Our Family – Page 105 – Andelin Adventures

Merry Christmas!

Christmas morning started WAY too early as usual. The first ones awake were the older two kids (of course). Then Jeremy and Dinah were next, and they ended up being so loud that Chloe and Lydia woke up. But then I was mean, I wouldn’t let them go out to the living room until I had come out and put breakfast in the oven.

We keep things simple for breakfast on Christmas morning, but not so simple as cereal. I like to buy frozen turnovers, and just pop them in the oven to bake while the kids are looking through their stockings. Then when breakfast is ready we just take a break to eat before cleaning up to open the presents that are under the tree.

The girls got a play kitchen. That was the first place Chloe ran to when she came out to the living room this morning.

Grandpa got the boys a train table that came with a huge set of train tracks and some other accessories. So now they have a nice table to build train tracks on, and they can use it to build their legos and to play with their cars and other things. It also has a nice large drawer underneath to store all the train stuff in.

Here is Lydia in her Christmas jammies, and she has her toothbrush from Santa. 🙂

In the afternoon we had to stop the festivities and go to church, but we only had sacrament meeting today so it was ok. We didn’t open presents until after church, and even then we had a pile left over for whenever Debby and Jeff decided to come over. They came over at dinner time. We had teriyaki chicken with rice, and some spiced peaches for dinner. Generally we make a big feast on Christmas eve, and eat leftovers Christmas day. But because we went to Karen’s for dinner last night, we didn’t have any leftovers to eat today. Then after we were all done eating we moved into the living room to finish opening presents.

I feel like we did a good job of not going overboard this year. Kyle and I did not buy any of our kids toys this year. In fact when Tyra’s girl scout troop was doing a toy drive we took our kids to the store and let them each pick out a toy to put in the box. Ya, it wasn’t cheap, but we really wanted them to be a part of giving instead of always thinking of the things they could get. They basically got the kitchen and the train table, and that was it for toys. We did get books and movies for the family, and we bought each of the kids a brand new pillow (the other ones were getting pretty lumpy and weird with being washed from time to time, and it was just time to replace them). I feel really good about how simple we kept it this year. Last year I had the list of everything that I wanted to get them, something they wanted, something they were in need of, something to wear and something to read and I had all the shopping and wrapping done before November was over. This year I wasn’t so organized. I didn’t WANT to get them toys, they already have so many. There are a whole bunch in the basement that I still need to sort through and thin out. I’m happy that they got the kitchen and the train table. Those are things that they can use with other things we already have. And they are nice and big and perfect for the kids to SHARE (something they still need to work on…) So even though I wasn’t ready a full month in advance this year, I’m happy with the way things turned out. And hopefully, the fact that we didn’t focus on getting them a bunch of stuff they want will help them disassociate Christmas as a time for wanting and getting. 🙂

Christmas Jammies

A few months ago, I made the decision that I need to either start sewing, or get rid of the sewing machine that I have sitting in my basement. I decided to pick a project and see if the sewing machine that I have even works. I thought that maybe I would make the girls some nightgowns for Christmas, so several months ago I found and bought a pattern. Then a couple months ago I bought some material. While we were in California for the Thanksgiving holiday I had my mom help me get one started so I could see how to put them together and all that. In fact, mom and I pulled an all nighter trying to get the first nightgown mostly finished just so she could walk me through the whole process.

I came home feeling confident that I can do this. Then I pulled out MY machine and plugged it in and tried to get it threaded and going. I couldn’t get it to work. As Christmas drew nearer I started stressing out and really wanted to finish these nightgowns, but only had the first one almost done. A week before Christmas I expressed my frustration on facebook and a friend of mine offered to help. So she came over and showed me how to get my machine threaded, and yay it worked. Apparently I had just put the bobbin in backwards and missed one loop for threading the thread on top. I got all the fabric cut out and put the pieces together. Later in the week my friend came back again to show me how to attach the yokes of the nightgowns to the dress parts. And then I got all those put together. The only real problem I ran into with the machine is that EVERY stitch is microscopic and it wouldn’t gather for me, so I had to do all the gathering of the trim and dresses by hand. I decided to slip Lydia’s gown on her to make sure it fit, but her head wouldn’t go through AT ALL. So I made another yoke for her, and decided to test it before sewing it to the dress, that one was too small too! So I had to make yet another one. This time it worked.

Christmas Eve, I was almost done. I finished up the last of the nightgowns, and all I had left was buttons and button holes. I went to my friends house to have her show me how to do button holes and it seemed simple enough, but for some reason wasn’t working when we tried to do it to the nightgowns. So she called another friend and sent me over there, and her machine had the same problem, and she suspects that it’s just because the interfacing is slipping and therefore the thread was getting caught and the machine got stuck. I bought the most darling, blue flower shaped buttons to put on them so hopefully I will figure out how to get them on, but in the meantime here is a picture of the finished (minus the buttons) nightgowns. 🙂

Christmas Eve

We went to Granny’s house for Christmas Eve this year. I really would have preferred to stay home since we have our own family Christmas Eve traditions, but I was polite and went anyways (even if I was super stressed out and just wanting to be back home again). Karen had made a turkey for dinner, and Laurel brought green bean casserole and sweet potatoes. There were some other things like olives and cranberry sauce and rolls. The kids never really seem to eat much when we go over for dinner, because they are always way more interested in playing with cousins.

I was worried about what presents Karen would end up getting for the kids. Last year she went way overboard and bought tons of stuff. Thankfully, it wasn’t so bad this year.

And as usual, Kyle was silly. 🙂

Failed baby names

Rebecca and I have discussed a number of baby names over the years of expecting our brood, and some of the names she simply cannot agree with include:

Adam Ondi Andelin

Felix Navidad Andelin

Twins: Michael and Ickael (Mike ‘n Ike)

Shaniqua

Basil (and Ginger, if m/f twins) or any of the: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme?

I don’t get it. What’s the problem?

(It’s funny, whenever we mention these names to family members, the first thing they ask is, “Are you pregnant?” I don’t get it. Why can’t we simply share a joke without being accused?)

And by they way the answer is “no”.

Tyra’s RAD Kids Graduation

Tyra had her RAD kids graduation this morning. It was more of a presentation of the things that they’ve learned. I knew what to expect of the graduation, because I had gone to Ethan’s last year, but I wasn’t sure what to expect out of Tyra. When it was Ethan’s turn, he saw the kids before him going through the course and he nearly freaked out and just would NOT do it. Tyra is a lot more outgoing though and she went all the way through. They basically had the kids go up to a person that was holding some soft squishy things to pretend they were attacking the kids, so the kid had to go into their stance and yell “Stay back you’re not my mom!” Then they had to go up to a dummy and pretty much yell the same thing and try to attack it. THEN they had to try to get past the police officer that has been teaching them. He was dressed from head to toe in red pads, and looked a lot like a transformer. 😉 The kids had to get from the dummy to their teacher, BUT the police officer caught them most of the time and they had to fight their way out! Tyra went through it just like she should, and she gave the officer a couple of good kicks because he had hold of her arms. She seemed rather pleased with herself for getting out of his grip.