up on the housetop

an mtc (that's my dad) production...here is the 2007 version:

up on the housetop reindeer pause,
out jumps good old san neeclaws;
slides down the chimbley with lots of toys,
all for the little ones, christmas joys.
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
down thro' the chimney with good saint nick.

first comes the stocking of little nell
stands by a store and rings a bell;
has a red kettle right near by;
always empty, wonder why?
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
down thro' the chimney with good saint nick.

grammie's next for her sock fill,
days with kids give her a thrill.
she drives to midland when she can
grammie days she loves to plan.
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! grandkids whoa!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
down thro' the chimney with good saint nick.

next comes the sock of jason, the dad,
leave him a gift and he'll be real glad,
he spends the day giving people their pills
keeps him busy and pays the bills.
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! santa - whoa!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
down thro' the chimney with good saint nick.

cara has a stocking too,
she still knows how to shout go blue!
if you should burp or pet the dog
she'll tell the whole world on her blog!
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! kids in tow!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
down thro' the chimney with good saint nick.

lilly is in second grade
leave her a gift that someone made.
in the pool she's learned the crawl,
swimming and dance she does it all.
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
down thro' the chimney with good saint nick.

next is the hosiery of maya lou,
she goes off to school too.
looking at photos is her thing
maybe a camera you should bring.
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
down thro' the chimney with good saint nick.

porter's the boy of the baker clan
of his preschool he's a fan.
tries to be good and with some luck,
santa will bring a red fire truck.
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! never slow!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
down thro' the chimney with good saint nick.

molly's stocking fill up well,
not going to be a southern belle!
out of her way as she barrels through,
when there's a song she'll dance for you.
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! in the snow!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
down thro' the chimney with good saint nick.

next several stockings for grandpa mike,
he's the guy that we all like.
bein' with grandkids is loads of fun
rock-a-bye baby with every one!
ho, ho, ho! who wouldn't go!
ho, ho, ho! all aglow!
up on the housetop, click, click, click,
stuck in the chimney like fat saint nick.

christmas #3 recap

boy oh boy that santa is something else! this year he brought personalized red sacks for all the kids with their goodies inside...and the kids all got what they asked for, even though maya had changed her 'order' while talking to the santa at denny's in florida!


lilly got the holiday barbie and a 'fur real' friend, maya got a computer game and 'baby alive' - a baby that really drinks a bottle and then pees (ask us how thrilled we are that santa got that for her!), porter got a thomas the train fire station and some more track and molly got a worm bike rider thing. our big gift to the kids (in addition to their disney vacation!) was a trampoline - which, of course, they have to wait until spring to use, but they are excited to do so! i got jason a fancy new ladder and various other books, dvds, etc. jason got me all sorts of techy toys, including a zen stone (like the ipod nano) so that i can have a much more portable music player when i'm working out. i also got an idog to use as speakers in my scrap room, and i'm already in love with it.

we had a great family christmas here and are now preparing this morning for our final christmas celebration...new year's eve. with the exception of one year (when porter was in the hospital at the age of 7 weeks) i have spent new year's eve with the cron family...the day has typically encompassed up to all of the following - athleticating (wallyball, racquetball, basketball, swimming), christmas carols, gift opening, horse ovaries for dinner, and a very loud midnight extravaganza with balloon popping, streamers, poppers, noise makers, etc. then new year's day brings football (both on tv and in the yard with the annual cron bowl) and a steak dinner. here's one of my favorite pictures of my cousin nick at last year's celebration:
with the passing of grandmoth, the cron family is no longer getting together, so we're having our own version right here in our house! we're not athleticating, but we are gifting and eating lots of horse ovaries, and i will be sure to post the destruction of our basement after the very loud midnight extravaganza. we are also hosting bowl game viewing tomorrow too, as well as a 'bakerized' steak dinner. oh, and did i mention we will now be watching said football on our new 42" LCD tv? :)

i'm looking forward to carrying on the family tradition in our own way, as i would much rather have our children exposed to this type of new year's eve celebration than others...happy new year to all of you!

'christmas eve'

it's christmas eve here tonight...here are a couple of shots from our traditional christmas eve photo shoot...

i hope i get some sleep tonight.

volume

christmas #2 recap

we gathered at my parents' house for a hall family christmas celebration...my grandparents, my mom's two sisters, her brother, and all their assorted, related kinfolk for a traditional christmas gifting and dinner. most of the folk we only get to see once a year, twice if we're lucky, so it's always an interesting gathering, particularly with so many young kids that keep growing!

santa filled the kids stockings that were hung there (here they all are waiting to go through them!!)
and we did a 'kid gift exchange' and then a BIG, traditional christmas dinner, complete with both turkey and ham. then came our 'gifting game' - contribute one and take one, if you will. this year we ended up with a new bird feeder (which i desperately needed) and a custom made bird house to go with it, as well as the newest edition of the game of cranium, which hopefully we'll get to play soon!

two more christmas celebrations to go - both of which are at our house, so our traveling for this year is over. whew.

vacation recap

okay, the moment (& pictures) you've all been waiting for...

now, as a type-a, event planner person, our little flight issues just screwed up my whole plan this week...we were SUPPOSE to

monday - breakfast at the Crystal Palace with Pooh and spend the day at the Magic Kingdom park to see Spectromagic light parade. instead...we actually MADE IT to florida.

tuesday - we were suppose to have a leisurely day at the condo and nap well to spend the evening at mickey's very merry christmas party - instead we spent the entire day at the magic kingdom (no spectromagic parade) and continued on through the night at the party. by 9:30pm or so the kids were beat, so we missed seeing the special christmas parade, but we did see the fireworks and we enjoyed all our favorite rides!


the castle had special 'ice' lighting, which was really cool, and we enjoyed cookies and hot chocolate during the party, as well as the plethora of christmas decorations...we've been to the park so many times before, but never before christmas, and it was quite spectacular.




wednesday was suppose to be a 'hang out' day...instead we ate breakfast at chef mickey's and then spent the afternoon shopping at downtown disney. each kids (minus molly) had their own wallet with money to spend on this trip and they had a great time finding what they were going to spend their moola on. we made a trip to goofy's candy company for some 'custom made' treats. we also made a trip over to disney's grand floridian resort to see a GIANT gingerbread house (almost the size of a real house!). each resort does a special edible christmas display...outside chef mickey's at the contemporary resort was a giant chocolate sculpture of gepetto and pinocchio and the kids enjoyed spending time trying to find the hidden mickeys in it!




thursday and friday went pretty much as originally planned, with thursday being our day at epcot center and friday at mgm studios. the kids weren't as thrilled with epcot (especially cause we kept referring to it as the 'learning park') but we did get to see the chinese acrobats perform, as well as a mime in italy and father christmas in england. we ate dinner at the rose & crown pub, to hearken jason's parents back to the days when they lived in england. we watched the illumnations night show/fireworks from the restaurant patio and then headed home.

friday at mgm was fun - there was just enough for us to do to fill the day and end it with the fantasmic show and watching the spectacle of dancing lights...5 million lights that used to be on ONE family's home in arkansas and has been transplanted at mgm. it was something else - gave me inspiration to kick-it up a notch at our place next year!





jason's parents left early sat morning and we spent the day at the condo with the kids praying for warm enough weather for them to go swimming. finally in the late afternoon when we realized that it wasn't going to get any warmer or sunnier (it was low 60s) we headed up the road to the spectacular orlando world center pool and went swimming anyway. swimming lessons are paying off enormously for the kids, as lilly, maya and porter were all able to go down the little waterslide there by themselves. both lilly and maya could swim away to water they could touch in, whereas i did have to 'rescue' porter at the end as the current coming from the end of the slide was a little too much for his scrawny body. he enjoyed it and didn't drown...so that's good.we spent a few minutes soaking in the hot tub before we left (as molly's teeth were chattering!) and promised the kids a community bath in our jacuzzi tub, which they thoroughly enjoyed.

so there you have it...our christmas disney vacation in a nutshell. we're headed to christmas celebration #2 here shortly, so look for recaps of that coming soon!

home again, home again

jiggity jig

through wind and snow and windy snow...

we arrived home without near as much trauma and drama as our departure. the cat is still alive. the house did not burn down (the cat sitter laughed when i told her to make sure that didn't happen...pre-teens!)

we did lose at least one plant though, but hey, basil, i hardly knew ye.

MANY thanks to those that assisted our vacation - sue, mike, tara, neil, terri, josh, hillary, dave, and jason's parents, who gave us a 1:1 adult to kid ratio during three long days at disney parks. not to mention the massive quantities of alcohol that they stocked the condo with. i think jason was hung over this morning after trying to finish it all up last night in an attempt to not leave any behind..but hey, we WERE on vacation.

anyway...i promise pictures coming. tomorrow is christmas eve. just in case you'd lost track of time.

where to begin...

it was saturday morning, and jason and i were reviewing the weather report and its possible impact on our travel plans...

i place a phone call to my loving aunt sue - please don't go to any trouble, i say - but can we (meaning all SIX of us) crash on your basement floor for the night so that we're at least two hours closer to the airport in the morning...

ha ha...famous last words...so um...she cooked us dinner, set us (jason, molly and I) up in the spare bedroom, made killer popcorn in her awesome machine, made a fabulous bed for all the girls to sleep on downstairs, and kept us entertained watching the cars at the party across the street try to get up the steep hill in the now heavily falling snow...ugh.

and that was just saturday night...then comes sunday morning. 6:30am...and my uncle mike is out shoveling the foot deep snow in the driveway so we can depart for the airport. i checked the metro website, the southwest airlines website, and had a text message sent to my phone. flight was on time. we had to leave...but...um....leaving required jason, sue and mike PUSHING THE MINIVAN UPHILL the 1/4 mile or so - IN FOOT DEEP SNOW - til we could get to a main street. we're not but 3 miles down the road (mind you, we're traveling at only 30 mph on I-75!) and we get the text message that our flight was CANCELLED. ugh.

jason spends 40 minutes on the phone (most of it on hold, of course) to get us on another flight. we decide we'll keep driving towards the airport at least - and i wouldn't have recommended ANYONE driving in that weather. we get a new flight, set to leave at 4PM...great. we call my friend tara (who is dropping us off at the airport and playing keeper of our van for the week), she has no plans for the day, so we'll hang out with her - which actually meant we went to her her mom's house, which had room to accommodate the six of us. MANY thanks to our hostesses throughout this ordeal!

we check flight status at tara's mom's house about 1PM. on time. i get the text message. on time. WAHOO! jason goes to start the van and now scrape off the additional 3 inches of snow that have fallen since we've been there. just as he's headed back into the house to round us up to the car....text message....flight canceled AGAIN.

okay, so now i'm irritated. duh. i forgot to mention all the calls i'd already made after the FIRST cancellation...to the rental car company to make sure they'll hold our car...to the condo to ask that they allow jason's parents to check-in (as they were vacationing with us, but the reservation was in our name - and they had flown down on wed to spend a few days in key west...smart move!) and now this cancellation...we have to do it all again...first southwest...all operations at metro suspended...have to fly on monday. great. to condo. all set there. rental car company...no problem. and then the heartbreaker. have to call and cancel our character breakfast (as we were suppose to be eating with pooh first thing monday morning.)

tara's sister works at a nearby hotel and called and made arrangements for us to stay there for a killer rate - a hotel complete with pool. so we head to the hotel and tara's husband and kids brought rations for everyone and then we hit the pool to make the best of this worsening situation. i call disney dining. pooh character breakfast has no openings all week. princess breakfast is the same. lucky for us we can still get into chef mickeys on wed, so i make a reservation there.

we swim and then sleep. jason makes an evening run to meijers for some food (lunchables and chips!) and we spend the night on hotel beds watching christmas specials. tara is back first thing in the morning to take us to the airport and lucky for us, THIS part of the trip is relatively uneventful. our plane is coming from chicago, which was, of course, hit hard with the storm too...so it was delayed over an hour, but for the most part, the kids handled the airport waiting time very well. and the poor 'gate keeper' at the terminal had to say 'please remember, don't shoot the messenger...' most of the people flying with us had been stranded at the airport when their flights were canceled on sunday...so at least we weren't them!

the kids did well on the flight, and after getting and having to exchange our first rental car we arrived at the fully-stocked condo (thanks to jason's parents who had now been holding down the fort by themselves for a day!)

so that's the trauma and drama in a nutshell. upcoming posts will be much happier...after all, we spent most of the rest of our time here at the happiest place on earth.

sad to be flying home tomorrow...not fun to lose a day of vacation, but we're coming home to christmas, and it doesn't get much better than that.

martinis

we toasted to my grandparents yesterday, here in sunny florida, with a round of martinis. we didn't make the 3 o'clock deadline, but we had them nonetheless.

happy birthday grandmoth (which was sunday, of course...what is with that woman and snow storms??)

happy deathday, grandfath...a day i will remember forever...our little molly was 18 months old yesterday. exactly.

i promise detailed vacation blogs coming shortly.

snowmen

the girls made their first snowmen of the season....so now we have sort of a little snow family going...porter made a small one, too...but smashed it before it was captured on camera. boys.

nearly a week with no posts and then BAMMM! three in one day...we're off on vacation in a few days...so maybe i'll post some palm trees instead of snow next week!

christmas #1 recap

those of you that follow the baker family escapades know that we have more than the average number of christmas celebrations with family...and given vacation schedules - we've already had one this year...here's a quick recap:

here's the cousins in their christmas jammies (from children's place, in case you're wondering - enough of a size range to cover all the kids!)

opening their stockings


molly gets HER anywhere chair (from pottery barn) and after 4 years of use, the other kids got new slipcovers for theirs - these chairs are well used around our house, and finally one of the older kids doesn't have to sacrifice theirs and sit on the floor during 'pizza dinner movie night' (and by doesn't 'have to' is not implying that their loving parents told them that their precious baby princess sister should get to sit in the comfy chair....it's because molly is a bully and simply sits in it and won't move)

mow-ore

yes, that's how you pronounce 'more' with an additional syllable...which is what molly is doing right now.

sitting on my lap, very figgity with her sippy cup of milk. i move the milk to the table next to me.

mow-ore....mow-ore...

i attempt to hand her said sippy cup.

she opens her mouth and purses her lips a bit...for me to feed it to her. she will not take the cup.

and i 'feed' her the sippy cup.

mow-ore...

that is the definition of princess.

candy canes

while eating candy canes, the 6 cousins together this morning...

KQOTD

Blake complaining that he can't hold his the way he wants.

Amy: That's because you broke it. Once it's broken, you can' t put it back together.

Lilly: Unless you hot glue it, but then it tastes terrible.

well, i AM a baker

i remember my childhood christmas baking days...covering the dining room table with newspapers to allow the rows and rows of cookies and chex mix to cool. then we mixed a variety of colors of homemade frosting and went to town on the cookie cutter sugar cookies. mom made a variety of other things too...chex mix always...sometimes caramel corn. all sorts of things.

i love just about every kind of cookie. but this time of year i tend to focus my baking on 'treats' rather than all cookies. well, tonight, i finished a majority of my baking duties for the season (we have two treat trays 'due' tomorrow and are leaving for vacation for a week, so had to get it done!)

here's the rundown on what our lucky neighbors and christmas party attendees will be enjoying:

chex mix, duh. a necessity. well into january. made 2 buckets.

7 layer bars - some of my favorites, and jason doesn't like coconut, so i get them to myself. the 7 layers you ask? butter, cinnamon graham cracker crust, butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, coconut, pecans and drizzled with sweetened condensed milk.

i needed a way to use up some of my extra white chocolate (see chocolate covered pretzels below)...so i 'drew' some snowmen and snowflakes in white chocolate and 'decorated' them. just a little decoration for the treat trays.
these are saltine chocolate things...yum. you will notice a distinct chocolate theme in pretty much everything i made. next comes s'mores and turtles. s'mores are chocolate dipped marshmallows rolled in crushed graham crackers - made 2 BAGS of marshmallows worth. the turtles are pretzels with melted rolos on top and then squashed with pecan halves. i made some nut-less versions too...hmmm...nutless turtles. poor guys.

chocolate covered pretzels - the twists are milk chocolate and the rods are white, some decorated with colored sugar or the holly sugar thingys (technical baking terms). i do have some dark chocolate ones i was going to make, but it's midnight, so um...not happening tonight.

bring on the peanut butter - these ones i make for jason (which are his favorite next to 'candy cane cookies' that only his loving mother has the patience to make for him) peanut butter blossoms and peanut butter cup cookies.

and the piece de resistance....
bohemian butter cookies...
which to me look like snowy stained glass windows of yumminess

these are by far the most labor intensive of all the treats i make...real butter cookies, sandwiched with raspberry jam and dusted with powdered sugar...they are worth every ounce of work i put in to them.

there you have it. 2007 christmas baking in review.

not that i'm excited or anything

but i added a trip ticker for our 10th anniversary trip to hawaii (which will actually happen 2 months after our 10th anniversary...)

you can view the ticker, complete with loverly palm trees at the bottom of the blog.

aloha!

balloon animals and so much more!

we spent the better part of sunday at a christmas party, perfectly planned and designed for kids! everyone saw santa (and molly was traumatized, as any good 18 month old would be when you try to sit them on the lap of a large man sporting a big white 'beard')

jewls the clown, a local who used to 'perform' at kids night at damons was on hand and made some great creations for the older kids...

we've been working on baking all our christmas goodies and getting the house in full regalia...and given that this is the first year in this house, we're still figuring out where all of our stuff goes...and i blew my first fuse last night (and fried a string of lights) by putting too many together...

here's a picture of our first fire in our 'real' fireplace (our previous one we just had to flip the switch!) we moved two of the stockings so they wouldn't get too hot...in case you were wondering if we gave away two of the children. also in this picture is one of our three trees - the 'disney' tree.

and finally, a little holiday video...long, but cute (of course, i'm a little biased).

santa

we're headed to a christmas party today sponsored by the realtor office we bought our midland house through...clown, lunch, crafts and.....the big guy...

so we spent some time during breakfast discussing this year's requests...which has lead today's

KQOTD:

Mom - Remember, you can only ask for three things.

Maya - I'm going to ask for a new computer game...

Lilly - but cross your fingers that we get the plasma.

just you

it's your sister's birthday, so you wore a 'fancy dress' to school today too.

i went to the corner to get you from school....in the freezing cold, wind whipping by me...noticing all the leaves still in the yard that need to be taken care of, the bush stumps we have to remove, the remnants of the hostas i never cut back, cursing under my breath that i was cold....

and then, there you were...with the crossing guard, chatting about your day...she said good-bye and you started skipping home.

and it made me smile.

scrooged

click to make him dance.....

elfed

couldn't resist...so check them out here.

KQOTD - though this was from Friday and I was computer-less for the holiday weekend

Lilly - I don't care about anything else, Mommie, this spaghetti is so good!

Grammie - Well, there's plenty more, honey.

Lilly - I have to eat my salad first.

Mommie - She has to eat her salad first. Sorry, Lilly, but that's the way it is. Complete with carrots and tomatoes, you have to eat your salad first before you can have more carbs. Can't do anything about it, it's just the way I was raised.

Lilly - Why do I have to have such a miserable life like you?

thankful

for you

SUPER sonic

this, btw, is my newest obsession while sitting at my laptop...

www.subsonicradio.com

does it get any better than THAT?

weekenders

there used to be a cartoon on the disney channel, i think, called the weekenders....i'm living for the weekend....

anyway, we had a great weekend here with a visit from margie and the kidlets...so um...six kidlets under the age of 8 (for a few more days anyway) for the weekend, and only half of them had runny noses, so it wasn't all that crazy! margie is a hunting widow, and for the last two years has opted to spend the weekend with us (and by definition - at least to us Crons - doing something twice means it's now a tradition).jason and i took the girls to the santa parade on saturday morning. poda opted to stay behind with margie and her kids (not knowing how long the parade would be, and it was pretty cold, we kept them home). molly provided a great deal of entertainment to those sitting around us - particularly a group of 'japanese tourists' that literally stopped on the sidewalk just to watch her. she spent a great deal of time talking to one of the mechanics from the muffler place we were sitting in front of.
jason saw kids with buckets and bags before the parade even began - gave us a clue that this was going to be a 'heavy-duty candy' experience...and fortunately for us, the newbies, one of the parade entrants near the beginning handed out bags....let me just say that the girls ended up with more in their bags after the santa parade than they did after trick-or-treating! they got candy...but also little plastic figurines, lots of pencils, coupons and brochures, and lilly even got a wiffle ball!
after the parade we just 'hung out' and it was great to do so. the kids enjoyed each other's company and so did the adults. here's margie enjoying a shrimp.