The Blog I Will Never Write

It is not December and so I cannot write the blog that I wanted to write.
I know this post is still dated in December- but it is a lie. Somehow December escaped my clutches with but one paltry post and that one was about November and now it is January, a whole new year, and far too late to go back to musings on what happened in December of 2010.
So here it is, the blog post that I will never write unless at some future date I happen to cross paths with a time machine.
I am sorry to say you will never read about the soft spot I had this year for the TV Christmas special "It's Christmas Charlie Brown!" as I surveyed my own gimpy wreath and tree. The wreath I made myself with real fir boughs, but it didn't turn out quite as I envisioned it so it hung inside our house and we enjoyed the piny scent. I could pretend that its humble, lop-sided appearance was on purpose in honor of the humble birth place of Jesus, but let's face it- I just can't make wreaths.
The tree, which I will not write about, was just fine, lovely in fact, until we decorated it. The twins helped me decorate it while David John just as quickly ripped off and destroyed ornaments. I had to keep moving the ornaments up higher and higher as David John devised new ways to reach them until the bottom 2/3 of the tree was completely bare and the top 1/3 suffocating with decoration. All of this majesty was topped by a homemade cardboard and foil star which frequently decided to flop over or threaten to fall off entirely.
David John seemed to notice the disparity in decoration, however, and tried to make up for it by shoving megablocks, dinosaurs, cars and dusting cloths into the bottom branches. This was truly a tree only a mother could love and you will never know about it.
I neglected entirely to write about the formal Christmas party for the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital that Marc signed us up to go to. You might never know about the panic of trying to find something even semi-formal that would fit over my gigantic pregnant belly. I won't be able to tell you about combing thrift stores with all three boys in tow, about Elijah opening the dressing room door while I was changing or about the miracle of finding a very plain funeralesque floor length black velvet maternity dress for $7 which a team of fairy godmothers turned into a cute knee length little number with fabric flowers on the neckline and matching hair clips and beautiful pearl jewelry. Marc and I had a wonderful time with all of the fabulous people he works with. We played with the exhibits, ate, danced, watched an awesome IMAX movie about Alaska and came home to find that our boys did not destroy our neighbors' house or even their breakable Christmas village display.

My year of blogging will not include the cute quip in which I asked my boys about the nativity scene and the only three characters they seemed to think worth mentioning were baby Jesus, Jesus' mommy, and the cow. (Here is the picture that I would have included of our nativity set we bought in the Philippines. The boys loved watching me unwrap each piece and put it on the mantle.)
I won't get to write about Christmas morning and how Gabriel threw a tantrum about having to put on his pajama pants before he could go downstairs and declared that he did not want presents. Of course, he changed his mind.
I'll never tell you about the boys unwrapping presents to find a sealed box beneath the paper and calling out, "I got a box!" then tossing it aside without thinking that there might be something in the box. This fabulous picture of Elijah after having eaten all of his stocking candy with a smile only a dentist could truly appreciate might never see the light of day.
No one but my immediate family will recall how cute David John looked in his little red robe, or how he stood by the door with his snow boots just waiting for someone to take him outside.
I wish that I would have written about my husband who worked through the Christmas holidays without complaint and even made it through some very tough days of endless patients, long hours and heartbreaking cases without a family to come home to. I wish that I could tell you about my gratitude for him and how sweet it was to come home to him and to have our own little Christmas celebration on New Year's Eve. I wish I could boast about what a good job he did in surprising me with thoughtful gifts but I will never write this blog so I can't.
Oh, and I wish that I could wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year but this blog was never written. Maybe I'll remember to write one this year.

Gratitude

So, it might be a month late, but I still wanted to express our family's gratitude for the blessings big and small in our life. Let me first say, that I am grateful for family and friends who take fabulous pictures since I so often forget my camera or am too busy interacting with the boys to take pictures of them.

Gabriel is thankful for books, books and more books. This kid loves to be read to.

Marc is grateful for "help" with raking and piling the leaves by the curb so the leaf-sucker truck can take them away.

Marc and I are both thankful for 3 adorable boys and 1 on the way.

Marc (and particularly Opa) is grateful for massive amounts of free leftover movie theater popcorn. He scored this bag after we all went to see the latest Harry Potter movie on Thanksgiving.






























We are very grateful for Robert, Nancy, Oma and Opa who came to visit us during Thanksgiving and helped out so much with the cooking, cleaning, and child-wrangling.

All the boys are thankful for birthday ice cream- Opa's treat.

Elijah is thankful for stickers.

I am grateful for movie night and my husband who watched our kids and our friends' children so I could go.

David John is grateful for his first kiss from a cute girl. Ava is quite the go-getter.

We are thankful for all the great friends we have here in Cleveland.

A Tale of Two Vans

Our van was dead to begin with..... dead as a doornail.

Okay, not really and I know that line is from A Christmas Carol and not A Tale of Two Cities- but remember last winter when our van had "irritable bowel syndrome"? We never did figure out the source of the IBS until it was too late. Apparently, in vans anyway, IBS can be deadly.
The estimated repair cost for a procedure that may or may not work was a minimum of $1500. At that point, the van was still running albeit in a scary vibratory kind of way. However, as I drove my little van home I had pretty much decided that we were in the market for a new vehicle. It was at that very moment that the van died for the first time. My van with the fatal IBS also had ESP.
Marc and I went to work at finding a replacement and located a 2009 Toyota Sienna for a good price. On the big day when we were to go trade our sickly van for a shiny newish one, Mr. Minivan refused to start at all- it clearly knew our plans- and had to be jumped. As we drove to the dealership, Marc made some comment about how this van only had to make it 2 more miles and then it would be out of our lives forever.
It promptly died.
After getting it started again, we finally made it to the dealership. Now, I am no expert on vehicles but I knew that this van we were trading in was something special. I mean, it wasn't going to work for us to keep it because we needed a vehicle that would, you know, go. However, I was sure that this van could be of use to someone since it clearly understood human speech and could even read minds. At the very least it should have been a valuable collector's item.
Would you believe that after we presented the dealership with all of anecdotal evidence pointing to our van's ESP abilities they actually lessened the trade-in value from the blue book price?
Anyway, for better or worse we traded it in and drove home in what the boys are still calling "the new van" even though it has been more than two weeks now. I love our new van, but kind of miss the red color and character of our old one. Oh, and the boys are definitely missing the built in VHS player. Our VHS tapes are missing it too since that was the only use we had for them. *Sigh.
It was the best of vans, it was the worst of vans.