Q is for Turkey
It's been a busy couple of weeks, thus the no posts :-) I'll summarize it as best I can back under the cut.
I had to work Christmas Eve, but with some last minute scrambling, we were mostly ready for Christmas with presents and even food to cook for Christmas dinner (namely, a tasty ham and casseroles to go with!). The AL grandparents came over on Christmas Eve and stayed till the 27th. In short:
1. The children enthusiastically ripped through a lot of presents
2. Everyone ate too much
Hubby and I split their presents so they'd have some things from Mommy and Daddy for both of their Christmases. We got each other a new hard drive Camcorder for Christmas, and it's been getting put to good use. I really like it, though it has some upsides and downsides. The downside is that it isn't as high quality as a tape based unit. The upside is ease of use - you hook up the USB connector and pull the file over. We were very perplexed at first, as it pulled over a file with a .MOD extention, which the computer was confused by. Hubby did a little bit of internet research, and showed me the complicated process of turning it into a usable file. He right clicked the .mod file, clicked "Rename" and changed the extension to .mpg. Viola :-) (Hard, huh?)
They loved opening presents. Ryan was reading the name tags and acting as distributor. Rachel was ripping open anything she could lay hands on, regardless of the name on it. I think she ended up "helping" everyone ;-)
Of the many presents received during Christmas, Round 1: Ryan and Rachel (and Daddy, and Grandma, and....) were having a ball with his Criss Cross Crash Matchbox track. It came with about 8 cars, and after watching a few high speed collisions, we see why. No one has lost an eye to cars flying off the track after a particularly thunky impact...yet! Rachel glommed onto her Hearts Only horses and dolls...and her clothes ;-)
Mom and I hit the after Christmas sales the next day and we got some *really* good deals. I just don't have many shorts I like, but after hitting the 90% off rack at Kohl's, I now have a good handful of Lee branded long shorts for the average price of under $4. As usual, disgustingly cute girl things abounded but the young mans' section was as barren as a desert. We still found a couple of decently priced nice things for Ryan...but sheesh, it's just kinda sad, the contrast between what you can get for the young boys and girls. They headed out the next morning, and hubby was working, so I did some desultory cleaning and played on the computer a bit.
Hubby's family arrived Friday evening. I was out and about, getting my hair turned back to something more akin to it's natural shade and picking up a few last presents. Saturday was a quiet day. We did a little shopping, and watched the Pixar movie Ratatouille (one of their Christmas presents), which was very fun. Rachel watched very intently, Ryan started losing focus after the popcorn was gone ;-)
We did Christmas: Round 2 on Sunday. Rachel by this time had been trained to bring each box to Ryan in order for him to discern whom to take it to. She was a most enthusiastic procurer of boxes, wiggling all the way to the back of the tree to wrinkle them out. She did better about not opening them all ;-) Ryan's digital art studio proved a big hit with him, and Rachel was interested too, and kept wanting to push the buttons. He did not like that at all, but he was having a blast with it, and has proven to be very adept. I found hubby on the computer after the children had been put to bed...coloring in a picture ;-) Rachel was most enraptured by the Dora dish/cup/implements set and demanded they be freed from their box and used that night. It's got a cute goblet cup with a floaty Dora in the stem. She asked me to get the Dora out for her ;-) I had to say no, though.
One of the things she got for Christmas is a set of foam animals with a pop out letter in each (T for Tiger and all). She wanted to try this, so we popped all the letters out, and I arranged the animals in alphabetical order, and turned her loose to match them up. A few letters she wasn't sure of, or she wasn't sure of the animal, and would bring them round to be asked about. "I" she knew, but she wasn't familiar with an Ibex. The "X" was a mystery, and I don't believe either of us were familiar with a Xenops, which is apparently some sort of bird. But we did overhear her confidently socket the "Q" into it's animal, declaring "Q is for Turkey." :-)
After dinner and bedtime for the children, we pulled out two gifts hubby's parents had given to us, Scattergories and exotic hot chocolates. So the quick breakdown of how to play: There is a list of various things, and you roll a letter. Each person writes down one thing for each item of the list, and it has to begin with that letter. You only get a point if no one else writes down the same thing you did. So: The letter is "S" The particular list item was "Things found in a desert." After studied consideration, I decided "sand" was too obvious, and they might contest "Spiders" so I put "Snakes." I was being the defacto list item reader, so when I announced "Things found in a desert" I wasn't prepared for hubby to literally fall out of his chair laughing and both his parents to bust a gut too. They all read it as "dessert" ... boy my answer sure would make for an odd dessert! I'll have my pie ala copperhead please! Their answers of "Sprinkles" and "Sugar" apparently only work if the desert is in Candyland. Hubby tried to argue that "sprinkles" would work for both, cause you know...it might occasionally rain just a touch in the desert....
I had to work Christmas Eve, but with some last minute scrambling, we were mostly ready for Christmas with presents and even food to cook for Christmas dinner (namely, a tasty ham and casseroles to go with!). The AL grandparents came over on Christmas Eve and stayed till the 27th. In short:
1. The children enthusiastically ripped through a lot of presents
2. Everyone ate too much
Hubby and I split their presents so they'd have some things from Mommy and Daddy for both of their Christmases. We got each other a new hard drive Camcorder for Christmas, and it's been getting put to good use. I really like it, though it has some upsides and downsides. The downside is that it isn't as high quality as a tape based unit. The upside is ease of use - you hook up the USB connector and pull the file over. We were very perplexed at first, as it pulled over a file with a .MOD extention, which the computer was confused by. Hubby did a little bit of internet research, and showed me the complicated process of turning it into a usable file. He right clicked the .mod file, clicked "Rename" and changed the extension to .mpg. Viola :-) (Hard, huh?)
They loved opening presents. Ryan was reading the name tags and acting as distributor. Rachel was ripping open anything she could lay hands on, regardless of the name on it. I think she ended up "helping" everyone ;-)
Of the many presents received during Christmas, Round 1: Ryan and Rachel (and Daddy, and Grandma, and....) were having a ball with his Criss Cross Crash Matchbox track. It came with about 8 cars, and after watching a few high speed collisions, we see why. No one has lost an eye to cars flying off the track after a particularly thunky impact...yet! Rachel glommed onto her Hearts Only horses and dolls...and her clothes ;-)
Mom and I hit the after Christmas sales the next day and we got some *really* good deals. I just don't have many shorts I like, but after hitting the 90% off rack at Kohl's, I now have a good handful of Lee branded long shorts for the average price of under $4. As usual, disgustingly cute girl things abounded but the young mans' section was as barren as a desert. We still found a couple of decently priced nice things for Ryan...but sheesh, it's just kinda sad, the contrast between what you can get for the young boys and girls. They headed out the next morning, and hubby was working, so I did some desultory cleaning and played on the computer a bit.
Hubby's family arrived Friday evening. I was out and about, getting my hair turned back to something more akin to it's natural shade and picking up a few last presents. Saturday was a quiet day. We did a little shopping, and watched the Pixar movie Ratatouille (one of their Christmas presents), which was very fun. Rachel watched very intently, Ryan started losing focus after the popcorn was gone ;-)
We did Christmas: Round 2 on Sunday. Rachel by this time had been trained to bring each box to Ryan in order for him to discern whom to take it to. She was a most enthusiastic procurer of boxes, wiggling all the way to the back of the tree to wrinkle them out. She did better about not opening them all ;-) Ryan's digital art studio proved a big hit with him, and Rachel was interested too, and kept wanting to push the buttons. He did not like that at all, but he was having a blast with it, and has proven to be very adept. I found hubby on the computer after the children had been put to bed...coloring in a picture ;-) Rachel was most enraptured by the Dora dish/cup/implements set and demanded they be freed from their box and used that night. It's got a cute goblet cup with a floaty Dora in the stem. She asked me to get the Dora out for her ;-) I had to say no, though.
One of the things she got for Christmas is a set of foam animals with a pop out letter in each (T for Tiger and all). She wanted to try this, so we popped all the letters out, and I arranged the animals in alphabetical order, and turned her loose to match them up. A few letters she wasn't sure of, or she wasn't sure of the animal, and would bring them round to be asked about. "I" she knew, but she wasn't familiar with an Ibex. The "X" was a mystery, and I don't believe either of us were familiar with a Xenops, which is apparently some sort of bird. But we did overhear her confidently socket the "Q" into it's animal, declaring "Q is for Turkey." :-)
After dinner and bedtime for the children, we pulled out two gifts hubby's parents had given to us, Scattergories and exotic hot chocolates. So the quick breakdown of how to play: There is a list of various things, and you roll a letter. Each person writes down one thing for each item of the list, and it has to begin with that letter. You only get a point if no one else writes down the same thing you did. So: The letter is "S" The particular list item was "Things found in a desert." After studied consideration, I decided "sand" was too obvious, and they might contest "Spiders" so I put "Snakes." I was being the defacto list item reader, so when I announced "Things found in a desert" I wasn't prepared for hubby to literally fall out of his chair laughing and both his parents to bust a gut too. They all read it as "dessert" ... boy my answer sure would make for an odd dessert! I'll have my pie ala copperhead please! Their answers of "Sprinkles" and "Sugar" apparently only work if the desert is in Candyland. Hubby tried to argue that "sprinkles" would work for both, cause you know...it might occasionally rain just a touch in the desert....