On the 5th Day of Christmas...

Today Ailey asked me if it was still Christmas. Our tree is still up and lit. All the decorations are still up. The lights are still on the house. We're not playing Christmas music, but only because we're playing CDs that we got for Christmas. And yet Ailey makes a fair point without even trying. We're not talking anymore about Santa coming, or about visiting the grandparents, or about presents we're giving. The hype of Christmas, especially in the eye of a child, is over ... or waning at least.

Our Christmas was more "hype" than planned this year, extended for sure. Instead of Christmas Eve with my parents and Christmas Day with Andy's parents, we stayed home-bound both days and only ventured out on the 26th and 27th. Both days were forecasted to have the worst weather thus far: snow, then rain, then freezing temps overnight. Our own roads were some of the worst around - apparently snow removal/road maintenance is not one of the City of Mukilteo's strengths. (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't need the two years experience as a Minnesota resident to know that a plow isn't supposed to push the snow to the center of the road.) The slush created by rain falling on several inches of packed snow was nasty. After it froze we felt like we were 4-bying across the rutted frozen slush.

Anyway, by Friday the roads, especially the roads we traveled after exiting our own streets, seemed more doable with three sick kids in a mini-van with 2-wheel-drive. So we had "Christmas Eve" on the 26th and celebrated "Christmas Day" on the 27th. All three kids were marginally better those days too (Ailey had punched a 104 degree temp a couple days before Christmas). Neither day felt any different, so the calendar could have said whatever it wanted - those were our Christmases because we were with our family those days, ate good food, talked good talks, and wished good wishes.

Here are a handful of pictures of our Christmas Day:

Watching the babies (not care at all about) opening presents.

Silje excited about the new musical toy.

Oh, she loves to dance!

Marin, happy Santa baby.

Ailey enjoying one of her new books.

The sick ones got good hard naps!

In answering Ailey's question I reminded her of one of her favorite Christmas songs, The 12 Days of Christmas, and told her today was only the 5th day of Christmas (Miss Piggy's "Fiiiiiiiiive Gooooooooooool-den Riiiiiiiiiiiiings!"). Perhaps the fact that the snow is finally (almost) gone had something to do with that feeling of it being over. But we're only about half way through the Christmas season. That's a difficult thing to remember when many people and places are de-Christmasing. We'll try to keep celebrating the best we can here! But still, on to the New Year. We'll be home New Year's Eve, but hopefully able to party a little with our neighbors who also have an almost-one-year-old.

I hope you all have festive New Years!

A Christmas Present From Marin...

2008 In A Nutshell

A Christmas Letter From the Higgins Family

Dear Family and Friends,

We’ve written about a lot of adventures in our Christmas letters over the years … going back to school, moving out of state, living in Norway, becoming parents. But this year has been the adventure of all adventures. Looking back on 2008 it seems either as if our lives stopped, or as if they took off. I suppose you could say that adding twins to our family in January has confused us a bit! (In the best way possible, of course.) The first weekend in January I went into preterm labor and was put on bedrest until Marin and Silje were born three weeks later. Marin entered the world screaming and only quit when she found her thumb a couple months later. Silje spent some quiet time in the NICU for a few days, though you’d never know it now that she is crawling like a speed racer and screaming like a banshee.

Ailey, who turned three in April, has enjoyed them from the beginning, thankfully not understanding that it was their fault that her world turned upside down. She has been a great big sister, helping me here and there, consoling the babies when they’re sad, and doing her obligatory duties like pushing them over and stealing their toys as well. She started preschool at our church this fall. She loves her teacher and enjoys the activities and her classmates. She broke her arm falling off her bike toward the end of summer and started school with a purple cast – her 3rd stint wearing a cast, if anyone is counting! She continues to show her creativity with her singing, stories and art.

Andy changed jobs again, or rather returned to an old one. He spent the first half of the year in Sammamish, loving his job there only to be lured back “home” for his third tour with the City of Seattle building department, this time in management. He also went from a 2-3 hour daily driving commute to a scenic train ride along the Puget Sound. He tells stories about watching fish jump and the sun set while he reads the news. He actually used the words “love my commute” one day! He also continues to design and build things. This year his outlet was a beautiful fence for our backyard.

Marin and Silje are 11 months old. They’ve made us a family of five, but they are each their own little person. Marin looks like a Higgins, shows many of the independent characteristics we remember her big sister having at this age, and when she smiles her whole face lights up. Silje looks like the Johnson side of the family, is very animated and emotional (alright, she’s a little drama queen!), and alternately sounds like ET or an Ewok at any given chatty moment. We look forward to seeing their personalities grow as they do.

I am staying at home doing a not-so-swell job of keeping a clean, organized, smooth-running household. I’ve heard various stories from other twin moms about when life gets back to a sort of “normal”, but I’m not holding my breath just yet. The kids are well tended to, so I figure it’s a job well done. I joined the local twin-moms club and keep busy socializing there. I also started this blog as a creative outlet ... and to help me remember as life goes on.


That's our year in a nutshell. We have enjoyed, and will enjoy, hearing from our family and friends this holiday season. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Cookies, Snow, Cookies, Snow

Have I mentioned we have had a lot of snow around here lately? Oh, I did, right. Well, we got more last night. It's just amazing around here. I don't remember seeing this much snow in Washington before - I was probably too young to remember the last time. It's beautiful, but it makes a lot of things difficult. Like Andy going to work. The road that leads from our house up to the Speedway is pretty bad with snow and ice on it, so Andy walked the 1/2 mile up this morning, took a bus down to the train station, and the train into Seattle to work. He said there were cars parked in the middle of the road on his walk to the bus, and he walked past a jack-knifed accordion bus in downtown Seattle. Aaahhh, life with snow, hills, and no regular plowing!

Ailey and I spent the day today making sandbakkels (a Norwegian cookie). I don't suppose it should be a day-long project, but with Marin and Silje only taking one nap (today at least, we never know what they'll do from one day to the next!), laundry to be done (urgent ... again!), and a 3-year-old who loves to read ("But, Mom, let's just read this one book first"), making sandbakkels was a day-long project. Yesterday's day-long project was gingerbread cookies. I haven't made sandbakkels or gingerbread cookies before (what can I say? I love baking more now with a kid!), so both projects had some learning curves. Both cookies turned out great. I don't have pictures of the sandbakkel-making, but here are some of our gingerbread Christmas trees (I couldn't find a gingerbread man cookie cutter at the grocery store on Sunday, go figure).

We didn't think the molasses smelled very good. Phew!

Like I said, it was my first time making gingerbread cookies. I now know I should have added more flour before attempting to "knead" it.

We finally got the dough to a point where we could roll it and cut out the cookies. Ailey is very good with the rolling pin and cookie cutters.

Ailey and I had to taste test the first cookies!

Ailey's creation: a glob of frosting and a pile of M&Ms. What else?!

My attempt at making gingerbread man cookies:

After a day of baking and decorating yesterday - whew! - Ailey got to go outside in the snow again. Andy and I took turns getting out in the stuff too. Luckily, our neighbors had a spare snowsuit for Ailey to wear. It's a size 7, but it works! Here Ailey is wearing her rainboots. The same wonderful neighbors also called from Target saying they had kid's boots on sale and bought a pair for us. So no more rain boots in the snow for Ailey!

Today after a day of sandbakkel-making, Ailey and Andy went outside again as soon as Andy got home from work ... this time Ailey had good boots on. They borrowed the neighbor's sled and went up-hill to join in the fun for a while. Ailey didn't want to ride, she wanted to pull. :)

It has been an interesting week. Cookie baking. Snow. Cookie baking. Snow. All three kids have been sick too. Ailey had a cough, but it thankfully didn't get any worse than that and is better now. Marin and Silje have had faucets for noses and aren't sleeping well for it. So I think we're just thankful that we have a roof over our heads and working heat this week. And beautiful scenery out our picture window!

December Stuff and Pictures

Babies' first Christmas: Ailey got this hat for her first Christmas. She was willing to wear it then, but these two will hardly keep it on long enough to take a picture! Pretty cute anyway, though.

Andy and I were dealing with something or other one day. Oh, I think this was a couple weeks ago when we were still dealing with the blow-out diapers. Anyway, we asked Ailey to get Marin some Cheerios while we were up to our elbows in ... well, you know. When we got downstairs, Ailey had certainly done what we had asked.

The girls all got Christmas pj's the day the tree went up.

We had a Snow Day ... or several. This picture of the fence is today, after a week of snow. The first snow actually stayed around. Imagine that. It didn't melt. Yes, we're all in shock too. Everyone around western Washington is at least. It has snowed several times in the last week, one snow on top of the last. AND we had high temps in the 20s. Yeah, I don't think we're in Washington anymore.

Ailey got out in the first snowfall last week before it froze too hard. Her Papa taught her to make snowballs!... And how to get hit by them!

Ailey made some darn good snow angels!... And a Snow Marin and Snow Silje!
We even got Marin and Silje out in the snow to "experience" it. Considering they each spent less than 5 minutes out in it, being held by Andy, it's a good thing we took pictures, because it was otherwise un-memorable! Unmemorable except for the fact that we only have one little hand-me-down fleece suit that has never seen use by our family before, so I had to bundle one baby up, then un-bundle her and bundle up the other one just so they could "experience" the cold and snow! Not sure it was worth all that effort. They did seem to think it was interesting though.

Ailey and I made "Monkey Muffins" one day - a really yummy banana muffin recipe she found in her Highlights magazine ... and Ailey wouldn't eat them. She enjoyed making them though!While I was out shopping ... driving on the snowy streets ... the Saturday before Christmas (not my first choice of activities that day) Ailey and Andy made a gingerbread house.

And all the while it's snowing....

Now I know some of you reading this blog are from Minnesota where you are currently dealing with blizzards. But really, by our standards, the snow and cold we've had here in Washington the past week has been about as affective and incapacitating to us as your blizzards are to you. And it's probably about as much fun too. I can honestly say that we have never had sleds, skiers or snow-boarders zooming down our street, but this week we've seen all three almost every day. I guess there's something nice about living in a hilly area when it snows!