Thankful for the little things

So....Jack is really bad on airplanes. I think he knows that he can get away with murder and get whatever he wants because we work so desperately to prevent him from screaming and turning into a beast....which makes him scream and turn into a beast. Despite him being grounded from traveling, we decided that a Stucki family Thanksgiving in Indiana was worth the bad, bad four hours in each direction on the plane. Here, he is "helping" me pack for the trip by pulling everything out of the suitcases as soon as I put them in. 

Maddie and the Stucki boys, on the other hand, get gold stars for being very good travelers.

 

It's kind of awesome how easy holidays are with my family. Kristina and Jamie love to cook, Stacey and Candace are amazing with the kids, and my mom and I are clean freaks. We each did our part and the day went so easily. I will wash dishes and clean the counters to avoid cooking or playing candyland any day.

My mom forced Josh to attempt his family recipe of orange jello with cheese in it. I know. Weird, right? He did his best, but only the bravest of the Stuckis tried it. Although the jello was not a success, Josh is freaking handsome in this picture and I love his hat and his blue eyes and his beard and his preppy style and how proud he is of his orange jello with cheese in it. 

Kid table

The grown ups snuck out for a late night movie to see Hunger Games in our pajamas. One of these days I will figure out how to not look homeless in cold weather, and also to not pack calf length pants when it is butt cold outside. My shins were frozen.  :o) 

Words don't do justice for this day. The pictures do a good job of capturing the magical fun we had there.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Yes, I know this is a biased comment, but I just thought Maddie was the most beautiful and graceful ballerina out there.

Maddie was jumping for joy when her dentist said she needed to get braces. The color she wants changes daily. I told her to just go for a rainbow all the way across so she doesn't have to stress about it anymore. 

Maddie is really lucky that she has two awesome grandmas who love to spend time with her. Her grandma Harris took her to Branson, Missouri for a special weekend of winter happiness and attending theater shows all day. Maddie loves winter, theater, and grandmas, so as you can imagine she had the greatest weekend.

She also likes to cook and bake. So every once in a while I dust off some of my kitchen appliances and pretend like I am the greatest chef in the world and impress her with my expertise. Haha.

She has also expressed an interest in learning the drums, so it turned out perfectly that I knew a talented drummer who could tutor her.

She has a really great voice and loves theater, so she wanted to audition for Cosette in a local production of Les Miserable. She came out of the audition depressed because she said she was terrible. So I took her to get a manicure because manicures make everything better. Turns out she is just a perfectionist who is too hard on herself, because she got a callback.

The sad thing is that on the day of her callback, she had a sore throat, fever, cough, congestion, and was all around sick. She still went to the callback because the show must go on, but she could barely walk, so I imagine that this one didn't go too well. We were pretty sad about it.

Living the Life

Josh's guy trip to his happy place.

All dressed up for a night on the town for Josh's law firm Christmas party.

Playing drums for the U2 cover band. I may or may not be the tiny head in the background going wild. Bono (even fake Bono) is awesome.

Josh's dad snuck me this picture of Josh leading an office meeting. I'm so proud of him!

Lake Mead Fun

Feeding the fish at Lake Mead is oh-so-much-fun!

Looking Fine at the Age of Nine

This nice girl turned 9 last weekend. Here, she is enjoying her birthday breakfast. She refused Josh's offers for homemade waffles and my attempt to make her eggs and bacon. Nope. She just wanted toast. With honey or jam or peanut butter? Nope. Just butter. She won't eat anything else for breakfast, which annoys me a lot. But it's her birthday and she gets whatever she wants for her birthday breakfast.

Not only did she want to have an ice skating party. But she also wanted to dress up 50s style for the ice skating party. So....despite my attempts to come up with lots of other ideas that didn't involve me freezing on the ice, she stuck to her original idea. Although I couldn't feel my fingers for 2 full hours, we had a lot of fun. I still like this girl.