Ice and Snow

We finished up our Christmas weekend by a little ice skating trip over to Aunt Terry's pond. The trip was prompted by the fact that I had forgotten to bring some gifts over on the Friday night pizza extravaganza and didn't want the Bentley children to have to wait one more second for their gifts. Also my kids were driving me crazy and I thought that if they could run around on some ice for a little while they would get all tuckered out and spend the rest of the day in blissful post-Christmas harmony. Then I woke up from that dream and took them over to Terry's house.

Here they are with Uncle Ray and Carver the almost service dog. Terry's pond was frozen with NO snow on it, and as anyone who has ever skated on a pond that has snow on it knows, that just rocks! Ray bravely skated across the ice to make sure that the ice was safe for children and dogs:

Terry bravely donned ice skates and even skated backwards. I stayed on the dock and took pictures. I am not brave.

This is how Hannah and Liz spent much of the morning. And they weren't wearing skates either. Luckily Carver the Almost Service Dog ran to their rescue:

Shelby showed Lizzie how to play hockey with a walnut as a puck:

Lizzie literally ran around the ice again and again and again:

Here are the ducklings following Aunt Terry on skates:

And here they are falling down:

Hannah congratulating herself for not falling (one time) when Lizzie did fall:

Lizzie got very cold and needed to stand by the fire in the wood stove to warm up:

Then they BOTH needed hot chocolate to continue the defrosting process:

And then the next day it SNOWED which probably ruined the ice, but made the kids and our dog very very happy. Here's Lizzie with Cash:

And Hannah with Cash. Hannah actually went outside to get the dog untangled from the *#(*&(*&)!@ Japanese Maple tree that he gets tangled in EVERY SINGLE TIME he runs around outside. I'm pretty sure once it thaws a little I will be taking a saw to the Japanese Maple.

Happy puppy in the snow:

THE ABOMINABLE SNOW DOG!! EVERYONE RUN!!!!! HE'S FROZEN AND HE LIKES TO JUMP!!!!

Christmas Memories 2010

I hope you all got what you wanted for Christmas. I certainly did! All I really wanted was a low-key day and that's exactly what I got! November and December were very busy, very stressful and sometimes very annoying so I decided that we'd hunker down -- just the four of us! -- for Christmas day. Of course we got started early on Christmas Eve with our annual trip to Terry's for pizza and then to drive around and look at lights (and look for Santa's sleigh, which Lizzie is pretty sure she saw) and then home to leave out the cookies and milk for Santa. Then bed.

But even BEFORE all that, both girls were looking everywhere for something to do to pass the time more quickly. Here, Hannah is teaching Cash to read. After this she took his paw and had him write his name a few times. Oh, and Cash is wearing that cone because he was fixed last week (10 days ago) and it went a bit bad so he's been healing for days and days and days. But the good news is that he'll actually sit still to learn how to read and write.

After the girls went to bed Cash took up a place on the couch to watch for Santa (the cone comes off when I can watch him):
The next morning the girls managed to stay asleep until about 6:30 and we let them go downstairs at 7 a.m. to open presents. Rob, too. Although I had to wake him up.

Rounding the corner ... starting to see the gifts...

NEW BIKES. YAY!!!! AND, they are BMX freestyle stunt bikes because Mrs. Santa didn't read the labels, but just really liked the colors so she sent Santa with two of them. So now the daredevil girls can do super wheelies and spin the front wheel 360 degrees. And they can stand on the back wheel and the front wheel. Yeah, we can't wait for them to figure that all out.

Then it was time to EAT!!! Here Rob carves the prime rib, while Cash waits, hopes and dreams that he'll suddenly toss it on the floor for him:

Getting ready to dig in. The menu was tortellini alfredo (first course), the roast, creamed onions, turnip, Christmas green beans and roasted potatoes. That's sparkling cider in the girls' glasses. Oh, and dessert was pumpkin pie and French Silk pie. There was enough so that we managed to do the whole thing again for dinner tonight!Then it was time to try out the bikes. The girls loved the way they looked but they've never had bikes without foot/coasting brakes, so there was a little bit of a learning curve. Especially when Rob noticed that one of Santa's elves at Walmart forgot to attach Lizzie's front brakes:

Hannah had no trouble figuring it out, and she was off -- up and down the driveway. Luckily they got to ride their bikes yesterday, because today we're expecting a bunch of snow so I'm pretty sure the bikes will be in the shed for a good long while. Oh, and right after this picture I told Hannah to put her helmet on!!!

But this is really how the girls spent much of their time since Christmas morning. These are their DSis and they love them. LOVE THEM.
So that was our Christmas. Low key, family oriented and perfect!!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from our blog to yours!



To celebrate the day, Elizabeth Garrity Rasmussen has written the following story:




Rudolph the Splotchy-Nosed Reindeer


There was a reindeer named Rudolph. He was hungry so he ate a frog.


Then he felt shaky and wiggly. He looked in the mirror and saw green with blue spots on his nose!


Then he went back outside and he barfed the frog up. He went back to the mirror and saw that his nose was red again.


"Hooray, hooray," he yelled. "I will never eat anything that is yucky again."


The End

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Happy 50th Birthday, Dad!

Happy Birthday to the man who today is actually younger than me ... or at least acts that way... ;)
I just realized there's a typo in the title of this. It should be "The worst Happy Birthday song ever sung." Not every sung, which makes no sense. Or even less sense that the alleged fact that my father is now younger than me. ;)
Turn your computer speakers down. Seriously. You've been warned...

Winners!

Several months ago -- about 12 minutes before the deadline -- Hannah and Lizzie decided to enter the PTA's annual Reflections contest. They both opted to create photographs based on the "Together We Can..." theme. Here's Lizzie's picture. Her theme was "Together we can save the planet" and she wrote an essay about how she and her dad had planted this tree together. I loaded the photos into my computer and let them use the sliders to do some photo editing. They both loved these neon-not-really-found-in-nature colors.

Hannah's picture was "Together we can clean up the Earth" and shows Lizzie picking up trash in our backyard. We tried to find some real trash on the side of the road, but with only 12 minutes, it was a little hard, so we improvised in the name of art.

Here they are at today's assembly. Hannah told me she was very nervous wondering if she'd won anything, while Lizzie said she was just excited. As it turned out Lizzie won second place and Hannah won third place. I actually found out on Friday that they'd won something so I got to go to the assembly today to take this photo from my place way way way way way back in the gym.

Here they are with their trophies at home. Lizzie's is a little bigger than Hannah's (which she keeps reminding her!) and they both have their names engraved on a plaque on the bottom of the trophy. They are very very very excited about this -- and let me tell you we were very very very happy to have some good news around here.And while I'm writing about winners... Uncle Ray was given the Melvin Jones Fellowship Award at the Lions Christmas party earlier this week. This is the highest award a Lion can get to honor his humanitarian work, and Ray's got his name engraved on it and everything, too. Here he is with Aunt Terry Wednesday night. Congrats Ray!!

Pre-Christmas Weekend

It's Christmas time in Garrity/Rasmussen land and that means lots of traveling and eating and socializing and did I mention eating? Here's what we've been up to the last couple of weekends. Oh and before I get any further into this post I need to apologize to my sister in law Ann who planned and brilliantly executed the Garrity Christmas gathering last weekend -- because I had NO pictures of her to post. Not even a bad one. So I'm a loser on that count. But the dinner was DELICIOUS and I did get several pictures of my niece and nephew!!
For instance here's Tommy and Grandma discussing the finer points of the iPod Touch:


Here's Grandma Jo looking very festive in her green scarf and red cup. As I've mentioned before people from Florida think it's cold when the temperature is below 75 degrees, so no one is surprised when they wear outerwear indoors, especially when it matches the season so beautifully:

The family patriarch opening some of his birthday presents. We always celebrate Grandpa's birthday at these gatherings but I can't tell you how old he is because he would be mad at me and cut me out of the will. Also, he is so old that I can't remember.

In case you're new here and were wondering about the crowns we are all wearing, we open Christmas crackers, wear the crowns and tell the jokes that are inside. Tommy's joke: What's is called when you're afraid of Christmas? Claustrophobia! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Rob made himself useful by carving the turkey. That boy will go to any lengths to avoid talking to the in-laws, won't he (kidding!!!):

The day was extra special because Santa stopped by, courtesy of the Somers Fire Department. Here are the kids posing with the Jolly Old Elf and the candy canes they got:

Here they are waiting for their candy canes. Rob was very patient and allowed the other kids to get their candy canes first:

When it was time to leave though, Rob had the most enthusiastic wave goodbye. This was not because of the candy cane though, it's because Rob knows that every gift that Santa brings is one less that he has to purchase:

No Christmas gathering is without drama though, and this year the drama was provided by this little elf who very (not) graciously gave her stomach bug to Aunt Tina last weekend after the Nutcracker.

And then Aunt Tina (not) graciously gave it this little elf, causing a THREE STATE infection of the stomach bug:

When we Rasmussens do something, we do it in a BIG way. But hey, Lizzie, it's not really anything to laugh at!!

Luckily both my mom and I escaped the stomach bug and managed to ignore those who were dropping like flies around us. I include this photo that Ann took because it's a great photo of my Mom and I...

... AND shows how good we were at ignoring the sickies. Here we are smiling away, chatting and having a great Christmas dinner while Aunt Tina ... well ... isn't looking so good on her side of the table:

So that was LAST weekend. This weekend we decided to break with tradition and have the girls decorate our Christmas Tree. It is Rasmussen tradition that Santa brings the tree and decorates it on Christmas Eve when he leaves the gifts. This tradition becomes a little odd when the kids in the house know that the Christmas tree AND the ornaments are stored in the basement. So after much begging and pleading (and the girls asked, too!) Santa wrote a note to Rob insisting that the girls help him out this year because he was extra busy and wouldn't have time to decorate the tree. The girls took the job VERY seriously. Here's Hannah:

Hannah wanted me to take a picture of her holding EVERY SINGLE ORNAMENT. I obliged with this one, which is actually one of Lizzie's ornaments:

Lizzie also took the job very seriously:

As did Rob (who required the usual Hickory Farms Bribe (I mean BEEF) stick to participate:

Happy girls with their tree. The Styrofoam ornament just to the right of Hannah's head is the oldest on our tree. It's an ornament made to look like me and was given to my parents when I was a toddler making ... well let's just leave it at the oldest ornament on our tree. :)

The finished product: