to tear through everything and even longer for me to get them out of their pajamas and into clean up mode.  I personally wanted to take the tree down that afternoon.  I don't know why I was in such a Grinchy place.  Did I mention how big the tree was.  Big tree means lots and lots and LOTS of needles on the floor.  ARGHHH!!

The last 3 years we have had our Christmas dinner at a Waffle House on I-85, but not this year!!  We had been invited down to a friend's house!  Yeah!!  Although I must say I did miss not having my traditional egg sandwich this year (sigh).  

Next up was ice skating!  I know what you are thinking, don't those people ever just sit around the house and do NOTHING?! Well yes, but that doesn't make for interesting blogs.  Not to mention the kids had been pestering us since the rink opened to go.  Last year we went right after we moved up here, it wasn't pretty.  Ben ran out onto the ice and promptly found himself lying prone on the ice after his feet shot out from under him; just like in a cartoon.  This year, he was a bit more cautious.  Really, all of them did 100% better, and only one "goose egg" for Ben.  Very little crying which made it so much more enjoyable for Jim and I.

On the way home from ice skating, it began to snow!

And it continued to do so all through the night!  The kids were beside themselves with excitement.  The next day we decided to go sledding at a nearby hill and the kids had a ball!!

So that brings us to New Year's eve - THANK goodness, right?!  This month has gone on FOREVER!!  Hey, I am right there with you - I lived it.  We actually got invited to a party this year! Yeah, we are popular!!  It was a kid-friendly party, so we hoped to be able to hold it all together until midnight, but all bets are off when you are including kids.  I brought them in their pj's and packed sleeping bags just in case they fell asleep.  Yeah right, fat chance of that happening!  Every time I turned around at least one of them was dunking something in the chocolate fountain.  I decided that if I hadn't been sitting there guarding it, one of them would have tried to put their head up there with the chocolate just pouring down their throats!  

We made it through another year!!  Big things on the horizon for 2013.  Among other things, we will be moving back to Florida.  Miami this time.  Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading through this marathon of an entry.  

I promise January will be boring.