The Adventures of Taking Pictures of Children

On Friday, Julie and I got together with the kids, as usual. This week, we visited the Shoppes at Chino Hills, had lunch, and then came back to our house to play and exchange Christmas gifts. I missed the pics of the girls with their gifts, probably because I was attempting to disengage their gifts from the layers of plastic and zip ties.

No need to worry that Lucas might not be able to open his gift. He had two very ready and willing assistants who were excited to help him!

Then someone (I think it might have been me, because I'm certain Julie has more sense) had the brilliant idea to try to get all three kids on the couch to take a picture of them. I was snapping pictures more or less continuously while Julie and I were simultaneously trying to get the girls to look at the cameras and to prevent Lucas from toppling onto the tile floor. I had no idea what pictures I took until I downloaded the pictures onto the computer. While none of them will win any prizes for photography, I love these pictures because they perfectly capture the hilarity of these three little people, the afternoon, and the antics of going out with three small children!

Ten on Tuesday

1. Rebecca and I are leaving tonight for Tennessee (Ramy will join us soon). Before I leave, I have to go to work, do an eval for worker's comp, score a bunch of tests that I will need in order to write reports from Tennessee, finish packing, straighten up the house so that we don't return to a messy house, eat dinner, be sure we have all our electronics fully charged and packed, give Rebecca a bath, give Snowy his instructions about remembering to fly to TN instead of coming back to CA after he leaves the North Pole tonight, and get to the airport on time for our redeye. Redeye is really an apropos term, as I always arrive in Nashville looking as though I spent the night on a bender instead of traveling, usually because I didn't sleep the night before trying to get everything done before I leave on a trip.


2. Please pray that we have no flight delays, cancellations, re-routings, or other snafoos en route. The forecast for Nashville has a high of 25 degrees today, a low of 20 tonight, and snow showers for tomorrow morning. I've had the distinction of being trapped in Dallas before, and it is an experience I don't really want to repeat. Plus, my mom has to drive from Fayetteville to Nashville to retrieve us. However, if we get stuck, we get stuck. Rebecca and I can kick it in a nice warm hotel somewhere that has room service and wifi.

3. I have decided that we should do away with this whole "white elephant" gift exchange thing. I'm not a party pooper, but it is stressful knowing what to bring and then the whole fighting over and stealing gifts thing is just a bit chaotic. Okay, I realized that I sound like a cranky old lady when I wrote that. At the party on Saturday night, we took two candles that I really wanted for myself. Unfortunately, when it was Ramy's turn to pick, he didn't pick our gift. Our gift was a hit though - it got "stolen" the max amount of times. How competitive (and pathetic) am I that I was pleased about that? We ended up with a glitter picture frame. At least I have a gift for next year's white elephant gift exchange!

4. It's a good thing we're going to Tennessee tonight, because Snowy is running out of places to hide in our house.

5. Is Congress ever going to pass a budget for the fiscal year that is now 1/4 over?

6. On Sunday night, Rebecca and I did some holiday baking. Not candy, cookies, or cakes to give as gifts to people! No, we made homemade dog treats to give to her favorite doggies for Christmas! She was so excited to give Christmas treats to Bandito, Riley, Slinky, Paddington, and Sydney. Rebecca said, "Now they will have a happy Christmas!" Who knew there were so many recipes on the internet for dog treats. Some involved things like grinding chicken liver or "leftover fish parts." Mama nixed those! In case you're wondering, here's the recipe we used:
2 cups flour
1 cup rolled oats
2 Tbsp. wheat germ
1/3 cup peanut butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 1/4 cup hot water
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350°. Mix together all ingredients, except egg. Knead dough, then turn out onto a floured surface. Roll to 1/4 inch thickness and cut with cookie cutters and place on cookie sheets. Beat egg with a whisk, then brush egg over surface of dog treats. Bake for 20-30 minutes. Turn off oven and leave the treats for several hours or overnight to harden.

7. If anyone had told me 10 years ago that I would have spent 30 minutes researching dog treat recipes online at midnight on a Saturday night just because my daughter wanted to give gifts to her favorite creatures, I would have thought they were crazy. Instead, I'm crazy.

8. If you're looking to make any last minute personalized gifts, check out Artscow. They've got really good prices on calendars, canvas prints, magnets, ornaments, and a lot of other gifts you can make from your pictures. They give you a ton of credits for "free" stuff you can make when you sign up. However, you still pay shipping on those items, which is significantly higher than you might expect. Essentially, the shipping is the cost of the item, but it's a decent price!

9. Rebecca informed Ramy and me the other night that Saturn is the planet that has rings and Mars is the red planet. She then went on to name all of the other planets in our solar system, except for Uranus. We have no idea when and where she learned about the planets, but I agree with her that Uranus is the one to leave out.

10. Please keep Ramy's Auntie Nellie and Uncle Milo in your prayers. (They're the grandparents of Rebecca's birthday-cousin-twin Hannah and her sister Kirsten who are often featured on this blog). They were in a serious car accident yesterday afternoon in Las Vegas. Auntie Nellie is in critical condition with collapsed lungs, broken ribs, a broken neck, and a lacerated liver. Uncle Milo is in much better condition, but very distraught. They will certainly have a long recovery, and their families will be doing a lot of running back and forth to care for them.

The Joy of Christmas

Christmas Party Time

Rebecca loves nothing (except snuggle time with Mommy and Daddy) as much as she loves spending time with her girlfriends.

On Sunday afternoon, we had our annual get-together at the Lohs, with Vincent, Madeline, Paul, Karen, Jonathan, and their respective families. There were five little girls there, and Rebecca was the youngest. However, she didn't know that. She refers to Ashley as "the little one," because Ashley is Rachel's younger sister. Ashley is still two years older than Rebecca. As soon as we walked into the house, Rebecca took off upstairs with her girlfriends, and we barely saw them the rest of the night!

Madeline was doing a cookie-decorating test drive with the girls in preparation for her room-mother duties this week. The girls had a blast decorating gingerbread girls and boys. At one point, I caught Ashley and Rebecca sucking the icing out of the Ziplock bags they were supposed to be using to squeeze icing onto the cookies.

Then it was time to gorge ourselves on food. Maddy came up with the idea that, this year, each family would bring two random dishes. We had no idea if we would end up with 15 bags of chips or all desserts or what. Thus, we ended up with honeybaked ham, meatloaf, lasagna, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, pizza, pesto chicken salad, garlic bread, pan de sal, salad, coffee cake, apple pie, gingerbread cookies, and red velvet cake pie. The girls drug themselves downstairs long enough to eat a bit of food before they were off and running and riding little cars around in the foyer of the Loh's house.

While the girls were upstairs playing dress-up and Twister and various make-believe games, the adults were downstairs talking. And talking. And talking. This is what this sophisticated group of professionals looks like, discussing the finer points of law...or generally making fun of each other. You need a thick skin to run with this crowd!

The kids all exchanged gifts, but unfortunately, Karen's kids and Lauren were already gone by the time I thought to snap a picture. Still, here's Rebecca and Ashley and Rachel posing with some of their gifts.

Snowy, the Elf on Our Shelf

Making his debut appearance in the Cisneros home this year is one of Santa's Christmas Elves. He's in the special class of elves called An Elf on the Shelf. He arrived one ordinary day in November and had settled himself on our dining room table with a book, which instructed Rebecca in the ins and outs of having an elf live with us. We can't touch him, or his magic could be broken. We can talk to him, but he can't talk back to us. Each day, he takes notes on what the child(ren) in our house does, whether she's bad or good, and takes any messages from her back to Santa Claus. The book instructed Rebecca to give her elf a name, and so he was named "Snowy." After Rebecca is asleep, Snowy flies back to the North Pole to give his report and visit with his friends and Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Then he flies back to us and chooses a different location from which to report each day.

Every morning, Rebecca rushes to find where Snowy has hidden himself. There have been two days since he arrived that he apparently didn't feel well or was too tired to make the trip back to the North Pole, because he was in the same place two days in a row. Rebecca was quite concerned one day and thought we should take him to the doctor, because he had planted himself in a box of tissue, after having not gone back to the North Pole the night before. It took some convincing, but she finally decided that if Snowy needed a doctor, Santa would make him see the Elf doctor at the North Pole.

We have been reminding Snowy that in a few days, we'll be flying to Tennessee to spend the holidays. Snowy has instructions that when he leaves our house next Tuesday evening, he will fly to the North Pole as usual, but then instead of flying back to California, he'll need to meet us at Grammy's house in Tennessee. Rebecca wants to leave him some snacks since this may mean some extra flying for him. I sure hope Snowy doesn't get lost and makes it safely to Tennessee! When Rebecca says her prayers at night, she includes prayers for Snowy's safety in flying to and from the North Pole. Needless to say, he's become one of our favorite Christmas traditions!

An Afternoon Fit for a Princess

On Sunday, November 28, we went to a special showing of the movie Tangled at Disney's El Capitan Theater in Hollywood.  Rebecca had a beautiful navy blue new dress to wear, and Rebecca doll had gotten a blue dress for the occasion also (of course, Rebecca doll was going to accompany us!).  So of course, Grammy and Mommy had to also wear blue. 

  

 The day before, we realized that Hollywood's Christmas parade was going to be the same afternoon and that the street in front of the theater and surrounding side streets were all to be blocked off!  This induced a bit of panic for me, because driving in Hollywood isn't something I do every day, and parking and walking for blocks or miles wasn't really one of the things I'd had in mind when I planned the day.  I talked to someone from the El Capitan's customer service, who assured me that there would be plenty of parking for El Capitan guests across the street.  I'll admit that I was dubious enough of this information that I ended up leaving our house before 10:00 a.m. to get there for the 1:30 show.  We arrived and parked by 10:50 a.m. without incident, which surely indicates that I should trust people more. 

This ended up actually working out perfectly for us!  We went into the Disney Soda Fountain and had a nice lunch and cupcake and Rebecca picked out her Tangled souvenir (some Rapunzel shoes). When we got there, the place was empty and we were able to pick out her souvenir with ease and didn't have to wait for a table.  By the time we left, it was a madhouse, and people were waiting in a line down the street to get in!  We had VIP tickets, which got us very nice seats on the front row of the balcony.  This was a mixed blessing. Good because we knew we had good seats. Bad because Rebecca freaked out about the height (I know that I have induced a fear of heights in my daughter. I can't help it. I'll refer her to a great therapist for some cognitive therapy for phobias).

 Before the movie began, we received our collectors edition popcorn buckets, drinks, and groovy shades for the 3D movie.  Once in our seats, Rebecca hid her head on the armrest so she wouldn't have to see how high we were and I contemplated how much we'd spent on these tickets for my daughter to watch the freckles on my arm and to take a nap.  However, once the pre-movie stage show began and she heard them announcing the introduction of the Disney princesses, she faced her fears and looked out and had no more height worries. The stage show had a lot of singing and dancing from Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, Princesses Belle, Jasmine, and Tiana, and some professional dancers.  At the end, they introduced the new Princess Rapunzel and Flynn Rider.  Then we saw the movie in 3D.  Incidentally, I get a migraine from the traditional 3D movies, but the new digital 3D is awesome!  Rebecca loved the movie!  She is officially obsessed with Rapunzel.

After the movie, we got to attend afternoon tea with Rapunzel.  As a gift, Rapunzel gave her (and all the other little girl attendees) a crown to wear.  Princess Rebecca colored a picture to give to Rapunzel and was so excited to present it to her.  She also got an autographed photo with her.  Rebecca absolutely loved the whole day, and, in turn, so did we.

Ten on Tuesday

1.  Last week was a week of computer maladies.  Our keyboard had been sticking, so we decided to replace the keyboard.  Of course, since the wireless sensor was for both the keyboard and mouse, we needed to replace both.  We go that done and realized the modem and router weren't working, so we spent time fixing those.  Then the external hard drive wouldn't come on.  I thought that the problem was in the power supply, because the CPU rested on the cord.  Alas, after several hours at Frys on Friday evening, we learned it wasn't the power supply. They tried putting on a new external cover with the new connections to no avail.  Because it had a lot of pictures and all of my digital scrapbooking, I was willing to pay for them to try to recover the data.  Unfortunately, it didn't work.  But the good news is that all the pictures were actually backed up.  The bad news is that I lost all my digital scrapbooking stuff.  I guess that means I'll have to start collecting it all over again!

2. This morning, I'm in awe of my husband's organization of all our important papers.  I had to return a call to the company that is doing my background check for the University of Phoenix.  They needed some documentation of my employment.  Like, my last year's W2.  Of course, no need to panic.  Ramy had them carefully organized into a file folder that was at my ready, and I was able to scan it and email it to them while I was on the phone with them.  Left to my own devices, that piece of paper would likely have been...well, who knows where, but I'm sure I couldn't have laid hands on it without seriously upending the house and file cabinet and my sanity in general.  So yeah, thank you, Ramy.

3.  I'm sad that it appears Elizabeth Edwards is near death.  I'm interested that as all of the people who love her are gathered around her, her estranged husband is one of them.  Yeah, buddy, you cheat on me with a flight attendant while I, your politicowife have been battling cancer, you're the last person I want by my deathbed.

4.  Have you checked out PostSecret?  I have a little guilty obsession with it.  The deal is that people can mail in their dirtiest little secrets anonymously on a postcard.  I don't know why I like to look at it, but apparently many other people do too!

5.  Hallelujuah!  My husband came up with something that he actually wants for Christmas!  You have no idea how momentous this is.  I, however, have still not come up with anything.  How unusual is THAT?

6.  Do you run out of shampoo and conditioner at the same time?  Or are you like me and it is always uneven?  I am seriously irritated by this issue.  I like my shampoo and conditioner to match.  But then I run out of the shampoo first, but since there is still conditioner left, I either have to throw out the conditioner and buy new conditioner to match the new shampoo, or I have to buy another bottle of the same shampoo, and that is an endless cycle that prevents me from switching around from brand to brand the way Ramy uses the remote control to flip between People's Court, Kababayan LA, Sanford & Son, and Gangland.  Whew, okay I feel better now.  Any lingering questions as to why I went into psychology?

7. For a time last year, Costco sold three-pack packages of shampoo and conditioner.  Each pack had two bottles of shampoo and one bottle of conditioner.  For a couple of months, all was right in the world.  Alas, they only carried it that one time.  Costco likes to toy with my emotions that way.

8. I'm really not mentally ill. 

9. At 4:00 this morning, two little hands grabbed my earlobes as an almost-four-year-old climbed on top of me and said in a gravelly voice, "I need you to snuggle me, my mama."  We were like a little cocoon until 7:10 this morning.

10. On Saturday, Julie and I learned why we usually shop on weekdays and why going to Toys R Us on a Saturday is an experiment in torture.  Between the nightmare of parking and the impossibility of getting a shopping cart through the aisles, it was like running a gauntlet.  But we made it through.  Thank goodness we'd been training for such a shopping expedition.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

We love our weekly shopping/lunch/play/tea and cookie dates with the Woltils!  It is definitely one of the highlights of Rebecca's week to be able to see "my friend Addie and her baby broder Nucas."

One of the things that gives Julie and me joy is to put the girls in matching or coordinating outfits.  (I know, we realize we are crazy).

A couple of weeks ago, the girls decided they needed to put on a "fashion show" in the window at Crazy 8.  There are always lots of hugs and dancing that go on!

And don't think this little fella gets left out!  Lucas is very much adored by his big sister and Rebecca.  He's such awonderfully squeezable little guy - I look forward to getting to kiss his sweet head and pinch his cute legs every week!  (No, I'm not practicing for having another baby.)

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving a few different ways!

On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Ramy's sister Myrna and her family came over for Sunday brunch. They weren't going to be able to join us on Thanksgiving Day, so it was a nice opportunity to make some yummy brunch foods. It is my favorite meal, after all.

On Thanksgiving morning, we awoke and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. We went to Thanksgiving Day mass at our church, and then we returned home and watched the rest of the parade and the dog show, while I cooked. That evening, we had Ramy's mom and sister over for Thanksgiving dinner with the four of us. Alas, there was no turkey, because I am the only one who eats it, and it isn't worth it for me. We had honey baked ham, dressing, creamed corn, macaroni and cheese, hashbrown casserole, green bean casserole, homemade rolls (after a slight fiasco with them), sausage balls, cheese straws, pound cake, and pumpkin pie. It was delicious and actually an easy cleanup. Unfortunately, I was too busy cooking to take pictures, and that makes me sad! I thought the table and the food looked really pretty, and I would have liked a picture with everyone there. Oh well, maybe next year I can get it all together!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note

My external hard drive, which is the device on which I store all my digital scrapbooking files, is sick. I think it is just the power supply, so hopefully after a trip to Fry's tonight, I will have it back. In the meantime, I can't change the blog header, which is a shame, because I've got cute Christmas designs!