Virtual Christmas Card 2011

Dear Friends and Family,
(I'm working on that photo header - hopefully I will remember how to get the right sized picture up there soon.)

In the mean-time, we want to wish everyone we know (who reads our blog - all both of you) a very Merry Christmas.

I have debated many times about writing a Christmas letter to put in a Christmas card to send to people.  Frankly, I figure, if you are really that interested in us, you probably either know what has happened to us this year, or you read our blog and have been tortured with every minute detail of our lives all year anyway.  The Christmas letter, seems redundant to me.

However, I did want to make a small note about how I feel about our year in general.  I think one of the things that keeps me from doing a Christmas letter is that they don't seem "real."  Sometimes, I think that happens to my blog too.  We tend to highlight and share the awesome stuff with everyone else and save the unsavory for ourselves.  Who wants to read a pile of depressing Christmas letters about everyone's struggles and trials?  Yet, at the same time, wouldn't it be nice to know that your family isn't the only one that's not perfect and has it's share of disappointments?

So, I think I'll put a little real in here.  We HAVE had an overall incredibly great year.  (You can read the  previous dozens of blog posts to verify that.)  David is doing great at his job and having a fantastic time on his bikes.  I am loving all the different things I get to do from mothering to volunteering to having some down-time, and Grace and Harriet are really flourishing in the things they are interested in and growing up and learning at an alarming rate.  We've traveled coast to coast with many stops in-between (WAY more than should be humanly possible in a year's time;) we've seen nearly every single close family member this year, in person.  We have reconnected with lots of old friends, and we've made some stellar new friends too.  Grace and Harriet moved into their own rooms and are FINALLY going to sleep and sleeping by themselves all night long with few exceptions.  Harriet does not require her pajama pants to be tucked into socks anymore.  Grace has added a few new t-shirts to rotate between the Darth Vader and the tie-dye.  We are loving our home here in Albuquerque and feel very content and happy.

Our "BUT's" include:  trying to have another child, but failing miserably in the reproductive department. The girls have developed intense seasonal allergies and asthma along with it, which have given us monthly struggles in keeping them healthy.  We've poured more money than we care to think about into our aging vehicles, hoping for the day when we can afford a new car but seeing no light at the end of that tunnel yet.  We worry (at least I do) constantly about our geriatric dogs, Shadow and Velvet, and are trying to squeeze as much quality time as possible from their shortening years.  The girls will NOT get ready for school in the morning causing major mommy melt-downs every day at 8:23am.  "Someone" played monkey in the bathroom and pulled the towel bar down and bent it in half.  And, the real kicker - I have broken almost half of our dishes this year.  We have 8 plates, 6 forks, and 7 spoons left in our everyday kitchenware, causing the dishes to have to be done more often than the dishwasher loader would like.  I mean really, it's pretty bad over here.  Well, if you want to feel better about your life, just listen at my door at 8:23am.

I think the bottom line though, at this time of year especially, is to realize your blessings and start the next year wanting to help others more and do a better job.  We are incredibly blessed and lucky.  Our lives are not perfect, but I wouldn't trade any of it.  (Unless maybe you have a new Jeep Rubicon you'd like to trade for a 10 year old Pathfinder.  I will trade you.  But truthfully - I actually love that old beater Pathfinder and I'm super happy driving it.  But, David would definitely trade you.)

Thank you to all of our friends and family who make our lives so great.  We thrive on knowing all of you and can't imagine our world without you.

Merry Christmas, and best wishes for a Happy 2012!
Love,
The Chapman Family

Thanksgiving 2011

I have to start my post with a correction to the whining I've been doing.  I could have sworn the last time we ate with my family was Grace's first Thanksgiving because I vividly remember spending my pregnant Thanksgiving, sick, at David's parents' house.  The every other year rotation got messed up somewhere.  Maybe we ate at both places the year before we moved away.   Anyway, even if it hasn't been the 8 years I keep yakking about,  it has STILL been a long time since we ate Thanksgiving dinner with my family.  It's been 7 years.  The last one was just before we moved to Boston at my Grandma Pearlie's house, with all my cousins and Aunts and Uncles.

However you slice it, returning to Salt Lake 7 years later for a Thanksgiving dinner with my sisters and the Mitchell (Barnhisel) cousins was a super big treat for me.  Harriet has never had Thanksgiving with my family and the cousins have never eaten together either.  (well, little cousins didn't exist last time!)

It would have been an absolutely perfect dinner if my poor sister, Emily, would have been able to come.  The life of an ER nurse caused her to have to work 12 hours that day.  I think that's why I didn't take a picture of everyone at the table.  I kept thinking I should, and wishing I would have, but it just wouldn't have felt complete with only one person missing from the whole family.  I did take a picture of Melissa's pretty table before we sat down though.

Everyone helped cook.  Good thing Melissa has a ginormous kitchen, and an extra kitchen to boot - with all the sisters, the husbands, and mom making different things.  Even with 3 ovens, we were embarrassed to wish we might have had a 4th.    This was also the first year that my family has eaten our own Thanksgiving dinner.  It was kind of weird and cool that we could fill a big Thanksgiving table with just our immediate family.  I guess we are getting old.

Speaking of old... Dad is turning 60 in two weeks.  We took advantage of family togetherness and threw him a small birthday party at the end of Thanksgiving dinner.  We all went in on a laptop for him - can't let him get too old and slip away into non-computer usage life.  Dad, I hope you've got your internet hooked up so you can read the blog now :)

 (and for some reason, my kids turn every holiday into Halloween and find a costume to put on.)

The 10 hour drive was made much shorter by the fact that I didn't have to drive it by myself.  Thanks David, for driving us all up there.  We spent a great weekend with my family, getting a good start to Christmas.  Melissa, my Mom, and I, went to see the latest Twilight movie.  I have seen every single one of them in the theater with my mom.   That's pretty impressive considering we've never lived in the same state since they came out.  It doesn't get better than seeing a trashy movie with your mom at midnight.  Good times.   We tried to do some black Friday shopping, but in the end, we didn't have the stomach for it.  The kids got a prize and we were done.   But, we did get to see Santa at the mall.  This was the first time Melissa's kids had ever gone to see Santa.   They all told Santa what they wanted in good form.  Grace sounded like the kid on A Christmas Story - she is very specific and to the point.

Cute Emily thought that the big sisters (aka - grouchy mommies) needed an afternoon at the spa.  So, she treated us to a pedicure for our birthdays (which are 2 days apart next month) and played with our kids while we went.   What a nice thing!

Grandma brought over this cool craft that we used to do with our Grandma Primmer when we were little.  I used to LOVE these darling Santas.  Grace made us all make one and we had a contest for the best.  Jessica won - she got creative with a candy-stripe Santa suit.  Why didn't I take pictures all weekend?  Bummer.  Well, these are the ones we brought home:

David and I even got to hang out with a couple of friends.  David spent all of Friday with Jared, our friend of many years, going on decades.  They froze to death watching the Utes lose a crucial football game and then drowned their sorrows in their favorite wii game and favorite Chinese food.  I got to see the Covilis for a bit too and then spend a blissful late night with my friend, Adrienne, sitting in a coffee shop sipping Limonatas and spilling our guts for hours.  I love talking to her.  She keeps me young as she's a full 10 years younger and in med school and doing all the exciting "get your life started" stuff.  Thanks to her, I learned how to text and stepped into the 21st century.  

Well, thanks bunches to all my family who did so much to get ready for us to come and to make the weekend great.  I left Salt Lake feeling so lucky to have such an awesome family and such great friends.  For all of it, I am truly Thankful.

More Thanks

Well, I can't head into Thanksgiving weekend without including what I am the most grateful for.  For most people, including myself, it's family.  I love my little family more than I could ever write.

I have a seriously awesome husband (shhh... don't tell him) who genuinely enjoys spending time with me and with the girls.  We have been living it up this fall since the kiddos went back to school.  David's job here in ABQ has a 9/80 work week which means he has every other Friday off.  Kids are in school for 7.5 hours on Fridays, which means the chance to do pretty much whatever the heck we want for as long as we want.  Thanks, school, for all the free baby-sitting for our new "date days!"  We've been known to walk the dogs on the mesa, have long lunches on restaurant patios in Corrales, followed by afternoon dollar movies, possibly combined with spending too much money together at Costco.  (p.s. we always spend more when we are together and can instantly approve each other's purchases.  It's not good.)

We may have also just returned from a belated anniversary trip to a bed and breakfast in Snowflake, AZ.  Thanks to a sweet groupon and some awesome family members (Grandma and Grandpa,) we were able to take off foot-loose and fancy-free for 2 days for really no reason.  David did want to do a little root-digging into his family tree as his Grandfather was born in Snowflake and other family members are buried nearby.  We also did a side trip to the Petrified Forest National Park.  David has promised, promised!, that he would blog about the trip.  Do I need to say "hint hint?"

This super great husband is also a stellar dad.   Although we give him his Saturday mornings for bike rides, he's always game to spend the rest of the weekend with us and never stops coming up with ideas for places to go and things to do.  A couple Fridays ago when he was off work and the kids were out of school, he took us to the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary.   It was a 2 hour drive into the desert, but so worth it to see these amazing animals up close and learn more about them.  Grace and Harriet are such huge animal lovers and were mesmerized by everything there.  It has been more than a week and they are still talking about it.  I think it will be a spot where we will be returning in the future.

We learned so much about wolves.  These two are "low content" meaning they have wolf in them, but they are mostly dog.  You can tell by their waggly tails, big ears, space between front legs, and darker eye color.   Wolves don't wag their tails have very small, fur-stuffed ears, have little space between front legs, and only have amber eyes.

The white wolf here has only 3 legs.  She had been born with a club-type leg and it was cut off by her not-so-nice owners.

A red fox that had been rescued from a zoo along with some other canines.  Our Swedish tour guide, Siri, is feeding him.

A white german shepherd belonging to one of the volunteers.  Seriously cool dog, but no, not a wolf.  Hence, no fence.

More high content and full wolves:

Our way home was past two national monuments.  We decided to stop at El Morro.  "Inscription Rock" is this huge rock where people have been stopping and hanging out for hundreds and thousands of years.  It is a rare place in the desert where you can find fresh water year-round and so makes a good place to pass by with a great landmark to help you find it.  There are ancient pueblo ruins up in the top of the rock and tons of petroglyphs, Spanish, and English inscriptions near the bottom.  Somewhere around 1912, I think, they decided that anything prior to that would be considered a historic inscription and anything later would be vandalism and graffiti.   Some inscriptions (which might now be considered historic) were sandblasted and removed.

 

Harriet just spontaneously sat down on the trail and assumed a yoga position to meditate.  I guess all the mysteries of the desert between the wolves and the petroglyphs caused her to stop and think.  Funny girl!

I am so thankful these two incredible daughters.  I don't know how I got so lucky to have two girls who are this beautiful, smart, and loving.  I could write pages of all the things I admire and love about them.  I am glad to give the greater part of my purpose in life to watching and helping them learn and grow.  But at the same time, I wish I could freeze them and keep them just like they are for just a little bit longer.  I just put away some old photos of them and can't believe how fast it's all going.  I'm thankful to be a mom.

Thanks

I don't know what is wrong with me this year.  For the past few, I've done my daily thankful posts during the month of November.  I just realized I'm a good 13 days behind on counting my blessings.  I know, one should count her blessings much more often than every November, but it's nice to write them down once a year.

I guess it's better late than never, even if I don't do a daily post.  I'll try to work in the family photos too.

One thing I truly am thankful for is our local elementary school.  I know it's an emotionally charged subject around here - where you send your kids to school and why.  I would never begin to tell another parent what to do because I would be pretty mad if someone else tried to do that to me.  But, I'm thankful for public education and for living in a country where I don't have to choose which of my kids to send to school because our family might only be able to afford to educate one of them, or worse, neither of them.  Obviously, there is always room for improvement and the education system in this country is not perfect, but I still feel pretty lucky.  I'm so thankful that my girls have equal opportunity to learn and participate.  Their teachers are so dedicated and hard working.  The staff at school is so nice and they do so much to help families and accommodate parents.  I have really loved spending more time there this year getting to know the workings of the school and getting to know the local families better too.  There are some stellar people around here who are committed to raising a good bunch of kids.  It takes a village... and I'm grateful for my village.

So, on the subject of great things at school, here are a few pics of recent school stuff:

jog-a-thon:  kids were given 15 minutes to run laps around the soccer field to raise money for their school

 (one silly band per lap)

 Grace did 6 big kid laps

one very sweet and dedicated aide - she ran the laps with the kids to keep them going:

Orbit came from the Isotopes field to cheer them on:

 Harriet did 8 little kid laps (about 3/4 of a big kid lap)

They ran about the same distance... don't tell Grace.

Then, it was Harriet's turn to be student of the month.  She is, reportedly, a model student in every way.  She must use up ALL of her good mood, obedient manners, and helpful attitude at school, because she sure has her teachers fooled!  No, she really is a great student and we are super proud of her for how fast she is learning and for how well she has adjusted to her long days at kindergarten.  We just wish she'd bring her school behavior home with her sometimes.   Or, maybe we need her teachers to come home with her too!

Thank you, school!

Halloween Festivities 2011

I'm starting to feel like Halloween season is as much work as Christmas.  It seems like there are as many activities anyway... AND you have to go in costume.  We celebrated the heck out of fall.  Here is the photo tour:

Kindergarten Pumpkin Patch Field trip, complete with crazy corn maze:

 cool green lady bug we found in the pumpkins:

 hay wagon ride:

Costume party numero uno:  Daddy's boss at work hosted a party at our very own Galloping Grace pumpkin patch!  This year, the chosen costumes were an Ice Dragon Ninja and a Fancy Witch.

 always fun to see our sweet friends, Maren and Christian (they were there too since the daddies work together and all.)

next up:  getting ready for trunk-or-treat at the church:

Lots of people have heard my costume story...  A few weeks back, I saw this awesome Marge Simpson costume, complete with wig on clearance for 15 bucks.  I should have grabbed it instantly, but was feeling cheap that day and didn't want to spend money on a costume for myself.  Fast forward a couple of weeks and I realize that I've got a half dozen places where I need to dress up so I head back to see if it is still there.  Not.  I can't get over it, so I decide if I can make the costume for $10 or less, I'll do it.   I made the dress and necklace for like $8 and bought some hair spray.   I've got plenty of hair - I can make my own beehive and spray it blue.  I think it's going to be fabulous.  I hate it when I'm wrong about things like that.  It was a total flop.  It turned out to be cold, so I couldn't wear the skin colored shade shirt under the dress and had to wear long sleeve black with black leggings.  So, that ruined it right there.  Then, I spent more than 2 hours getting a beehive in my hair only to find out that my "blue" hair paint looked green when sprayed on and made my hair too heavy and flattened the beehive.  BOO.  Bottom line - if you have to explain your costume, you don't have a good costume.  It didn't help that Homer has a full head of hair, a goatee hanging from his chin, and took his stuffing out of his shirt right after this picture.  

These folks are much cuter.

Then, off to costume dinner party the next night.  Harriet decided to wear several costumes over the weekend since she has a closet full of fun things.  She did Snow White on Saturday night.  (why don't I have pictures of Saturday night?  She looked so darling in the Snow White.)

Then, a pumpkin carving party on Sunday night with the Wixom bunch.  Hattie opted for Tinkerbell this time.  Grace stuck with her Ninja wear for everything.

 David worked real hard to put on that scarecrow hat from the costume box and find his plaid shirt.  I decided the kitty ears and a satin ribbon tail would increase my costume : effort ratio so I ditched Marge.

Best Woody, Jessie, and Buzz I saw this month:

The kids designed their own pumpkins.  I super love Grace's yin/yang jack-o-lantern.

Is it Halloween YET?????
Oh, yes it is.  Time for school parties!  I have no pictures here either.  There wasn't much to capture.  The school banned costumes and face paint.  The kids wore black and orange Halloween shirts.  Harriet's class served an all orange lunch which they had to eat in about 15 minutes flat to make it to library on time.  They saved my pumpkin muffins for snack the next day.  Grace's class banned sweets and had a mid-afternoon snack of fruit and veggies and pretzels then pulled out some card games.  I guess I should have taken pictures, but there wasn't much to see folks, and parties went by so quick (compared to how much work I did for them and how long I was at the school!)

Definitely pizza for dinner.  Since... I was still at school when the last bell rang and we came home at 4pm with pumpkins still to carve.  Check this out - I didn't even have to make it.  Good ol' Papa Murphy's made me up something cute AND tasty.

The girls chose "luna" pumpkins from the Galloping Grace patch.  They also designed these all by themselves.  Grace also carved nearly her whole pumpkin.  I helped her with the details on the wolf.  I thought this one was SO COOL.  I was so incredibly proud of her for doing such a great job.  Then, I don't know if I can bear to mention what happened to it.  I still haven't told her.  I hope she doesn't ask about it.  One of the trick-or-treaters ripped the wolf out of it and took it.  Was this before or after I gave this child free candy?  For RUDE!!!

Harriet's design:  flower bouquets with a sun, moon and stars on the other side.  (see other picture below.)

 

and, these guys were still hanging on, so we put them out too:

And, MY pumpkin from the GGYR patch.  I thought it was only fitting to carve horses into it.  Grace pointed out afterwards that it does look like a face made with horses.  um sure, I planned it that way!

Can we trick-or-treat yet?  FINALLY!  We invited Aunt Christine to come with us too.

And, I found a use for my blue (no, GREEN) hair spray.

 Came home to glowing pumpkins.

Happy Halloween!