Grandpa!

In the beginning of the year, we had the pleasure of Grandpa's visit all the way from Syndey, Australia. While he only stayed with us for about ten days (much of which was riddled with illness and brutally cold weather), we were thrilled to have him.

I was just getting over my first round of strep throat (more on that later). Four days into Dad's visit, Bill came down with strep throat. Such bad timing. Thankfully, neither Dad nor Liam ever came down with it. Whew!

We managed to squeeze in a few sights in Manhattan, mostly his old stomping grounds: Lincoln Center and Radio City Music Hall, where he performed in various orchestras before becoming a conductor himself and Greenwich Village where he often went to take in some jazz, his favorite type of music. We walked around Times Square and had some hot chocolate to thaw out from the fierce cold winds. While there, I took him to my secret location where he could get a bird's eye view of all of Times Square and pointed out where the New Year's Eve ball drops. One evening, though it was kind of late, we drove down to the World Trade Center at his request. I obliged, even though I had no intention of going there at least not for a good long while, mostly until all the masses of people there to view the new memorial had subsided.

On more than one occasion, we also enjoyed some really nice New York pizza which he truly missed. Here we are at one of two pizza places we visited.

We also took him out to eat empanadas at our favorite empanada shop, Papa's Empanadas which is owned by my good friend's family. Yum! He really enjoyed "the meal in a pocket", the dessert empanadas, Colombiana (Colombian "champagne" soda, not sure why they call it that since it practically tastes like cream soda) and Pony malta, a cold toasted barley beverage. Also pictured here on the left is my mom, a.k.a. "Welita" (as Liam so lovingly calls her).

 

 

 

Since it was brutally cold the days he was here, we spend a lot of happy time indoors playing, eating, talking, watching movies and just catching up.

Time flew by and before we knew it, we were sending him off to Arizona to visit his daughter for a week. Then, he visited with a few friends in California for four days before flying back to Sydney, Australia. I'm glad he got to thaw out in Arizona and California before returning home; his own home, which might not be for very long, since he will return to live in the U.S. when he officially retires. Hooray!

Our Feliz Navidad etc

 

Lest I should forget to document it. (A couple of more photos to be inserted later, when I find them. Grr!) 

We did have our Feliz Navidad which included two trees, family, Liam's crafts, guava paste and cheese hors d'oeuvres, Christmas music, a roast dinner, chocolate chip cookies, fruit smoothies, musica Colombiana, a bench, BeyBlades, Legos and more!

Musica Maestro
Liam is constantly signing or humming something. He's the son and grandson of classically-trained musicians after all (from Daddy's side, of course). He especially loves Christmas music! He's always busy singing or humming something Christmas-y, all thanks to a light FM radio station that plays Christmas music nonstop from the day after Thanksgiving to Christmas Day. Among his favorites are Jingle Bell Rock and Sleigh Ride (?). He dislikes "Santa Baby" because he says that it makes him "nauseous" which is exactly how I feel about "Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano -it's the song that never ends. We did however hear a somewhat bearable version of Feliz Navidad by Michael Buble and Thalia. Also, on my least favorite Christmas song category is Feed the World (?) by various rock singers and that one country song about the little boy buying shoes to give as a Christmas gift to his dying mother. I mean, really. Anyway...

We certainly got to listen to a lot of Christmas music one late afternoon while sitting in traffic for 2 whole hours as we drove out to drop off dinner for a  wonderfully large family that just had a new baby. Their 5th! We must have heard about four different versions of Sleigh Ride (?) in just that one sitting. It must have stuck because whenever we talk about the weather being lovely, he always sings out, "Come on it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you. Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy are we. Come on it's lovely weather..." It's pretty hilarious.

Oh Christmas Tree...
Liam loves Christmas! Liam reminds me somewhat of that little boy from the home alone movie in that he loves Christmas trees. He gazes at them almost hypnotically and always requests to have his picture taken by them. Like clockwork, he or I or both have been sick in December since he was born, so we had not been well enough to take him to see the big one at Rockefeller Center. But, this year was it.

 

We met up with daddy in Manhattan after work and made the trek together to see the tree. We got Liam super excited to see "the biggest Christmas tree ever." We even made him close his eyes until right before making the turn into Rockefeller Plaza. His surprise and enthusiasm were priceless, evidenced by his squeals of joy and applause, that is, until he spotted the Lego store and begged to go inside.

Christmas cards:
So, it looks like some people have nowadays elected to send them out electronically. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It sure would be a welcomed relief, but I like to think about my family and friends as I write them. I also like to include our yearly family photo (above photo, minus the tongue which we didn't see him do).

Liam's school:
At school, he was given a choice of either a star, angel, bell or tree cut out to make a Christmas tree ornament (essentially made out of flour and water). He, of course, chose a Christmas tree, painted it green and sprinkled it with glitter. Super cute! He was also pretty busy at school making other Christmas crafts: a reindeer, a gingerbread man, a wreath, and a Christmas card. Here at home, our advent calendar was a printout of Santa that got one cotton ball per day glued onto his beard until it was filled with twenty-five cotton balls.

As a side note, he was also taught all about Chanukah and the menorah, but not about the Nativity or the meaning of the Christmas tree which I thought was unfair. I didn't actually expect him to be taught about anything remotely religious since he is in a public school, but I just wish Liam would have told me about it earlier so that I could have spoken to his teachers about it. We ask him every day about school and all we got was his typical 4-year-old-boy answer, "I don't know... We played, made crafts, read, and sang songs." It wasn't until later when he and I overheard someone at the supermarket talking about the Jewish festivities on the morning of Christmas Eve, when he actually told me that "all they talked about was Chanukah all the time." There was nothing I could do then. Oh well, live and learn. Next year, I will actually speak with the teachers about what will actually be taught over December.

Liam's Christmas parties:
As it turned out he had quite a busy Holiday season with festivities at every turn. He had a Holiday party at school where they had milk and cookies, played secret Santa and sang "Holiday songs". Then, there was the party at Church where he sat ("again") on Santa's lap. He got a little present, a mini football, which he said was not on his Christmas list because he already has one. Oops. Many questions followed. Did Santa not get his letter? Did he not read it? Is he playing tricks? Etc. What an exhausting conversation that was!

Decorating and family traditions:
Anyway, Liam set up our little Nativity set and also "helped" to decorate our Christmas trees at home: the main one in the living room and my little disco ball, table-top tree in the dining room. I never knew how stressful it would be to take on such a task with an over-excited, 4-year old. I'm sad that Liam accidentally broke two of my special ornaments, but it's my own fault for not anticipating the unavoidable. Regardless of how we think it turned out, trimming our trees was memorable for our little family, especially for our little boy. Now that Liam understands a little more, we have now introduced him to some family traditions. We place the really special ornaments, those that have real meaning to us, on the tree on Christmas Eve. These ornaments are our first Christmas as a married couple, Liam's first Christmas, one that my brother had made specially for me years ago, a little ornament that sort of represents my mother and four beautiful glass ornaments that my mother-in-law, Bette, gave us on our first Christmas as a married couple.

We also introduced our very own family tradition this year: the Santa sack! That's right, no more wrapping presents. We just gift tag everything, dump it in the sack on Christmas Eve before heading to bed and place the sack right by the Christmas tree. The Christmas sack was made by "Welita" of course. Then, the Santa sack just magically disappears at the close of Christmas day. Santa's elves pick it up! (wink)

Which reminds me... note to self: I must learn how to sew in 2012! My mother is an amazing seamstress. She retired a while ago from working for years in the fashion district for various designers sewing haute couture, while I can barely sew a button. It is an embarrassment that I hope to correct in 2012.

Family and food
Uncle Moe and his huge family (sans Yvie, the eldest niece, who has elected to live upstate with her biological mother for a while) came over and spent Christmas Eve day with us. I cooked arroz con pollo and served it up with a simple side salad. After they left, I went to pick up "Welita" and we spent most of the evening with her, listening to her favorite Colombian music and enjoying special treats: Bill's special fruit smoothies and "bocadillos con queso" (courtesy of Welita) which is guava paste cut into cubes and served with cubes of Muenster cheese with toothpicks. Yummy! I baked chocolate chip cookies from scratch for the first time in my life, because you know, gotta leave cookies out for Santa. Not sure he would have liked the guava and cheese. Once again, he left a note for Liam thanking him for the cookies etc. even though they were kind of hard once they had cooled completely. I'm hopeless at baking. Our Christmas Day dinner was lemon and herb roasted chicken which we ate with roasted potatoes and salad. Again, yummy. I had every intention of making all sorts of Christmas goodies, but I got sick again (laryngitis?) and I just didn't have the energy.

Which brings me to this. The only places I had been to over those weeks was Church, Liam's school, the supermarket and Michaels. Someone somewhere was sick, maybe coughed too close to me, and somehow I got really super duper sick. Why do sick people go out in public? I mean really, I know I'm a big germophobe and all, but I can't really understand why sick people aren't more careful about not spreading their illness. If you've got a bad cough, stay the heck home and nurse yourself back to health. Ugh!

Liam's Star Wars themed Christmas
No big surprise there. Aside from my frilly-woolly scarf, Bill's super warm woolly socks, the bench (our Christmas gift to each other as a family) and a pre-school board game from "Welita", practically everything was about Star Wars from the Legos to the candy dispensers.

The most special family Christmas gift, though, in my opinion, was the bench. Love! It sits by the entrance where we take our shoes off and throw our hats, gloves, scarves inside.

I made baked doughnuts (from scratch) for our Christmas morning breakfast. So good I made them again for New Year's Eve morning. Yum!

Spin tops
Liam also got a special gift that was sent all the way from Japan: a BeyBlade spin top complete with its own string launcher. These spin tops are for ages 8 and up, but our 4 yr old little Liam learned how to play with him back in February 2011 when he was first introduced to them by a kid from senior Primary at Church. Along with Star Wars, it's all the rage here in our house.

Christmas and Boxing Day:
The better part of Christmas Day and Boxing Day were spent spinning tops and building Legos. To say that we were up to our eyeballs in Legos is an understatement. I never knew how satisfying yet stressful it would be to build Legos. You're searching and searching for the next piece, you start to panic, then suddenly you find it. This happens repeatedly, despite our best efforts in sorting the pieces into colors, size etc. Spinning BeyBlades was a welcomed break from all the Lego madness.

Also madness was a side-by-side comparison of the original Star Wars movie as it was released in theaters in 1977 and the edited version called "A New Hope". No words here. Only a pity party of one that included me.

Our New Year's celebration was almost a repeat of last year's in that Liam refused to go to sleep, so we rang in the New Year with the 4 yr old. Welita bought some glittery hats and horns from a sidewalk vendor that make the obnoxious vuvuzela sound. Along with Liam's band-in-a-box and the sounds of fireworks around our neighborhood, it made one noisy but lively New Year.

Well, as I look back, there are some things that I pictured in my head that turned out great and not so great (like some of the photos I took or forgot to take). Some Christmas wishes went unfulfilled, but some wishes that I never dreamed in a million years came true. All in all, it was happy Christmas/New Years with my dear family and family is what matters most.

Now if only I could find all of my photos!

Busy Fall

(Photos taken in the school's parking lot)

 (Photo taken from our bedroom window.)

Life's been pretty busy around our house this Fall. It has been a colorful and fun season around here, and we're glad to be enjoying it this year. Here's a recap and a sampling of our life this Fall in pictures:

Liam's school:
Schlepping Liam to and from school every day, I'm starting to feel like a half day is just too little time for him. I have to drive him everyday because the pre-k that's walking distance from where we live closed after the last school year. I have already told him that next year he will be gone all day. To my surprise, he exclaimed, "Oh yes! I love school! I can't wait to go for all day!" Me, too! Perhaps then, I can get to do a little more around here without having to stop projects at the halfway mark. He is growing so fast and learning in leaps and bounds.

He played a turkey in his very first school play and had two lines. All the children did remarkably well considering all the parents had their cameras out constantly taking pictures. We all looked like paparazzi photographing celebrities. So cute! Bill took lots of photos with his fancy camera while I mostly shot video. Oh and Liam had two Thanksgiving dinners: after the school play and on Thanksgiving Day itself.

On our daily drive home from school, he almost always requests pizza. One day, I tried to get him to try a slice with chicken and broccoli, but he wouldn't hear of such a thing. It's plain pizza or nothing at all. I ordered a chicken marsala slice because it looked so darn good. (When you're really hungry, anything looks great.) He shoved a piece of chicken into his mouth and to my surprise, he really liked it. In fact, he closed his eyes, went "Mmmm!" and said that this was his new favorite. So now, every time we drive past that pizzeria he always requests a slice of chicken marsala pizza. I have to talk fast to get him distracted enough so that he doesn't realize that we're driving past his favorite pizzeria.

The house:
Things are looking better and better in our house. Bill has almost completed the installation of the banister in the basement, so it is no longer "the stairs of death." I can't even begin to tell you how many near falls we have experienced, especially by me hauling the laundry up and down those stairs, and Liam with toys he manages to find down there.
 
The bigger news, though, is our new roof! You may recall that Hurricane Irene dropped a tree on the back of our house. Well, I would love to say that the experience with the insurance company went smoothly, but it didn't. Perhaps if we had suffered severe structural damage like a roof collapse, then the claim would have been cut and dry. We have gone back and forth for months now and we still have some unresolved matters. We are crossing our fingers that they will err on the side of logic and fairness. We are very happy with our new roof. It has created a different feel to our house, making it feel more secure, quieter and somehow warmer. We went with onyx black to match the window framing and white gutters, of course, which will match the "white" siding once we have saved the money to restore them to its original whiteness.

In the kitchen:
I have done some baking, too, from scratch, with good results. Pumpkin pie made with fresh pumpkin (not out of the can), doughnuts, and my boys made me a birthday cake. The cake picture here is of course from a bakery. My mom brought it over on on Thanksgiving Day to celebrate my birthday again. How sweet of her! Another Thanksgiving feast went by, only this time, I have to say, it was the best turkey I have ever cooked, which is saying a lot since I normally cook a fabulous turkey. This year's though was more flavorful and the leftover turkey made for some very delicious soups. I must mention also that Liam helped me by bagging the last minute groceries for our feast. So darling!

Illness:
As predicted, we have had our share of colds and whatnot. It never fails. At the start of the school year, all the kids go through their rounds of colds and viruses, because, you know, "sharing is caring!" Year after year, it is almost guaranteed that I will fall sick anytime between Halloween and New Year's Eve, and this year has not been the exception. You may recall last year's beast of a flu. This time, despite the mild Autumn, I came down with a cold accompanied by a nasty cough that apparently lingers on for months. This has made my life so uncomfortable, causing me to place many important projects on hold, including the crafty stuff and this blog.

Shared computer time:
I do manage to squeeze in a little time to check out friend's blogs, mostly because Liam really wants to see pictures of his friends, etc., but because I am now sharing my computer with Liam, I get very little time on it. I mostly have to wait until he is fast asleep to get anything done. It really couldn't be helped. It was just a matter of time. He begs to see pbs kids, sesame street, qubo, and some other stuff including vids on you tube. The boy can also google and always yells out for me to spell certain words, mostly Star Wars related. It's pretty hilarious as is his growing vocabulary. He really is learning in leaps and bounds. I can hardly believe that he will turn 5 in January.

Yup! We've been quite busy around here!

Liam's wardrobe:
You may recall me mentioning Liam's wardrobe issues last year. His karate uniform pretty much cured him if it. This year, thanks to the generosity of my family in Texas, we have not had to buy a single article of clothing for Liam (except for underwear, socks and shoes). My cousin's three year old son is so big and tall that he outgrows his clothes at lightening speed. As a result, Liam has inherited so many wonderful clothes! We are humbled by their generosity and feel truly blessed. One more thing... you will notice in the pictures that he is diving into the package, well my aunt and cousin also threw in some hot wheels and matchbox cars.What a lucky little boy!

So there you have it. There are a few more photos I should include, but can't seem to find. I will insert them when I do. If there's one thing I can't stand is not being able to find my photos. Dear tech guy, please stop moving my files around without telling about it first. Thanks.

Gathering of pumpkins and cousins

We went to the same farm as last year. It's spacious, they have plenty of pumpkins to choose from, pick-your-own veggies, free hay ride to the field with the pumpkins, a corn maze, blow-up rides, a concession stand and plenty of parking. Once again, because of scheduling conflicts (Bill's work) we missed our chance to go apple picking to our favorite place upstate with the nearby drive-in movie theater. At least we made it pumpkin picking and as a bonus, we met up with some family.

Our hay ride

I couldn't resist, so I brought Liam's black cape and Star Wars light saber for a photo op.

Liam, as always, couldn't resist doing the sound effects.

In fact, he has quite a repertoire of sound effects.

We picked out only three small pumpkins this year, not this large one.
I want to try a new dinner recipe.

We also picked some veggies for dinner that night.

Here Liam is inquiring if these radishes were sweet because they're red.

Love that boy (and the sky, too)!

(Never mind daddy's shadow as he's shielding Liam from the direct sunlight.)

Hurray for finally meeting up with Liam's cousins!

(Boo-hoo that my niece Yvie was stuck in upstate New York.
Mother dearest also MIA. Too "cold" for her.)

Liam and his cousin Jared were inseparable.

Liam's three step-cousins adore him and he loves
all the attention he gets from them.

Long over-due photo!

My husband hunched over with a sack of pumpkins on his back, me (a.k.a. the "bag lady", sheesh), Moe (my little bro) and his fiance, Julissa.

Liam's Uncle Moe!

Still as funny and handsome as ever.
Congrats on the weight loss! Go Moe!

Another hay ride, this time with the family.

(It was one of those arm-extended self shots.

I know I have a big head, but here it just looks enormous. Yikes!)

The three (out of the four) men in my life inspecting a tractor. (Can't wait to have grandpa join in on our family outings.)

Blow-up rides

Ending the day with a candied apple.

Thumbs up!

Our families give this family-owned farm a big thumbs up!