Halloween 2012

RJ was Harry Potter, since he has been LOVING the books (we've been reading them at bedtime!).  His was an easy decision.  Logan was a little more indecisive, but we finally settled on Hedwig (Harry Potter's snowy owl).

RJ in his school's Costume Parade

RJ's Kindergarten Class

After School, RJ & I carved pumpkins together.

Logan was there too, but he mostly ran away with the pumpkin tops and tried to destroy them.

Logan and RJ with their Jack-O-Lanterns

Hedwig and Harry

I love this picture of my cute little Hedwig

Candy Corn Parfaits for a light dinner (Mandarin Oranges, Pineapples,  Honey sweetened Plain Yogurt)

Trick-or-Treating with our friends

Group Picture

Post-Trick-or-Treating Crash

More Halloween Pictures here.

DreamWorks Easter Egg Hunt - April 6, 2012

 DreamWorks had their annual Easter Egg Hunt on Good Friday, so I drove the kids in for the festivities. They had on adorable matching shirts, but RJ insisted on wearing his dinosaur costume the entire time and we never got a picture of Logan without his jacket on!  Anyway, after Lunch with Daddy, the kids ran around picking up eggs.

 RJ spotted the Easter bunny and gave him a hug.









Logan was a little apprehensive of the giant white bunny.

But he was interested in the bunny and did some approaching, then flirting from afar, then running away.

Then we stalked the bunny for a little while (see video)

And then he finally hugged the Easter Bunny so we could leave!

RJ & Logan get a visit from a Leprechaun!

We didn't do much for St. Patrick's Day, but the leprechauns paid the kids a little visit.

They dumped Logan's toys and left green footprints on the dresser (on their way out the window, of course).

They messed up RJ's bed and dumped his clothes.

And left those pesky green footprints.

And left GREEN pee in the toilet!  Silly leprechauns!

Happy Valentine's Day from the DeLanceys

Valentine's Day around here was good.  We started the morning out with homemade heart shaped cinnamon rolls with Bagels, cream cheese and lox (because it's yummy AND pink).

The boys put on their "Spud Muffin" shirts and we headed off to preschool with RJ's 28 owl valentines (it's a miracle they were done on time since we made them ourselves and RJ signed each one!  Thankfully, the teachers asked that they not be addressed, so we didn't have to do that!).  Friends and family should be getting their Owl Valentines soon (I put them in the mail today.  Yes, I realize it's March, but we wanted to finish them!).




The party at RJ's school was WAY longer than I thought it would be.  We got there at 10am and didn't leave until nearly noon.  While his preschool is normally very organized, it's clear that losing one head teacher to another job and having the director out on maternity leave made a huge difference!  It took a while to even get started, but Logan enjoyed the extra playtime in RJ's classroom, and pretty much ate his lunch in healthy and not-so-healthy party food at 11:30.

When Logan and I finally got home and I got him down for a nap, it was time for me to get moving on making our fancy dinner.  I made roasted duck with pomegranate reduction sauce and corn cakes topped with garlic, bacon, smoky mozzarella kale saute (which I also drizzled with the pomegranate sauce!).  Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the pretty presentation of the adult plates, but I did get pictures of the kids eating theirs!  The corn cakes were a huge hit with them!  And RJ even ate some of his kale, so I think it's clear that we all enjoyed dinner!

For dessert I made strawberry chocolate yogurt parfait popsicles.  (Basically pureed strawberries on top of strawberry-yogurt puree on top of strawberry-yogurt-chocolate custard ice cream puree).

After the kids' ate their popsicles and we got them to bed, us parents got to drink wine, have dinner together, and watch Glee (which had an AWESOME valentine's day episode!)  All in all, it was a great day!
More pictures here.

DeLancey Family Christmas 2011

Our Christmases have usually involved insane travel.  In the 10 years that Lance and I have lived together, we have only stayed in our own house for the holidays once, when I was 8 months pregnant with Logan.  However, this year was our first Christmas home alone without any family members with us, so it was a little lonely, but we still managed to have a good time.

Interestingly, Logan is now close to the age RJ was when we first did Christmas at home, so we think, as was true for RJ back in 2009, that it was a good year to establish our Christmas traditions at home and to reinforce some family traditions that would happen regardless of where we are.

Christmas Eve:
We started by cleaning the house.  This isn't a tradition, but I didn't get to it during the week since I was busy procuring groceries, making teacher gifts, making and drying kluski noodles, etc. on top of all the normal craziness.  Then Logan's naptime involved putting RJ in front of the TV and doing some covert Santa wrapping.  And then cooking.

 I made my Dad's family's traditional Polish Wigilia meal, which involves a fruit compote, mushroom gravy (which is traditionally made with imported dried mushrooms from Poland, but they are crazy expensive out here and I'd have to go to San Francisco to get them - so I used Porcinis, which are close, but not quite the same), homemade kluski, a rice-apple-raisin casserole, boiled potatoes, peas, rye bread, fish (I made beer battered cod, my family has been doing halibut since my grandparents stopped camping and fishing all summer long to have enough bass), and pickled herring.  Last time I made the Wigilia dinner, I forgot the rye bread.  In similar form, this year I remembered the bread, but forgot to make the peas (which is by far the EASIEST to make).

The best moment from this meal was when RJ proclaimed (referring to the pickled herring), "Mom, I like this Polish Sushi!" (which is what I called it to get him to try it). And while RJ and Logan didn't like everything on their plates, both of them tried everything, which I was very happy with.

After eating and clearing the table, the kids opened presents from Grandpa, Great Grandma & Great Grandpa (from whom they would receive gifts on Christmas Eve normally), and got the book "Twas the Night Before Christmas" (to read at bedtime) from us. After opening gifts we drank eggnog and let the kids stay up a little later to play with their new toys.

And then after getting the children nestled all snug in their beds and were satisfied that visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads, mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap did not settle our brains for a long winter’s nap, but instead set to work assembling Logan's Plan City Parking Garage (easy) and RJ's new bike (pure hell) while eating the cookies that RJ so lovingly set out for Santa us (I also made sure to snap the carrots off the carrot tops [returning them to the fridge] to make it look like the reindeer got their treat too).

The end product was a very nice looking display of Santa magic under the tree.

Which brings us to Christmas Morning:

Here Logan enjoys his new
Pillow and Blanket

There's not much to write about Christmas morning.  The kids opened their gifts with fervor and played with them.  And we ate chocolate chip pancakes.  It was how Christmas morning should be.  We actually filmed the whole thing, which is why there aren't a lot of pictures, but someday I will edit and then post the video too.

Christmas Dinner:

Since we were Christmas orphans, our friends the Goldsmiths invited us to share in their family Christmas festivities.  They are Russian Orthodox, so there are some Christmas Eve similarities that we talked about.  RJ and Logan enjoyed playing with Maddie and Hannah and their cousins Jayden and Jack (the kids are all around the same age, so it worked out well).  I was really impressed with RJ at dinner time.  He was really well behaved, stayed in his seat, and ate really well.  I think the delicious food had something to do with that. We started out with the broccoli cheese soup I brought, then had Beef Tenderloin with a side of Horseradish cream sauce, twice baked potatoes, jello salad, asparagus, and bread. After the way RJ ate, he definitely deserved the big dessert of cookies, ice cream, and chocolate cake!  It was an excellent Christmas Evening and we're grateful that Ashley and Jason shared their family with us!

Overall, I think our Christmas was fantastic!  Santa was very good to us!  More pictures here.

Pre - Christmas Activities 2011

Our holiday season kicked off with St. Nicholas' Day (December 6, errr the 7th in our case because I forgot until the morning of the 6th...oops).  RJ and Logan found some Christmas essentials in their shoes: New flannel PJs for Christmas Morning (Cars for RJ, Thomas for Logan), Santa Hats, and Cars Christmas ornaments.






Then we baked a massive batch of Gingerbread Cookies for our friends' Cookie Swap party (and us too).  The kids were huge fans of the process, mostly the sneaking dough while rolling them out and then the traditional eating dough off the beater and the spatula.










Next up was getting our tree and seeing Santa Claus, which we already posted about!  Here, you get to see the decorating process. 

I have a love/hate relationship with the tree.  I love it because it's pretty and gets us all into the Christmas spirit and it's fun to decorate.  I hate it because for about a month, it's one more thing that I have to keep Logan and the cats, and occasionally RJ away from (Logan loves to take the ornaments off and throw them across the room or run away with them, and the cats like to walk under the tree, knocking off low-hanging ornaments and Boca loves to knock them off with his paws too).  Also, since we had a real tree,  it loses needles, particularly after the first week when I forget to water it.  But it smells amazing and looks so pretty that even with it's problems, I love it more than I hate it!


Then, we saw Santa again, this time with our co-op buddies at the Bass Pro Shop, where each kid gets a free picture.  Interestingly, I think the free picture(s) came out better than the one we paid for at Dell Osso.  And Logan got one on his own because he ran up to Santa before RJ caught up!

We also made more cookies - this time my mom's amazing butter cookies (also known as "frosted sugar cookies", "frosted cutouts" or "Kris Kringels" depending on who you are).  We let RJ stay up late that Friday night to finish decorating them with the colored sugar and sprinkles...which, he clearly enjoyed as evidenced by the floor afterward.

 And just in case that wasn't enough Christmas, we also drove to San Francisco to meet up with a family friend to see the big ass Christmas tree in Union Square, the decorated store fronts, and a gigantic gingerbread house in the Westin St. Francis Hotel lobby.  Even more fun for the boys though was riding in the decorated Cable Car!





More Christmas Celebration pictures here.

DeLanceys Get a Tree and See Santa - December 10, 2011

It's that time of year.  The time of year when the children want to see the big fat bearded guy to beg him for presents and the time to get a tree.  Luckily, we happen to live about 20 minutes from a nice place that does both.  Dell Osso Farms (of corn maze and pumpkin patch fame) also does "Holidays on the Farm" during the month of December.

Our first stop was their country store, where Santa was hanging out. I think this is better than some of RJ's past pictures with Santa, but Logan looks confused.












Next, Santa let us know that Rudolph (err..."Rudolpho") was with him and resting in a pen.  RJ loved this since it was early in his intense Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer obsession.  He had already started wearing the first of his red noses at this point, and it would later progress to a daily wearing of the nose 2.0, the antlers, and the tail.  However, as much as RJ loved it, it made me a little sad, because I don't think that Reindeer should be living in a sad little pen in the dirt on a farm in Lathrop, CA.  And it made me wonder where the poor creature lives during the other 11 months of the year when reindeer aren't so popular.  Rudolpho should really be in the woods somewhere.

After seeing Santa and Rudolph, we picked out our tree and strapped it to the car.

We kind of wished we could've done a little more there - they had Ice Skating and Snow Tubing (which Logan was still too small for), but we ran out of time and so we'll have to go back before the fake snow and ice goes away.

For the rest of the pictures, click here.

Thanksgiving 2011

We did things a little different this year.  Usually, I cook and we occasionally have visitors join us, whether from out of town or local.  This year we were invited to our friends' house to share their Thanksgiving meal.



For a change of pace (and because we would be pretty much the only ones who ate Turkey), we had butternut squash raviolis, along with a potato-fennel gratin that I made and brussels sprouts, followed by a wonderful apple pie!  The food was delicious and we had a wonderful evening with our friends, the Reichguts and their family.


It really was a perfect night; RJ and Logan got to play with their friends Zach and baby Austin, and we got to engage in some adult conversation at the table while Zach and Austin's Nonno entertained Logan!  Both boys love Nonno, who actually lives in our neighborhood and whom we get to see when Zach visits him and we meet at the park.


For those of you who up until now might be worried that Lance didn't get to eat turkey and stuffing this year, have no fear!  We decided to have our Thanksgiving party on Black Friday instead of on Thanksgiving, so we had turkey and stuffing (which RJ & Logan helped make with their bread tearing assistance), mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberry sauce, candied yams, and green bean casserole. And LOTS of pie...Ashley and Jason's Amazing Apple, and my usual - pumpkin and pumpkin cheese.  Two other families with kids our kids' ages joined us and we had a great time!  RJ & Logan even got to have a movie night with Maddie and Hannah since they were staying the night!
More pictures here.