Santa came early this year...

... Friday night to be exact.

We had to get special permission for this to happen.

So... cookies were made... (the Santa at North Star mall told Lucy that chocolate chip were his favorites)

And stockings were labeled so a certain someone got "big girl" toys and her siblings got the "baby toys."

Lucy: wanted Santa to bring her a horse "to ride on the floor"

Other favorite gifts: books, sparkley makeup, a bike from mom and dad (in that order)

Loved it when she said (at Saturday night bedtime): "Mom, I sure loved all my presents and I think Austin and Elise did too." (thinking...) "I think Santa should come every day."

Elise: pots and pans from Santa

Favorite toys: Definitely a pink purse (with cell phone, lipstick, keys and nailpolish). Later we saw her sitting on the couch putting the lipstick and nailpolish on herself. It was really cute. She also liked her magna doodle thing and a wind-up (backflipping) cat.

Austin: got blocks from Santa

Favorite toys: definitely a large glitter ball. He threw it all morning. He also liked a car ramp and all the empty boxes underneath the tree. He's liked those boxes all month and never seems to tire of stacking them, taking off the lids, and scooting them across the floor. With all the new toys, I thought he'd leave them alone. Nope.

I'd say it was a success...

See you on Christmas Eve, family...

2009 Christmas card

I sit down to write
-'cuz its Christmas card time,
A small rhyming verse
of the Tripp's in '09.

Austin this year
worked mostly on growing.
The chub in his cheeks
shows no sign of slowing

In one sure regard,
he takes after his pa.
He's missing a few
of the teeth in his jaw.

Elise now has set
the Tripp family standard
for climbing and running
and falls of all manner.

This now has convinced
her poor worried parents
to up their investment in
trauma insurance.

Ole Aus' and Elise
both had their first birthdays
and now they unite
in mischievous forays.


Their favorite raid,
behind their parents' backs,
is to get in the pantry
and tear down the snacks.

Preschool was Lucy's
big milestone this year.
Spanish and music give
her grins ear to ear.

She also enjoys
writing "cards" to her pals.
She sounds out most letters
but struggles with vowels.

As much as the children
are cute little dolls.
They stayed behind when
we saw Niagara Falls.

For Kimi and I,
it was celebration
for what might be my
very last graduation.

So to all our loved ones
at this time of great cheer,
Have a right Merry Christmas

and Happy New Year!

Lu's preschool Christmas party

My friend Wendy and I hosted Lucy's preschool Christmas party. Next time, we are taking dibs on the Valentine's day before anyone signs up. Ha! Actually, it turned out pretty fun. One thing I loved is that we could talk about the REAL meaning of Christmas. None of this "Winter Holiday" nonsense (not that I don't like Santa and all that goes with him. It just annoys me when we can't even call the holiday "Christmas."). The class learned about Hanukkah the week before and now it was time to learn about Christmas. Sounds like a good plan to me.

We had 9 children, 5 parents, 2 teachers and us... full house (which was Wendy's... wasn't that nice of her?)! The party started off with me reading "Room for a Little One." It is one of my favorite Christmas books and has special meaning for our family because it was right around the time we bought the book (Christmas 07) that we were working hard on our adoption paperwork and felt like there was definitely "room for a little one" in our home. And, lucky us, there was room for two!

Anyway, afterwards I used our cute nativity advent calendar (made by grandma Liz) to tell the Christmas story. I read parts of the Bible and the children each put their flannel pieces on the manger set as I told about the event. I was kind of nervous about it all and afterwards I wondered the reason. After all, this is one of THE BEST stories ever told. Still you wonder if the kids will be little stinkers... but they were good as gold and great listeners/helpers. Afterwards, the kids decorated their own nativity scenes with stickers.

We had a yummy snack.

(note... the green salsa tastes yummy even though it looks kinda "pukey")

We did a mini-music lesson with drumsticks and jingle bells. I did the same thing for music class, so it wasn't hard to put together, but I never got a video of it so I was glad to have photographer Wendy.

Lastly, we tried to do a "left/right" nativity pass the present game. It was quite funny at how confused the kids were... so we cut that a bit short. All in all, I think it was a success. Here's a link to Wendy's post... thanks for hosting with me, friend.

Pediatric Christmas party

We attended the Pediatric Christmas party on Friday, Dec. 11 at Sunset Station, which is in a part of downtown San Antonio I rarely visit. There were some pretty Christmas lights, including a big train all lit up (impressed Lucy especially). The party was held in a nice banquet hall with a lot of room and a nice mexican buffet. The food was pretty good, but I am kind of with Kevin Pieroni (our old peds friend that moved), who said that any Mexican dish over $15 is sort of a rip-off. I mean, how can you do "fancy" mexican food? However, I'm always a sucker to shell out extra money for guacamole. Totally worth it. ANYWAY, for me, the fun parts of peds parties are visiting with George's collegues and the entertainment/games. This year we didn't last long enough for the entertainment (see below), but we were guessing that would happen since the actual eating didn't start until 7:45pm. Lucy's favorite part of the night was dancing in front of the Christmas tree. There was a heater vent she kept standing over that would blow her skirt like Marilyn Monroe. So cool.

As you can tell, Elise's favorite part was seeing Santa.

Our babies had "had it" by 9ish, so we left before the traditional events of singing carols to a doctor's guitar playing and the Irish dancing by someone's daughters.

Wonderful Christmas time - part Tew

Ha! What a funny pun! Bet Mark has never heard that one before.

Here are some pics of week #2 with the Tew family. They left on Saturday and we had such a wonderful time with them around. What fun it is to have a sister! We have been plotting ways we can be next door neighbors in the future.

Lacey and Mark can take credit for this new favorite word by Elise as well her lovely outfit.



Even bath time is more fun with Aunt Lacey around

We (the girls) wanted to make carmel apples, but the boys voted for a movie. So here is our compromise... carmel apple nachos then the movie. They don't look quite as pretty as the lovely apple shapes, but still tasted good.

Elise was in heaven with a pile of chocolate chips

And what did Austin do during all this baking/eating? The usual...

Afterwards we watched "Up." I had never seen it. My favorite part was the "growing old" montage at the first, but it got me all teary. We got in a few other movies, like "Muppet Christmas Carol" and "White Christmas" (no surprise there), but most of the nights were spent playing a variety of games. The first week was lots of "Settlers of Catan", but the second week I borrowed my friends "Cities and Knights" and we enjoyed the upgrade. Look how hard everyone is concentrating trying to pick the best starting settlements...

Thursday night we had a "pre-Christmas dinner with a fancy candlelit table. Lucy made our namecards and though it was really fun to put "Christmas dots" by all the names. Lacey and I made red, white and green enchiladas for dinner. The favorite was the green which was kind of a surprise.
The kids are always in awe with candles. George thought it would a good contest to see who could blow a candle out from the farthest distance. Here is Elise giving it a try:

Friday morning Lacey and I went to the Guenther house breakfast for military wives. This is an annual event and I always look forward to it. I love the company and the food is to die for. They have the best biscuits ever. Normally, I am not a fan of buffets but this one is definitely an exception. I love that I can have a taste of all their specialities: hash browns, pastries, gingerbread muffins, biscuits & gravy, fruit, etc. etc. Delish!

Shopping date

This Saturday was another day of dating. But this time, it was a daddy-daughter date. Lucy was really excited. She slept in until 8 this morning and when I commented on it, she said, "I slept a lot so I wouldn't be grumpy for my date."
And the extra sleep must have done the job. She had a wonderful time. The objectives of this date were to buy me something for Christmas and drink hot chocolate. According to reports, the favorite activities were browsing (aka Lucy trying out all their toys) at Lakeshore Learning, reading books at Barnes and Noble (and drinking hot chocolate at the cafe there), and visiting the Pet Store. Apparently the pet store had a Santa in a glass room for people's dogs and such. I mean, really?

Nerds and Spurs

Saturday was a day for dating.

Date #1 was in the morning. For my birthday, Lacey and Mark gave me a "free night of babysitting from the professionals." After considering a few ideas, we decided to judge the science fair at John Jay high school. Yes, we are nerdy. George found out about this opportunity through an email at work. I was pretty nervous to go, having not done this before and of course, not being in the "school scene" for quite a while. Also, science was my worst subject in high school. Well, maybe it was gym. Anyway, I admit, I actually had a great time. For the first hour and 20 minutes, we had a "judges meeting". It was good and informative for the first 40 min but got pretty old after that.

Next we received our assignments. We decided to do Freshman science fair projects as I was pretty nervous to be outsmarted. We just told the people in charge to put us wherever they needed so I judged the Social Sciences and Geo did the Physics/Astronomy. We judged ten projects each. The students were there and told us all about their projects. It was really fun and the projects were at all ends of the spectrum. My favorite project was called "Do you get what you pay for?" This girl decided to do her project on whether buying a more expensive golfball helps achieve a greater distance (the motivation being that the girl's mother was always annoyed with her father for spending so much money on golfballs). She did a thorough job, had ideas on what she could do better, used some statistics analysis (I admit my math bias came out a bit there... she did well) and obviously had done the project herself as she was able to explain things real well. I bet I talked with her for 20 minutes. There were also a couple "did last night at 1 in the morning" type projects. I also found it funny at how many students tested 11 people. I'm guessing their teacher told them to do greater than 10. :) Afterwards we walked around and looked at some of the other projects and overall, I was impressed. We browsed around a few of the upperclassmen's as well. Science fair projects are mandatory for Freshman and Sophomores so there were quite a few. John Jay is a math/science/engineering magnet HS and gave out eight $30,000 scholarships. I must say, it was a fun date. I think we have the science bug..I'm thinking we should try to judge the regional competition in March.

Date #2 was a double date with Mark and Lacey. We started off with a yummy dinner at Cheddars (highly recommend the ribs) and ended with a Spurs vs Nuggets game that evening. It was a close game, but the Spurs couldn't pull it off in the 4th quarter. However, there was a bit of excitement with the Texas vs Nebraska game (the score was announced throughout).