Snow Day!

Last night it finally snowed enough to go sledding. The kids and I started getting ready when Brian left for work at 7:30, and then we took off to Carmichael Hill before the crowds showed up. I went down with the boys a couple of times, but Marcus didn't like the 'going back up the hill' part, so he and I sat at the top and watched Alyssa and Ethan slide down and hike back up.

Christmas Day

Alyssa woke up Christmas morning, just before seven o'clock. She climbed into bed with Brian and me, and soon we were all joined by Ethan. Marcus didn't wake up until close to eight, and then we went downstairs. Santa did a fabulous job this year - everyone loved their gifts. (Yea me! I mean, Santa!) Alyssa got a B.F.C (Best Friends Club) doll, which she loves, and the boys each got a Transformer. Ethan got Optimus Prime, because of his Halloween costume, and Marcus almost got Bumblee Bee, but once I found Megatron and heard him say, "There is no command but my command!" I knew that that was the toy for Marcus. Brian got a waterproof, fireproof document safe, and I got a hip hop workout dvd and chocolate covered cherries. Contradictory, I know, but still good.

We opened our presents from each other, then headed to Brian's grandma's for a bit, then we headed to the Stake Center in Pasco to hang out with my family.

The guys played basketball.

I (kind of) learned how to use the wave board.

We sang Christmas carols,

sang Beatles songs,

and ate lots of food.

It was a great Christmas.

Chirstmas Eve

We started the day by decorating our cookies for Santa. The kids had a blast from start to finish with these cookies. We baked them the day before, and Marcus loved slamming the cookie cutters into the dough, over and over, and everyone kept fighting over the snow man cutter, and no one wanted to use the bell cutter. When it came time for frosting, Alyssa was in charge of decorating the snow men,

and Ethan was in charge of decorating the Christmas trees.

Marcus just had a great time squeezing frosting all over everything.

And Ethan got a little too generous with the red sprinkles. (Yes, there is a cookie under that red mountain.) I used a spoon to distribute the sprinkles a little more evenly.

After decorating cookies we strated tracking Santa online. It was fun to see him get closer and closer to us, especially when it was bedtime and we were able to show the kids that he was getting closer, and they'd better go to sleep.

We baked homemade bread and cooked our Christmas ham, which Brian so lovingly picked up for us from Costco on his way home from work the day before. (You want me to go where? - two days before Christmas?!?) Apparently Costco was a little crowded.

And then we had Brian's family over for an early Christmas.

The boys had a fabulous time with the boat, I mean box that Grandma brought the presents in.

Then we opened the presents

and played and played and played. After everyone went home and we tucked the kids in bed, Brian and I kept checking to Santa's progress across the globe.

Apparently, he went through Spokane, Washington at 11:18, which was as close as he came to the Tri-Cities, and it was good enough for us.

And Here's The Yellow Scarf

The yellow scarf, in all its radiant glory

Marcus was fine sitting on Santa's lap

But Ethan was scared silly

To Alyssa, Love Santa

Last week Alyssa finger crocheted a scarf for Santa. It was a bright yellow scarf, about two inches wide and three feet long. She worked on it all afternoon, and kept adding yarn to make sure it would be "big enough for Santa." Then she brought it with her to the Primary activity and waited excitedly in line, until it was her turn to sit on Santa's lap. When she presented the yellow scarf to Santa, he was excited and had her wrap it around his neck, and she loved giving it to him. Her only Christmas request was to be able to go on a sleigh ride with him.

Yesterday I was checking my hotmail account, which I don't really use anymore, and while scrolling through the email, I noticed one that said, "Please give to Alyssa." It was an email from Santa, thanking her for the scarf. I thought it was so sweet that I printed it onto a Christmas card to give to Alyssa when she got home from school. She was thrilled!



The letter says, "Dear Alyssa, Thank you for the great scarf. You must know how cold it gets flying from house to house. I will always keep it for riding in my sleigh. I will wrap it around my neck, right under my beard and coat. You are a very thoughtful young lady. Love, Santa. P.S. Please tell Grandpa Jacks that he can e-mail me and we'll work on the details of that sleigh ride."

Oh What Do You Do In The Winter Time...

...when all the world is cold?

Ever since September when I was inspired by Katherine to try Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred, I've been doing really good about exercising every morning. And I really do love the workouts on that video, but a couple weeks ago I started to get really bored with them. So luckily, I had on hand a weighted hula hoop that I splurged on a few months ago, so I started watching a video each morning and hula hooping while I watched. And even that is getting a little boring, but just a little boring, though. The real problem is that even though I can feel it in my legs and stomach, it's not much of an aerobic workout, and I miss that. I've thought about alternating between 30 Day Shred and the hula hoop, but as it is right now, I don't want to get up at six in the morning to hear Jillian tell me, "Just think about all the reasons you bought this dvd in the first place..." and "...and next we're going to do..." shrug, "...jumping jacks...with weights..."

I'm wanting to mix things up so I don't get too bored and stop exercising during fudge/divinity/caramels/cookie season. So the question is - what do you all do to get exercise in the winter time?

Dinner With The Jacks

The other night, while we were eating dinner, Brian said something incredibly funny. Too funny for me to remember, apparently, because I have completely forgotten what we were even talking about. After he said it, he said, "You should put that on the quote blog," to which Alyssa replied, "No, Mom. You should put on your blog: I said this, and then Brian said that, so Alyssa said this, and Daddy said that, so I did this, and Alyssa did that, which made Daddy say that...." and this rambling continued for about three or four minutes. Brian finally interrupted her.

"Alyssa, you've got to think about what you're asking. Do you want Mom to be our maid and cook, or our stenographer?"

"Oh, now that's funny," I said, and looked over at Ethan, who was jumping a little piece of french toast up and over his plate and saying, in a little tiny voice, "I'm a rocket man!!" We don't know how long he had been involved in this activity, because we had been listening to Alyssa and wondering when she was going to stop rambling. Then Ethan took a good look at his piece of french toast and realized just how small it was, and while jumping it over his plate, oblivious to us all watching, he said in an even tinier voice, "I'm a rocket baby!!"

That's when I looked over at Marcus, who was playing his fork (complete with a bite of french toast on it) like a trumpet.

And now the question is: since I wrote all this down, who's doing the laundry and making dinner tonight?

Broadway's Award-Winning Best Musical

Yesterday we headed to Spokane to see "The Lion King." We dropped Marcus off at Kim and Brian's house, who happen to live just ten minutes from the INB Performing Arts Center, and he hung out with them for the afternoon. He had a wonderful time! I was a little worried that he would be upset with us for leaving him, but they said that he was happy the whole time, and he didn't even fight them when they strapped him into a grocery cart. He always fights me when I strap him into grocery carts.

Brian's parents got Brian and I tickets to go see "The Lion King" for Brian's birthday when it came to Portland when I was pregnant with Ethan, so when we heard that it was coming to Spokane, we decided to take them. So we met them at the hotel they stayed at, then walked across the street in the freezing cold to the INB center. We made sure everyone had gone to the bathroom (especially Ethan) two or three times before sitting down, and then we were treated to a spectacular performance.

The animals were amazing, the costumes were amazing, the music was amazing - everything was fabulous. There were times when the choir would sing a chord, and it would just hit you and you could really feel it. I loved watching the kids as they sat, completely enthralled. Brian's dad brought some binoculars, and Ethan loved looking through them to see the actors close up. He had them through most of the performance, and if anyone else borrowed them, he would soon ask, "Where are my by-noc-lers?" He actually went back and forth from sitting on Brian's lap to sitting on our pile of coats to make him tall enough to see, then he fell asleep when there was about twenty minutes left in the program. Alyssa sat in the row behind us, with Brian's parents. Every time I looked back at her, she was intently watching. She said her favorite song was "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" and her favorite character was Nala.

We splurged (big splurge!) and got the kids each a stuffed animal. We bought Nala for Alyssa, Simba for Ethan, and Zazu for Marcus. Alyssa loves hers, Marcus loves his, but Ethan is not happy with Simba. I think he might be a little afraid of it. He does claim it enough, though, to not want to hand it over to Alyssa. When she asks, "Ethan, since you don't want your Simba stuffed animal, can I have it?" he says, "NO!" But as you can see, he didn't even want to pose with it for the picture.

Christmas Decorations

A couple of Sundays ago we decorated the Christmas tree. Right after Thanksgiving I was thinking about getting a real tree this year (it would be our first one), but then I realized that in addition to buying the tree, we would need to buy new lights, because I didn't want to deal with destringing our fake one. We're trying to save every little bit right now to save up for a down payment on a house, so we decided to wait for another year to buy a real tree.

First job: fluffing the branches. Alyssa, Ethan, and Marcus did the lower branches while I worked on the top ones.


Alyssa did a fabulous job of placing the ornaments.


This is the tree skirt I made copying some of Sarah's. We've never had a Christmas tree skirt before. Up until now I've always draped some fabric around the bottom and called it good. But I decided that this was going to be the year that we would finally have a tree skirt! After I saw the ones Sarah made, I had a perfect vision in my head of what I wanted ours to look like, but I couldn't think of a time when I would be able to make it to the fabric store without kids, so I opted to raid my fabric tub of leftovers. The white is from a temple dress I made when I was pregnant with Ethan, and the red is from a belly dance costume. Our tree skirt is actually still not finished, because I ran out of ribbon and red thread. I'll have to make it to the fabric store soon!

Ethan and Brian had the privilege of putting the angel on the top when we were done.


And last week my neighbor and I went out in the front yard and put up our outside decorations. It was freezing cold outside, but we had a great time!

Christmas, Christmas Time is Here! Time For Joy, And Time For Cheer!

Last year I made an Excel file of everyone's addresses so I could have a quick list to use to send Christmas cards this year, but every time I try to pull up that file, a window pops up that says, "Windows cannot find 'C:\Users\Carrie\Desktop\Home Manager\Addresses.xlsx'." So maybe sending Chrstimas cards this year won't be as easy and quick as I thought it was going to be.

Therefore, if you are reading this (and you know you are) please send me your address. carrielynnjacks@gmail.com. Thank you!

Mixin' It Up...Not So Good

Since we started homeschooling this year, I've had to put myself on a pretty rigid schedule. I found that if I didn't completely keep up with the dishes and laundry, Alyssa's school work fell behind. On Monday and Thursday I wash diapers, Tuesday is Brian's and my laundry day, Wednesday is the kids' laundry day, and Friday I wash sheets and towels (as necessary). I've been waking up at six o'clock every morning to exercise and shower, and hopefully be dressed and ready for the day by the time the kids get out of bed.

For a while things were working great. Then the kids started to realize that Mom got up way before them, and they decided to take turns getting up early to thwart my alone time. A couple weeks ago, when my alarm went off, I thought, "Why do I get up this early to be up before the kids, when the kids wake up anyway?" and I turned off my alarm, rolled over, and went to sleep. Five minutes later, Brian's alarm went off, and he promptly pushed the Snooze button (because that's what he does) and went back to sleep himself.

That morning I started a two-week run of not setting my alarm, staying in bed while Brian showered and got ready, getting up to say prayer with him and send him off to work, and then staying in bed until the kids woke up, which ended up being usually around seven-thirty. I started exercising with the kids either exercising with me, or watching me from the couch, saying, "Mom, you're supposed to have your feet in the air. Higher. I know it's hard, but you can do it." And then after pouring bowls of Marshmallow Mateys for the kids, I would run upstairs for a quick shower, then after I was ready we would start school.

Overall, it only put us behind our school schedule by a half-hour, but it really messed with my dishes and laundry schedule. Instead of sorting and starting laundry at seven o'clock, I was starting around ten, and that meant that it didn't always make it into the dryer or out of the dryer. After the first week the kids started living from a pile of clean clothes sitting in a laundry basket on top of Ethan's dresser. When one of them needed socks, I would run downstairs to another clean, but unsorted basket of clothes to hunt down a matching pair. Because I was getting lazy in other things, Alyssa and I started getting lazy with her school work schedule to where she was learning that she could argue and whine instead of doing her work, and if she whined long enough, eventually the time to get her work done would disappear and she wouldn't have to do it. And she's not the only one who's been lazy. Yesterday while Alyssa was at MCP, I didn't even start the laundry or clean up after breakfast. I read a book, and when the characters in the book made brownies, I decided to make brownies, too. Then I spent the afternoon on the computer dreaming about houses, and didn't even think about dinner until Brian called to say he was on his way home.

So last night I decided that we need to get back on a good schedule, but this morning when my alarm clock went off, I decided that it's going to be a modified schedule. I will stay in bed while Brian gets up to shower, but I've decided to get up to exercise when he leaves for work. That way I'll be sleeping in a little bit, but I'll still be up and getting the morning started early enough not to effect other things.

I don't know why I'm sharing this. It's not particularly interesting, but it's just been on my mind. Believe me, it is not in my nature to want to do laundry every day or to keep the kitchen constantly clean, but I've found that striving for that is necessary to my sanity. Funny, huh? And even though I generally keep the house clean during the week, I take the weekends off, and by Sunday evening it usually looks like a tornado came through, and then Monday morning I start all over again. Another funny thing I've found is that when I'm closely following our cleaning and school schedule, I actually have more time to work on my own projects and to spend fun time with the kids.