Minnesota is Heaven, But Virginia is Home

Christmas is almost over...the kids were up early, as per Child Regulation #298-B1, Section 8.2 which states that "All children shall awaken their parents at a totally unreasonable hour, preferably before 6:00 a.m. on Christmas Day". I'm lobbying Congress to get that regulation changed to 9:30 a.m. So far, I have 12 signatures. Anyone else want to sign my petition? Anyway, we tried to calm things down by having one child open a present at a time. Josiah, then Annika, then William as per Child Regulation #3...well, you get the picture. Eldest, middle, youngest and so it has been since the beginning of time. We tried to get them to slow things down, appreciate each gift and its giver before moving onto the next, and think warm, happy Christmas thoughts in between. But--they are children and before we knew it, the entire living room was engulfed in a massive pile of torn shreds of paper, smashed ribbons, cardboard and empty plastic shell packaging. Guess who got to clean al...

Annika in the Cub Club @ Great Wolf Lodge Just finished painting her dolphin magnet. Goofing around at the Cub Club... Josiah, at work on his latest masterpiece (in case you can't tell, it's Mario)! The kids' "cabin" inside our suite...typical Annika with her tongue out, Will is a blur! We had a good mini-vacation at the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg. Arrived Friday night in time for buffet supper. The kids expressed some wonderment that "buffet" means, loosely tranlated: eat until you fall over. We let them go ahead and fill their own plates, go back for seconds, and make deserts that were meant to contain ice cream but mostly contained M&Ms. They begged us to go back to the buffet for every meal afterwards, but at $70/meal, that just wasn't going to happen. It didn't matter how much we ate, it was nowhere close to $70 worth. But it was fun for just that evening. As you can see, we had quite the charming little suite. The kids had an...

And so, as usual, we begin our tale at the end and work backwards. I've invented a time machine and it's called Blogspot...I give up trying to figure it out. Deal. These are the kids on Sunday at approximately 3:49 p.m., just moments after they had walked through the door of the Ted Constant Center and found out they were (surprise!) attending "Phineas & Ferb Live!". I think Annika's face in this one pretty much sums up the general success of this surprise. General fun was had by all. All of us sang, some of us danced... Now...travel back in time with me to Saturday and the FRG cookie exchange. Yes, I baked. A random cookie recipe I found online. Yes, they were edible. Some might even say slightly good. We have a professional baker in our FRG (Family Readiness Group), so I knew I wasn't competing for any titles. She won, hands down. But it's me, nevertheless, having a cookie. Which is standard behavior for the XO's wife during the cookie exchange...