4th Annual St. Patrick's Day Party

We at TimBeck5 are big on family traditions. Truth be told, on occasion it feels like we're doing something just for the sake of keeping the festive tradition going.

Like, going to church.

Only kidding. Just wanted to see if anyone is reading this.

But not our annual St. Patrick's Day Party. This is one of our family favorites, as it combines friends, food, an instant playdate with our kids' friends, music, and a general oppportunity to celebrate one of my favorite holidays. Hard to believe this year was our 4th annual, and the first time that St. Patrick's Day fell on a Saturday. We had our friends the Evans, the Parkes, and the Madsens over to celebrate, and it was a lot of fun with 8 kids screaming, cheering, hitting balloons, and running amok in our green, white, and orange-decorated house!

Moose chillin' at his first St. Patrick's Day feis. He was generally in a good mood, eating Becky's green pasta salad.  

Three of the four dads: Me, Conan, and Romney.  

Awkward group photo #1. Photo #2 was even worse: darker, with closed eyes.  

Another feature of our St. Patrick's Day Party is my quiz. Each year, I compile anywhere from 10 to 20 multiple-choice and true-or-false questions about Irish history, music, culture, and geography. I'd like to think this is a real challenge, but I do make some questions ridiculously easy (like, "What's the name of the four-leafed plant synonymous with Ireland?"). This year's top scorer was Andrus, who got 8 of the 10 questions right. His reward was a gold-leafed chocolate wafer, stamped with a shamrock.  

I'll leave you with a sample of some of my favorite Irish music:

Wild Rover, and The Leaving of Liverpool, and The Minstrel Boy. Until next St. Patrick's Day!

One more from Utah

 Last Utah 2012 post...Breakfast with family! It seems that a lot of our activities revolved around the dinner table. Catching up with family, letting our young kids run around so we could have some adult conversation, and good food. Our Saturday morning breakfast with the Ross family was a highlight of our vacation.

(Above): Hey, it's the two people in our family who blog! 

 Bo the Master Chef and Moose, who loved his first waffle experience

 Our girls and their cousin Allie

Here's Moose, who was feverish to pet their dog Murphy every time he saw Murph. Moose was our only child who wasn't deathly afraid of dogs. His big sisters Goose (especially) and Mouse were borderline frantic whenever Murphy entered the room or was let out of his cage. 

So, looks like us getting a dog will wait a few more years!

A Dirty Day

Soundtrack to this post is U2's "Dirty Day," off of their massive musical detour Zooropa. Listening to it now, it's better than I remember. The New England winter ended on a summery note, with unbelievably awesome weather. We're talking bright sunny skies and temps in the 70s.
In mid-March.

It felt like we all had somehow relocated to San Diego, minus the palm trees, a terrible baseball team, and slightly even more expensive real estate. Our girls reveled in the warmer weather. Shorts and t-shirts replaced leggings, jeans, hoodies, and hats. They spent as much time outside on certain days as they had in some previous winters, start-to-finish. It was magnificent, a little slice of heaven.

I came home from work one afternoon last week to find my little girls playing in their dirt pile next to our square foot garden/"square foot constant-reminder-that-my-green-thumb-must-have-been-severed -at-birth." Smudges on their cowboy boots, dusty little fingers, and dirty knees welcomed me home, with the sound of their laughter ringing in the springtime air. Goose and Mouse thought they looked cute all dusty. But a twinkle in their eye tipped me off to their mischief, because they then patted their faces with their dirty hands, leaving them looking like this:   

The U2 song ends with a haunting chorus, with the phrase "Days, days, days run away like horses over the hills." It's one of my most favorite lyrics in any U2 song.

And, of course, it is very apt as it relates to being a parent with young children. The days all run together quickly, in one mass stampede to a moving, undelineated future that no parent can hold back:

the time when their children grow up.

Another favorite U2 song of mine, "Kite," also deals with the themes of parenthood and realizing that your children are becoming more independent, self-sufficient, and their own persons. It is riveting to see it in hindsight, and difficult to track as your kids move out of one stage and into another; they all seem to blend together.

I'll remember this Dirty Day, for my daughters' simple joys at not being weirded out getting dirt on their clothes and on their faces. For their uninhibited sense of fun. For not caring what anyone thinks of their playtime and creativity. For their excitement at their daddy coming home from work.

Utah family time

I have this nagging sense that if I bypass our Utah recap in favor of more recent photos, our dwindling audience of readers will join the exodus to other electronic pastimes. And, I may never get to post all of these shots again, so time is of the essence. So, without further ado, here is our almost-last post about our fun-filled two-week vacation in Utah.

What made our time there so fun was seeing family, so this post is a tribute to those people who filled our days and hearts with their time and attention. It was a great vacation, and we struck a better balance than on previous trips in terms of seeing exactly who we wanted, and not running ourselves around trying to see everyone who lives in Utah who has ever crossed our paths in life.

Grandma Mary Ann made this sign to welcome us to her home. Someone made the observation toward the end of the trip that the red dots look like the Wonder Bread packaging.

Becky and Brandon, who was the first non-grandparent to spend time with us once we touched down. He kindly took some time from work to meet with his clients/relatives, and to chase our girls around a chilly but beautiful Temple Square.

Becky and Debbie, who entertained me and opened my ears to some of my Utah viewpoints. We had a great few hours visiting with her, John, and their four kids in the middle of the state. It was cool to have some time devoted to each family all on our own.
 

Becky and her sister Jodi. I wondered if our visits to their house were overkill (I think we crashed their place 5 times over a Friday and a weekend), but they always made us feel welcomed with laughs and good food and company.

Girl cousins! Our daughters were in heaven hanging out with their cousins Lindsey (in back, whom they called "Loodoo" on our last trip to Utah in the summer of 2010) and Madison, in front. They begged for more time to hang out, jump on the trampoline, and just have fun.

Our girls with Allie, their cousin whom they saw the most on this trip. Allie was a great sport, sharing her dolls and toys and books.

Our girls with their closest cousin in age, Graham. His brother Harrison was home napping, I think. He was born at the tail-end of 2007, the year that Goose was born. They all had fun jumping and rough-housing in Graham and Harrison's basement.
 

John and his boys Cameron and Jake, who was super eager to show us his Airsoft guns.

Becky's cousin Sariah, holding Moose. We had an awesome afternoon catching up with her and her family at Becky's parents' house. We are trying to convince them and help them move to Boston. Our fingers are crossed!

Grandpa Fred took some time off of work a few days to spend with us. Here he is, hitting Temple Square with our trio, en route to the Church History Museum in downtown Salt Lake City. 

Mouse and Grandma, for whom we gave Mouse her middle name. She has been saying her full name for almost a year by saying, "...Grandma Maryann Wilson." Our kids spent the most amount of time with Grandma than anyone else on this trip. They did crafts, they colored, they helped make cookies and decorate cakes, and they got along well.

Here we are with Jenny and Matt in their basement. They were kind enough to let us crash their place on short notice and let our daughters jump all around their basement with their boys. Each family visit was special, strengthening our ties to far-distant family members. It made us wish that we lived closer. Maybe someday, we will. It was one of the best trips we have taken as a family, and the longest by far.

It left me feeling like I could actually live in Utah, which is a sentiment I had not felt on any previous trip. So, we'll see.  But we were also delighted to come back to our own life, at our own pace, in New England. Bon voyage to our awesome time in the temple-dotted land of Utah!

10 Months!

Happy 10 Months today to Our Mighty Moose! Here is to our "Chub and Bub," as I call him. Becky calls him "Mr. Moo." Either way, we are verbally reinforcing to him that he is a chunker. Not sure that's going to boost his self-esteem, but it's a habit that I'm trying to break of using that nickname. That's him with Nana (my Mom), taken on a pristine Sunday afternoon a few days ago, in an Irish knit-sweater that my grandmother made for me.

Here are some things that Mr. Moose is up to these days:

• Eating adult foods. In the last month, he has had lasagna, eggs, thin-sliced pork, whole yogurt, red seedless grapes, bananas, cold cereal flakes, pancakes, and a host of other foods--all with just 2 teeth in his head!
• Has this loud, shrill, and hilarious YIP sound when he sees me in the morning and when I come home before 5:30. I need to record it, before he's on to other sounds and this cute call will forever be gone.
• Pulling himself up our front hall staircase. It has about 15 steps, with a landing before the final 3. He still looks back at us for reassurance, but I think he's gaining confidence and will soon zip up the stairs without looking back.
• Sleeping through the night, most nights. Although lately, he usually cries for a few minutes between 8pm and 10pm.
• Crawling like crazy, and he's getting faster, too! I dreamed last week that he was trying to keep pace with us while we crossed in a cross-walk, but he got tired of crawling (not sure why no one was holding him!). When I looked back, Moose had decided to start walking right then and there! His earliest steps looked like an orangutan walking.
• His top two teeth have finally come through, and it looks like the little teeth on either side will break through soon.
• Last night, for the first time, he tried to feed a bottle to himself. 
• His vocabulary of "words" is limited to Mama, Dada, and Bub. He tends to babble in long waves, interspersed with long periods of silence, shrieking, crying, and contentment.
• Favorite bad hobby? Sticking his hands in the toilet bowl. He is mesmerized by the circling water in sinks and toilets.
• No longer nursing. He hasn't really seemed interested in it since about Christmas, when he was 7 months old.
• He loves to pat my left shoulder whenever I pick him up. He also likes getting his head scratched (just like Dear Old Dad). 
 

And that's the latest and greatest from Our Mighty Moose!

#737: The plane ride West

Thought it was appropriate to tie-in our 737th post on TimBeck5 to our most recent airplane experience. Get it? Blog post #737, a 737 is a plane...anyone with me?!

 1 family, 2 planes, 3 kids, 6+ hours in the air! The thought of it almost made me never want to fly again.

Becky and I were anxious and curious to see how our brood would do on our flight to Utah. We left home at 6:45 a.m., left Logan at 9:00, and got to Detroit around 11:30. We then had less than an hour in The Motor City before our second leg, to Salt Lake. Our girls loved the red Express Tram in Detroit and the slow- moving conveyor belt walkways in Boston and Detroit.

Turns out, we had nothing to worry about. All three of our kids were simply terrific. Cooperative, kind, and quiet. Of course, Daddy bringing his iPad along for the ride certainly helped. That way, one of our kids was so focused on puzzles and doodling and zoning out, that we basically just had to focus on the other two. Our girls were a dream--either they were into the iPad, or they listened to MP3-type players we loaned from our library. Seriously...I know that people, including like, tend to go overboard while blogging or Facebooking sometimes and brag about their kids/families.

But in this case, the bragging is swear-on-a-Bible legit. Sure, Moose could have used more than just two 45-minute naps. But he never screamed, whined, or bothered people around him. When we landed in Salt Lake, I lifted him above my head in my seat. The woman sitting behind me said, "What? There was an infant in front of me this whole time? He was perfect!"

The flight home? The same, especially since we had the iPad, the MP3's, and, on this flight, a small video screen at every seat. Our girls tuned out by tuning in to "Dora" and other kids shows. Yeah, so we exposed our girls to about 2.5 straight hours of TV, plus commercials...but we were all relaxed and comfortable.

If every flight was like that there-and-back one, we would not worry about flying with young kids. I thought for sure I would have blown a gasket somewhere over Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but thankfully, everyone in our family was chill and cooperative. I think it helped that, aside from Boston to Detroit, our whole family was not sitting in the same row. From Detroit to Salt Lake, and Salt Lake to Boston, it was: parent with infant and girl, and other parent with other girl, with about 6 or more rows separating us. The lack of proximity probably meant a much lower risk of fighting over the same book or toy.

Whatever it was that worked, it was awesome! More to come.

And here's a video of one of my favorite '60s songs, "The Letter" by the Box Tops (probably better known as "Gimme a Ticket for an Aeroplane"). The video provides some great high comedy, as these dudes painfully and pathetically lip-synch to their #1 hit, the best chart-topper of 1967--45 years ago!

Girls' haircuts

Not to be outdone by their little bro and their mom, our girls begged to have their long hair cut while we were in Utah. As a matter of fact, Goose has been asking off-and-on for about 18 months to get her hair cut. She frequently commented to us that she wanted her hair to be like her friends Ava's and Ellie's. We kept punting on her request, because we liked her long hair. But it also made bathing and drying a longer effort, and by the time she was about to turn 5, Goose's hair was half-way down her rib cage.
Like in many other ways, Mouse wanted to be just like her big sister. Her hair wasn't as long as Goose's, and it is thinner and more manageable. She wasn't as invested in getting a haircut because, well...she's a little more content with things as they are in life. Mouse has a very laidback style, for a 3-year-old. She does not make much fuss about anything.

On our last Friday in Utah, we left Moose with Grandma and took our girls to their big date at the hair dresser Nanette's house. Of course, we wanted to document the occasion:

Mouse was a little apprehensive, as you can tell in the photo above. When she's nervous or uncertain about what's going on around her, she doesn't tend to ask questions. She just quietly hovers near us and looks at her feet or at us. I call it the "perplexed pensive" look. Mouse has it mastered.

And here she is, just a little while later, hanging out at her cousin Allie's house! To us, Mouse instantly looked older. Haircuts on kids tend to have that affect. We thought she looked awesome, and she loved the attention from her grandparents, us, and aunts and uncles. It only made my little girl even more adorable!

And here are photos of Goose, before and after:

Both girls really wanted to keep their shorn ponytails. They spent the next few days showing them off to family! Goose was sort or repulsed by hers at first, but once Mouse got hold of it and was playing with it (with me) while she waited her turn in the chair, Goose suddenly became very interested in having her ponytail back.

I love this photo of Our Dear Goose, excitedly examining her new haircut!

Here is Goose, who was just three days away from turning 5. Her new 'do made her look even older. We were very pleased with our daughters' haircuts and with how excited they were to get cuts. It was a highlight of the trip for both of them! And wouldn't you know...we have somehow misplaced the plastic baggies that hold our daughters' cut ponytails. I guess their interest in the old locks did not last long.