Christmas morning has come and gone, and only one toy has actually been damaged.  Pretty good for three kids 5 and under.  The favorite present by far for Dom and Will was a replica of "The Polar Express":

This was quite a showstopper.  It didn't even matter that for 15 tense minutes the train appeared to not work.  The children have only briefly experienced battery run locomotives, so Will just got on the ground and started pushing it around the track.  Luckily, the problem was minor and the train continued its eternal trip to the North Pole steamed by 6 C-batteries and a couple of double A's that we had on hand.

We received this lovely name plate from Eric's parents.  In what must be record time, it is already hanging prominently in our living room.  Now we just have to figure out where to put the displaced pictures...

The family received Mario Kart for the Wii and it has been played multiple times.  For several weeks now, we had been making due with the N64 version where the boys pressed the "gas" and Eric and I steered.  Now the boys can play all on their own.  Our next step is to teach them that it is okay to lose, it just means you have to practice.  We also have to teach them that it is all right to turn off the game.  It will be there the next day.

Dominic received a tabletop foosball game.  It is the perfect size and he really gives you a run for your money.  Word is that Eric only beat him by a goal this morning.

Molly received this cute coat and a pair of mittens and hat from her grandparents.  These came just in time for winter.  She had been making due with some hand-me-downs from her brothers, which work, but it's always nice to be a little more fashionable.

Since early November, Dom has been saying that he wanted a Nerf Gun for Christmas.  Nothing says "Peace on Earth" like Nerf Guns.  As a special treat, the whole family got Nerf Guns (or generic ones) and we had a couple of battles.  Eric and Dom against Will and me.  Perhaps if Will had spent a little more time learning how to shoot and less time trash talking, our position would not have been overrun twice....Though,  he valiantly defended me when Eric tried to tackle me.  I might have gotten away if I hadn't been laughing... Almost immediately we realized that we would be needing a lot more ammunition (to allow for longer battles instead of taking breaks to crawl out into "no man's land" to retrieve errant shots as well as to replace those that have already been lost) and hit up the store yesterday.  I won't say how much we got, but we will not be running out soon.

William received a "Marble Works" package from Santa.  I really want the boys to do it themselves, but if I get going, I just can't stop.  Dominic will quickly learn, I'm sure, that if he just puts two pieces together I will cave and build one for them.  You should see the one I did today.  It is awesome.

And here is Molly on her "big" gift.  She loves it.  It is an activity table with three levels and it can also convert to an easel.  I hear it makes breakfast and cleans up after itself, but I've yet to see this in action.   She played on it all Christmas morning (once we let her out of her high chair).  We'd worried she'd get into the presents, but she was content to crawl around her table.

We also received several games (which we have played), some household items, a Darth Vader Mask and much much more.  I can't speak for the rest of the family, but my favorite gifts are the ones we can all do together.  And, of course, the Darth Vader Mask.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Pretty much since the last piece of pie was eaten on Thanksgiving, we've been preparing the house for Christmas.  We haven't had much snow to speak of and the weather is very mild, but we are getting in the festive mood!

 

The boys and Molly and I decorated a small tree and made a star for the top.  I won't ruin the surprise of where this tree ends up.  A word about the expression on Dom's face...I took two pictures and this was the better one.  Though the culprit in the other was William.

Our shoes awaiting the arrival of St. Nick (December 6).  Dom attempted to put out all of his shoes, but we dissuaded him from this.  Apparently, not everyone in America follows this tradition.  Luckily, I grew up in a household that did.  A good fortune that allowed me to win my table a round of drinks at a holiday party when the question was asked "What do children in Germany do the night before December 6th?"  Other people were looking up the answer on their smart phones.  I guess it just pays to be smart...and to have a German professor as a father!

The most popular gifts received were the slipper socks.  It worked out well as we had the heat off all day due to water in our vents.  I'll have another post about that later.  The boys were quite fashionable and had them pulled up to their knees on the outside of their pants most of the day.

Even Molly received a gift or two from the good saint.  And she loves them!

A later gift was a child friendly copy of "A Christmas Carol".  We've read it a few times and I will often catch Dominic paging through it on his own.

The second weekend of December we went to find our Christmas tree.  It was a beautiful day, but one of the coldest we've had.  I think we picked out the best tree we have ever had.  And I'm not just saying that.  I would also like to add it was much easier to walk around with Molly on my back than how I had to carry her last year!

We seem to have a tradition now of getting our tree on the second Saturday and then spending the afternoon of Sunday decorating it.  It was a wonderful afternoon with Christmas Carols playing a fake fire going on the tv (Thank You Netflix!).  The tree was a little bottom heavy with decorations.  Something we rectified as soon as Molly woke up from her nap.

The finished product.  Picture taken by D. Joseph Buschelman.

And here is our other tree in the family dog, Katie.  Sadly, the star blew off a couple of days later.  Probably should have glued it to the aluminum foil.  Ah well, live and learn.

I made it a priority to be done with Christmas shopping and wrapping by late last week (don't be too impressed, I'm not quite done, yet, but I did come pretty close to my goal) so that this final week of Advent could be devoted to baking and candy making.  The boys have helped with just about every aspect of the food prep.

And it has been a lot of fun.  Well, except for a tense moment last night when I was trying to roll out Springerli.  Though, I've decided that as long as they taste good, I won't sweat about the appearance.  Besides, I can always blame it on William.

My favorite part about having them help is that they insist on trying everything. The most helpful thing they did was unwrapping the hershey kisses while I rolled out the dough for peanut butter blossoms.  Oddly, the package was short a few candies...

An anecdote

We've been pretty busy around here getting ready for Christmas and I apologize for not having any pictures.   I need to remember to have Eric upload them to the computer tonight.  But for now I have a story I want to save for posterity.  William is in the final stages of potty training.  A few weeks ago I decided to start letting him wear underwear around the house.  This, of course, has meant I've cleaned up several accidents.  However,  we've hit upon a strategy that never worked for Dom, but seems to be just what William needs.  We set the kitchen timer for 45 minutes or an hour and have him go to the restroom when it beeps.  He is quite obedient about it and it has lead to several accident free days.  Though it might be working a little too well.  This morning when the timer beeped for Eric's coffee, William came into the bathroom and informed me that he had to use the toilet because the timer went off.  Did Pavlov have kids?

Working hard all day!

Here is another random post of pictures to give a sense of day to day activities.  William was eating his 100th pretzel when he realized that he had made a horse.  This has now become the new game to play when eating pretzels.  They really are pretty good at making letters.

Buzz Lightyear and Darth Vader doing battle over an espresso pot.  (Don't worry, Eric gave this to the boys to play with a long time ago.  No punishment was inevitable).  The boys are quite entertaining to listen to when playing with their action figures. Most of the dialogue consists of: "I am Darth Vader (audible breathing)" "I am Buzz Lightyear.  To Infinity and Beyond"  "I am Spiderman, I'm swinging into action".  and so forth.

I wrote several weeks ago about using scraps of paper to make mosaics.  Here are a few of the results.  Guess which is mine :).

As a cheapskate, I really hate to spend money when I can use things around the house for lessons.  A prime example is that we keep a tin of poker chips handy for addition and subtraction lessons.  Also sorting and patterns.  The chess pieces are great for learning how to pick up after yourself.

Molly knows that books are important, but has not quite figured out how they are.  As you can see, she confuses them with another important thing in her life:  Food.

Our "T" collage.  Dom is actually pretty bored with making the collages, but loves to help me come up with words.  A funny anecdote (at least to me) happened this week.  Some, if not all, of you know that I have some issues with the letter "C" and its existence.  This past week we were working on sounding out words and spelling.  I asked Dom to spell "Candy" (we are doing Christmas themed words).  He starts by saying "K", when he sees my expression he goes: "Oh, it sounds like K, but it looks like a C."  What a trooper!

I think Will took the above picture of our U words.  I explained to the boys that Uncle Sam was used as a code word for the United States.  They weren't very impressed.  But, umbrella was a huge hit. (stay tuned for pictures of the boys cavorting in our flooded backyard)

My attempt at being a little more fashionable.  And after all of that we were exhausted:

There's something about Molly...

It was 52 weeks tomorrow that my otherwise uneventful pregnancy suddenly became quite exciting.  Well, if having hours long monitoring sessions and never knowing from one appointment to the next if an immediate induction would be advised means exciting.  My anxiety level was through the roof.  This is the face of all the trouble!

The entire pregnancy I had told myself that we would get through one more Christmas with just the boys and then prepare for the arrival of the baby.  But, high blood pressure and a very relaxed baby changed all of that.  As a result, I was the most prepared for Christmas that I have ever been since I didn't know if I would have another day without a newborn to be taking care of.

Of course hindsight is 20/20 and I wish I could tell my 9 month pregnant self that everything would work out beautifully.  Perhaps some of those blood pressure readings would be a little lower.  I always knew the third child would be great (being a third myself), but there really is something about Molly.

Thanksgiving weekend!

Note:  We did eat food, a lot of it, but I have no pictures of it.  You can check out Eric's sister's blog for proof.  She also has some nice pictures of a frisbee golf outing we took on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

We celebrated Thanksgiving this year with Eric's siblings, Megan and Brian, and Megan's husband, Stephen.  They drove all the way from Oklahoma and having done this drive with three kids, we were grateful that they elected to make the trip.  After staying up late Wednesday night, we were all out of the house before 8 to run/watch the base Turkey Trot.

Dom took over as photographer and we have a lot of pictures of strangers running on a beautiful fall morning.  I believe that the below picture is Brian as he complained about being sore from being in a car for 15 hours...

Here we have Uncle Stephen (Scuba) right before he gave high fives to the boys.  Unfortunately, he gave Dom two high fives and William only one, a slight which Will felt acutely for about 10 minutes...

...Until Aunt Megan jogged by and rectified the situation.  William than proceeded to join her on the rest of the route where we hear he trash talked the rest of the 1.7 miles.  I have no idea where he gets that from...

Proof that the earlier picture was indeed Brian.  Dominic loves to cheer on the racers and occasionally race himself.  I personally like this picture of the Buschelman men.

Molly, I believe, enjoyed her time as a spectator.  I really need to remember to bring a stroller in the future.  I didn't run, but my arms were sore after carrying her from before the race started to the time her father finished.  She's cute, but can get heavy after about 30 minutes.

Our big runner finished strong.  He takes it pretty seriously and notes all the people he passes in a rather loud voice.  Of course, he will omit the fact that Megan had to carry him part of the way...

Eric's parents took the opportunity to unload a couple of boxes of "Eric Memorabilia" on us.  If we had known that these boxes held treasures, we would have collected them long ago.  Will loved this flight suit.  There are two, but the other one is even smaller.  Molly should be able to wear it in about a year.  Will also scored some sweet cowboy boots and Dom gets to wear a real soccer jersey from when Eric was in 1st grade.

Friday arrived with beautiful blue skies.  We held our 2nd Annual Buschelman Turkey Trot.  This consists of a run around the block (approximately .4 miles) with lots of cheering and noise making.  We invited our neighbors to join in the fun.

Dom easily beat the competition and enjoyed himself the entire way, waving to the crowd (me) and giving high fives.

William ran with his entourage and then gloated about the fact he beat them.  I wonder when the realization will hit that these two ladies graciously let him win...

We spent the rest of the day bowling and putting up some decorations.  Oh, and Eric brewed some beer.  Perhaps he can write a post about that at a later date.

Our little garden gnome:

Eric's sister and brother.  Photo taken by Dom.

We enjoyed all of our time together, but some of the best memories came after the kitchen was cleaned.  We broke out the N64 and played Mario Kart.  The boys chose whose lap to sit on and then pressed the gas.  Molly just clapped and tried to figure out why people weren't paying attention to her.

Look at the intensity:

It seldom got physical, but one can never be too prepared:

Group shot.  Brian was by far the dominant racer and when asked what they were thankful for, both boys said playing video games with Uncle Brian.

Once the kids went to bed, the rest of us played cards for hours.  This year we played the card game Scum.  I'm not sure who suggested it, but we decided that whoever was the lowest player had to wear some sort of head piece.  The following was one of the selections.  I will provide documentation of the rest in a later post.

Along with being thankful for Brian playing video games, the boys also said they were thankful to play with Uncle Stephen in the living room (which consisted of wrestling or an intricate game of hopping from pillow to pillow to avoid landing in water or hot lava) and that Aunt Megan ran with them in their race.  Even now, when we ask them to give three things they are thankful for, they will inevitably say that they are thankful that Megan, Stephen, and Brian came to visit.  And so are we!