Why is it, that I so loathe toothpaste, a paste of mint–a flavor which generally I enjoy, but I thoroughly enjoy other pasty foods in flavors I would normally turn my nose up at? Example? At this very moment I am eating a ham salad sandwhich. I also enjoy tuna salad which is, essentially, a paste of fish. GROSS! But I like it and will eat it and would WAY rather have “salad sandwich” in my mouth than toothpaste. Any help on this one?
Archive
Well hello 2010. You kinda snuck up on me. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll be calling you “two thousand ten” or “twenty ten” or some other bizarre nickname, for now I leave it to my readers to insert their own voice in reading you, 2010. You know 2010, you have some big shoes to fill. 2009 was an enormously eventful year for us! We were so busy that a lot of stuff never made it onto the blog. I guess that will be my resolution this year, to do a better job of keeping up with the record of our lives as they happen via blog, correspondence, photos, and scrapbooking. We did manage to sqeeze in a quick family photo session before 2009 ended. If you haven’t received a copy of our family photo, don’t worry, you may still, I have great intentions (as I do every year) to mail them out. I may need some addresses though… But I will insert the photo here also so you can see–like a sneak peak reward for reading our blog! 
Josh and the kids love to tell the story of what we went through to get this picture. Of course there was the usual amount of fretting over corresponding outfits for everyone etc, but the part of the story that they really like is that in order to find a clean backdrop for us all I made Josh pull the couch away from the wall. Then, in order to place the camera high enough to use the timer feature and get us all in the shot, I had to stack wrapped present boxes on top of the electronic piano box that is living in our front room all in front of the couch without having them topple all over the couch or backwards into our Christmas tree. You probably had to be there, but the kids and Josh got a real kick out of watching me set up the camera just so and then having to hop up and over the couch without knocking anything over and sqeezing into my place on the wall before the camera took the picture. There were a couple times I didn’t make it. But keeping them amused seemed to work well enough for getting pictures with nice sincere smiles and I had a keeper with all eyes open etc after only about 6 takes!
So I have a four year-old daughter, most of you know her. So many of you will understand what I really mean when I say she LOVES her daddy! And everyone else, including myself, well…it’s questionable. For example, last week I was alone watching a movie (one of those touching Christmas family comedy dramas made for tv) and I was feeling very overwhelmed and had uncontrollable tears. Just then Elena woke up and came downstairs and came over to me and looked at me quizzically–questioning the tears. Then she offered up a rare hug and climbed upon my lap with her blanket to settle in and watch the movie with me. I said “I love you Elena.” And she replied “I love…my daddy.” To which all you can say (and I did) is “I know.” Well. Today when she was demanding that I pour her milk while she nuked a second hot dog she was all caught up in some excitable chant/cheer/singy storytelling which had in it somewhere “mommy-riffic.” Then she said, “Mommy, your name is Becca, so you could say Becca-riffic.” So I asked “oh, and when do you say Becca-riffic?” “When its good.” “oh, so like if something is awesome I can say it’s Becca-riffic?” “Well, you coooould…if its soooo beautiful.” Now I’m gonna stop the day right there and just milk that thought for all I can. Loved.
For the first time in over four years Elise has consented to cutting some bangs. I’m hoping somehow this will help her take better care of her hair and just might keep some of it out of her food at mealtime! I also let her change her earrings this week for the first time in over a year since she had them pierced!
So I went out to help Josh dig out the driveway today. Apparently it was time to break in the new boots and snowpants. The wind blows through our side yard like a tunnel and so the side yard still has visible grass, but the driveway has like a three to four foot drift! I made a lot of progress but then I got tired and bored and decided to see if I’d have better luck tunneling through the driveway. When the kids saw my awesome fort they decided to come back out and play. Between my sitting in the snow trying to keep the ceiling from caving in and the boys with their lightsabers, I had a lot of quotes from “Empire” running through my head! Some of the pictures Josh took especially remind of scenes on Hoth.
Today, Elise is 9. Yeah, we had a party, and then we had dinner at the Texas Roadhouse where both Jacob and Elise were put up on the saddle and “Yeeeeee-haw”ed at. They also got to open their presents from Aunt Sarah and Uncle Scott who joined us for dinner.
It seems to be impossible to get any good pictures or video from inside the school “auditorium.” But here is Jacob performing at his first band concert!
Wow! I haven’t finished with our Russia trip on here yet, and it already seems so long ago! We’ve been keeping plenty busy. We hosted Thanksgiving for my family at our house again this year, and that went swimmingly. Everyone pitched in.
Big Helper
Mom did her part to save the environment, Dad and Sarah fixed our garbage disposal, even Bertie helped make sure the dishes and floors all got clean! And there was plenty of quiet relaxing time too.
And family togetherness. 
It was a nice long weekend. Josh and Sarah and I went Black Friday shopping and the Strums came over to play for a while Saturday, then we put up the tree and the Hintzes joined us for dinner on Sunday and taught me how to play Settlers of Catan.
Then it was back to our regular weekly schedules, except this week also included eye doctor appointments, dentist appointments, making all the plans for Elise and Jacob’s birthdays along with all the usual holiday planning and Jacob has his first band concert tonight! I’ll try to add a picture. So I’m ALMOST ready for this weekend, but in a way I am already exhausted!
So here’s the deal, we have over 1500 photos from our two weeks in Russia, and honestly, they don’t even begin to capture the fullness of everything that we experienced, and I’m just not sure what will interest those of you who will bother to look at this. So for the next few days of our journey, I have chosen several pictures to tell of what we did–they may not be the best ones that I have, but Josh will be in every single one of them! Try to spot Josh! It will be a lot easier in some than in others but I promise he is in every one! (Except the very first one which I will describe.)
