Holidaze « Katie S. 28

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4th Festivities

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

We had an amazing long weekend! We went swimming with friends on Friday, to the zoo with friends on Saturday, and to the best pool/pot luck/fireworks/outdoor movie party ever with family and friends on Sunday. Then Chris and I went away to celebrate our 6 year wedding anniversary in Asheville NC for a few days. Our actual anniversary isn’t until Saturday but I’m in school all day so we won’t really get to see each other.

Here are some pictures from the long weekend.

No goats were actually kissed in the making of this image.

The twins were kind enough to make room for our boys in their patriotic swagger wagon.

Bennett and his namesake chillaxing in the pool.

Me and my sister, aka – our bartender for the night. Blackberry mojitos…mmmmm!

Benny boogies down with our lovely hosts.

Matt and his lovely wives.

The boys getting ready to watch their daddies try to blow their hands off.

All that was missing from Chris’ sparkler dance was a grass skirt and a coconut bra. (heh. Good luck getting that mental image out of your head.)

The one thing we didn’t get pictures of was something that shall henceforth be referred to as ‘the cupcake incident’. My sister made these amazing red velvet cupcakes for the party, and just as I was taking my first bite her boyfriend Luke (who has been waiting for two months to get me back for a terribly minor incident involving a sippy cup) came up behind me and smashed the cupcake into my face. I then chased him around the pool with my nostrils still full of icing and hurled the remainder of my cupcake square into the middle of his back. Seriously, it was beautiful. If cupcakes were bullets, this would have been a kill shot.

The bad news is that since I chose to retaliate, apparently we are still not even for the original sippy cup indiscretion. So now I have to wait again….and according to my sister, it could go on for years. I have to say, I really like this one, but if he weren’t a fair skinned guy from Florida, I would swear he had mafia connection.

Posted in All in the Family, Holidaze | 1 Comment »

Pettybone Rerising

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Aunt Jaki has a knack for picking out toys my kids will love. Whether she spends $100 or $1, her gifts are always the hit of the party. Last year, she put a gooey clown fish toy in Corbin’s Easter basket. He named it “Mr. Pettybone Fish” and for the next 10 months that thing went everywhere he did. It slept next to Corbin in bed every night, traveled to and from school with him, went to Atlanta for long weekends, and even ventured to Canada for a couple weeks in the summer.

Corbin loved that fish raw. By mid summer he was missing a piece of his tail. By autumn all his stripes had worn off, giving him the appearance of a gold fish. And by the holiday season Pettybone fish had no tail at all and had sprung a leak in his side. It was at this point, when Pettybone started to leave a trail of tiny plastic beads wherever he went, that Chris and I made the painful decision to ‘flush the fish.’ Of course being the sentimental cowards that we are, we didn’t actually get rid of the body. We just hid it in the laundry room and told Corbin it had been moved to a place where it would be safe until we figured out how to fix it. (like cryogenics for clown fish) Corbin handled the separation reasonably well, but he still asked me about Mr. Pettybone Fish every time we got in the car to go to school, and occasionally when he was in a forlorn mood.

So fast forward to this Easter. Aunt Jaki, who has been looking for a Pettybone replacement ever since the stripes wore off of the original, happened to venture into Target in search of toys for the boys’ baskets. The original Pettybone came from Walmart and had apparently been discontinued, so she had all but given up hope at that point. But as she was sorting through a bin of gooey snakes, lizards and dinosaurs, she happened to come across one solitary gooey fish. He was a bit dirty after months of living in the bottom of a toy basket, and his stripes were white with blue lining rather than black, but Aunt Jaki knew that these minor defects wouldn’t matter to the little boy who had long been missing the cold squish of a gooey fish in his hands.

And come Easter Sunday, Corbin’s reaction did not disappoint. Upon seeing the toy he squealed with delight and ran to thank his beaming aunt. He was later found curled up on the couch in the formal living room, whispering sweet nothings into Mr. Pettybone Fish II’s invisible fishy ear. My mother of course tried to turn the miraculous clown fish recovery into an analogy about the resurrection, but we all agreed that this was quite sacrilegious and chastised her for being a hieratic.

Posted in Holidaze, Speaking of My Children... | 3 Comments »

Holiday Happy Thoughts

Friday, January 1st, 2010

So Christmas is officially over. (sigh) Today we will take down the tree, box up the nativity scene and throw away the gingerbread house. Its always a little sad to realize that we’ve come to the end of another holiday season, but I’m very thankful for the wonderful memories that were made over the last few weeks with our lovely family and friends. I’m also very thankful for the space I’m going to gain in the living room once the nine foot tree has been disposed of

Here are some of the Christmas 09 memories that I will be thinking back on as I take down the decorations today:

1) Listening to the Christmas story at church on Christmas Eve and watching the lovely candles spread light throughout the sanctuary.

2) Standing out in the freezing cold on Christmas morning so that the boys could try out the new wheels that Nana and Papa got them.

3) Singing “Blue Christmas” with the Songer’s at Nana Wanda’s for my 8th Christmas in a row.

4) Watching the boys jam on the guitar with Uncle Phil at Boxing Day brunch and eating the best Alaskan Salmon that has ever been shipped to Nashville.

5) Having my wonderful husband at home for a week and a half straight!

6) Knowing that what we celebrate at Christmas time is not something we should ever box up and put away until next year.

Isaiah 9:6 “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

Posted in Holidaze | No Comments »

Just One

Monday, December 28th, 2009

I am making just one -hopefully attainable- resolution for the New Year. I am resolving that in the coming year I will make deliberate efforts to stop imposing my ideas and hang-ups about what is and is not cute and/or socially acceptable on my children. The nitty-gritty details go something like this:

1) I will let them wear all of the ‘character’ jammies, shirts and shoes that they got for Christmas and will not ‘accidentally’ misplace them after a single obligatory wear.

2) I will further stop making excuses for said mismatched and/or themed outfits when we are in the presence of parents who I deem cooler and more together than me. I will instead try to focus on how happy my sons look as they fly around the room in a Super Man shirt, or stomp their little feet to make their Diego shoes light up.

3) I will still make my best efforts to ensure that they have clean hair and snot free faces, but I will stop chasing them around with wet wipes everywhere they go. Kids in general get messy. Boys in specific get filthy. Mine don’t have to be the exception.

4) I will stop complaining about how hard it is to keep my house tidy when my children are forever bringing home one new toy or another from their grandparents’ house, and instead thank my heavenly father for blessing my boys so abundantly with extended family members who are so eager to show them how very loved they are.

5) I will try to teach my boys both by example and by testimony about the importance of sharing what we have been given.

I want my children to be happy, confident and unique individuals, and I think allowing them to express themselves will probably play a role in the fulfillment of that desire. So rather than continuing my exhaustive worrying about what other people will think of them (and me by association), I want to relax, take a deep breath, and allow God to teach them (and me) what He thinks of us.

Posted in Holidaze, Things I'm Learning | 3 Comments »

Tis The Season….

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

To share a random group of holiday pictures in no particular order!

Mugging in front of the tree

How proud are you of me mom?! I TOTALLY let him go to the hardware store looking like this. I didn’t brush his hair or anything.

Corbin and his “Dad” at the school’s Breakfast with Santa. (Apparently ‘house’ is a favorite game in Corb’s class)

Bennett recoiled in fear when Santa walked into the room but Corb jumped up on his lap like they were old friends. He was just a little confused at why poor Santa didn’t get to eat when the event was called ‘Breakfast with Santa!”

The chaos is always cut in half when Nana comes along.

Remember my friend Kari who was pregnant with twins at the same time I was carrying Bennett? Well this is her with one of her little cuties (You’d have to ask Corbin which one though- he’s the only one in our family who can tell them apart) I’m pretty sure this is the first time she had a chance to eat in at least a week.

Posted in Holidaze | 3 Comments »

A Silent Night

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

I told Chris the other night that I’m having trouble getting into the holiday spirit. It seems like I’m so busy trying to make Christmas special for the boys that I forget to breathe, to rest, and to take in these precious and fleeting moments that we have as a family.

Now ordinarily I consider pop songs that play off of classics pretty cheesy. And I’m not really Amy Grant’s biggest fan either (or at least I haven’t been since I was eight and had all of her albums and wore a black hat like the one she wore in her “Hats” video everywhere I went.) But for some reason every time this song comes on the radio these days, I find myself tearing up. Regardless of what you think of the music, its a good reminder that Christmas (like every day) is about celebrating and resting in the birth, life, death and resurrection of our savior.

Amy Grant “I Need a Silent Night”

Posted in Holidaze, Things I'm Learning, videos | 2 Comments »

Thanksgiving

Friday, November 27th, 2009

I posted this as my status message on facebook last night:

20 years ago we moved to Nashville, a town where we had no family. Today we celebrated Thanksgiving in two different homes with more family that we could fit at four dining room tables. God is so good.

I am overwhelmingly thankful for the family God has given us in Nashville. I was 8 years old when we first came here and I was the kind of kid who worried about things that were far beyond my scope of understanding. (I know, shocker right?) I remember lying awake at night in a total panic, wondering what would become of my sister and I if something ever happened to my mom and dad. I knew it would involve moving back to Canada, far away from friends and familiarity, and that scared me to death.

But twice yesterday afternoon I found myself gazing down the length of a dining room table full of people who have become my family, and who do everything in their power to care for my children and let them know that they are covered and loved.

And so I say again – I am thankful today that we belong to a God who covers us, loves us, and creates family where there once was none.

Allow me to introduce you to some of my family:

I believe these three people are God’s greatest reasons for bringing me to Nashville.

Nana Vickie and Aunt Paige taking a very small break from entertaining my kids!

Grandpa (I think he’s calling someone about a Black Friday deal)

Corbin with Uncle Dustin’s boys.

Cousin Amber, who shocked us all by wearing makeup yesterday (she was Corbin’s age when I met her!)

Aunt Mindy working hard to serve the 23 people she so graciously opened her home to yesterday.

My two beautiful brunette sisters, Jake and Marcela

Uncle Phil using his baby kryptonite.

Benny and Esteban watching some football.

Mom and I practicing the head tilt that Jake spent all afternoon trying to teach us.

Posted in All in the Family, Holidaze | 2 Comments »

Halloween Fun

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Corbin to the neighbors: “This is my Gracie. She is a beautiful Tinkerbell. We are going to be married.”

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Trying on our costumes at Nana and Papa’s house earlier in the day.

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The whole Gang (Did Nana Di do a great job on that shark costume or what!?)

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Trick or Treat!

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Too young for candy but not too young to stroll around the neighborhood looking adorable.

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And because Tink and the ladybug have some pretty stinkin awesome parents…..

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We got to spend our post trick or treat time in a suite at the Predators game!

Posted in Holidaze | 2 Comments »

Resurrection Sunday

Monday, April 13th, 2009

We had a wonderful Easter yesterday and I was especially touched when I realized that Corbin is starting to understand the reason that we celebrate this time. As we were singing “Oh the Wonderful Cross” in church yesterday an image of a large wooden cross was put up on the screen. Corbin whispered to me, “Look mama, the cross.” “Yes baby, I replied, “that is where Jesus died for us.” He looked at me with excitement in his eyes and exclaimed, “Yeah, and then he rosed again!”

That’s exactly right buddy.

Exactly right.

Posted in Holidaze, Kid Quotes | 2 Comments »

A Few More Holiday Pictures

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

My little Cutie McCutersons

Bennett and his John Papa

Bennett giving Daddy his, “seriously?” face and Corbin and Uncle Dustin trying out Daddy’s new PS3

Bennett Christmasing it up with Nana Vickie and Uncle Jeff

Corbin rockin out with Uncle Phil on Boxing day

OK so that turned out to be more than a few, but just be thankful I didn’t post the video of Chris’ entire side of the family sing along to Elvis’ Blue Christmas!

Posted in All in the Family, Holidaze | 3 Comments »

Katie S. 28