Mattias's 9th Birthday

Mattias's birthday began with mom cancelling school, except for the Friday spelling test. Then we invited a friend over, Kerstan. The boys played Wii sports, and we all went swimming. Kerstan brought over some brownies to share. If you stack 9 matches together in the center of a pan of brownies, you get an enourmous flame!



Mattias did decorate his own cake, which we had later that night as a family. He decorated it to look like a NXT lego brick. (This means something if you are into robotics.) He had all the buttons, and the screen decorated onto it.


Here is one of the many robots Mattias has made. He attached a set of gears to it, built some blades at the end, and programmed it to spin. He used it to whip up some scrambled eggs for Sylvia.

Because I grew up in a family of 9, where every birthday, every year, we would play "drop the clothespin in the jar" for a party game, it now seems like you can't really have a birthday without some version of that game. So, here we are, since I do not stockpile clothespins like my pioneer mom, playing the game with some bean bags and plastic buckets.




Sylvia found a plastic cone in the beanbag game, and thought it looked like a "party hat". She wore it for the rest of the night. She couldn't move here head at all, so she kept shifting her eyes around like a criminal. :)



Here is our shifty eyed Sylvia, next to Mattias who is opening presents. He is pulling out the contents to a Wilton Cake decorating class. He loves to decorate cakes and took Course One this fall. Now he can go on to even more amazing sugar creations.

We found that piling 9 candles on a cake together does create a flame as impressive as 9 matches on a pan of brownies, in case you had ever wondered. Both are fire hazards. Do not try this at home.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

McMullin Medieval Archers

Sean and Asher have been driving into Madison Wed. nights to hang out with people who dress like this....

They grab swords, pikes and sheilds and practice battle skills inside a large UW stock arena. Do they do this in case some Medeival army descends on Madison to steal the local livestock?

No, it is merely the local chapter of the S.C.A. (A group of medieval- interested people that have very cool events.) Sean and Asher go for the archery practice. They drool over the longbows and wish they lived in Merry Ole' England with not a care but where to get feathers to fletch their arrows with. Here is Asher checking out the competition. I'm sure you'll be seeing more of this sort of thing here.

Ribbons and Curls

Sylvia has begun to ask to have her hair done every morning. This morning we added some curls in her hair, and she was sooooo proud. She says "I so pretty!". But the best part is that then she will grab my face, stare into my eyes and say "You so pretty!" She is right, of course.

"Party over here, Party over there... OOh OOh!"

Noel's 12th birthday get together was a Twisted affair... (hahaha! Love the pun?) Here Espi and Suzannah compete against Asher and Sylvia.

Noel was also part of the action, but it was difficult to keep up with the future yoga gurus, Suzannah and Espi.

We had a photo session, where the most important thing was to get all of Espi's hat into the picture.
The fish cake smiled co-operatively when its turn for glamour shots came around.


Suzannah helped decorate Noel after presents had been opened... she is a cutey birthday package, I'd say, but I may be biased.


Noel's grandparents in Idaho sent Noel some money to buy a winter coat for a present. Here is a picture for them to see how stylish she looks in it. Thanks mom and dad!

"Tea, anyone?"

We have had several soggy tea parties in our dining room as of late. One evening, at a loss for something to entertain Sylvia while I made dinner, I asked Noel to get down her little tea set from her closet and introduce Sylv to the world of tea parties. It was a hit!

When Noel is not available for tea, Asher is a good substitute. I was doing dishes in the kitchen while he was pouring out tea for Sylvia. I laughed when I heard him ask her, in a very proper voice "And what have you been up to lately?"

Many thanks to our friends in Sweden for the tea they sent us!

Home at last - Dec 28 Sunday

After a long night in the hotel, where Asher got the flu... we were excited to climb into the rental van and be on the road.

It was a beautiful, clear, cool morning. We had blue sky and clear roads for the 6 hour drive north. The kids travelled great, and we were happy to be driving instead of flying.

I think a blessing gained from this day was in appreciating the flexibility driving gives you. When we go out for Cheri's wedding next summer, we will drive. :) It was also nice to see how much the kids have matured since we road-tripped this summer, when Sylv was just starting to potty-train. We only had to make one stop. This bodes well for future trips.

Another blessing gained was appreciating the beauty of Wisconsin. All you have to do is drive across flat Illinois to realize that Wisconsin could be worse. It may not be mountains, but it is home.

After 7 days of trying to get here, it feels good to be home. Santa was kept abreast of our travel dilemas, and will be dropping his goods off later this evening. We will open the presents under the tree tomorrow moring, Jan 31...

From this adventure, I learned how much I love my family... extended and immediate. I also thought a lot about what Christmas really is, since it was so fragmented.

Christmas isn't a date on the calendar. It is more a feeling, the feeling you get from sharing a joyful moment with someone. The feeling of seeing amazement in Sylv's eyes at her pink pajamas , or watching Asher be mesmorized by a Christmas poem, or the joy of seeing Sean's parents one extra time.

Merry Christmas... a little late.

PS I still have half my Christmas cards to mail! You will see them come into your mailboxes later this week.

Exploring St. Louis, Dec 27

After a shower, and the best breakfast we've ever eaten, we were all feeling much happier. We didn't have our bags, they had gone back to Denver. But at least I didn't have to pack and unpack them again. I was somewhat grateful to only have our carry-on bags.

We looked at maps of the city and found that St. Louis is supposed to have one of the best zoos in the nation. Near the zoo was also an art museum with Egyptian mummies and a wall sized original of Monet's water lilly painting.

We figured out how to get there using the city transportation, and set off. - It was starting to rain. We took the shuttle to the airport, took the Metro across town, and took a bus for the rest of the trip. The kids thought the metro was cool. - What we didn't know was that the thunderstorm was increasing. It was pelting rain like only storms in the Midwest can do. We found out later there was a tornado warning out. If we had been locals, we would have been sitting in a basement somewhere.

But as it was... I am truly the daughter of my mom. I refused to spend a day in a new city without seeing something of it. - Mom the kids out-voted me on seeing the Lewis and Clark sites! Oh well.. next time we are stranded there, maybe.- (The adventures of this day reminded me of getting stranded with the kids and my mom on the butte in Idaho a couple years ago, and almost having to call the search and rescue to get down.)

When the bus let us off at the stop we found we found the zoo gates were locked. We ran through the storm around the zoo's perimeter until we found the gift shop open. I had Sylvia on my back, and we were running uphill. When we dove inside the doors, it was suddenly silent. We were huffing and puffing, but dozens of people were just standing in the lobbey staring at us like we were aliens. We tried to wring out our clothes as much as possible before entering the building further. We then went into the restrooms, and I had the kids strip down and wring their clothes out over the toilets and get dressed again. We then stood under the hand-dryers until out hair stopped dripping.

We couldn't have been any wetter if we had fallen in a swimming pool. Luckily, it was warm in St. Louis. It was humid and in the 60's. We only had our snow boots and snow coats (which we had left at the motel, because it was soooo hot.)

We tried to see some of the animals when the rain let up. Sean bought us umbrellas, which were soon destroyed by the winds. We went to the primate house, and saw how beautiful the zoo must be if it was not a torrential downpour. It would be a nice place to visit some other season.

Here we are, soggy, in front of some local primates.

Sea lions are my favorite animal, and we happened to pass them in our mad dash back to the gift shop. So, we stopped for a moment to look and get a picture. By this time everyone was getting cold and shivering.


We walked up the hill to the art museum, which turned out to be the most wonderful hour of the day. I loved looking at their wonderful collection of paintings. Sylv fell asleep in my arms, so I could look around as long as I had strength to carry her.

Sean showed us what the different images on the Egyptian coffins meant, since he studied that long ago. It was very fascinating.

The boys looked at the medeival daggers and weaponry before we left. It was a place to rest our weary souls.

I think the blessing of visiting St. Louis was to remind me of the importance of art in our chaotic world. Instead of feeling like I was in survival mode, my soul felt joy for the first time. I am now trying to think how to make art more a part of our busy home life. Last night, I played the piano after the kids went to bed... and it didn't even wake them up. The music was soothing to me after a busy day. I wil remember the relief and blam of the St. Louis art museum for a while to come.

Then it was back to reality. Back into the rain to wait for a bus, to take the metro, to take the airport shuttle. We made it back to the motel, and had mostly dried out. After dinner, and renting Kung-Fu panda in our room, we went to sleep happy, knowing we would be home the next day.