What I learned in 2008...

I wanted to post something celebrating the New Year and couldn't figure out just what I wanted to say. Talking about resolutions just seemed too predictable, plus I don't want anyone to hold me to anything I resolve to do. While watching Bedtime Stories this afternoon, it came to me. What I learned in 2008 will be short and sweet (relatively speaking) since I only have a short amount of time to reflect on the past year and what I have learned but here is what I could come up with off the top of my head....

1. Watching your kids watch a movie is almost always more entertaining than the movie itself.

2. Most things are easier than you think they are going to be.

3. If you are wearing low rise jeans, you need to wear a belt, even if you think you don't.

4. Saying what you mean will save you a lot of time and energy rather than trying to get others to read your mind.

5. There are very few things that are unforgivable.

6. Facebook, although frighteningly reminiscent of high school, is addicting even for 33 year olds.

7. Most things really just don't matter. Too much time is spent worrying about little things.

8. Taking Christmas presents out of their packages is a full time job.

9. Computers can be your best friend or your worst enemy.

10. It is possible to be too hard on yourself.

11. Choosing the right check out line is the most important moment in a shopping trip.

12. Even the smallest things you say or do can have a huge impact on another without you even realizing it.

13. Men are born without a hypothalamus. The only temperatures men recognize are hot and boiling hot. Women need to keep a sweater handy.

14. If something can go wrong, it probably will. You may as well plan for it.

15. You can't unsay something.

16. Christmas still comes even if you don't have Christmas lights on your house.

17. No one can do it all by themselves.

18. Sometimes the most ordinary things can be made extraordinary simply by doing them with the right people. (Something I read not something I thought of myself!)

19. The dressing for seven layer salad is not 1 cup of mayo and 1 cup of sugar.

20. You can't fully understand something unless you have actually gone through it yourself.

21. It's usually worth spending the extra few dollars or extra few minutes.

22. Potty training is the single most important milestone in any person's life. There's just nothing bad about it.

Christmas cookies and holiday.....

FLU! Yep, the holiday flu hit our house along with all the homes of the extended Kolb family. Grace woke up not feeling well late Friday night and threw up all over our bathroom. She was sick for the rest of the night and spent all day Saturday in bed. Ella decided to one up her big sister and really show her how it's done by throwing up all over Jason and I's bed Saturday night. Her bout was very short lived and felt 100% by the time she woke up Sunday morning. Apparently Lily doesn't think she could top Ella's performance so she is remaining healthy which is the silver lining in this storm cloud that passed! Once again, I thank God for my husband who deals so much better with this type of thing than I do. I handled the comforting and the periphery cleaning while Jason took on the big jobs. He obviously knew if I got involved in that, I would have only made the mess worse! We make quite a team.
Prior to the flu outbreak, we were able to celebrate Christmas in grand style! We arrived in STJ at lunch time on Tuesday and basically spent the day relaxing and playing. The girls enjoyed the warmish temperatures with some sledding, animal hut building and snowball throwing.

Work before play came on Wednesday with meal preparations beginning in the morning. It takes time to put a feast together and that is exactly what Mom and Dad did for us. Prime rib that rivals any I have ever had the pleasure of inhaling, shrimp scampi that put Red Lobster's to shame and totally succulent twice baked potatoes were the stars of the show with various salads, vegetables and treats playing secondary parts in this culinary play of Broadway proportions!

Our own personal Top Chefs!

Joshy and his little elves!

Santa made his presence (pun intended) known while Jason, Sheila and I took the kids on a tour of STJ's finest Christmas light displays. Gift opening commenced upon our arrival home and I do believe everyone somehow received pretty much everything on their lists, even though Mom and Dad cut down this year! If you notice in the picture above, the presents stacked up were taller than Josh so I have a sneaking suspicion maybe they didn't cut down much! Highlights for my girls were probably Ella's fabulous red dress (thanks Uncle Joshy), Grace's camera which is nicer than her mommy's (thanks Grandma and Papa) and Lily just loved everything and gave hugs randomly.

Ella with a big smile even though she has no idea what Shrinky Dinks are! We did some on Saturday though and she proclaimed them to be "Awesome!".

Grace just can't believe she got a camera. I can't even count how many times I heard that in the past several days. Notice Lily in the background hugging Papa just because she was so happy for Grace.

THE red dress!

I'm seeing this picture retaken about 10 years from now for Prom!

Lily is absent from this picture as she was busy having a total meltdown because "I don't want to wear pink tights, I want to wear black tights!".

Christmas morning, after many rousing games of Wii bowling, we hit the road to make it back to Sioux Falls in time for Christmas Mass. After Mass, the entire Kolb crew converged upon Nicole's house for another feast. Seriously, the amount of food I have consumed in the past week is absolutely obscene. Turkey, ham, hashbrown casserole and Cliff's corn were on the menu and we made short work of it. After a terrific slide show put together by our niece Liz, Santa made a surprise appearance. Good old Ella wouldn't be fooled though. She knew this couldn't be the real Santa because his belly wasn't nearly big enough! All three girls were completely and fell fast asleep on our way home from Nicole's.

Byron, the master turkey carver!

Lily knew better than to question Santa's true identity. She wanted that "candy land" (candy cane and the box of chocolates!

Most of the grandkids with our skinny Santa.

Byron, Angela and John with front row seats for the slide show.

A Christmas piledriver to Joe from Johno with love!

Lexi and her Santa

As of right now, I believe all gifts have been unpackaged and found a home. Just today alone, they have played with Lily's cash register and learning city, Grace's Pixos, Ella's jewelry designing kit, their mp3 players and the Cherry Blossom Market and are currently outside working on their snowman. It appears they may have enough to keep them busy through the rest of this week!

Little Orphan Lily

Our Christmas blessings are too numerous to count and we are grateful to be looking towards the New Year with many memories ready to unfold.

Santa Claus is coming to town.....

Actually, he came to our house last night. The girls were thrilled on Saturday when I told them Santa would be coming on Sunday since we had to leave on Monday or Tuesday for STJ and he didn't want to miss us. We all had our fingers crossed that he would be able to make it in spite of the wind and the cold. The girls had the utmost faith in Santa and they were right to believe because he pulled through. To clear the coast for Santa's visit, we started the evening with our traditional Timberlodge meal. Grace was going through the mozzarella sticks like they were nothing, Ella proclaimed the bread to be "delightful" and Lily was licking the butter off any piece of bread she could lay her hands on, all the while wondering, "What's in this bread, Mama?". Jason made clean plate rangers out of all of us by finishing off any remaining crumbs of our meals and then we hit the road in search of Sioux Falls finest light displays. Lily must have lost interest quickly because she was snoring in the backseat before we even found which direction we wanted to go. Ella and Grace tolerated the drive but really just wanted to get home to see if Santa had made the drop!

Team Daddy-They won in the eating contest!

Team Mommy-The happy losers!

They were greeted with a six pack of strawberry Crush pop, bulging stockings and gifts galore. Santa left letters for each of the girls in their stockings which brought smiles to their faces, especially Ella's when it was read that Santa thought she was a "character who counts". The gift opening commenced and there were lots of ooh's and aah's. Lily could barely contain herself alternating between trying to rip everyone's presents open and hugging her sisters saying, "Oh, I'm so glad you got that.". When the destruction was complete, we had three happy girls. They really couldn't even pick a favorite gift although Grace immediately donned a sweater and pair of earrings she had received, Lily snuggled herself up in her new Tinkerbell blanket and froggy robe and Ella began furiously jotting notes to herself in her new password journal.



Lily with the angel she was hoping for. Too bad Santa didn't pull through with the big penguin she wanted so desperately!


Grace just loves High School Musical! Troy is so dreamy!


Lily couldn't decide if she wanted to be comfy or ready to rock so she opted for the classic frog robe with boots look!

From the Kolb Family to all of you, have a wonderful holiday season and a blessed New Year!

Oh the weather outside is frightful.....

Brr......what a difference a day makes. Yesterday was so beautiful (relatively speaking) so Jason hijacked us to go enjoy the weather. I had planned on spending my day making Christmas treats and organizing some things for the garage sale I am going to have in April. OK, maybe I don't need to start working on that quite yet so off to the zoo we went. Even though the weather was so nice, there weren't many people there and we had a terrific time. I think the funniest part was when Lily was standing at the bear exhibit looking through the glass and I overheard her saying, "Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?". She really likes that book, obviously!

The monkeys were a little loud!

Posing with some of the animals in the museum

Dr. Ella Doolittle talking to the animals

Lily felt safe in her Daddy's arm but still didn't like it when the goat tried to kiss her.

It took her a couple minutes but Grace finally worked up the courage to pet this goat!

The peacocks were just wandering on the walkway! I am so brave!

Ella had a TaeKwonDo birthday party to attend in the afternoon but we had some time to kill so what better way to do that than by enjoying French Silk Pie at Perkins. After dropping Ella off, we took a little trip that Jason has been anxiously awaiting for many, many moons. Our brother-in-law, Byron, is an extraordinary mechanic and has taken on fixing up Jason's '68 Volkswagon Bug. The call came that the Bug was ready for pick up and Jason couldn't wait to get behind the wheel. Of course, his sidekick had to take the first ride with him. Grace thought it was pretty cool but noticed quite a difference between riding in that and riding in the Expedition. In fact, as they were cruising and she was checking it out, she asked Jason, "What's this?" while pointing at the window crank. I suppose it's been awhile since most of us have been in a car that doesn't have automatic windows!

Today was a much different type of day! The wind whipping woke me up and didn't calm down all day. Church was cancelled due to the weather and so while Jason ran some errands, the girls and I snuggled in to watch the old classic, E.T. Grace and Ella both proclaimed it to be an awesome movie and Lily seemed to like what she saw from behind her hands. It was a little scary for her, I guess.

Anyway, off for baths and bed. Keep warm and enjoy your week!

Weekend Update with Jess and Jason....

Happy Sunday night to you all! The fun-filled, action packed days just keep on coming. It seems like days are just flying by as the things to do pile up. Baking, shopping, wrapping, addressing cards, cleaning and decorating are all items that need to be checked off the list but we managed to squeeze in some fun over the last few days.

Thursday we were gifted with four tickets to the Stampede (hockey) game from the ever so generous and lovely Denevan's. Being the avid hockey fans we are, we painted up our faces, donned our jerseys and headed to the arena. OK, so maybe we didn't gear up but we did go to the game. Ella was less than enthused at the prospect but we forced her to tag along anyway. Of course, about five minutes after arriving, she leaned over and said, "You know, I am really enjoying this," and proceeded to root, root, root for the home team. The highlight of the evening (well, other than the most awesome snow cones ever) was when the blimp dropped a $15 gift certificate to Ruby Tuesday's right in front of us. Actually the man sitting in the row ahead of us got the certificate but he turned around and handed it to Grace. SCORE! When we were talking about how nice that was of him, Ella again chimed in with one of her classics, "Well, I guess he just wanted to be a character who counts!". How right she was!

Jason and I were able to have a hot date on Friday night. Nothing screams romance like a dinner at Red Lobster followed by a shopping trip to Target and Kohls. The ever patient Jason smiled the whole time and we had a lovely night out.

After such a wild night Friday, we needed to slow it down a bit Saturday. First stop, lunch at The Keg for the most delectable chicken this side of the Mississippi (and on the other side for that matter). Some of you may be wondering if we ever eat at home and the answer is YES! I do know how to use the oven and I do cook, no matter what Dad thinks! Grace and I parted ways with Jason and the other two screwballs so we could join the Girl Scouts for an afternoon of cooking baking. We had a great time and brought home a bunch of delicious treats. Grace now lists baking as one of her talents and I would agree she is pretty good. Hmm, maybe she can start making supper for us.....interesting thought!

***Interesting little bit of trivia, Grace and this girl were best buddies in daycare many moons ago and hadn't seen each other since about four years ago. They didn't recognize each other but Jason realized who it was when he saw Brookelynne's mom.

After Grace and Ella each had a quick workout (weird, I know!), we finished out the night with our own private viewing of 'Fred Claus'. Just marginal in my opinion. Watchable but it's definitely not going to knock Simon Birch off of my favorites list!

***Lily, obviously, didn't think she needed the workout and was content observing.

And finally Sunday! Church, more eating out and more shopping. When will the madness end?

Wishing you all a terrific and stress-free week