caution: elves at work

(our new walkie talkie spy pens, thanks to wend and karl)

we knew the holidays were started off right when our first night of hanukah (how cool is it that i get to celebrate hanukah now??) gifts included a family of tape measures as a gentle hint from the boy that either: a) he was tired of having to go out to my car or dig through my purse anytime he wanted the tape measure, or b) he was tired of all of our pictures being hung unevenly on the walls

in honor of our recent mexico trip, i got him an electric wall-e toothbrush, complete with berry blast toothpaste.
(it was the "blast" part of the toothpaste that made the boy's hair look like he'd been electrocuted)

it only got better as we travelled down to the new mexico to spent christmas with the rents and sibs. maybe we didn't think it was getting better when we ran out of gas... i'd rather not talk about it...

at the homestead, we made, and delivered, our traditional christmas cookies (does anybody else still do door-to-door christmas caroling?? oh wait - we do!) then, off to see the luminaries, which is an awesome new mexican feature. it was even more awesome when my dad was sure he knew where this great lighted neighborhood was, got us lost a couple of times, then we got stuck in the middle of this completely blocked-off neighborhood - jammed between hundreds...maybe thousands of other cars, including this unmarked white van doused in blue christmas lights...?

then, in pure indiana jones style, my dad totally hoped a median right in front of a cop to get us outta there. i'm sure the brother's reading this right now thinking "it was not even a median. it was a curb. and the cop was all the way up the street." to which my response as the author of this post is, "creative liberty."

and then home to put on our elves hats and make the nephews some toys! (okay fine, i didn't put on an elf hat. i just took the picture)

and in the morning, the expected response was achieved

the boy and i had a good idea what we were getting from each other. i KNEW (at least hoped i KNEW) that the boy was getting me ddr. for those of you not hip enough to know the lingo, that stands for dance dance revolution. for those of you still lost.... well, i can't help you. anyway, let's just say that now i can - and probably will - dance my life away on a 3ft square pad.

the boy KNEW (at least he thought he did) what i was getting him. so i think he was a little shocked when he opened up his brand new mortel and pestle (which is actually a very cool little item). it's not what he thought i was getting him though. he kept looking in the box, trying to seem excited with his gift, but hoping that a sign of something more would magically appear.

and it DID appear when we all marched into the dining room! the boy looked like he was two! and i thought gibson was excited when he saw his space train

so, we had popcorn for our christmas breakfast...and lunch... and dinner... and every day since (ps, thanks for the scarf grandma and grandpa! it completes the perfect charles dickens image of a street popcorn vendor)

and here's mr. milo - all tuckered out after such an exhausting christmas morning

look how long he is. seriously. where did he come from?? he's got to be at least the same size as three subway $5 footlongs

our babies

according to makemebabies.com, this is what our kid will look like

1. we can't tell if it's a boy or a girl

2. he/she certainly didn't get MY ears!

3. not to brag or anything, but we made the cutest baby i've seen so far on this website, although he/she does look totally smug and stuck up. crap. 

and then we decided that one of the guys the boy works with looks like the love child between quentin tarentino and jude law. we're waiting to hear back from said guy to see if he'll donate a baby picture for us to compare...

p.s. might i emphasize that our e-baby is WAY cuter than jude and quentin's, because as smug as he/she is, he/she doesn't look 50... or maybe i've just got mommy eyes for my own offspring.jpg 

our tripod trip

leg 1: cancun

our mexican fiesta started off in cancun, where the boy's company takes its employees every year for christmas...i know - rough...

we stayed at the iberostar paraiso del mar, which i think literally translates into "that big ship that all the humans lived on in the movie wall-e." check out this description - it says it all.

with all our salmon colored couches, pillow menus and personal butlers et al., what were we to even do with ourselves?? why, try out the pillows of course

and then, we discovered the secret ingredient to the whole resort.

so we left in search of something less made-of-babies.

leg 2: sayulita

we flew from cancun into peurto vallarta where the plan was to go staight to yelapa (spoiler alert - leg 3 is yelapa). we instead decided to rent a car, buy a bag of oranges from some guy selling them in the middle of the highway (it was a hard choice between those and the giant reindeer antler pin cushions the lady next to him was selling), and drive up the coast to a lovely little town called sayulita.

we liked the town the second we drove in and saw a sign for the burrito revolution. step aside qdoba and chipotle. you've just been trumped by the world's best burritos.

while i would recommend visiting sayulita for sure, i would probably not recommend it during any sort of week long santa maria festival. you might be woken up at odd hours of the night to fireworks flying right past your window and think that your hotel room is under siege.

i would also recommend checking your time zone map before going. it turns out sayulita is part of the teensy little sliver of mexico in mountain standard time. when we drove from the airport to sayulita, we switched time zones and never even realized it until right before we were leaving to head back to peurto vallarta. good thing we got it straightened out though. it's always good to know what time it is

leg 3: yelapa

when you stay in an open-air pelapa in yelapa (shameless plug - casa aramara was AWESOME!! thanks, alex!), three things happen:

1. you for some reason always have the bananas in pajamas song stuck in your head, only replaced with the lyrics "pelapa in yelapa. do dee do do da dee."

2. you can't fall asleep any hour of the night because there's apparently a blind old senile rooster in the town that cock-a-doodle-doos his way all the way through the night

3. you get critters in your house.

we woke up one morning to find this crime scene

what animal comes in at night, eats a banana but leaves the peel, opens the fridge and takes one egg (ps, we had lots of good stuff in that fridge!) and then leaves his little grubby footprints all over the place?

i think it was a monkey. the boy thinks it was this monkey

other cool things about yelapa. they have multiple uses for soccer balls

people like our new friend tita live there


there's lots of bamboo shavings that come off the tree and make a decent paper substitute. since we had such a rockin pelapa, we decided on our last night there to throw a party for all of our new friends. and since we were feeling oober creative, we wrote our invites on these shavings

on our way back from delivering our invites, a bunch of the town kids came up to us and started telling us to drop those shavings right away. the little needles get on you and create a rash. luckily we had already distributed them all out...

people still showed up to our little party surprisingly, but everyone was at least an hour late. the more we thought about it, the more we realized that everything going on in this crazy place was about an hour late - people not showing up on time, things not being open on time...

then, on our very last night there, something clicked. after seeing half the town's clocks, we realized that the clock in our pelapa was an hour fast. we had spent the entire week an hour off. we were those old people who show up for dinner at 4pm and then go to bed at 10pm. all of our guests were right on time - we were the ones who were off!!

i guess our goal on the trip to "completely lose track of time" was accomplished

turkey lurkey day

sometimes thanksgiving brings mayflowers and other times it brings walkers. i can't really attest to how much people liked when it brought mayflowers, but i CAN say that we very much liked it when it brought walkers because the mom makes a dreamy stuffing and the brother made a killer yam/orange combination. i can just picture him in the kitchen thinking, "hmmm...yams are orange. and oranges are orange. and this crayon is orange." only i'm glad he left the crayon out. 

one time, i knew a girl who went on a color diet. she matched up days with colors and only ate certain colors on their designated days. i feel like i've shared this story before...no? 

anyway, bug didn't bring any food, but she brought herself, which is always more than enough entertainment for any holiday occasion. 

the boy made his first ever turkey and, are you ready for this, maxine - he even put onions in it! (this is a big deal because the boy is "sensitive to onions")

we ate a grandiouso feast on our new plates, a very generous house/wedding gift from the soon-to-be-parents-in-law (yes, the very same ones i got a speeding ticket with...i'm surprised they didn't instead get me a "how to drive slower" guide book)

look how lovely, but don't look too close or get too attached because that might seal our fate to host thanksgiving every year, in which case i might start threatening to make tofurkey for everyone. 

after dinner and a little i'm-full-of-turkey-and-stuffing-and-orange-yams-and-maybe-crayons walk around the block, the festivities continued with a celebration of gibson's fourth birthday! a present for the boy and the brother was conveniently planted amongst the others. as soon as gibson opened it, they snatched it away and started making ramps and obstacles for it. 

crew didn't need any toys. he just needed a cubby.