Party in CDA!

We do love a good Dowers gathering! We headed up on Saturday to hang out at the grange hall with tons of our cousins, aunts, uncles, and my grandparents!

The roads were decent this year thankfully. . .and (some of) the kids got a little rest on the way up:

Will is genuinely completely passed out. Ben was totally faking it. He never did sleep, and for a kid that naps 2-3 hours a day still, he managed to keep an even temper the whole afternoon!

See!

Someone always takes good care of the littlest cousins, with their playdough, colors, and crafts!

Mass lasagna! That dates back to my childhood. We always had lasagna, Christmas Eve, with my mom's whole fam.

The crowd! There are almost 90 of us now. . .but this was a good showing!

And, my grandpa! Sure love him :) What a great party they throw!

Merry Christmas Dowers families!

Always a Good Way to Start a Birthday

Fish #1 of the day:

Ed fighting his first steelhead ever from shore:

Safely in the net:

One final fish to cap off the day:

And Dad got to try his kayak out on the North Fork:

Overheard:

Jack: Will, come on over here so I can rub your lucky head!

Logos Christmas Program

Oh yes, the kids had their Christmas program the other night. . .it was really good! Sara had a whole 6 verses to recite with her class, and the olders were pretty much singing through the entire program. Ben got a huge kick out of the African drums. . .really, there was something for everybody!

Every year I think, they are as cute as ever, but every year they just get cuter and handsomer than the year before!

Some school friends!

Sara's first program ever!

She did so great. She mouthed the words really big as she said them. . .in case your video was on mute, you could still read her lips!

Kayte was way on the other side of the stage, so we just got glimpses of her here and there, but she sure looked great! :)

Joe and I have been attending the program since we were married, and then we used to actually be in them together much longer ago than that. What a tiny circle of life we get to live here. We love it!

St. Lucia's Day, December 13th.

Kayte planned a little St. Lucia's Day treat for us 6 months ago, after reading the American Girl book about Kirsten's Christmas. She kept close track of the December calendar so she wouldn't miss the big day, and she wouldn't tell any of us what it was. She did say that usually it happens at 4 am, and I said it would be ok if we did 7 am (that's Hawaii's 4 am anyway.) She accepted this, and even though I again forgot all about it, at 7 am sharp, Kayte, dressed in her white dress (as is tradition) snuck into the kitchen with Will, made breakfast for the whole family, and then one by one delivered it to us in our beds saying "St. Lucia welcomes you to breakfast." Traditionally she would be wearing a wreath with burning candles on the top of her head. I'm very thankful she has reached the age where even she knows that may not be practical, and skipped that part.
She reminds me so much of me when I was her age. I too read about St. Lucia's day in a recipe book when I was 13 years old. It had a bread wreath that was often made by the oldest daughter of the family and presented to them with six burning candles in it, the evening of December 13th. So, in honor of our mutual love for the day, I dug out that old recipe and made it as a surprise for Kayte that night. I love it that she totally gets me. Or that I totally get her :)

Will wanted to be in the pic, he helped!

The wreath I made for Kayte. Next year, we will make it together.

Lewiston Lights!

Yep, this Sunday we made the annual trek down to Lewiston to see the lights. It was raining for the first time ever, which is much preferred to below freezing temps. . .and the kids didn't even seem to notice the rain. Except for Ben, who latched on to Anthony's umbrella and wouldn't give it up. He had lots of fun :)

Ben does the best 'happy face'.

Sara can hold her own in that category as well.

Merry Christmas :)

Ok people, time to move on.

I totally don't have time to be doing this right now. My to-do list has gone from chaotic to certifiably insane. But frankly, I'm tired of looking at pictures of kids with puke buckets. So I sit down today to freshen up my screen with some good cheer. Monday night I fell asleep on the couch at 7:30 (what to-do list?), opened my eyes long enough to roll into my own bed at 8, and there I slept until 7:30 the next morning. Tuesday I woke fresh, with a new perspective and ready to tackle my chores for the day. Which included making 22 graham cracker gingerbread houses for the 1st grade class.
See! My little housing development:

Notice my little glass of reisling and well, my phone? Nothing like a little multi-tasking :)
I think I've mentioned before that I'm not a crafty one, but I do have a little fetish for glue guns. I mean, that is right up my alley! So precise and the glue hardens so fast. . .much easier than frosting!
Thankfully, most of my tasks are in the spirit of Santa's elves, and while it can be a little stressful, it is so much fun. . .I literally couldn't sleep last night from all the excitement of the week. And when I got to school today and delivered all the little houses, and 15 little first graders crowded around and ooh-ed and aah-ed, well. . . .that's just plain cool.
What a very merry season it is!

Oh yes we did!

Well, if you don't like a good puke adventure, I advise you to skip this post. I plan on sparing little detail.
At 12:30 am Thursday morning, Kayte ran into our room in a panic. Pretty certain I knew what was going on since the plague has been making the rounds lately in Logos Elementary. I rushed her to the toilet and then sent her back to bed. As I snuggled back in to sleep, I thanked God for blessing us with the curse. Somehow to me, anticipation is the worst of all. Let's just get to it and get on with it already. I started mentally cancelling my plans for the next day and rewriting in pencil the rest of the week. We were up with Kayte one or two more times, but she suffered more than we were aware of. I expected Will to come down with it soon, since he sleeps in the same room and got little sleep that night. But I was still surprised when he came in at 7 announcing that he too, had tossed it. Again I thanked God. Thank you for shortening the length of the sickness by downing two at once. And my own tummy was starting to turn, and I tried to believe that I was just talking myself in to it. I'm a well-known hypochondriac. Sara seemed fine, but before 8 was asking for the bucket. Joe went in to get Ben. . . poor Ben had never puked in his life, but was still at the age where one is likely to just lie back down and go to sleep in it. And there Joe found him.
Five down, one to go. And Joe never ever ever gets the flu. It's like the Seinfeld record, "Puke-free since '93".
So I went to bed and Joe spent the next twelve hours talking the 4 kids through 30 separate episodes. (Yes 30, he counted.)
Ben, locked down with his bucket:

At one point I heard him cheering for himself as he successfully made the bucket, "Yay! I did it!"
We celebrate all sorts of mile markers at this house. . . .
The one nice thing about being sick with the kids (besides the fact that I missed out on the mass of the clean-up) was getting to cuddle my sick kids and not be totally paranoid about being breathed on, or washing my hands till they bled in a totally futile effort to resist the bug. I'm pretty sure Joe would've traded places with me. . .

Joe's artillery.

Watching a movie. Each kid has his own bucket.

The next day everyone was on the mend. Joe took another day and helped me clean and detox the house and the children. I opened all the windows and spent two days on just laundering all the bedding. But God was very merciful to us, and I was so grateful. Twenty-four hours and time to move on! With 6 people in the house, it could've easily been a good ten days.
On to Christmas!

Ben, Meet Christmas.

Christmas, this is Ben.

Getting it done.

We decorated the tree Sunday night. Joe is in charge of getting it in the stand. . .he's honed that skill, it once took us two hours (including a trip to Walmart to get a bigger tree stand). We always set it up after the kids go to bed. Kayte likes that little tradition, she was opposed to a 'naked' tree. We pop the champagne and put on some Bing, and reminisce over the ornaments. Back in the day, we had one or two actual ornaments, and then boxes and boxes of Christmas balls. Now our little tree is heavy with memories and no Christmas balls! All of a sudden, it seems like there have already been a lot of Christmases in our little family.

The kids always get an ornament the night of the tree reveal. Kayte and Will's have swimsuits, cause they learned to swim this year, Sara's is a skater, cause she learned to skate, and Ben's is just cute, cause that's what he's best at :)

And my favorite part, we wake the kids up and show off the tree. They ooo and ahh, and point out all their own ornaments. They are so appreciative, they don't stop until they've inspected every one.
It's gonna be a very Merry Christmas!

Hunting down the tree. . .

We headed to Viola to get our tree on Sunday! It was a beautiful day for tree-hunting.

Ben, so cute.

Dad made quick work of it!

We are growing up!

The boys were very busy with a snowball fight, so the girls picked out the tree. . .yep, it's a prickly one. But you cannot beat a blue spruce for the pretty glow!

One of those days. . .

Argh, you know? It just wasn't going well this afternoon. Lots of slush, lots of boots and backpacks, and a good round of old-fashioned disobedience (from all parties, I'm afraid.) At some point I tried to save the day with some chocolate chip cookies. Burnt them to a crisp.

The kids finally got their room cleaned up, and while I was busy tidying up some loose ends, they started on some big busy project down in their room. Will comes running through the kitchen on the hunt for some paper, and as he breezed by me on his way back down the stairs, he hollered at me, "Love you bunches, mom!" says he. "I'm so glad you're my mom!!!"

Yep. It's been a great day :)