That tooth SERIOUSLY needs to come out.

It's hanging by a thread, but he won't let us pull it.

Today's Project ~ Family Photo Wall

Every year we take a family photo, and I display it in the large frame in the living room.  I take the old photo and put it up in the hallway downstairs.  A few years ago, I bought a pile of grey frames at IKEA for the downstairs photos, but clearly I didn't buy enough as they were all filled this year.  Naturally, IKEA doesn't make the grey ones anymore, so I had to look for something new.

Aaron Brothers is having their 2-for-1 sale, so I bought 12 frames in varying colors.

Crazy to think that when this wall is full, Parker & Cecily will both be thinking about college.

Rainbow Kitty

For Christmas, all Cecily wanted was a "Rainbow Kitty", she even drew me a specific picture of what she wanted.  I asked her if she'd seen one, or if this was just an idea in her head, she said it was an idea in her head.  Nothing so fun as trying to shop for something that exists only in Cecily's head.  Fortunately, I manged to find this moderately-creepy kitty on Amazon and I apparently hit it on the head.

Her name is Rainbow Crookshanks Kruger.

Side note: Cecily HATES Harry Potter and Crookshanks is the only "character" that she cares 2-cents about.

Zoo trip

Our zoo passes expire on the 31st, so I thought we'd make one more trip before it expired.

I don't even know what kind of animal this is, but Cecily was really excited and said, "Hurry, Mama, take it's picture!", so I did.

We took that carousel ride I'd promised when we were at zoo lights.

Harry Potter

Parker got the entire Harry Potter BluRay set for Christmas.  We won't let him watch all of them until he's older, but we did let him watch the first one, he was pretty enthralled.

White Christmas!

We were all amazed to come out of the Christmas Eve service to see a not-insignificant amount of snow on the ground.  Amazingly, it was still even snowing the next morning, for a white Christmas!

After breakfast, we all bundled up and headed outside to play.

2017 Christmas Card

Merry Christmas

from the

Kruger family!

Cecily (5) started Kindergarten this year in the fall.  We went back & forth for months about the decision to start this year or next, but she jumped in with both feet and her teacher assures me we made the right decision.  At home, her current favorite saying is “I HATE EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING!”, so I’m still not 100% sure we made the best choice, but at least she’s doing well at school!  Cecily loves all things home and “cozy”; one of her favorite things is to bundle up with a “cozy little blanket” and her “cozy little unicorn” and her “cozy little Mama” and read a book.  She is also an incredible storyteller, I’ve heard that at school she likes to spend her free-choice time surrounded with her friends “reading” stories.  I asked her the other day if she’s going to be a book writer when she’s a grown up, her answer was: “Yes, but mostly I’ll be a Mama, and on the weekends I’ll be a famous ballerina.”  Clearly, we’re teaching her about achievable goals.

Parker (7) is currently in First grade at the same school as Cecily.  He finished out a great year of Kindergarten and is thoroughly enjoying 1^st grade as well.  He’s still working on learning to read, but in the meantime, he loves listening to stories.  After I spent three hours straight reading Harry Potter aloud during the Read-a-thon, I introduced Parker to the wonder of AudioBooks, now we can lose him for days on end as he’s immersed in Harry Potter, Narnia, or a variety of other stories.  In the spring, Parker played coach-pitch baseball (not just baseball, “coach pitch”, it’s apparently very important to him that you note the difference).  It was a new team this year with a combination of two T-ball teams from last year, he had a great time and loved playing.  In the fall, Parker played soccer in a neighborhood league.  Nearly every boy on the team was from Parker’s school, so it was fun playing with kids he knows and sees every day.  He is still a HUGE Seahawks fan and Keith & I are learning more & more about the sport every year.

Keith continues at the same engineering firm. This coming fall he will hit his 20-year anniversary at the firm.  In the meantime, he (according to my unbiased opinion) has become one of the most popular managers in his division.  Every time I meet one of his engineers, they mention how great he is to work for.  Between work and parenting, Keith doesn’t have much time for extra-curriculars, though he does enjoy an afternoon of puttering out in the garage.  I think he has also come to enjoy his Sunday afternoons of watching the Seahawks with his son.

I’m still acclimating to the idea of being the stay-at-home parent of two school-aged children.  I keep feeling like I should be filling my days with new, exciting things; but really, most of them are filled with the normal cooking, cleaning, and groceries they were before, the only difference is that I’m doing it without an audience now.  I’ve found that without the “I only have 2 hours of freedom” pressure, my urgency of doing tasks has gone down and I’m not nearly as efficient as I could be. I feel like I spent the first month of school just catching up on everything after a very busy summer.  I have picked up a few of my old craft projects, and even made Parker a Harry Potter cloak for Halloween.  This summer, my Dad married Kathy O’Neill, an old family friend.  They are blissfully happy together and we are all so happy for both of them, though it is still a little surreal for all of us to now be family with our childhood next-door neighbors.

After a few years of not much travel, this is the year we made up for it.  In March, we went to Puerto Vallarta with my Dad, Kathy, and both my brothers.  There were 10 of us total and the kids had a blast swimming and loved having their cousin Fiona there to play with.  In July, Keith & I went on a Mexico cruise as a combined celebration for our 11^th Anniversary and my 40^th birthday.  This was the first time we’d spent more than 2 nights away from our kids since before Cecily was born.  It was a great, relaxing trip where we did little more than sleep, read, eat, swim, repeat.  In August, we went to SunRiver, OR with the Hamilton, Need, & Kruger families.  We had 16 people split between two houses and we had a great week riding bikes, swimming, and spending time with family.  The kids favorite part was the night they decided to become “famous”, it got a little quiet while the grown-ups were finishing dinner, we went around the house to discover Parker, Wesley, & Cecily were having a dirt fight.  They informed us that they were going to be famous: “the dirtiest kids in the world!”, I think they were pretty close. Then we came home and finally had a few days of down-time before school started!

We hope that this letter finds all of your well and we share our best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year!

The Krugers – Keith, Julie, Parker, & Cecily

As always – there’s more where this came from on our Blog: www.MeanderingJulie.Blogspot.com

It’s updated…occasionally.

Christmas morning!

For Christmas Eve, my dad gave each of the kids a Kindle Fire.  Parker was up Christmas morning at 4:30 "Can I play with my tablet?" "No, go to bed"

5:00 - "Now?" "No, go to bed"

5:30 - "Now?" "No, go away"

etc...

Finally about 7 we gave in/gave up and let them go.

This is about 8:30 am, "So, does anyone want to open presents?  Anyone?"

Eventually we got to it, but it's hard to compete with tablet time.

Christmas Eve

I did a terrible job taking photos at all our events this Christmas.  Between our Dec 16th Early-Christmas (with the Kruger side), our Dec 23rd Hamilton/Kneeling Brunch, Christmas Eve dinner with the Hamiltons, and Christmas Dinner with the Krugers, I believe this is the ONLY photo I have, and I'm pretty sure I took it after everyone left.

Oh well, we'll still have the memories, right?

Christmas Cookies

Cecily helped me frost the Christmas cookies.

To be honest, you really can't tell which ones I did and which are hers.

Then she helped me clean up all the frosting we smeared on the floor.