But we started the day with Brandon’s delicious homemade bagels. When we have our act together, we have a weekly tradition of having whole wheat bagels and smoothies on Saturday morning. As Brandon was putting the bagels in the oven we realized that we didn’t have any cream cheese so the kids and I took a quick trip to the store.

Shhh…don’t tell Brandon but I got the kids a donut at the store. It keeps them quiet.

Of course, the point of getting the kids donuts is to bribe them into sweetness and compliance but when Sylvie finished hers and wanted to eat George’s and was told that this was not going to happen, this is what I got:

When we got home the bagels were ready and we sat down to a wonderful breakfast.

William especially loved the smoothie!

After we were finished the kids headed outside. I should take just a moment to say that you will see several remarkable outfits that Sylvie picked herself. We start with this one which I call “ballerina grunge”:

And here she is in our dying peach tree:

George took advantage of the beautiful day to do a little outdoor yoga.

I was able to capture this video of all of George’s sweet moves.

Then George got distracted by these creepy crawlies

And he found a wasp nest which he thought was just about the coolest thing ever!

William spent some time helping his daddy fix the fence.

The kids had a great time playing outside and with each other.

Speaking of, I caught his little interaction on film.

The look on William’s face there is priceless. He’s completely betrayed.

And now it’s time to introduce another Sylvia outfit. This one is called “Recapturing Youth”.

Perhaps you noticed the sticker on the back of her pants. If you blew this picture up you would find that the sticker reads “18 months”. Yes, those are William’s pants that Sylvie insisted were hers. A few minutes later decided that this outfit was not complete without a little French flair.

We have a lot more work to do in the backyard as it is currently ripped to shreds. Tomorrow our peach tree will be cut down and as soon as the snow melts from the predicted blizzard that’s coming, the dead bushes and grapevines/nightmare trellis will be removed as well. And, of course, there are the giant blocks of cement that for some reason the previous owners decided to bury in the backyard?! I am seriously considering turning their last name into a substitute swear word but my mother taught me better.

Regardless, I love having a backyard to enjoy with my family and I think it’s important for the children to see me carry around 50 lb. blocks of cement so they know not to mess with me! in all seriousness though, I have been so much more appreciative of the small, simple moments I get with my children, they just seem magical right now.

Life is precious.

I have to be honest though, a New Year’s Eve birthday is hard. If William had given us a chance, we would never have chosen this time of year for a birthday but since he didn’t, we have to find some way to make it special.

We failed this year, William’s birthday was an unmitigated disaster. Both Brandon and I were exhausted from the holidays by the time New Year’s Eve rolled around. We had a series of unfortunate circumstances that occurred including a cake failure.

The cake was supposed to look like this:

But ended up looking like this:

By the time this happened I was done and declared a do-over and that we would be celebrating William’s birthday on New Year’s day instead. Luckily he’s one and doesn’t know the difference.

We did have a sweet end to the day, a tender mercy. We have a couple missionary in our ward who dropped off a cupcake for William’s birthday that allowed us to light a candle, sing Happy Birthday and let our prescious little boy stuff his face with chocolate cake.

New Year’s Day was much better and we were able to celebrate in a much better way. After we got home from church we opened Baby William’s birthday presents.

William loved opening presents!

He had an interesting technique, though.

We ended the day by eating my disastrous cake. It might of looked disgusting but the combination of chocolate and salted caramel was delicious!

And William loved it!

So maybe William’s 1st birthday didn’t go exactly as planned but it ended okay. And luckily we have a couple of years to figure our how to balance the holidays with his birthday.

My William continues to be a surprise and delight! It is hard for me to see him grow up and become a toddler because he is my baby. But I know that as he grows he will continue to surprise me, make me laugh and bring joy to my life and that is a future I very much look forward to.

Most won’t care to view all of this, but each clip has a little charm that makes it worth clicking “play.” (My personal favorite is number four.)

Things getting underway:

Checking out the stockings:

Discovering the new play kitchen from Nanny and Grandad:

William and his Christmas orange:

Kiddie cameras from Grandma and Grandpa:

This year I’ve been tasked with a getting a letter to Santa filled with Christmas wishes from the family.

Well, we’ll just have to see if they’ve been good enough to get what they want.

The Naughty

The Redhead:

Let’s be honest, nine blog posts for an entire year is completely unacceptable. Doesn’t the Redhead know that her one major duty as a modern Mormon woman is to keep a mommy blog full of idyllic family scenes. If Salon knows this then she should too. Sure, you can justify her failures with a multitude of excuses ranging from working on her thesis, perpetual exhaustion, a surprise baby resulting in three children age 4 and under. Blah blah blah. Excuses aren’t enough to get you on the nice list. Plus, while I was snooping around doing my job, I came across this little thing:

Yeah, I don’t even know what to do with this…

And don’t think for one second that winning the Best Costume trophy at the Ward Trunk-or-Treat for the costumes she designed and hand-made for her children is enough to negate this. It isn’t.

Moving right along, making his second appearance on the naughty list

Baby William:

Yes, maybe he is as cute as a pumpkin…

Sorry, couldn’t resist. Nevertheless, cute doesn’t make up for the fact that this kid is still waking up twice during the night and he turns one year old in a week! No wonder the Redhead is such a mess.

It is also a personal belief of mine that any baby that doesn’t enjoy horse kisses is automatically suspect.

And in true William fashion, he has yet to walk and seems disinclined to do so. No big deal unless you have to walk in order to go to school, which William does so the Redhead can finish her thesis.

So naughty it is. Man, two years in a row and the kid isn’t even one yet. I’m afraid William will always have a place on the check twice list. Tragic.

(Since I am one of Santa’s elves I am required by cosmic law to mention some positives for each child. William is the cutest and friendliest baby that was ever born. True Fact. He is an expert clapper and says the word “duck” with gusto.

Plus, he is dapper just like his dad so maybe there is hope for him in the future.)

The Nice

The Bald One:

Let’s face it, this man is a saint. Do you know how crazy this family is? He lives by that most Santa-like mantra that it’s more fun to be happy than sad. Or he has been lobotomized. One or the other.

Anyway, he’s a great dad!

And he scraped off all that popcorn on the ceiling of the Triangle House which automatically put him on the nice list.

Sylvia:

Sylvia turned three this year and it’s a little known fact that Santa Claus loves three-year olds!

I know it’s weird but after observing Sylvie I can say without hesitation, she deserves to be on the nice list.

She is such a helpful girl and brings so much joy into the world! Plus, she spells her name better than any three-year old I know. Oh, I just know Santa loves this girl.

George:

I have to be honest, I was worried about George at the beginning. He started the new year by throwing a toy train at his one week old brother. And then, of course, there was the beautiful mural he drew on his Auntie Weasie’s bedroom wall.

Permanent marker and plaster walls are a tricky medium but George took to it like a true master.

However, George really turned it around and has had a great year. He’s a wonderful brother, a diligent student,

And a king among boys.

In my humble elfish opinion, despite two out of three naughty redheads, the Matthews pretty great and I feel lucky that they’re my family.

Trust me, it could be a lot worse. You should see my friend Zarkle’s family, two words:  Train. Wreck.

Well, I’ve got to get back to the North Pole and hand in my report. See you next year!

]]> http://symphoniadomestica.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/2011-naughty-or-nice-report/feed/ 2 mraynes Christmas 2011 001 Christmas 2011 006 photo (17) 2011 Pics 022 photo (18) photo (19) photo (20) 2011 Pics 032 2011 Pics 033 photo (21) photo (22) photo (23) photo (25) 2011 Pics 091 photo (26) 2011 Pics 242 photo (27) photo (28) 2011 Pics 178 2011 Pics 028 photo (29) photo (30) http://symphoniadomestica.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/jingle-kazoos/ http://symphoniadomestica.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/jingle-kazoos/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:41:11 +0000 brandonsmatthews http://symphoniadomestica.wordpress.com/?p=1052 ]]> Happy holiday greetings from George and Sylvia. I am confident that they will soon hit Vegas with their kazoo duo show.

This performance was recorded while waiting for the Denver Parade of Lights in what had to be the coldest night in recent memory. It didn’t phase these two.

Now I’m afraid Meghan is an overworked mother of three and earnest grad student laboring to birth a fourth child: her thesis.

So the time has come for me to reclaim my original role as family blogger. No doubt Meghan will still contribute in the future, but for now I’m taking responsibility for keeping you all updated on the goings on at Chez Matthews, especially now that the holidays are in high gear.

To easy myself back into this role, I begin with a short, easy post.

George has spent his first semester at public school developing some serious artistic skills. We’ve all long known that he’s a sensitive young man with creative impulses, but the kid has some serious artistic talent as an illustrator!

His greatest opus to date, titled “Polar Express”:

Now, I don’t know about you, but George at age 4 can draw a locomotive better than I at age 31. But that’s not even the part the artist is most proud of. Upon presenting it to me, George said, “Look, Dad, his hair is BROWN!”

More recently, but still on the holiday theme, George drew snowmen:

Who knows what the future holds, but George’s may well be in the visual arts. If he wants to pursue it, that is …

I’d love to show you progress on our house but honestly, there hasn’t been much since we moved in. We’ve tried to not let the craziness of our life take over so Brandon and I have worked hard to do some fun things with the kids. 

The Denver County Fair was in town a couple of weeks ago so we took the kids to experience that very American of institutions. We went to go see the animals first and George and Sylvie loved petting the animals.

I didn’t get any pictures of it but the kids especially liked the chickens. I’ve been trying to convince Brandon that we should get two backyard chickens so we could have local, cage-free eggs. He’s been less than enthusiastic about this idea but now I can make George and Sylvie my co-conspirators.

After we spent some time with the animals we went outside to the rides. I’ll be honest, carnival rides make me nervous–being completely filthy and being set up by carnies does not inspire a whole bunch of confidence in a mother’s heart. Nevertheless, we went on the carousal and ferris wheel and had a good time.

Don’t you love the look of complete terror on Sylvie’s face as we fly by the highway overpass?

The next week the kids’ preschool threw an end of the summer carnival which was so much fun.

There was cotton candy, snow cones, face painting, games.

It was nice to connect with other students, parents and teachers at the place that we have really loved and that has meant so much to our kids.

And if nothing else, the Auraria Early Learning Center indulged Sylvia’s most recent desire to become a “princess cat”.

So yes, it has been a crazy summer but we’ve also had a lot of fun. And now that most of the craziness is over, we’re looking forward to getting back into a schedule and getting settled in our home.

I hope the rest of you have had an equally busy but fun summer!

Our number one priority in looking for a new house was staying downtown. We love living in the city but we were afraid that real estate would be just out of our reach. Well there was literally one house that we could afford that suited our needs. The triangle house…

I was driving around one day and saw a for sale sign up and just knew that this would be our home. I was instantly attracted to the charming art deco features and George loved the house because of its distinctive shape. I bet you would never guess that he came up with the name “the triangle house”.

Anyway, we put in an offer and after the typical wrangling, the triangle house was ours! We actually signed the papers in Oregon when we were visiting my family so when we got back to Denver two weeks ago it was time to get to work. The nice thing about the house was that there were no major repairs to do, we could have moved into it as is. However, there were quite a few cosmetic features that neither Brandon or I wanted to live in, specifically the popcorn ceilings.

The walls of the living room and dining room are a highly textured plaster so between that and the awful popcorn it made the space feel like a dark, oppressive cave-like. I don’t have great pictures, I took these right after a 9 hr. car ride and so I wasn’t thinking about how to best capture the space at the time.

But you can get the idea that there were some less than ideal features. The paint colors that the previous owner chose were horrendous.

Yep, that’s an orange hallway. There was also a blood red stairwell with red, white and blue pendent lights…it was not attractive.

There has been and still is a lot of work to do but the kids are so excited about our new house.

So that makes the hard work that Brandon and I have been doing for the past two weeks totally worth it.

It started with the popcorn. It took a full week to scrape all of that popcorn off. To say it was back-breaking labor would be an understatement.

Of course, George and Sylvia were tremendously helpful.

And you know you’ve spent more time at Lowes than anybody ever should when the paint guy knows your children by name.

But the popcorn removal and painting have paid off. Here’s what the ceilings look like now.

And that dreadful orange hallway is now a calming shade of grey.

This upper living space is so beautiful now; it’s light and clean, everything Brandon and I were hoping for.

There’s still a lot of work to be done on the rest of the house but our new triangle house is beginning to feel like ours now and we can’t wait to spent the next phase of our lives here.

Stay tuned for further home improvement projects plus some of the most beautiful family pictures you have ever seen…

Our darling girl had an adenoidectomy yesterday. Sylvia has always had that deep, raspy voice and recently she has begun to snore like a 300 lb. man so we were concerned that she was developing sleep apnea. The pediatric ENT confirmed our fears and suggested we have Sylvia’s adnoids removed as soon as possible.

So 6:45 a.m. yesterday morning found us pulling up at Children’s Hospital to have the procedure done. Sylvia thought the hospital was super cool, she was especially enamored with the huge fish in the waiting room.

I had dropped Brandon and Sylvia off at the hospital earlier in the morning so that I could drop the other two children off at their respective destinations for the day. When I got back to the hospital the women at the front desk immediately knew who I was–the red hair is always a total give a way–and gushed about how adorable Sylvie was. Apparently Sylvia had pranced about doing her “I am a princess” routine when putting on her purple hospital outfit which captured the heart of just about everybody.

When I got there, Sylvie was playing with the gas mask they had given her to help prepare her for when she would be put under.

I think this surgery has been more stressful on me than it has been for Sylvia–I’ve been a nervous wreck for weeks stressing over how Sylvie would do through this experience. Because of this, I wanted to give her something special to help comfort her just in case she needed it. I was perusing Amazon and found the exact teddy bear that I had growing up and decided that it would be perfect thing. So right before the surgery Sylvie got “Snuffles” the bear, which now that I think about it, is the perfect name.

Sylvie was so excited about her new teddy bear. It was so cute to see her play with it and give it lots of love. Here she is trying to put her gas mask on Snuffles.

Eventually it was time to take Sylvie back to the operating room. They let us go back with her which meant we had to put on these super sexy sterile suits.

The worst part of this whole experience was walking Sylvie into that operating room, putting her on the operating table and watching her be put under. It was a terrifying experience for Sylvia–being surrounded by people in weird clothes, the bright lights, the machines–by the time it was time for the gas mask to be put on her face she was pretty upset and resisted as much as a two year old being held down by four adults can. And it was horrible for us as her parents to watch her fight the gas and then see her eyes roll back in her head. That’s an image I’d like to forget.

The surgery only lasted 1/2 an hour and by the time we got back to Sylvie she was already awake and slurping down an orange slushy. Sylvie was pretty grumpy while she shook off the anesthesia but the rest of the day she was such a sweet angel. And she recovered quickly. In fact, we were out of the hospital by noon which inexplicably cost us $100 dollars more than it would have if she had stayed over night. Oh America and your broken healthcare system…

Anyway, Sylvie was super excited about going home, mostly because it meant she got to ride in a wagon (although she was grumpy as I was trying to take pictures).

But Sylvie managed to snap out of it by the time we started pulling her to the car and was waving and smiling at the hospital staff and other patients.

Sylvie spent most of the day yesterday like this on the couch:

Every once in a while she would perk up and ask for a popsicle and then proceed to tell us how much she loved popsicles. Imagine a muppet character saying “I love my pops” and you’ll get an idea of how cute this was.

Sylvia did pretty well through the night; she woke up about 3:00 a.m. with a fever and I spent an hour and a half trying to comfort her back to sleep. But as soon as Georgie woke up she was ready to go. Other than some occasional grumpiness, a loss in appetite and some bruising under her eyes you would never know that our sweet girl had surgery yesterday. Here she is in one of her grumpy moments this morning:

So that’s that. The surgery is over and we can move on to the rest of our busy and exciting summer which will include another multi-state vacation and a big move for us. We’ll get to those things all in good time and maybe I’ll get the ambition to post some of the things I’ve neglected over the past two months.

Maybe.

I can’t tell you how much it warms my heart to see my sweet little George love and care for his baby brother.

George is very protective of Will. A couple of Sundays ago a fabulous sister in our ward offered to hold William while I struggled to control Sylvia during sacrament meeting. The whole time she was holding him, George watched this sister very closely and told her every so often that William was our baby.

And William loves George. He is still not super cognizant of his surroundings but when he recognizes George, William lights up and treats George to some of his biggest smiles.

What a handsome and sweet pair of boys! I get the feeling that William will adore his older brother.

It looks like the relationship between Sylvia and William may be a little more complicated. At best, Sylvia ignores the baby. At worst, she tries to push Will off my lap and demands snuggles when I’m feeding him. And she was not happy about posing for pictures next the baby. I have to admit, while somewhat annoying, her sulkiness is rather cute. William also looks a little perplexed as to why he had to take pictures with his sister.

My three babies! While they certainly make life much more complicated they also make life incredibly interesting.

I can’t wait to see how their personalities and relationships develop as they grow.

It should be a wild ride.