jubyred

'Tis the Season to be Creepy

Check out some awesome pics here.

Fa La La La La

Ringing in the holiday season.

The Circus girls. And a monkey.

Gobble Gobble

While others are out looking for deals on Black Friday, I am eating leftovers, shopping online, and trying to get caught up on family pics realizing it is far too gorgeous outside to be doing this today. 

Tomorrow we are boarding the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway for the Santa Express up into the mountains.  Considering I've spent my whole week off doing stuff around the house, I think it's time to venture out. 

This year, it was just the four of us for Thanksgiving.  Drew says we've celebrated with just us before but I don't remember.  Certainly not since we've had children. My in-laws are in L.A. with Drew's sister's family.  My brother is in Florida with my parents.  And we declined an invitation to drive up to Ohio to be with my dad.  It was a difficult call to make.  But I have been traveling for work non-stop over the past six weeks and an eight hour drive was really not a good idea given my state of mind.  What I really needed was some quiet time with the family at home. 

Here are some shots that are not at all representative of the day.These were taken in the five minutes when my children actually stopped running and screaming and jumping off furniture.  The other 12 hours, I stood in an apron yelling, 'Ok, seriously,  CALM DOWN or GO OUTSIDE!'  In 5 years, we'll all think it looked like this:

Scooby Dooby Doo

Somehow I got talked into the family group costume.  Given the amount of time that my children have spent watching Scooby Doo, it's no surprise that this was their request.  Also no surprise that GirlChild got to be the cute one.

We learned quickly to stick together because no one knew who were were individually without the other three.  Our neighborhood is full of families with kids.  So, in many cases, the grandparents gave out the candy while Mom and Dad took the little ones trick-or-treating.  The funniest thing was to watch the grandparents try to figure out who in the hell we were as they dropped Tootsie Rolls into the kids' bags.  Their eyes would dart from one of us to the next in total confusion.  Pretty funny.  People either got it and asked us where Scooby was or they really didn't get it and just stared at us.  Honestly, it was pretty fun both ways. 

 

     








 

Happy Fourth

Since having children in 2001, I have not seen real fireworks.  It simply got dark too late, they were too loud, or the kids were too little to handle one or the other.  But last night, we finally got back into it.

We spent a good chunk of time drinking mojitos at the pool then hung out in our culdesac for a little sparkler action.  GirlChild spent most of the actual firework portion of the evening with her hands/my hands/Daddy's hands, and eventually purple fuzzy Dora earmuffs, over her ears to muffle the loud sounds, but eventually she acclimated. 

Shots from the day are here.

Fun Day. 

Five!

Thursday was the Rhubarb's fifth birthday.  Impossible to wrap my brain around the fact that she's not a baby anymore. 

We started Monday at 3 am with her in bed next to me and a fever.  Daddy slept in the guest room and she dug her toes into me all night as always.  Arm thrown over me.  Really, it's hard to complain because it's so damn sweet. 

So Monday-Wednesday, she was home from school with a fever and sad face.  Meanwhile, her brother came home from school Wednesday afternoon with 103 fever and was in bed for the night at 5:30 pm.  Add to that non-stop rain and grey skies and I'm wondering if 10am is too early to start drinking. 

GirlChild has a Princess Tea Party on Saturday so we were pretty low key for her actual birthday.  We ate some little strawberry shortcakes and opened the gifts from family and had everyone in bed before 8 p.m. 

Here's what a birthday looks like when you have a fever and have sat on the couch all day eating popsicles and watching Noggin:

how i know she's not faking it:  she had no interest in eating this

new shirt from Mommy

i love that she sits on the floor just like me

 
closing her eyes, waiting for her brother to bring in the big present from the boys: a remote control Barbie in a convertible purple VW
 

Another Year Wiser

Happy Birthday to me. I turned (ahem) thirty eight yesterday.  Obviously I've been in a bit of a whirlwind since leaving full-time work behind.  I'm not sure how it is that I'm busier now than then, but somehow that's the case. Must get caught up.  Must get caught up.  Must get caught up.

I have loads of stories and pictures to catch up on here and will make a diligent attempt to do so soon.  Each year, I go back through these stories and photos to create a book for my family of where we've been and what we've done and who we were.  So far, I have nothing to account for the past two months.  Oops.

So, let's see, Thirty Eight.  Yikes.  I've never been one to freak out about birthdays.  I've never had a problem with the actual number.  Not when I turned thirty or thirty five.  Honestly, I was feeling better about myself at thirty six than I did at twenty six, so it was never a big issue for me.

But thirty eight?  God, that's so close to forty.  I'm practically middle aged.  Ok, ok, I won't think of that.  Here are the good things about this age...

• I know who I am now and I'm not reliant on someone else telling me or showing me that.
• I can ask for what I want.  I know I have rights in relationships to demand communication and respect and I don't feel guilty for asking.
• I know that everyone else is responsible for him/herself.  it is not my job to fix or change anyone.  if other people want me to participate in a relationship with them, I have some standards and if they can't cut it, let's agree to move on.  I have spent so much time wishing and wanting for people to be different.  in the end, it's a waste of time for everyone involved.
• That being said, I think I am also much more aware now that everyone is just doing the best they can.  I no longer take it personally when people can't be what I need.  I can either accept the good parts and that will have to be enough, or, I can decide that it's not and keep walking. 

I'd honestly take all that over being young and cute any day.

The Birthday Girl on Her Birthday

Christmas 1997

We moved to Seattle in November 1997.  In December, we drove to a gorgeous tree farm in the mountains (really, check out the view) and with Drew's 2 sisters and their families, we cut down out first tree together.

The kids are my nephew Christopher (now taller than his mother) and baby Anna (now 11).  The rest of us were kidless.   Now there are 5 more kids between us.  Hard to believe.


Tree Cutting 1997 from shannon cobourn on Vimeo.

And here we are decorating said tree to the tunes of Disco Noel which I pull out every year much to my husband's dismay.  Just so you know, I did eventually make curtains for those bare windows.  And I no longer wear overalls.  Remember, it was 1997. 


Disco Noel from shannon cobourn on Vimeo.

Little Tree

I admit it.  I wasn't really feeling Christmas this year.  Part of it was due to the enormous stress at work (which took care of itself) and part of it was due to the fact that we weren't really going to home for much of the holiday.  It seemed like a lot of extra work to string up lights and buy a huge tree and drag 10 enormous rubbermaid containers from the attic when we'd be at Jason's Christmas Eve and leaving on the 26th.  I know, I know.  Bah humbug. 

BoyChild's birthday is five days before Christmas as well and my parents were set to arrive that day.  Of course my mother was slightly appalled that I didn't have my house in full-on Christmas Cheer mode, but I simply didn't have any time to do so.  With me working and getting home late and homework and scouts and all these events like singing at the old folks home and other people's parties I'm not sure when I was supposed to squeeze that in.  Plus, with all the news of the economy, it all just seemed so excessive to me.  All that STUFF.

I'm a firm believer, as I've stated before, not to assume that kids want things they don't care about, to not introduce conflict when they are content.  My mom kept saying, " Well, I'm sure the kids are wondering where the tree is."  Actually, no.  They never asked.  Don't get me wrong, they made lists of gifts and had some definite opinions on what they wanted.  But no one ever said, "Mommy, why isn't our tree up yet?"  Ah, the benefit of them not really having a concept of TIME.

So, a couple days before Christmas Eve, we got our little Charlie Brown tree out of the attic.  It's the one that we used the year I had BoyChild in our Seattle apartment when I also did not want to deal with a real tree.  I recall at the time, it was at Eddie Bauer for like $35 and we had to decide if we really wanted to  shell out the money for it. 

So, Drew got it down and we stuck it on a table and that was it.  Voila!  Christmas decor.  We didn't even bother with lights.  The whole event took like 10 minutes.  And when we returned home from Ohio on the 30th, cleaning it up took five.  Merry Christmas to Mommy.

Christmas 2001. Does this tree make me look fat?  Really.  Tell me the truth.

And its latest incarnation in 2008...

Christmas Eve

My parents live in Florida so each year before Christmas, they drive up and switch off between my brother and me.  Last year, my brother and his family came to our house on Christmas Eve and my parents slept at our place and opened presents with us Christmas morning.  This year, they did the opposite.  We went to Jason's house and came home that evening to open gifts on our own Christmas Morning.  (The master plan did not include the enormous fight we had locked in our bedroom while the kids played downstairs with their new goodies.  Not to worry, we worked it out before spending nine hours in the car the next day.)

Jason lives about an hour and a half away near Lake Lanier.  It's a hike through the country to get there, but well worth the drive to see everyone and spend some time with them. 

Shannon and Jason

Reece and Ruby.  Reece threw up about 30 minutes before this was taken.

Shan and Angela.  The only one I could get with Ang's eyes open.

Jed, Ruby, Reece, and Raymond.  Peas and Carrots. The boys are sweet and gentle.  The girls are hell on wheels.

Jason pretending to be interested in what I'm saying. 

I'm so slouchy after two drinks. 

Raymond and Jed enjoying Ray's marble track.  It didn't look that big in the box.  I'm sure his parents love the fact that we got him a gift with like 500 pieces.

The girls put together the sticker scrapbook.