Totally doing this backward

How I want to blog these posts:

1. Do a 2011 book wrap up (I will end the year having finished 60 books)
2. Do a 2011 Year in Review with photos
2. Announce the 2012 theme

But we're ending the year with a trip so instead I'm going to announce the 2012 theme with the wrap ups coming next week.

A little history here... I declared 2010 The Best Year Ever. AND IT WAS. But it was crazy and exhausting and overwhelming and too much. Best Year Ever is not a sustainable pace.

I slowed it down in 2011, declaring it The Year of More. Oh and was it ever more. More success at Jon's job than we ever imagined. More success in my photography business than we ever imagined. But it came with a downside as well. More difficult terrible things happened to loved ones this year than ever before. Both Jon and I gained weight, ending the year with MORE.

I had to think long and hard about the 2012 theme. I'm trying not to focus on what could be the potential downside of this but 2012 will be

The Year of Connection

In this crazy busy fun life, I feel like I've lost a lot of time with my friends and loved ones. I'd like to change that in 2012. Call my sister more. Spend more time laughing with friends on the phone. Walk away from the computer.

And with that, I am walking away from the computer to go visit Irene and family. 5 boys 5 and under, SEND HELP AND WINE.





Happy new year, everyone.

Fun! with paper!

It's been very weird the last few days going out and about in public. The first question everyone asks is what we got the kids for Christmas. I feel slightly grinchy when I say we got them remote controlled cars and a few other small gifts. We didn't go crazy with Christmas because they have a lot of loving family members who sent them gifts so they had a TON of gifts.

Yesterday I took down the 9 ft tall roll of paper we used as a backdrop for our holiday card, seen here:




What I did not think about was that it is stiff, seamless paper. When I pulled it down, it folded over and created the world's most awesome cave. There are twin five year old boys under there:




I am not kidding when I say the boys played in it for hours. They said they wanted to live there forever. It had to leave my office so Jon and I moved it to Alex's room. They piled toys and art supplies in there:




A house full of brand new toys and the boys play with a PIECE OF PAPER. And that is why I don't truly feel grinchy.

Be still my heart

After carefully considering options, as one of our holiday charities we chose to fund a project through Donors Choose. We discussed it with the boys and decided to help a low poverty school in our area buy a ton of science books.

As we were on the website, Jon and I asked the boys how much they wanted to individually contribute to the project. They emptied their entire wallets while saying, "Now they will get a LOT of books!"

Most days 5 year olds are (developmentally appropriate) selfish jerks but man, that one made me bust out the kleenex.

Christmas 2011 overload post

I am so glad I took a week off blogging! I am back and ready to snark on the daily life of raising children! First however, let's catch up on the last week.

One night last week, we went to a holiday party where Santa arrived to deliver an early present. Nate got a lego boat and Alex got a Panthers jersey. Alex wanted to sleep in that thing multiple days.




Christmas Eve we let the boys pick 3 presents to open. One boy was VERY cooperative for photos and one was not.




Obligatory shot under the Christmas tree. Yes, this was the best one.




Guess who was cooperative again?




We also continued the tradition of baking cookies for Santa and leaving out reindeer food. We also tracked Santa's activity on NORAD and got to see Santa deliver presents to London!




Christmas morning the boys SLEPT IN. Jon and I woke up early, anticipating an early morning. Elfie covered the boys' doors with crepe paper to make sure no one snuck out early!




We told the boys we would all go downstairs together. Nate ran down the stairs, ran to the tree, and ripped open a present screaming "SANTA BROUGHT MY REMOTE CONTROL CAR!" before Jon and I even realized what was happening. Christmas is the freaking BEST as a kid.




And all Alex wanted was a football.




We had a very blessed Christmas with some beautiful warm weather.
Now if you'll excuse me, I am off to ice skate with the kids!

Last day of school!

Today is the boys' last day of school before Christmas break. They'll be off for two weeks then they will also be tracked out for three weeks in January. Since this is the second quarter they've completed, it also means they are half done with kindergarten. Yes, I am in shock at how fast it's gone!

Posting will be sparse around here until the new year. I'll post when I feel like it but honestly, I'm looking forward to a break to get my blogging mojo back.

Elfie drew on pictures of the boys.... but more importantly, check out the lights in the background! Sweet. If you have an SLR, here is a tutorial to do it yourself.

Baby it's cold outside. And inside people's hearts. Stupid Grinches.

We had another awesome, jam-packed weekend at Casa Case. It included quite possibly the best party we've attended since the boys were born - there were babysitters at the party to watch the kids in a separate part of the house. Kids had fun, adults had fun, plenty of booze and desserts. WIN WIN.

I also decided I was done with the white paper in my office and let the boys go to town on it. (You MUST download Camera+ ! Best iphone photo editor EVER.)




The only thing marring my weekend was how many people sent me this article from People I Want to Punch in the Face. With a disclaimer, OF COURSE, that they don't mean me, they mean other people who do the Elf thing. Seriously, I got this from at least 20 people last week.

From the very start of this holiday season, I have very publicly declared our focus was on experiences. I doubt my children will grow up remembering the things they received but they will remember the time we spent with them. They will remember what it was like to wake up with a little bit of magic in their house.

This season, I have spent about 1% of my mental energy on presents and gifts and what I can BUY and instead thought about how I can make MEMORIES.

And for that, I am proud.

Sunday Elfie got into the chocolate covered peanuts that were delivered this weekend.




This morning Nate and Alex couldn't find Elfie for a good 15 minutes. Elfie picked a really great hiding spot.

Our favorite tradition

Elfie is SUPER SAD he will be at the North Pole when we have the 9th Annual Case Family Gingerbread House Smash. He tried to get a jump start on the activity but his tiny arms were too puny for the mallet.




(For those new here, here's a photo from 2 years ago of our tradition)

Sorry, this year's Santa picture is the most boringest ever

This is the first year since Alex was a baby that he wasn't afraid of Santa. He marched right up, told Santa what he wanted, and smiled big for the camera. (Santa looks like he is growling, huh?)




I much prefer the Santa picture from when they were one. INSTANT CLASSIC.




It makes me a teeny tiny bit sad we'll never have another Santa crying photo.

And look! Elfie is loving visiting a Unitarian household. He taught everyone the dreidel song.

I blame you ALL (if you have kids older than mine)

How many times do I have to say that the hardest part of being first time parents to twins is that we are perpetual rookies? And that we have to learn lessons the hard way... times two?

We didn't really let the boys use pencils much before they started kindergarten. Do you have two boys? Then you know why we made that wise decision. Kindergarten rang in the era of pencils to our house. Jon and I are not dumb enough to manually sharpen pencils for two boys so we bought an electric pencil sharpener. In our genius first time parent way, we left the pencil sharpener out for the boys to use whenever they NEED.

Did we consider they would use it ALL THE TIME? No. Did y'all warn me? NO.

Basically every pencil in our house has been sharpened down to a nub. A very sharp nub. Elfie got in on the action, and sharpened two pencils the way Nate and Alex sharpen pencils.

(Sorry I went crazy with the holiday light bokeh in the background. Best use of 1.2 lens ever.)

I have the sense of humor of a 14 year old boy and I am okay with it

Alex went to Target with me last night. Every time we take one of the kids to Target, they are obsessed with the nutcrackers. Alex asked if we could get it and I said no. He said, "I will pay for it with my own money." and so he did. I bought some peanuts in the shell for cracking.

(I'm 100% fine being *that mom* who makes their 5 year old buy something in Target if they want it.)

The boys were OBSESSED with cracking nuts last night and this morning. I could not help but giggle at these quotes:

"I want Alex to eat my nuts."
"Can I put my nuts in there?"
"I love eating nuts!"

If I had known it would make me giggle so much, I would have bought it a lot time ago.

(Fortunately Elfie put his arm in the nutcracker instead of his nuts.)

A new series: "After the Shot"

If you know me, you know when I did the sled pictures, I didn't *just* take sled photos. We took some fun shots after we were done.

Insert "mom is making us take pictures again" cheeseface:




Like I've said over and over, I'm done trying to get them to take "good" pictures. That's not what our life looks like. Our life looks much more like this:




The boys decided they wanted jumping shots. People asked why Nate was Rudolph... because Alex doesn't like to take direction. He just wants to jump however he wants to jump...




while Nate can do just about any pose in the air.




I'm loving this new zen attitude with photos of my boys. They (both the photos and the boys) may not be perfect but they're my crazy boys.



PS. I was out last night and Jon said the boys were AMAZINGLY GOOD all night. Crazy how Elfie works, huh? Last night Elfie decided to make his own star for the tree.

Christmas is so much better as a kid

Christmas exploded at our house this weekend. Friday night we went to the Pullen Park Christmas celebration. This was our FAVORITE holiday activity two years ago (adorable photo and write up here) so we were sad when Pullen Park was closed last year. Never fear: it opened bigger and more awesome than before. We used the same strategy of getting there as soon as it opened and riding the train before the lines got too long.



This was the longest we have ever stayed at Pullen - three hours. We rode the train, rode the carousel, did Christmas crafts, but the overwhelming favorite was the new awesome playgrounds. The only way we got the boys to leave was to promise to bring them back over holiday break.

We ate dinner to some awesome drumming from a local magnet high school.




And... at age 37, I learned a valuable style lesson. A cute hat goes a long way toward covering up a bad hair day.




Saturday afternoon we had to skip the Cary Christmas parade because two boys were SO BAD. Saturday night we had a family baking night which included gingerbread men, buckeyes, oreo balls, and gingerbread houses. Alex might be kicked out of the Verhoff family as he declared oreo balls better than buckeyes. The rest of us love both.




What did Elfie do this morning? NOTHING. Nate and Alex were again VERY BAD on Sunday morning so Santa told Elfie to not do anything fun and not bring any treats for the advent calendar. Sometimes it sucks being the parent at Christmas, but I'm thinking a valuable lesson was learned this morning.

Remind me next year

That Elfie shouldn't come visit until December 1.

An Elfie confession

The majority of Elfie's antics are antics that I gleaned from Pinterest. Some of them have been our own creation (Jon's At At inspiration) but for the most part, these are ideas we got from other people.

Elfie made a zipline last night.



If you'd like to see some inappropriate Elf antics, head on over to Baby Rabies for the Inappropriate Elf Contest. My personal favorite is Dexter elf.

The crazies kind of won a little bit

First order of business: Elfie was playing with the At At last night. Because who has seen Empire Strikes Back and not dreamed of doing this?!



Second order of business: yesterday I posted the full story of our holiday card on my photography blog. For those that haven't seen it, I am SUPER PROUD of this card:




Third order of business: photo stealing. In the last week, I got two more emails about stolen photos. One was super crazy - a guy used Nate and Alex's baby and toddler photos for a year to court a 15 year old girl. The other was run-of-the-mill fake Facebook page with the boys' photos.

ALL of my photos that have been stolen have been stolen from Picasa. When you upload your photos to Blogger, Google creates a Picasa web album for you. In the past, people could only see those photos if they navigated to your blog OR if they had the direct link for the album. They did NOT show up in Google image searches. If you sign up for Google+, they import ALL of your Picasa web albums into your PUBLIC profile (you can not have a private Google+ profile). Ever since I signed up for Google+, more and more of my photos were stolen.

Frankly I don't have time to deal with this over and over. To deal with the issue, I:

• deleted my Google+ profile
• sent extremely ranty emails to Google+ about their photo privacy issues. This is why Facebook is going to win this race peoples - privacy.
  
• I made ALL of my Picasa pictures private. That means 1400 (!!!) photos are now missing from the first few years of this blog.
  

All of the baby pictures, all of the toddler pictures - POOF. Gone from the blog. And I have to accept I will never have time to move all 1400 pictures over to Flickr and replace the links.

I can't end this blog post on a negative note though because then the crazies really win. I've said it before and I'll say it again - this blog is my baby book. And even though I don't have their baby photos on the actual blog anymore, I will always have the blogbooks. And the blogbooks are AWESOME.

The one where I get all Pinteresty on you

This morning Elfie was on the third floor reading books to Nate and Alex's animals in THE READING NOOK:




What is the reading nook? When we bought the new house, the builder put in a window seat on the third floor. It's a small window seat but still a window seat. As soon as we saw it finished, I said to Jon, "READING NOOK!" And I finished most of it last night:




I didn't want it to be overly cluttered and with the crazy storage area on one wall, it was never going to look like Pottery Barn. The colors were decided for me when I was out shopping one day and found this painting. The first time Nate and Alex saw it, they said, "Is that us?" YEP.




One part that is not quite complete is this bad boy:



Why yes! I did print some Instagram photos! I used an awesome app called PostalPix. You order the photos directly from your phone. Be still my heart... take a picture with your phone, use free app Instagram to edit, then use PostalPix to order prints delivered to your house... this nerd LOVES. I have some more prints coming and then it will be done.

I also used Pinterest to learn how to make signs like this. Printed up two quotes on reading and voila:



The best part? That window overlooks our whole neighborhood and the woods in the distance.

Seriously peoples... HAPPY PLACE.

Our no-waste lunch

I've gotten a ton of questions about packing for school lunches, so I thought I'd do a write up now that we have a solid system. While we loved the Go Green Lunchbox Gillian suggested, the boys could not put on the lid by themselves so that was a deal breaker. Before school started, we took them to Pottery Barn Kids to try out their lunch systems in person.

We love love love LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE the PBKids bento:




The bento has 5 "slots" for meals. We always pack a fruit and a vegetable in two of the slots, leaving room for a main course and two sides. This may look like a lot of food but my boys eat almost every bite every day! Both of them fit in the top rack of the dishwasher along with our other dishes. And only $14! And BPA free!

Our goal was to have everything else waste free as well. Here is what our daily packing looks like for lunch and two snacks (one at school, one at YMCA after school):

• Cloth napkins from wherever you buy kids' cloth napkins (we have some from PBK)
  
• Lunchbox also from PBK.
• To keep things cold, some ice packs from PBK.
  
• Water bottles from Target. Orbit labels on water bottles from Inchbug.
• Reusable snack containers from The Umbrella Girl on Etsy. She is real life friends with Lindsay. I LOVE that they have tags on top to make them easy to open. We also have extras from WasteNot Sacks on Etsy that we use for the car or when these are being washed.
  
• Reusable applesauce containers from Sili Squeeze. Not going to lie, these do leak occasionally so we send them in a plastic bag that we reuse. But SO MUCH BETTER and cheaper than individual applesauce squeezers every day!

Please note: I did not receive any compensation or free products. We bought all of these with our money and have tested them for 5 months with two 5 year old boys.

Any awesome products I am missing? Any questions?

Last night Elfie took a marshmallow bubble bath with the Chewbaccas from the advent calendar:

Day 10

This morning Elfie had written each boy a letter. Nate's letter said, "Look in the mirror." When the boys looked in the mirror, they didn't see anything. I had to point out that their noses were painted red like Rudolph. Alex's letter said, "Look at mommy's phone." When they turned on my phone, they found this:



Nate thought it was funny but Alex woke up on the wrong side of the bed and was NOT AMUSED. He wanted to wash it off so no one at school would laugh at him. It was the first time we've heard something like that (being laughed at) and a little heartbreaking.

I laughed quite a bit, so there's that.

I need to sit down and have a talk with Elfie. He had quite a number of antics planned that perhaps the boys are not going to find amusing.