Timmy’s trying to be a Minifigure here. We love our funny guy!
I can’t believe I forgot to post about Legoland! <Facepalm!>
We surprised the boys with a brief trip the day after Christmas, on our drive home from spending the holiday with Dave’s family in Tampa. Instead of writing a bunch of dialogue about it here, I will drop the Google+ photo album here and you can enjoy the captions. Enjoy!
Happy Holidays from Major Mom and Family!
Okay, okay, so I’m a bit behind here.
“But at least you’re kept your head above water with all the holiday obligations, right? You seemed to have had a billion Christmas parties for Dave’s unit, scouts, the spouses’ club, and the boys’ piano lessons.”
I guess so — the house was decorated, trees trimmed, gifts were purchased and wrapped, cards made and sent out, and we made it to everywhere we were expected to be this season — with White Elephant gift exchange gifts as needed.
I was pretty tired by the time the kids started their holiday break on the 18th. It was non-stop from the week after Thanksgiving.
The Magic of Christmas light show at Bellingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every holiday season. Our family really enjoyed it.
I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while, but before I knew it, Christmas got a bit overwhelming. Since there are still several days to enjoy the light show, I will try to get this post out there before their last weekend so people can try to fit it into their New Year’s plans.
Bellingrath Gardens and Home is a 65-acre property just southwest of Mobile, Alabama. The holiday light show, called Magic Christmas in Lights, which started in 1995, has become very popular and draws visitors from throughout the Gulf Coast.
Dave asks me around Thanksgiving every year, “What do you want for Christmas?” And I usually come up with something unusual, such as “I would like you to arrange a family trip to Bellingrath Gardens in December.”
Of course, he had to go do all the research: What is it? Why does Patricia want to go to a botanical garden in December? How much do the tickets cost? Do I need to get the tickets ahead of time?
I’m usually the one who does the travel planning in the family: I make the airfare, hotel, rental car arrangements, I am the one who does the route planning ahead of time. I don’t mind, really. But for Dave to take the reigns on travel planning is a real treat.
Dave got us internet tickets for December 8th, a Saturday night. The hours for the event are 5-9pm, and I will explain in a minute why it’s important to arrive at 5pm. We took our time getting to the gardens, stopping at Lambert’s Cafe in Foley, as well as a brief trip to the Wales West Tourist Railroad to see the holiday decorations there also.
Can you see the cracks in the screen? It’s extra creepy when I’m looking at this picture of screen cracks through the real cracked screen.
Allow me to give a little public service announcement.
Last weekend I dropped a filled duffel bag while attempting to load it into our car-top carrier for our holiday trip to Tampa. It fell from the top of our SUV, and in the bag were my Macbook and iPad. The iPad was well-protected, but the Macbook was not; the screen shattered and one corner of the aluminum body crushed.
Don’t yell at me, I’ve been fussed at enough about this.
The computer is still working decently, although I can occasionally feel the cracking of some small shards of glass inside the keyboard.
We have USAA Property Insurance (being a military family and all), and we immediately called them about our options for getting the computer repaired or replaced.
This has been an insane holiday season! But let me just toss up some You Tube videos showing off the kids. These were all taken with our new camera…with the telephoto lens zoomed in as far as it would go.
I promise I have so much more to write about this week, bear with me, thanks!
The first four are from the boys’ piano recital last Friday night. The first two are Timmy, the second two are of Jacob.
And this is Jacob this morning reciting a poem he wrote himself at the school’s “Peppermint Parade”, in which each student from four of the classes recited a poem about winter, Christmas, or any other theme from this time of year. I apologize for the zoom sounds in the first 15 seconds or so…I had a hard time seeing whether the image was zoomed in or not. I need to learn to adjust that manually so you can’t hear the motor.
I’m only putting text here because otherwise those colorful “Share This” buttons cover up the controls for the Peppermint Parade video.
“Mommy, now I look like a professor” ~ Timothy
Today Timmy got his first pair of glasses.
We knew this was coming for a long time. He’s like his father in so many ways: appearance, his comedic nature, and many other “youngest child” traits. It took three visits to the eye doctor this year to get everything right, Timmy would complain about his vision, and the eye doctor was trying to delay his needing the glasses. Over Thanksgiving break, we noticed him crossing his eyes purposefully. He claimed that his eyes “felt better” when he crossed them.
This last visit was the one where the doctor noticed the slight cross-eyed-ness. The glasses would help his eyes not have to strain so much. The doctor prescribed him glasses to wear for anytime he needed to read: books, blackboards, computer screens, music.
The doctor’s office has a nice optical shop on site, with a great deal for kids’ glasses. I was particularly sold by the one year warranty, which covers everything except complete loss of the glasses and lenses. Timmy wanted a pair that looked like his Dad’s. He told the completely-smitten-by-him ladies about how much he already looks like his Dad, and that with glasses he will look just like Dad!
Reading his Harry Potter: Prizoner of Azkaban.
They helped him choose a pair that offered some room for growth, and they put silicone nose pieces on them so they wouldn’t slip so much. An extra case for school, plenty of microfiber cleaning cloths, and some cleaning spray.
My hats off to any parents with young kids in glasses. How do you keep their glasses from getting lost while at school? Timmy has exhibited responsibility with other high-value items (such as his Nintendo DS), but my concern is with his flippy/floppy/hangy/roll-around-ness that will probably result in the glasses falling off easily. Here’s hoping he doesn’t lose them…
Our family got to spend last week with Dave’s family in New York. Even though Jacob, Timmy and I get to go annually — the boys spend some time up there — I sometimes go up to pick them up from their visits…Dave hadn’t been since 2009.
We flew the family up this year, driving to Panama City Beach so we could take advantage of a low-stress Southwest Airlines route to Islip, New York…on Eastern Long Island. This made pick up/drop off easy for Dave’s parents. The boys were wonderful during the travel both to and from New York.
The enjoyed playing with their stuffed animals on the trip up to New York. They were each allowed to bring two. It sounds strange, but they play pretend with their animals very nicely and don’t fight. I’ll take it!
The family spent most of the week relaxing; Dave and the boys played with LEGOs and Lincoln Logs, and the whole family enjoyed going through box after box of photographs from when Dave was younger.
It’s a tradition — playing with Daddy’s toys.
Jacob enjoyed helping me review a book for the blog last month.
This post is about Jacob. Some folks know — some folks don’t — that Jacob has been our more reluctant reader ever since he learned to read. His little brother plows through books pretty quickly, while Jacob reads more slowly and more deliberately.
Jacob had been sticking to book series that are heavier on the illustrations: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Big Nate, Origami Yoda, Adventures of Tin Tin, etc. Timmy loves those books also, but had no problem reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series while in 1st grade. Having Jacob read every day for school had been a challenge. In 3rd grade he had to set reading goals and it was pretty tough working with him to meet those goals.
Like a heel, I forgot to bring our good camera, but I was able to get a bunch of nice iPhone pictures of Pack 105’s participation in the Pensacola Veteran’s Day Parade.
First I have to show off these two pictures because they melted my heart!
The Scouts took turns carrying the flags…Timmy briefly carried the Pack 105 flag during the parade. The flags are very top heavy, so mainly older Scouts did this task, Timmy didn’t last very long at all.
This reminded me of the time Jacob carried the Pack 464 flag when we were in Bellevue, NE. He was a cute little Tiger scout at the time.
Now for this year’s event. I was the coordinator for our Pack this year, taking care of registering the Pack with the Gulf Coast Veteran’s Advocacy Council, and then setting up a meeting space for the Scouts and their families.
We don’t live super-close to Pensacola, so we only have a smaller group take part, but it’s so rewarding seeing the Scouts waving at the spectators. The older Scouts were noticing all the Veterans who were standing at attention saluting our group’s American flag.
These poor Scouts had to wait…and wait…and wait…for our position in the parade to start walking. There were over 100 entries and we were #83, phew!
Jacob and his friend Seth.
When we finally started marching, the kids were definitely ready to go! They were so busy looking at the spectators, we had a couple of crashes when the group in front of us stopped and we were completely paying attention.
After the parade, one of the den leaders held a class on proper use and display of the U.S. flag.
An awesome picture of the boys who stuck around for the flag class.
Just before I took my October trip to Nebraska the family did a Cub Scout Family Camping Event near Defuniak Springs. This is our 3rd time going to a Fam Camp event, so this time around the family could be more laid back.
The Cub Scout family camp experience includes the same activities: fishing, swimming, boating, leathercrafts, archery, BB guns, model rockets and lots of hiking. Our pack included a night hike and a game of lightstick tag after dark. The scouts can come and go as they please, and the entire family can participate, even siblings!
2 weeks later, while I was in Nebraska, Dave took the boys back to Defuniak Springs for a “Webelos Weekend”. Jacob is a Webelos-rank Cub Scout, and this weekend was designed for the scouts to earn from numerous activity pins. Jacob earned two activity pins in one day during the weekend.
Enjoy some pictures!
Our camp setup. The weather was really wonderful, so even though we just got a screen wrap-around for our shelter, we didn’t need it all weekend.
I was testing hand-cranked/solar powered emergency radios by Eton Corp. for GeekMom. This one included a cell phone charger, it’s truly a for-emergencies-only charger. We could get about 2% charge on the phone.
Fam camp isn’t complete with Patricia’s latest Dutch Oven cooking experiments. The first night’s dessert failed miserably (a peach cobbler that didn’t set). This is a chicken and rice casserole turned out really well.
The finished meal. Here’s the recipe: http://papadutch.home.comcast.net/~papadutch/dutch-oven-recipe-chickenrice.htm . Unfortunately, now that our sons eat adult-sized portions, the 10″ diameter Dutch oven is ending up too small. It might be time for a larger one. The recipe was designed for a 12″ Dutch oven and things were VERY full in the one I had.
The boys devoured it!
The Family Camp tradition is a huge bonfire on the Saturday night of the event. Everyone gathers for skits and music. The fire was ENORMOUS! The kids enjoyed the skits a lot.
This was the setup from Webelos Weekend. Dave and the boys did this with NO HELP FROM ME!
Jacob being handsome.
This is from the opening ceremony. Jacob is towards the back on the left, facing us.
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