Christmas Eve Celebrations

For the past few years, my family has gotten together on Christmas Eve to celebrate, eat a fabulous dinner, and exchange gifts. You'd expect a family with three boys - ages 9, 4, and 3 - to have those moments in the movies where the kids tear through the gifts in under three minutes. OK, maybe I just expected that of Evan. Oddly enough he had to warm up to the idea. He helped his grandma open her gifts (this happened at both my parents and Dan's) first.



I'd like to think it was one of those perfectly angelic gestures of unselfishness, but I'm not biting that fruitcake. Despite his theatrics for a small crowd, he is considerably more shy in front of groups of people.



He opened gifts, as long as he was in someone's lap.



Dan has an understudy.





After all the unwrapping was done, despite all the new toys, they proceeded to play my circa 1980s Pac Man card game.



Then I caught my mom and her sister reminiscing about their childhood Christmases. Maybe one day Evan will remember this one?

Distractions

I've been wanting to do a "I need to write this down" post for a while. Recently I found a piece of paper where I'd jotted down the first 50 or so words and phrases Evan started saying around age two. And every now and then I go back to some of our video files and find something like this (click on image to open video file):



This would be the answer to the question "has he always been loud?" Yes. Always.

The past few weeks it seems like someone in the house has had some sort of cold or sniffle of some sort. Evan has the achoos. That's what he calls sneezes. "Mommy why do I achoo all the time?"

It's usually followed by my favorite facial expression, the "it's a mystery!" face.



This is more of an exaggeration of the expression, but I'll take it.

On the way to preschool yesterday, Evan said something so perfect when I so desperately needed it. Lately he's been obsessed with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Canon. The one where the kids sing in perfect soprano tones to Pachelbel's Canon in D. He started the song (because he can operate the iPhone better than me most days), but just a few seconds in he paused it. I asked him what was up and he said, "Mommy, I love you. I love you so much I can barely believe my eyes." Then just as quickly as he'd paused to say it, he started the song again and started singing. Sweetest sounds I've ever heard.

Family Photos Part 2

For my brother and sister-in-law's family photos, Andie suggested an historic location not far from us. All I can say is I'm IN LOVE with this locale. It's nearly winter and most of the leaves are off the trees, but this place was beautiful. Lots of old stone buildings, open fields, rock walls, wooden seats, etc. I might be biased, but I think this family is pretty photogenic to boot too. For the first time ever I filled my card and had to take a few minutes to go through and delete duplicates (my 2 back-up cards failed of course). Here are some of my favorites.

















Head swap. Can you tell? [Hint: it's not Aaron/the dad]



And it never fails, my first and last shots are almost always at the top of my list of favorites.

Family Photos

My sister-in-law is a photographer by profession. She took some of the early photos I cherish of Evan before I had the energy or a working camera for that matter. We worked out a swap this year and as usual, Evan was far more cooperative for someone else than he ever is for me! Thank you, Andie, for making time in what I know is a very busy schedule to capture our little family. Here are some of my favorites.









Evan being Evan...

How I Almost Became a Vegetarian (Again)

We went to visit Dan's family for Thanksgiving this year. Since we live a few hours away it limits what I can bring for the actual meal, so I opted to bring wine and was recruited to help cook. I'm totally fine with that because Dan's mom, Fran, is an awesome cook and I could use the training.

Evan also got in on the food prep, helping to peel tangerines and pluck grapes for the fruit bowl. He loves to help in the kitchen. He also loves watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with his Poppy.



I thought my sous chef responsibiliities were going pretty well, up until it came time to stuff the turkey. It's been nearly 20 years since I was a vegetarian, but I just couldn't do it. I think I'd used up my daily quota of toughness picking the meat off of some unknown bones for the stock. I love my mother-in-law. She was totally cool about it.

Evan smiled for one pre-dinner picture.



And Dan staged an American family dinner feud. Notice how his brother just ignores him. Ha!



Happy Thanksgiving!