The Zoo and Christmas

So a tradition in my family growing up was to pile into the minivan and go through a couple of neighborhoods looking at Christmas Lights. We just spent our third Christmas in the Mid-Atlantic and it is official, Ebenezer Scrooge lives here. People think that they are festive if they put a string of lights across a window, and even then they don't do it until the week of Christmas. In other words, there aren't any neighborhoods to drive through to look at lights. (I think this is easily explained by the fact that people do not want people driving by their house, because when people "drive by" out here it usually involves handguns.) ***Update!!! So Beki just went online to see if she could find other Christmas Light displays, and she found some, but they are all $15-$20 per car. Scrooge...I'm serious.***


The Temple puts up a light display similar to what happens in Salt Lake, and we thought about going there again this year like we have the last two, but then we heard about "Zoolights" at the National Zoo. It sounded like fun, and it would involve a train trip downtown, which to the boy is the highlight of the trip. So we bundled up and went off on our way.

We didn't tell Owen where we were going, but he figured it out pretty quick. And it wasn't the animals that gave it away, apparently he knows that "Z-o-o" spells zoo.

On the advertisements that we had seen for the Zoolights, they talked a lot about their train exhibit, so first things first, we went to see the trains, and this is what we found:

Just above the green engine there is a little ladybug train car...Owen was excited to have finally found the ladybug train.

Now, I'm not saying that it wasn't neat, but we had been to see the trains at the Botanical Gardens where they steamed through, in and around natural wonders of the world. Compared to that, this was pretty lame. Even the boy thought so, because after a few minutes he was done and ready to go. When we got outside Owen saw something really neat on the ground that he needed to stand in...

They had these neat light things everywhere, in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I decided that I need one next year so that I can project snowflakes onto my roof!

For the rest of the evening we wandered around the zoo (a few of the exhibits were open, but most of the animals were sleeping anyway. The smell however, does not sleep.) and looked at all of the light displays.

The animal designs were pretty neat, they are all done with regular C5 led lights, and from what I could see, all on a single continuous string.

Think your job is bad? Try being the guy inside the Panda Suit dancing inside an inflatable snowglobe...good times for that guy. 

It is hard to take pictures in the dark, but this one did kind of capture the blueness of this tree and arch display.

This is why we never have family pictures of us...the boy is a spaz!

But he is really cute... a little cold, but cute.

Most of the exhibits were animals, but they also had some that moved, and then some that had the music that went with them. We were watching one, and I was recording it with the camera just in case something like this happened. It looks just like a normal lame display, but about 25 seconds in the boy strikes up a power stance and starts shaking his booty!

Then of course Christmas came. While most of you I am sure had children up at the wee hours of the morning, Owen woke up at around 8:45am. What is our secret you ask? Simple, we were out delivering goodies and visiting friends until 9 or 10pm on Christmas Eve. By the time we got the boy home and into bed it was pretty late. Now think about it, "Santa" is going to be about his work until 1 or 2 in the morning anyway, at least this way the morning came a little bit later! Ok, rapid fire picture time!!!!

Santa left Owen IronMan and a Hotwheels car in his stocking!

This stickhorse (which was immediately name Spiderman, along with the other identical horse which was named Batman) are from Grandma Nettie, and get ridden around the house frequently.

Owen was going to have Spiderman the Horse eat the apples that he left out for the Reindeer, when he noticed that the Reindeer had eaten them!! (Had he inspected he may have found that the Reindeer prefer their apples with peanut butter...if you have never tried this, you should!!)

Technology is amazing. Beki's family got to watch Owen open all of his gifts via Skype

He got some reptile hand puppets from his friend Lizzie

His very own mug with his name on it! (It was immediately filled with water, which made mommy and papa nervous for the remainder of the morning.)

Grandpa and Abuela got Owen some Car PJ's that look huge, but I am sure he will outgrow in 2 months!

10 minutes before the mall closed, Papa finally found what he had been searching for weeks for...

Speedy Spencer...

I don't know if you remember, but dashing off to his room is exactly what he did last year when he got Hiro, I barely caught his elbow in this picture, he is getting faster!

Spencer needed to be played with immediately!

Tia Tina got his Rosie...

And off he went again!!

Both trains needed cars to pull!

Thank you Grandma Nettie for making sure that Papa never makes it through story time dry eyed again...

Owen has become fascinated with Legos, and especially loved the lego mat to build on

Owen's best friend Dean got him a stuffed snowman that plays Christmas Carols. After watching Toy Story3 - which the boy also received - I can not look at stuffed animals and not think that they aren't evil.

Speaking of Toy Story3, this present showed up on our doorstep two weeks before Christmas from my Father and Carolee. Owen loves packages in the mail, so he picked the box up, and immediately Buzz started making all sorts of noise. Owen freaked out because there was a Buzz Lightyear in the box, and he needed it! Luckily the box was addressed to me, and Owen has a well developed respect for mail belonging to who it was addressed to. He tried to convince me to let him play with it, but I told him that it was mine, and I stick it in my closet. He forgot all about it...

But loves the fact that it moves on its own!!

Beki and I got presents too:

This is not all of her gifts, but the Apron is pretty neat. Underneath the apron, if I may be so bold to say, is her favorite gift of the year from the boy and myself - an electric blanket. No more being cold!!!!

Backstory Time!!! So we have a little fireplace, and in the wintertime I like to have a nice roaring fire. Sometimes when the fire dies down I will blow on it to get it going again, and by going again, I mean I get the fire ridiculously hot so that it starts to burn your eyebrows off and you could probably smelt steel in there. (I'm a Tuba player, we have a lot of hot air.) Beki and I have always joked about how if I got a bellows I could be a real blacksmith...

Yup...she found me bellows, I am still giggling about this.

So apparently I have a bit of a gum chewing addiction...

Because everyone got me gum...

I received 30 packs of Trident Cinnamon gum...that is 540 pieces!! That should last me until February I guess...

Once all of the gifts were opened I started cooking. We had some family friends who were not going anywhere for the holiday, and we figured that since we didn't have family to make the day crazy, we would all get together and let our kids go nuts and stuff ourselves with delicious food. Since I was that one cooking (and we had ham, garlic mashed potatoes, Italian Sausage with Onions and Peppers over Rice, Corn, Salad, Potato Salad, Crab Spread, Spinach Dip, Red Velvet cake and more candy than our kids could eat) we don't really have any pictures of the crazyness, until the very end of the night, when a toddler toy, a feather and my wife turned out to be the greatest toy the children had ever played with.

They took turns for probably a half an hour putting that leaf in the air-stream and catching it.

We hope that you all had a great Christmas, and that you are gearing up for a good New Year's as well!!

p.s. In case you want to experience Christmas Morning with Owen, here it is...

Behold The Awesome!!!

So I've noticed that most of the blogs that I read have been sharing recipes lately, and I got thinking that I should share some of the Awesome that I have been cooking up out here, especially after what The Boy and I made today. !!! BACK-STORY TIME!!!


We were at the Church Christmas Party (Which could easily get it's own rant) where Beki and I were making an attempt at being social. (When you've had Meningitis and a Respiratory Infection, you don't have much desire to be out and social.) We were talking about Christmas Traditions with a lifelong Marylander, when Beki mentioned that we were frustrated because we had been unable to find Cinnamon Bears to put on our Graham Cracker houses. The lady looked at us puzzled and then asked a question that I never thought I would ever hear, "What is a Cinnamon Bear?" I was so stunned that I just starred at her with a look of disbelief on my face. As it turns out, in addition to rampant racism, oppressive taxes, a crappy infrastructure, and inability to cope with snow, the Mid-Atlantic United States have no idea what Cinnamon Bears are!

This stunning revelation has been on my mind lately, only increasing my desire for wonderful cinnamon deliciousness, so I decided that I would try to make those Cinnamon Roasted Almonds that you can find at the fair.

Ingredients:

• 4 Cups of Almonds
• 1 Egg
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 1/3 Cup Butter (Melted)
• 1/2 Cup White Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 1 Tbs Cinnamon

Preheat Oven to 250°

Christmas Traditions and an Offensive Rant

Chapter 1 - Dinner Time

Are you one of those parents who has children who refuse to eat, no matter what you make? Do you grow tired of fighting with your kids every mealtime? If so, you might want to skip this first Chapter....

Notice the time-stamp on these 4 pictures:

 12/09/10 6:34:07

 12/09/10 6:34:12

  12/09/10 6:34:23

12/09/10 6:34:29

The Boy was taking a bite every 22 seconds! And I took the pictures at the end of his 2nd plate of food. Now I will admit, not every meal is quite like this, sometimes there is a full 30 seconds between bites - cold cereal can be hard to get on the spoon - but I am proud to say that my child likes the food. 

(Two quick side comments here: #1 Since I am the one cooking dinner should we surprised that the boy thinks it is awesome? I make awesome things that I like to eat, so of course they are good. #2 What is your child's favorite cold cereal? Something with marshmallows or coated in sugar? Owen's favorite cereal, which he eats every morning, is Special K with Strawberries. Seriously, what kind of kid eats a cereal that is marketed at the women who are trying to loose the weight that they gained bringing them into the world? What really stinks is this means that I don't get to eat cereal with marshmallows or coated with sugar.)

Chapter 2 - Object Lessons

"The Foolish Man built his house upon the sand,"

 "The Foolish Man built his house upon the sand,"

 "The Foolish Man built his house upon the sand,

 And the Rains came a'tumbling down!"

"The Rains came down, and the floods came up,

The Rains came down, and the floods came up,

The Rains came down, and the floods came up,"

 "And the house on the sand washed away!"

 "The Wise Man built his house upon the Rock,"

 "The Wise Man built his house upon the Rock,"

 "The Wise Man built his house upon the Rock,

And the Rains came a'tumbling down!"

 "The Rains came down, and the floods came up,

The Rains came down, and the floods came up,

The Rains came down, and the floods came up,"

"And the house on the Rock stood firm!"

Chapter #3 - Gingerbread Houses Graham Cracker Houses

There really was a point to the Object Lesson that I did with the Boy for Family Home Evening (FHE) - more than just getting him to understand what the song was talking about. The point was to introduce Gingerbread Houses (So I am starting a revolution here, I am tired of calling things what they aren't. I don't make gingerbread, and I don't use it for my house. I use Graham Crackers, so I am going to call a spade a spade and say that I make Graham Cracker Houses. And another thing that bugs me about calling things what they aren't, Book of Mormon stories are not about the Lamanites, that song is on my list!)

Each week for FHE we have been doing a different Christmas Tradition. Week one was the Christmas Countdown Chain:

Week two was snowflakes:

And week three was Graham Cracker Houses. Now I have blocked most of the memories of my childhood out of my brain (Sorry Mom, but it is true, I don't remember too much before the 53 days 14 hours and 27 minutes that I had to live in Idaho Falls...it was kind of traumatic.) One of the things that I do remember was making Graham Cracker Houses every Christmas. Now there were two styles of building in our house. There was my brother Kevin who would pretty much build a million dollar mansion out of graham crackers, and then the rest of us who were lucky to get a box to stay up. Since I could never compete with the Awesome factor of my brothers designs (And they were designed pieces of art, he would sketch them first, and then make sure that he got the perfect graham crackers, and use a knife to cut them...he could probably get people to pay him money to do this now.) I would go for sheer candy holding potential. (I once built a football stadium so that I could have gummy bears as the crowd sitting on Smarties for their bleachers, and I got to put 22 more gummy bears out on the field!)

Needless to say, with my love of the sweet things of the world, Graham Cracker Houses are a tradition to stay. Owen was tremendously excited to build one, and especially to snitch the candy. (Again, children are like dogs - if you are really excited about something, so are they. This also works with cartoons. Owen watches Phineas and Ferb, Kick Buttowski, and recently has gotten into the Marvel comic series because I like those cartoons. There are some other cartoons that he has tried to watch that I don't like - Pretty much anything coming out of Japan, ask your grandpa what he thinks of the Japs, and that is pretty much how I feel about what they have done to cartoons!) 

**I know this is a terrible place to get sidetracked, but I have to tell you about the Marvel comic thing. I don't know where he learned about Iron Man, probably from the commercials on TV, but he thinks Iron Man is pretty awesome. Then he got an early Christmas present from a family friend that was two Marvel Comic Monster Trucks, Spiderman and Thor. He knew who Spiderman was, but he didn't know anything about Thor, so I checked and Thor has his own show that comes on after Iron Man. If you don't know about Thor, he is the Norse God of Thunder who has left Asgard to come to earth to help us out, he has a big Hammer named Mjollnir, and he is pretty much invincible because he is after all, a demi-god. Owen loves Thor, and so I had to drop this bombshell on him. When we first found out that we were having a boy, the first name that I suggested to my lovely wife was....Thor! Owen went the rest of the day being called Thor, and I thought that I might have a bit of a situation on my hands when Beki got home, but by the end of the day Owen had decided that he liked Owen better. (In case you are wondering, Thor's father's name is Oden, so when Beki rejected Thor, I went to Oden. She didn't like that either (no sense of gradure and adventure) so while watching the world cup I saw a player named Michael Owen, and Owen is close to Oden. Beki thought Owen "wasn't bad" and so we went with it.**

Ok, that got a bit off topic, back to the Graham Cracker Houses (Which I am eating right now...stale candy, rock hard icing, and soggy graham crackers, what is not to like?)

 One of the most difficult parts about being a parent I feel, is being patient enough to find ways that your children can help you. It was a big responsibility to hold the roof together so that papa would stick it together!

 Putting the candy is right up a 4 year olds alley! I did the first one, just to show him what he was supposed to do, and then he picked out what he wanted and where.

 By the time we were done he was a pro.

 We took a bunch of pictures, and this was the best one that we got. I guess this is what you get when your child has been snitching candy for an hour. (His mother really shouldn't set such a bad example for him!!)

 Here are the front doors...

And the back doors (Except for Beki's cause she didn't put a back door on hers.)

Now before we leave this topic, I am going to be a little vain and show you a close up of my Graham Cracker House:

I say that you are not a true homeowner until you create your house in candy form!!!

Chapter 4 - The US Botanical Gardens

Owen had so much fun at the Botanical Gardens last year that we decided that we needed to go again this year. The main attraction during the Christmas Season is the train exhibit. Designer Paul Busse makes replicas of famous building out of plant matter, and then makes a fantasy world with trains running all around. It is a great plan, Owen and Dean are there for the trains, and I get to look at the cool replicas. And so here are pictures in rapid fire order - the boy is in all but one, just because I feel silly putting up pictures that are unrelated to the boy.

 Right as you walk in they have a large Christmas Tree with a train running around it. We almost didn't make it into the exhibit...

 The Taj Mahal - and of course Thomas with Annie and Clarabell

 As much as I despise Paris, this was impressive since it is all from plants. (And there is Thomas again.)

 Petra - the city in Jordan that you probably know from Indiana Jones. (And there is Percy)

 Owen was actually interested in the Great Sphinx, but he turned and ran away as I was taking the picture.

 The Boudhanath Stupa. Now before you think that the boys are great scholars of all things from Nepal, notice that there is a little Tram engine running in front.

 Hagia Sophia. (It's in Turkey)

 Tikal and Machu Picchu (The boys liked the little Caterpillar train, but Owen wanted to know where the Ladybug train was. Apparently last year there was a ladybug train. My son, who can not remember what he did at school that day, remembers a specific train from a year ago.)

 This was my favorite - Neuschwanstein Castle

 The boys played in this tunnel for probably an hour

 The White Heron Castle, a Waterfall coming out of a tree and a railway bridge...the boys were transfixed!!

 I know that we have already seen Petra, but this is the boy running along with Percy, pumping his arms like a train!!

  

 After the trains we did go and look at the rest of the Gardens. This giant barrel cactus got some attention, mostly because they were discussing why you shouldn't touch cacti.

 Owen is like his papa, fascinated with Waterfalls and fountains. (Dean is even more fascinated, he actually tried to climb in one!)

 Back to the big tree from the beginning, this time racing the train!

The decorations on the tree were totally gaudy over the top...Loved It!!!