{2012} Year of the Family Pizza Party

For Christmas 2007 we assigned each family member two months for the upcoming 2008 year and asked them to come up with a family outing for their assigned months.
Then they wrapped something to represent the family outing and placed it under the Christmas tree.
In that way, Christmas lasted all year long as we fulfilled the family outings.
(for a lengthier explanation, visit here)

2008 was such a huge success that we did it again for 2009.
Then 2010 kind of fell through the cracks because of our out-of-state move and the difficulty of planning monthly activities when we didn't exactly know when we would be moving.
We made an attempt to revisit it in 2011 as a way to explore our new city, but it resulted in a very sorry execution.

So one year ago, as we approached 2012, we decided to tweak our monthly family activity and we voted to take Rich's suggestion and turn it into a monthly
Pizza Party & Game Night.
The goal was to try a different pizza parlor (not a chain restaurant!) every month.
Overall we did pretty darned good, at least with the pizza portion
(the game playing part was only hit and miss).

With such a long explanation, here were our
2012 Pizza Destinations...

January ~ Extreme Pizza (hillsboro)
(thumbs up all around as we kicked off the year of the pizza)

February & March ~ cannot remember
(shame on me for not writing down the list) 

April ~ Papa's Pizza (beaverton)
(just an "ok" rating paired with an "overpriced" tab)

May ~ Eat Pizza (portland)
(their specialty pizza menu left us wanting to return a few more times)

June ~ (tigard)
(can't remember the name and it's out of business anyway - not a good sign on either count)

July ~ Perfect Pizza (wilsonville)
(their pizza knots are AWESOME!  the pizza was good enough that we returned three months later and ordered everything the same)

August ~ Red Rock Pizza (las vegas)
(definitely in the top three of the year.  too bad it's so far away!)

September ~ Abby's Pizza (newberg)
(Rich's vote for #1.  Generous toppings, almost to a fault)

October ~ Mean Street Pizza (west linn)
(awesome flavor despite the thin crust - our family is divided on thick crust/thin crust)

November ~ Ye Olde Pizza (newberg)
(at the bottom of the list - much to Rich's sadness)

December ~ Cibelli's Pizza (redmond)
(they offer a 24-inch pizza.  Huge!  Pretty good flavor too)

We have come to the end of the year, only to see three Portland Pizza Restaurants (here, here & here) make Food & Wine's list of the 50 best Pizza Places in the U.S.
Obviously we are not done with pizza yet...

Celebrating Six! and Ten! (and Twenty-One!)

I always feel so proud of myself when I can keep December together.

I get the shopping done.

The cards get mailed.

The gifts get wrapped.

And then, when I am not paying attention, the birthdays hit!

With three birthday's within a week of Christmas, it always throw me!

Luckily Tanner's birthdays are easy now that he is an adult

(Happy Birthday to Tanner on the 27th - the big #21!!!)

J's SIXTH birthday was on the 22nd.

The poor kid has yet to have his mother pull together a real birthday party - complete with invites and gift bags and a guest list.

I'm not going to fool you - this year was no different.

I told him to pick his two closest friends and I emailed their moms with a couple day's notice. 

Not quite pinterest-able, but it totally worked.

I took the birthday boy and his two chosens and let them run around Pump it Up until they were completely exhausted!

When we left Pump it Up, I asked "hamburgers or pizza?"

Pizza won the vote so I stopped and picked it up on our way home.

As the boys ate their pizza feast, I quickly frosted the cake, shaping it into a "Snowman" as per the birthday boy's request.

And then it was time for gifts...

What can I say?

I know how to throw a party...zero preparation required!

Rumor has it, mother's everywhere are throwing the themed parties, complete with matching water bottles, out the window in favor of my party plan.

2013...the year of the no-preparation party.

Your welcome!

and then....

just as we were coming out of the Christmas haze, C's TENTH birthday was on the 31st!

We celebrated as a family (his friend party was last year and I only do parties every other year)

the night before his birthday with his special dinner, gifts and a cake not shaped as anything (at the birthday boy's request - I am not THAT big of a slacker!)

(obviously it was so exciting that he lost his shirt somewhere amongst all of the gift wrap)

We made it!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALL OF OUR BIRTHDAY BOYS!

Conversations with the kids....december 2012

I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought that it would be cute to do an interview with the kids at the time of their birthdays.

Since 3 of the 4 have their birthdays this month or next, and since I just took photos of the kids for the Christmas card, I chose to put the interviews together now.  

It was really fun to ask the questions and hear their responses...I have some pretty great kids!

the Sillies

My kids come by their funny sense of humors through their dad (just in case there was ever any question)

(sadly I cannot assure anyone that those particular pieces of licorice did not eventually get eaten)

Outside of Rich's sillies during Gingerbread House decorating, here are a few of the other sillies that we captured...

J sporting his stocking, and someone else's, in preparation of reading Christmas stories... 

the "pirate eye".  I don't know where it came from by T is sure proud of it...

T all packaged up...he saw an opportunity with this empty box and climbed right in...

dad was not far behind to join in...

What a fun gang I have!

Christmas 2012

I have always prided myself in the fact that we keep Christmas (gift giving anyway) fairly simple.

I'm totally okay with that.

and I love that my kids are okay with that.

But this year, as we set out all of the gifts, I had a pang hit my heart with the realization that we (meaning "I") had not done enough.

I have TERRIFICALLY AWESOME kids who deserve to be wowed on Christmas morning and I had a fear that they may be a bit let down this year.

It seriously kept me up on Christmas Eve!

Then Christmas came and the kids were terrific, despite the fact that I knew one had, indeed, been let down.

I cried a couple of tears for this child 

...and then we talked... 

and then I wanted to cry again because this child is beyond awesome!

Here is to my commitment to do whatever it takes next year to "wow" my kids (with one in particular)!

With that said...

man oh man, do I wish the Christmas wonder and magic of my four-year-old could be captured and stored for decades.

I don't think T opened a single gift without exclaiming

"THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVERRRRRR"

Loved it every single time!

J's faces for the camera were his gift to me!

C is our tricky one...we know his interests inside and out, but really, how many footballs and basketballs does one kid really need?

K is right there on the verge of teen - clothes and gift cards - it seems only yesterday that she got her Little Mermaid CD player!  Where did the time go?

In the end the day worked itself out.  

I still hold tightly to my desire to keep the true meaning of Christmas at the forefront and not make it all about the presents.

I am grateful for the gratitude expressed for the gifts that were given (despite small disappointments) 

and I am grateful that the day was spent together as a family.

maybe, with that in mind, this really was the best Christmas everrrrr!

Thinking inside the box

When I was growing up, we had a never-ending supply of cardboard boxes coming our direction and as a result, I am a bit of a box lady....

I can come up with a lot of purposes for a box and I have a hard time letting a perfectly good box go.

Go figure!

One of the traditions we had in my home growing up, without it probably ever really being considered a tradition, was that you had a designated box next to you as you opened gifts on Christmas morning.

The box is where gifts, once opened, were placed.

Old traditions die hard and my kids have been Christmas morning boxers (I just came up with that) as well.

They come by it genetically.

Except for the year that Rich shook it up and gave everyone a 5-gallon bucket in place of a box...

and then everyone decorated their buckets...

(look at how little all the kids were just five years ago!)

Since then we have mixed it up each year with boxes or buckets... 

decorated or plain...

This year the kids requested BOXES and DECORATED...