Old Friends were excited to play with new toys!
After Christmas Play
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Happy Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve Fam Adventures
We started off the fun with a killer walk up (okay, and back down) the Heart Attack Hill loop. Look at the sun!
Here’s my husband less 35+ lbs.
Then, we left Wes at home and the 4 of us went to the nail salon. Dwayne has this habit of running his toes over my calf in the morning, and I constantly flinch and declared “Pedi, Stat!” I finally got us all over there and got family mani/pedi. Note to self: make an appt next year—we kinda overwhelmed them on what they thought would be a quiet day. But it was lovely! It’s very little about the nails; it is the sugar scrub massage and hot stones. 
2018 Christmas Letter
Me: “But did you mean NOT to?”
Salads uneaten, you get the gist.
Oops! We’re all on the naughty list.
December 4-12, 2018 seriously
Dear Friends and Family,
I spent an embarrassing amount of time and creative effort on that poem, and I’m afraid I have nothing left but unjustified optimism that that I can pull off the annual epistle.
This year has been especially enjoyable for me, though I should hesitate to speak for the (oh, crap—Kyla just got lost on the ferry, and I had to engage the crew to find her. Back safely now). Restart. You know, “enjoyable” is probably inversely proportional—for me—on how many brains I need to be the motherboard for at a time. I can picture the faces of those nodding in agreement.
Wesley, being youngest, is the one most plugged into the motherboard. The youngers often must get themselves to school, and he’s the one most likely to cheerfully ride his bike to school, helmet on, sometimes even with a backpack and lunch! He has much freedom to make mistakes, and we’re waiting for the “and learn from them” to kick in. To be fair, he only blew up one coin in a light socket this year so maybe learning is happening. Or maybe the key to learning is administering electrical shocks. It’s difficult to discern the correct lesson here. One of my best moments this year was comfortably reading in my garden hammock chair when I was startled by a noise—Wesley wearing roller blades and a look of pure elation, zooming by riding the gas-powered leaf blower like a quidditch broomstick.
Being 70% cat, Piper should be practicing much better hygiene; though to give her credit, she doesn’t randomly vomit on the stairs. Drat—as soon as I read that line to her, she quacked. Pick a species, Pipes! She has a small menagerie that, surprise, she cares for more than she takes care of (said parents of any child, ever). Piper had a breakthrough this year with sibling relationships when, after another tedious tantrum, I dropped her off at Dwayne’s work while I took her siblings to the cabin for a few days. Piper is not one to show weakness, and she gave no indication that going to management meetings was anything but her preferred choice, but we’ve had a significantly more peaceful household since that episode. She still helps my dad bottle wine whenever she can, and it was on her birthday that we all saw Hamilton in Seattle. One of her recent highlights is that she entered a Scholastic name-the-5th-grade-reading-buddy contest and won! Both Piper and her teacher got their own book box and each classmate got a gecko stuffy as long as your arm. Piper is shy, and most people don’t get to know her well, but if you’ll believe her mother, she’s sugar and spice and with a shot of rum, like her favorite Christmas cookies.
When I grow up, I need to be more like Kyla is at twelve, who really may not need her mother very much, other than ferry finding. I’m still drooling into my pillow when she wakes herself up and gets ready for the school day, packing herself a healthy lunch and gathering her homework, then reminds me to take her to the bus on time. Things that have come out of her mouth this year: “Sorry, Mom, I’m still working on my homework and I don’t want to leave for the cabin until it’s all done so I can enjoy my weekend.” “I’ll clean the kitchen tonight. Dad did the cooking, and Mom already worked enough today.” “Wesley can come snuggle with me when I’m done reading.” Creepy, huh? If the Stepfords had children, this one landed in my nest. She does have plenty of faults—now that she’s grown almost to my height, we can share clothes, and while she’s not really into fashion, she does love socks and my favorites usually end up in her drawer (if they aren’t strewn over the house like stinky breadcrumbs). She rocked a week-long survival camp this summer, and then took a weekend to makeover her bedroom into her own teenage taste, which for her is bold colors and minimalism. This is where Kyla inspires me—she really owns only the things she loves and finds necessary. Her room is relaxing in its simplicity and when I’m ready to declutter, I bring her in to consult.
Dwayne is significantly less the man that he was last year. In the last few months, he has made a full effort to lose weight through healthy eating and exercise, and is on track to soon be the thinnest I have ever known him. Before he lost the weight, he must have lost some brain cells, because he thought it was a good idea for us to spend two July weeks at the cabin building another huge retaining wall—something we last did ten years ago. If he does this to me in our fifties, we’re skipping divorce and going straight to husbandcide. Of course, as all his bright ideas do, it turned out even better than he envisioned, and we’ve since built a whole garden/pergola area within it. We’re still a synergetic team, but I’m calling dibs on the next project.
Dwayne and I both drastically changed our diets this fall, and to those who think I was already slender probably also think I am still blonde and clever. Past tense, my friends, past tense. My biggest brag this year, besides getting down to the weight on my driver’s license, is that when our washing machine broke, I dragged out the tool box and, with YouTube’s assistance, fixed the blasted thing myself. It now makes a terrible racket that it never made before, but it cleans the clothes, so I’ll call it a victory. When I’m not fix-breaking things, I work 4 jobs—substituting, tutoring, librarying (yay!), and keeping Heartsease Properties, LLC out of bankruptcy. Probably the most fun I have in a week is coaching the 5th grade Math Team (which Piper is loudly and proudly NOT a part of) and collapsing on the couch while Dwayne puts the kids to bed.
As a family, we’re catching the traveling bug. We spent Spring Break running around Idaho in a rented motor home, enjoying both the spring snowfall and natural hot springs. In August, we toured the Olympic Peninsula, tromping through wet beaches and dry rain forests. Weekend trips now mean leaving kids at the hotel with pizza and Netflix while Dwayne and I go bistro hunting, which means we now all enjoy ourselves. We’re trying our first international trip this February when we fly to Costa Rica, and we can’t wait to do some ecotourism! We’ll see if Piper Doolittle can actually talk to animals, if Kyla can avoid getting seriously lost, and if Wesley will survive a week without Minecraft.
We wish you blessings of every kind, the heart to recognize them, and the hands to pass them on.
Lovingly,
Denise for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, & Wesley
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Warrior Wes
He made himself some armor …
…and go into his favorite fighting stance!
When we go to Target, he loves to jump to the top of the red ball in a single bound. This time, he did it Ninja-Santa style (and yes, he leaped with the cap over his eye). Impressive, my son!
The Cousins Came!
I love that Brian and Sandi always find a chunk of time during a visit to spend exclusively with us! Kyla and Piper are excellent big cousins, who read, play, jump, and care for their little cousins. And Amber and Taryn are darling kids even if they are my nieces!
I had to trick Wesley to get a picture of him in non-combat stance. I’ll take goofy over go-fight any day!
This is going to be an extra fun holiday, as we get cousin time Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday! See you soon, dear ones.
Wild Kids, Wild Lights
The girls and I were finally able to talk Wesley into going to Wild Lights at Woodland Park Zoo (Wesley has been the Party of NO lately). Of course, he had the best time of all of us, but that is sometimes to be expected from the epitome of contrariness!
My phone camera does not do well with the Christmas Light/Dark Background, but I need them to recall the pictures I took in my heart:
It was the was the Snow Ball Fight, nay, the Snow Ball War that made Wes the Happiest Child that night. I never caught a recognizable picture of Wes or Kyla that night, but Piper stopped long enough while stuffing projectiles into her Santa hat to let me take this shot:
Wesley isn’t mad here; he just prefers a fighting stance to be his current pose of choice. Should make Christmas pix a hoot!
The butterfly garden was open!
The girls and I were pleased to see the penguins let out of their enclosure this year!
Let the Break Begin—with a bang!
Recently christened “the Fun Mom” (by wiser parents), I let Piper invite her closest school buddies, one little sister and one little brother (Wesley’s age). They came home after school with us (after I taught—okay, “taught”—a full day in a 5th grade classroom) to start Winter Break off right.
After a taco dinner with red and white “wine” options, they decorated ugly sweater cookies (a shout out to Joe, as in Trader!).
(That face is Piper’s parting shot at me right before I scraped off most of her frosting and then let her eat it. This is not the first time we’ve done this routine.)
Then they watched Wall-E, and played until moms came. It was a lovely, if not slightly overwhelming, evening. Far better than when I’ve invited all the girls from her class, though. I dislike exclusivity, but the squealing of 20+ girls takes me from “Fun Mom” to “FU Mom”!
Children’s Choir at Church
First of all, I love my Christmas outfits If nothing else, they are the icebreakers that help me make new friends. Secondly, I rock the Wicked Elf look.
Wesley and Kyla did children’s choir this year, playing Joy to the World on handbells and singing (and signing) two carols.
(Wesley is “dressed up” in a purple shirt that he hasn’t slept in recently and his newest gray sweats that come down to his socks, so he’s looking extra spiffy in the center there. Kyla is wearing one of my 3 LBD—little black dresses, translated for dads—and is one of the tallest kids in the back row.)
This is what church is like for me, especially when there is no Sunday School. Piper on my lap, Wesley snuggled up to my side, and Kyla snuggled up to Wesley, and as close to me as she can get. It’s like they don’t catch me sitting in one place long very often!
Wesley vs. Books
I won’t go into all the gruesome details but Wesley has been spending a lot of time in the red zone (angry, frustrated, fuming) lately. We’re trying two things, starting today, but in the meantime, here’s a related story.
Wesley usually sleeps with Kyla, as he’s a kid who doesn’t sleep well on his own. But he makes a lot of demands on Kyla (no light! no reading! not that story!), so she understandably kicks him out sometimes. This particularly time (and he was being extra grouchy), he accused her of liking books more than liking him. She didn’t respond. He got into as much as a fight as you can being one-sided and all, and stormed off to his bedroom, leaving this note in front of her door.
Dwyane found it and brought it to me, explaining Wesley’s side. Then he looked at me more closely, and commented that I probably thought that liking a book more than a person was a reasonable thing. Like Kyla, I didn’t answer. Just picked up my book and started reading, while ruing my children’s awful spelling.
Needopedia 