Christmas Eve Eve

Ugg...I hate it when I take such large breaks from blogging. It makes it so hard to start up again. Luckily I'm too stubborn to give up and let the memories from the past couple months float away into forgotten-even-though-I-have-a-lot-of-pictures land. I don't know where to start, but I know I have to start somewhere, or I'll be kicking myself in a year. So just like in beauty pageants, these next few (or many) posts will be "in no particular order", starting with...Christmas Eve Eve.

We have been so crazy busy this month--even busier than the inevitable busyness of this time of year. Amongst all of the"important" stuff, there wasn't too many extended periods of low stress family time, so, even though we still had much to do before Christmas, on Christmas Eve Eve we took a trip to our neighborhood park and got just what we needed.

The boys were thrilled when I told them they could ride scooters and take what they call the "long cut".




...even when the long cut requires you to drag your scooter up a grassy hill.


It never ceases to amaze me how, within minutes of getting to the park, one of them will say, "Do you want to play monkeys, cheetahs, spies, ninjas...or one of several other names, and how the other will immediately agree and know exactly what to do. (By the way Reed and Max--all your games look the same and seem to involve a lot of talking)


Ruby was having a lot of fun too...until she crawled through the tunnel puddle.


Luckily she recovered fairly quickly from the wet pants and uncharacteristically enjoyed swinging with me.


Actually it was at the swings where we had the most fun. The boys loved having Sam there to push them super high. In fact, I'm pretty sure Reed asked for an "UnderDAD" when I tried to push him. I'm not sure if it's the pusher or the pushee who is having more fun here.


And then, like all good parents ,we encouraged our children to jump from the swings...and did our best to set an example.

Sam thought he was pretty awesome...we all did actually.


I did my best, but couldn't help but have visions of sprained ankles dancing in my head.


After watching us, Reed was eager to do his best too.


Max on the other hand, didn't want anything to do with jumping.


This was more of what he had in mind for a swing trick.


But even he finally gave into our prodding and gave us his best...


...and landed like this and realized that it wasn't as bad as he thought.


Even Ruby got a little brave and let Reed do an "Underdad"...


and liked it.


Our time at the park was just a quick diversion from the Christmas craziness, but it was special and just long enough to help me remember which part of the crazy matters most.