A Gingerbread Nightmare

I'm not sure what persuaded me to buy a clearanced gingerbread house set after Christmas, but today the boys talked me into letting them try it. Well, I couldn't get the walls to stay together and neither the boys nor I had the patience to keep at it, so we just laid everything flat and decorated the flat pieces. The icing is absolutely sickening sweet and combined with the candies that the boys have been sneaking while decorating, I can sense a lot of hyperactivity at the Hagen house later this afternoon.

Instant Puppets

At 2 1/2 Liam is starting to have an imagination and letting his creative side show through. While watching a tv show today, he took his socks off of his feet, put them on his hands and said, "Puppets!"

Not a lot of excitement around here

You have probably thought that with 5 days and no posts that I have been lax in updating the blog. However, things have been pretty boring around here with Ray working a lot (that is the downside to beginning a new job around the holidays) and the boys continuing to make messes. They have played with all their new toys and are back to acting somewhat bored again. Their movie obsession right now is "The Polar Express" which Ray DVRed with the new DVR he bought to celebrate getting his new job!

Merry Christmas to all...

We celebrated Christmas eve with my side of the family as usual. My parents and sister and uncle came to our place for a few hours to exchange gifts and then we all went to my mom's brother's house in Brooklyn Center for the real celebration. At my uncle/aunt's house, we got to meet the two new baby second cousins -- baby Danielle is 3 weeks old and baby Ben is 12 days old. (You will see a photo below of the four Boyces -- we hadn't taken a family photo in probably 5-6 years because I am sure it was before I was pregnant with Connell.)

For Christmas Day, we got up at 6 am as usual and found the gift that Santa brought each of the boys (Santa typed the to/from tag this year since a little boy named Connell has been rather suspicious of Santa and we were afraid that he might catch on to either of our handwriting.) Connell was impressed that Santa knew their middle initials to put on the tag!!! We think we made it through another year with him still believing.

After taking a photo with mom and then dad by the tree, we were off to 8 am Mass where we spent our first time ever as a family (with no nursery). We truly do appreciate the church nursery for regular Sunday Mass -- that's all I can say and Ray would agree!

We came home and the boys played with some of their new toys while I made dinner. I threw together some soy sauce, orange juice, ginger, honey and garlic to marinade some pork chops. I had some cornbread stuffing in the freezer that we warmed up and I did a package of asparagus with some butter sauce. It turned out very well (can I admit to all of you that I totally forgot about Christmas dinner and so this morning I was scrambling trying to think of something to make and playing the game of...let's see what I have in the house and can throw together to look like a planned dinner). Life is so hectic with these two boys for some reason. We did commit a few years ago to saving Christmas Day for the four of us and we have talked that in a few years we would like to volunteer as a family at a soup kitchen or special dinner for the homeless. Right now the boys are simply too young.

Oh, and I can't go on without mentioning that since Connell got the game Mancala from the Boyces for Christmas, that he and I are Mancala fools now. Neither of us had never played and yet we are totally addicted. I like it better than some of the games that he suggests, so we'll see if we continue to play it in the coming days.

Ray has to go back to work tomorrow -- Friday.

A Wacky Weekend

I came down with the flu bug late Friday and it lasted until late Saturday when I finally stopped vomiting. The weather was so bad on Saturday that Ray and the boys didn't even attempt the drive up to Little Falls for Christmas with his dad and his wife. Traveling was not advised, we saw many vehicles in the ditch already on the morning news and so they decided that it just was too risky to try. So we spend the day Saturday homebound and the boys had to listen to my vomiting (yuck!)

By Sunday, I was able to keep some food down and the weather had settled and so we went to Ray's mom's house in North St. Paul for a Christmas gathering. Ray's brother and family were there as well as his sister and family. We hadn't all been together since August of '07 so we got a photo of the 6 of us with his mom. We tried to get all 6 cousins together, but cousin Madison wanted no part so her brother Nic had to stand alone! Here are the photos.

(the inlaws...Chris and Christine Albright (Ray's sister), Juliana and Clint Hagen (Ray's brother), us in the front row with his mom, Sue)

(Nic, Trent with Liam on lap, Nichole with Connell on lap)

Monopoly already?!?!??!

Connell begged and begged for me to teach him how to play Monopoly today. With a few distractions for Liam (including some DVDs), we managed to play a game for about an hour and 40 minutes. He did quite well. We had all the properties purchased by the end and Connell had 5-6 houses on the red ones. I had purchased all of the yellow ones, but between paying rent and landing on the "pay taxes" space, I couldn't get any houses for my properties. Connell was sad to quit and now he is obsessed with the game. He is even playing it by himself (pretending to be 2 players and the banker) and also creating his own fake money! I didn't think that I would be diving into these types of games quite so soon...

"Happy Birthday, Jesus" party (year #2)

We just came back from our second annual "Happy Birthday, Jesus" party at the St. John Neumann preschool. Connell was again located middle front (not sure why) and sang and did the actions for most of the program. We all had cake downstairs afterwards to celebrate.

(in case you don't recognize Connell, he is in the red shirt and dark pants)

Transitions, transitions

It's been quite a change for me readjusting to Ray being gone 12 hours of the day. His commute is very long especially with all the snow we have been getting this winter. Yesterday it took him about 15-20 minutes just to make it out of the industrial park that VISI is located in and about the same amount of time to make it to the highway. The evening commute took about 1 hr 50 minutes total. Ugh!

In addition to Ray being back at work, he also notified me this morning that the new insurance that we will be covered under does not have an agreement with the clinic that we have been attending for 13 years. So we are forced to change clinics. I have had the same family practice doctor for 13 years and have become pretty attached to him. He is the boys' doctor as well -- they have only seen him since birth. Ray is probably the least attached to his doctor of the four of us, not to mention the fact that Ray is better with changes/transitions! In the next few weeks I will be searching for another doctor/clinic for us at least for the next 1 1/2 years. When I go back in the fall of 2010, perhaps we would change to the school district's insurance plan for our family coverage and maybe we would return to our clinic. Or perhaps we will like the new one better?!?!?

Stomach Bug?!?!?

Liam woke in the night and was throwing up. I changed his sheets and then tried to stay on top of the mess as he continued to vomit a few more times. He is still gagging and vomiting this morning. The question is whether he has a bug that is going around or if the Pepto Bismol that he got into yesterday made him sick. I told Ray that the Pepto Bismol should have had the opposite effect, so who knows?!?!? Timing isn't great -- not only is Ray now gone to work long hours, but tomorrow is Connell's Christmas singing show at church and so I hope he doesn't catch whatever it is! Not to mention our two Christmas celebrations this weekend.

I'm at risk of losing my job here at home...

Just since Ray had been home, we had taken down all the gates since Liam would just help himself through them anyway. We still left babyproofed knobs on some door knobs since we prefer to keep Liam (and Connell) out of certain rooms. Well, for a few minutes this afternoon Liam was being quite quiet playing by himself upstairs as Connell was writing at the table so I figured I better check on him. Unbeknownst to me, Liam had broken the babyproofed handle off of our bedroom door and gotten into things. He got to an entire tube of Orajel and squeezed it all over the stairs (it comes out orange if anyone is interested). He also opened a babyproofed container of Children's Pepto Bismol and since he was chomping on something, I counted the pills left in the bottle. There were still 22 of 24, so he must have eaten 2 at most. I hope he enjoyed the wintergreen flavor. He also got to some games that I had hidden in our room because previously the boys had tokens and little parts all over the house. Well, you guessed it -- they were again all over the landing upstairs. So I am mad as a hatter and calling out to him, "naughty boy" and he is countering it with "No, I'm a good boy!" Ugh!

(update...Connell admitted to breaking off the handle and letting Liam into our room. That sounds more like it although I totally missed all of that action. The boys can be very good at playing upstairs together and then again, they can get into mischief like today! Perhaps Connell is trying to make a statement because he didn't want daddy to go back to work. He liked having him around. That would be nice if we didn't have to pay the mortgage and eat!)

Everything is fair game....

Now that it is back to reality for me and with winter upon us, I am thinking of activities we haven't done in a while. The Magnetix were hidden in our bedroom since Liam used to put the metal balls in his mouth and so I thought they might be worth a try this afternoon. The boys had fun for a few minutes playing with them and then wanted to take pictures of their creations. Connell got a photo of his "glob" of magnets and then Liam got a nice photo of 3 of their 4 feet instead of the magnets. Cute though. (I did crop the photos for the blog though)

Back to Work for Ray

6 weeks after his lay-off, Ray is back to work. I'll be curious to see how his first day at VISI went. Given the snowy weather and the long commute, he is planning on going straight from work to his Tuesday night employment support group in Burnsville. He is slated to tell them about his new job and bring cookies to celebrate. That means that my first day back to being a full-time stay-at-home mom might end up being about 14 hours with no break! With Liam's refusal to nap, it could be a tough day! I think you would call it "trial by fire".

Cookies

Whoever invented the dough already made and broken into squares and ready to put onto the pan is a genius! I know that it isn't as much fun as baking from scratch, but my boys get flour and sugar all over the kitchen and it isn't worth the hassle. So I got a good deal on some chocolate chip and sugar cookie "ready to bake" packages at ALDI and we have been having a few each day.

First Sledding Adventure of the Year

Ray, Connell and Liam invited our friends Sammy and Joey over to sled behind our house this afternoon. It is a little warm for sledding, but they had fun nonetheless. I think Ray realized that since he starts his new job this week that things will get quite busy and so he better take advantage of the down time now!

Disney on Ice

We used our free tickets and attended the Disney on Ice production at the Xcel this morning. I don't have any photos since I discovered as we came back to our car in the parking lot that my camera had fallen out and was laying on the cold ground during the entire performance. Luckily no one stole it.

The program was broken into 4 sections -- "The Lion King", "The Little Mermaid", "Lilo and Stitch" and "Peter Pan". The boys did ok for the first and the second, but really got antsy during the "Lilo and Stitch" part. Then there was an intermission so we took them out to walk around a little bit. They did ok, but I would have really enjoyed the performance much better without them next to me standing up/sitting down, walking back and forth. The "Peter Pan" part got a little long for them.

I think I really was the family member who enjoyed it the most since I loved ice skating as a child and combined with roller skating last week, I am on a skating kick right now. I always love a good musical performance, too.

Liam's lack of naps starts catching up...

After three days of absolutely no naps, Liam was caught resting underneath the dining room table this afternoon.

Ray Accepted a Job Offer!

Ray was offered a job Wednesday afternoon and accepted. He will be working for VISI (rhymes with "dizzy" or "busy") -- a business class web hosting and data center colocation company. It is located at 169 and 494 in Eden Prairie which will be a bit of a commute (but Ray has always had a long commute). He will again be a product manager. This company only has about 60 employees -- whereas ADC had nearly 10,000 worldwide. There will be very little travel and regular business hours.

We are extremely excited about the job! He starts next week which means that he will have had 6 weeks of time between his job loss and new start date.

Now I have to get reaccustomed to being the only stay-at-home parent which might be challenging given that Liam has appeared to have totally given up his nap. He turned 2 1/2 on Monday and that was the last day he napped. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I tried to get him to go down with little success.

Tomorrow morning we will be going downtown to the Xcel Energy Center as a family to see Disney on Ice. Will let you know how that goes...

Boys will be boys...

Well, Ray has been busy networking, interviewing and applying for more jobs. Connell and Liam are preparing for the holidays. Liam is being his usual self in his spare time (like getting into the sunscreen and slathering it all over himself). The Christmas tree is up although the boys are skating on thin ice....Liam took one long piece of tinsel off this morning and had it wrapped around himself like a skirt. I did not take a picture of that though!

Reconnecting

This morning after church, I drove to Bloomington to meet up with a childhood friend, Barb. She and I grew up across the street from each other and spent countless hours at each other's houses. We hadn't seen each other in over 18 years. It was so much fun to reminisce and simply catch each other up to speed. She is married and works for Target in IT and lives in Maple Grove. She has a son who is 7 and 2 nearly-grown step-daughters.

A Morning at Michael's

We went to Michael's Craft Store this morning in Apple Valley where they had some Christmas fun for kids. The boys did some crafts and then Santa was there. Liam wasn't thrilled about wearing the reindeer ears though, nor did he want to go anywhere near Santa. Our little extroverted Connell ran right up to Santa and was talking his ear off. (Sorry that the picture turned out so dark!)

No Broken Limbs

So my 3 friends and I went roller skating tonight -- I hadn't been in at least 20 years -- perhaps more. It came right back to me and I really got into it and enjoyed it. This was a 18+ night and so there were about 16-20 total adults there. A few of the regulars were talking to me (yes, some strange guys), but my ladies didn't bail me out so I had to respond to their questions. I was invited back and also invited to skate in their little group! When I told the one guy that I hadn't skated in 20 years, he said, "What -- were you 4 back then, sweetie?" It was really a blast though, but I know that we will all be feeling it in the morning.

(this is Monique, Katie, myself & Vicki showing our legs for you!)

Photographers in the Making?!?!

We let Connell and Liam both try and take a photo of us tonight. Can you guess who took which? Oh, well -- I guess it is a giveaway since Connell is actually the focus in one of them although he wasn't supposed to be. And Liam's finger made it into the picture too! :-)

The Monster Mash

We found a Halloween CD that I have with the "Monster Mash" on it and the boys are now crazy about it! They were doing the Monster Mash all evening. Not sure why the bare chests though...