The 1st Van Tress Family Christmas

We've been married 3 years, but this year felt like the first family Christmas because we weren't at family's and we have kids so we felt we wanted to start some kind of traditions. I have to say it was a fun Christmas! So for memory's sake, I have to write all my notes down (and there's a lot of pictures to go along with it too).
CHIRSTMAS EVE Because we were doing a big dinner for Christmas day with company over, Christmas eve dinner was really low key, we just had Olive Garden soup with bread and salad. And because I wasn't doing a lot of baking that day, I thought to start a tradition making Gingerbread men and so the kids would have fun decorating them and then leaving a plate of cookies out for Santa. Well, I like the cookies for Santa, but we're going to have to find a different cookie recipe, because I just don't like gingerbread. After dinner, we of course had to do our Christmas Pageant with costumes and the nativity story. I wanted to read from the Bible, but it was going to be too hard with the kids so we ended up just reading Tomie dePaolo's Little Christmas Pageant Board book (great book!) and acting it out. Lucy LOVED being Mary and getting to hold the "baby" blanket. Daddy was Joseph, Willie was a shepard, and mom was an angel. Then Mary, Joseph and the shepard became the 3 wise men as well. I was happy to see Lucy get real into it. Later our neighbors showed up with an early Christmas present, so it was fun for all of us to get to open one present.







CHIRSTMAS DAY I kept the kids in their room for at least an hour letting Jeremy sleep in a little. We opened presents and then headed to the beach! Hey, what would you do in Hawaii on Christmas day? It had been windy for the past while, so I started making kites with Lucy to take outside. Then they turned into Christmas kites, and it seems like a fun tradition! I loved the Christmas Tree one the best! I painted it and Lucy put on the gem stone ornaments- it was a gorgeous glittery thing, and I loved the 3D looking star topper!









We came back from the beach and hurried to get ready for a big dinner with the missionaries and one friend of ours, Stephanie. The dinner kept getting pushed back, and we finally ate at 7pm. Not everything turned out I'd say, but overall I thought it was a great meal! For my own future reference, the menu was: 9lb. hickory smoked ham with a homemade mustard sauce, Lorraine's potatoes (funeral potatoes), spicy lemon carrots (way too spicy, oops! I was rushed), baked yams with spiced dollop topping, wassil (didn't turn out too good), frog eye salad, and chocolate huapia pie for dessert. Stephanie was awesome and brought rolls, green salad, and cookies. The three elders gave quite varied reactions, one from Salt Lake City seemed to love it and said it reminded him of home, one (from Ponapei) said it was a first experience for a lot of things and loved the yams which also reminded him of home, and the third (from Chuk) didn't say much at all and didn't put much of anything on his plate, so I'm not so sure he liked it all that much. So that was Christmas. I missed some traditions that I'll have to do in coming years, like reading the bible story (we just never got to it) and singing more carols. We're going to Carols and Candlelight. I did not get my fill of Christmas music this year for sure. I was so disappointed with the radio stations, they barely played Christmas songs until like the day of Christmas! What was up with that?! I can see cutting back some because you are usually ready for them to be over by Christmas, but we had to hunt stations just to find a Christmas song! Lame.
Here's a couple last pics from our outing to see the Honolulu Lights display. This is also one of my favorite traditions. I love looking at the tree and wreath display. Lucy and Willie of course loved all the lights and action. Willie hated Santa, if you couldn't tell. :)



sorry these pics were all over the place, I'm too tired to fix. You'd think with my marathon posting, I'd become a little more skilled at all this.

--------------Mele Kalikimaka from Hawaii!-------------

Willie's Bday Revisited

I never actually posted the pics from Willie's 1st birthday, because they were B.C. and I guess the disposable camera pics just didn't really seem post-worthy. But the occasion shouldn't be missed. So here's a stitch back in time.

I was bummed we couldn't plan a big party for Willie's 1st because in Hawaii the first birthday is a traditionally big HUGE party, and Lucy's 1st birthday had some 40 people. But it just wasn't going to happen. I had to keep some things consistent though- like the cake. Lucy's cake was in the shape of our Hale (the dorm we lived in), so I decided Willie's cake could be a building of some sorts as well, fitting to choose a Haunted House.

With his chocolate goatee.

Planet Hollywood

Just being silly when we went out to dinner Friday night. This isn't on our list of places to return, but we wanted the experience so we went.


And to complete the experience we walked the Waikiki strip a little bit, which is quite decked out this time of year.

Happy Holidays!

Ok, so I do know that I missed yesterday's post. I was too busy getting our Cousin Card Exchange ready to get in the mail! So, here's this special treat- a new holiday photo in the header. This picture is going out in our newsletter, so I hate to spoil it. ;) But I'm still a ways off from even sending that out, so I present it to you now...

The news, oh, the NEWS!

Congratulations! You've won a ... Haven't you always wanted to hear those words?! I don't know if I was just too hung up on price is right when I was young or what, but I love winning stuff- like contests and drawings and stuff like that! I don't go out of my way (too much) to play, but definetly do one when I see it. Ok, so here's the exciting news, I won a Leap Frog Didj game system, with one Hannah Montana game and an Indiana Jones game! Isn't that cool?! Ok, never mind that it's for 6-10 year olds, which I am not, nor will my kids be not for another 4 or 5 years, because that is so besides the point! For those super curious, look up the link to see the toy (I didn't even know and had to look it up).
And here's how I won it: Savvysource.com is doing the 12 days of giveaways, where you leave a comment on the article of the day and you're entered in a random drawing. Not too hard. I don't think I've missed a day, and it paid off! ;) It ends Saturday, so the chances are getting slimmer...

Ok, so onto the real news...
My kids had their first dental visit yesterday!! A big thank you to my sister for the awesome dental advice!! I have to say I was nervous that this kind of thing would become a battle with the kids, and become a big frustrating thing...hope I'm not speaking too soon. But it went great!! And I really owe it all to my sister's advice weeks ago that encouraged me and helped me know how to teach tooth brushing skills to my kids and who the dentist is. I actually have been meaning to talk to you about writing a book...I'll call you! It's so nice to be tutored in mothering, ya know?! Anyway, Lucy did great and the Doctor was able to do everything which made it a successful visit! Willie was more hesitant and I layed down with him in the chair, but he did really well. The dentist seems satisfied that she did what she needed to get done. We like the dentist, she seemed quite young, which surprised me, but she's very gentle. They go full throttle with the kids too with a TV monitor and stickers and talking to the kids, stuff like that. Here's there certificates:

Warm and cozy by the fireplace sipping hot cocoa while giant snowflakes are gently falling

Sound good, don't it?! It was good, sipping hot cocoa and enjoying peppermint chocolate by our "fireplace." When we were at BYUH, some friends of ours always made up a jimmyrigged fireplace for Christmas, to protect Santa's story. Lucy doesn't quite follow all the Santa stuff yet, but it just seems like a fun tradition. So we decided to make one this year especially because we're not going to get a tree. After the kids went to bed, we started our FHE wrapping as many empty cracker and cereal boxes as we could round up. Then we stacked to Huggies boxes on top of each other to make a base. The red "bricks" are hot glued to the base, and by the next morning they were already falling off. We knew they were coming down anyway because we didn't have a way to protect them from the kids..but I'm in the process of attaching them more permanently...it's a work in progress as it takes a little work for each box. But we're sure to have a great fireplace up and running by Christmas eve!This is our Christmas tree this year. I made 8 of these little silver trees for centerpieces at our enrichment night, and I kept one. I don't know if this is a good picture, but it's a pretty cute little tree. The little tissue paper oranaments were not used at enrichment, but I added them later. These ornaments are actually pretty fun to make with your pre-schooler. You need metal lids (like from frozen concentrate juice or I used the lids of glass baby food jars), tissue paper in whatever color coordination, thread or string (I like the upholstry thread, it's strong), and glue (tacky glue or elmer's glue, clear drying). Then cut up the tissue paper in tiny squares, uneven is fine b/c it adds dimension. Glue the tissue paper squares in random pattern covering metal lid, you may want to keep the round shape for a snowball/ornament kind of effect. Overlapping is allowed and helps make it stronger; but you don't want to many layers to take away from it being a little see through like stained glass. Using about 1.5 inches thread make a large loop and glue the ends close to the top of the lid so it can hang on the tree, cover the glue dabs with some tissue paper squares. *Let dry completely, then put in freezer until cold. Ornament will peel off lid pretty easily. Dry the lid, and repeat if desired!* (*I forgot to put this part, but you need to know about the freezer part...;) If this all doesn't make sense, email me or you might just be able to google the directions. Directions for the snowflakes in the window can be found in an earlier post, 3D snowflakes. Have fun!