I'm Back!!

Over here at Casa Ludwig we've been fa-la-la-la-la-ing our way through December with lots of fun activities that I have been unable to blog about since shortly after Thanksgiving due to some unfortunate circumstances. I was innocently surfing the Internet on my computer one night a couple of weeks ago when all sorts of mayhem began to occur. As I watched helplessly, every picture on my computer began to disappear. I was literally crying as I watched every single picture ever taken of Max disappear into computer oblivion. Thankfully, a coworker of Chris's was able to recover the pictures from my "badly infected" hard drive. Unfortunately, my once nicely, chronologically organized pictures are now a jumbled up mess....77,000 pictures and random Internet images dumped into one folder. Perhaps one day in a decade or two I might get them sorted out again. Let's just say it was a very sad lesson learned about storing my pictures somewhere besides my hard drive.

So, back to our regularly scheduled holiday celebrations. Two weekends ago we went and picked out our tree at our usual Christmas tree stand. This year we let Max have a vote.

I want that one!

You've heard of a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree....but this is a Max Ludwig Christmas Tree:

After Max selected the appropriate tie-downs for us, we loaded the tree up on the trusty Kia, and we were on our way, Griswald-style.

That night, after we put Max to bed, Chris and I decorated that baby while we watched Clemson beat Virginia Tech, securing our spot in the Orange Bowl. Usually I like to decorate the tree with Christmas carols playing in the background, but Clemson winning a football game was also music to my ears. Max loves the tree and the lights. Since "light" was his first word (besides "uh oh"), he has really had a good time running around the house pointing out all the lights. I still haven't quite convinced him not to pull the ornaments off the tree, but we're working on it. And at least I was smart enough to put only non-breakable ones within his reach.

The next day, after we enjoyed the Christmas cantata at church, I convinced Chris that we should attend the Simpsonville Christmas parade. I'm not sure if he was very excited about it, but he did agree to go. It wasn't a very pretty day, but the chilly, overcast weather did seem kind of Christmasy.

This float was definitely the best one. It was a replica of a spa on Main Street and the clock tower that Simpsonville is "known" for. They had really done a great job on it. We were standing at a spot on the road where there was a grass median in the middle, so all of the floats or groups were having to choose which side to take when they got to the median. Sadly, the guy driving the truck hauling this float opted for the side with the tall tree. Oops. The float ran right into the tree. It was actually happening as I took this picture. It resulted in all of the large ornaments falling on top of the people sitting on the float, and then the clock tower began swaying from side to side and would have toppled over if the Grinch hadn't saved it. The women on the float were screaming. It was comical. And I wish I had gotten it on tape...but I only got the aftermath of the almost-destruction. (By this point, Chris had come to appreciate the spectacle that is a small town Christmas parade!)

Let's face it, it was hard to beat all of that excitement. The rest of the parade was kind of anti-climactic. But Max did have his first-ever sucker. Look at him; like he's done this every day of his life!

That's how Santa rolls.

I think we were all feeling a little bit more Christmas spirit as we went home!

(Oh, and before I forget, of course we celebrated St. Niklaus on the evening of Dec 5th with my gluttonous consumption of gingerbread thanks to Chris. I've successfully converted Bailey into a gingerbread-lover too - not that it took much "converting".)

So this past weekend we found some more activities to keep our Christmas cheer going. We started off by visiting with Santa in our neighborhood clubhouse on Saturday morning. Santa was running late, so we had no choice but to consume many doughnuts, chicken minis, and hot chocolate. I don't think we were hearing any complaints from this guy:

In fact, I think Santa had been all but forgotten ....

Santa did finally make his appearance (apparently his reindeer were stuck in traffic) and he got started right away with the kids-on-his-lap routine. No story-reading this year. I guess Santa got the memo that last year his reading of The Polar Express turned many children off of the story. Let's just say that Santa needs to stick to his day job. Now, last year, if you recall, Max was pretty happy with old Santa. Not so much this year.

I don't trust you, but I do want that candy cane.

(I'm not sure what Max asked Santa for, but I know Chris asked Santa for an iPad, and Santa promised an early delivery. I asked Santa for a real live Koala Bear. I'm not holding my breath.)

Now dash away, dash away, dash away all!

The next day, we had even more Christmas fun (nope this post is still not done) when we went, along with Mimi and Pop Pop to Hollywild Zoo Lights

When we first entered the place, we were all a bit disappointed that there were no animals roaming about. I was ready to scream "false advertising!" BUT, Max was rather enthralled with the lights, so I was happy about that. I have never seen so many lights in one place. It must have taken months to put these things up.

After cruising through acres upon acres of lights (but no animals in sight) we finally came to the Enchanted Deer Forest and an opportunity to buy food to feed the deer and whatnot. The three scrooges in the car with me did not want to buy any food, but I insisted and was able to convince them to splurge for a $3 pack of fancy crackers. As we entered the area and saw nothing but fleeing herds of deer I was thankful that at least Max, PopPop and I were enjoying snacking on the crackers.

But then we saw this guy (well, gal):

Yes, I will agree, there is nothing inherently interesting about a cow. But that is by far the biggest cow I have ever seen! It's taller than that SUV! Cars were lining up to give the cow snacks, and again I had to beg to get Chris to get in line to visit with the cow. I wanted that cow's head in our car. It's just fun. Chris finally gave in and accepted his fate and I think we can all agree that it was a good decision:

Well, Max wasn't willing to give up his cracker for the cow...

If that doesn't get you in the Christmas spirit, I don't know what will! So, with our car smelling of cow breath and dripping with cow drool, we took off for Santa's village, where we were able to get out of the car and visit with some more fun animals!

Max is evidently not a camel fan, which is weird, because he always wants to pet the one in my Nativity.

Max is looking at this guy the same way he looked at Santa.

I think we were all in agreement that it was worth the trip to Hollywild. Stay tuned, as I'm sure that we will be partaking of more holiday activities. It's true what they say; Christmas really is more fun when seen through the eyes of a child!!

The 9 Days of Thanksgiving (or The 8 Days of Sickness)

A while back, Chris decided that he would take the entire week of Thanksgiving off of work. I have been looking forward to it for quite a while. Nine whole days of having Chris around and getting lots of things done that we've been talking about for ages. Of course we tried to cram as many activities and chores as possible into those nine days, and our to-do list still has a few items yet to be crossed off, but we had a great week together as a family (if you ignore the hacking/no sleeping/sore throats/grumpiness/lack of energy/general malaise that we experienced for most of those days. And also, if you have any idea who might have given us this awful illness we've been suffering from, please point me in that person's direction. I'd like to have a couple of words with them.)

On Monday we started the week off with a bang by driving to Columbia for Max's first trip to the Riverbanks Zoo. It was an absolutely gorgeous day; I'll take 80 in November any day, thank you. (Although, I do have my suspicions that the constant wildly swinging temperature changes didn't do us any favors when it came to our illness.)

Max made friends with lots of animals at the Zoo:

But meeting the giraffe was definitely the highlight of the trip. Max has been very interested in giraffes for a while now, so feeding this sweet guy (or girl?) was a special treat. Ok, yes, I was probably more excited than he was.

Get a load of that tongue!!!

The gorilla was also incredible. I could have watched him all day. I did convince Chris to make a second visit to the gorilla viewing area before we left.

In fact, we spent so much time watching the gorilla that Max was able to perfect his gorilla impression:



Sadly, we had saved my favorite animal for last, which unfortunately coincided with naptime/meltdown time. Come on, Max, look at the penguins!!

Maximilian "Penguine" fleeing from the penguins:

I'm so glad we spent the day outside, enjoying the weather and the animals!

On Tuesday we had to stay close to home since we had Max's checkup. But on Wednesday, we were on the road again, this time to Atlanta to get my little German/American his German passport. Wednesday may or may not have been a most horrendous day to travel up and down I-85, but that is neither here nor there because that is the day that we were given an appointment at the German Embassy. I had fully intended to get some pictures of Max entering the Embassy or afterwards outside the Embassy to commemorate the momentous occasion of his first passport, but when we got out of the car and it was so windy I thought we were in Chicago and so cold I thought we were in Chicago I totally forgot about the pictures. Also, the "German Embassy" was a major letdown. When you think of an Embassy, don't you picture a large and regal building with lots of flags flying out front and important looking people prancing about? I do. However, the German Embassy consisted of a smallish room in a large office building with a rather lackadaisical security guard and generic waiting room a la the Social Security office. It was all rather anti-climactic. But, we should have Max's passport in hand within a few weeks and he will be free to travel the world as a German. (including trips to Cuba, which Chris keeps threatening to take him on without me)

We had toyed with the idea of visiting the Georgia Aquarium while we were in Atlanta, but since we had just been to the zoo, we decided to go to another well-known Atlanta institution instead: IKEA. We weren't really looking for anything in particular, which always makes for the most dangerous trips. Before shopping, we of course had to dine at the IKEA cafe. Chris had some of their famous Swedish meatballs. Max wasn't overly excited about them. After all, he eats meatballs several times a week at home. Oh well.

We didn't make any major purchases (and it's a good thing because we were traveling in the Beemer), but we did collect some fun toys for a certain little someone for Christmas. Then we hit the road for our ever-so-fun drive home in the day-before-Thanksgiving traffic. This year we were thankful to make it home from Atlanta. It wasn't the best drive ever.

The next day was Thanksgiving, a day on which we can sit around and express our thanks for having plenty by being huge gluttonous pigs. I started off the morning bright and early by joining Julie on our second annual Thanksgiving We-Are-Thankful-For-Free-Stuff shopping trip to CVS. We waited outside the doors before they opened like crazy people, but at least there was no shoving or pepper-spraying to get in the doors. There were about 5 or so other hard-core shoppers there at opening too, but we were able to get all of our free stuff and thus the day started on a high note :)

This year was a (relatively) quiet year at Mom and Dad's with only 6 adults and Max in attendance. Mom, of course, had prepared enough food to feed at least twice that many people...but, again, that's Thanksgiving. As has become tradition apparently, Chris prepared to fry the turkey (graciously provided by Olympia via her job - sweet!) and the ever-so-traditional side dish on Thanksgiving....onion rings. Hey, what else are you gonna do with this huge vat of oil? It's a shame to let it go to waste without frying something else yummy. Chris had had a hankering to do some onion rings for a while now, ever since someone started extolling the virtues of the most-excellent onion rings that Mema always used to make. So, Eddy family recipe in hand, he embarked on his first-ever onion ring frying adventure. The results: divine.

So, we settled in to eat our feast. I think it's a well-established fact that Paulie loves his mashed potatoes and gravy. You might even call him a connoisseur. As he tore into his serving, however, he had a small complaint. "This gravy tastes sweet. What's wrong with it?" Mom hemmed and hawed and declared that she made it like she always does and had no idea what could be wrong with it. Finally he convinced her to taste it herself. She agreed; it did taste oddly sweet. (It's worth noting here that I also had some mashed potatoes and gravy and did not notice anything out of the ordinary about the gravy. I also had the beginnings of my illness and clearly my taste buds were suffering.) Nothing much more was said about it, but Paulie did not eat his mashed potatoes.

After lunch, as I was helping Mom clean up by washing dishes, she dumped the remaining gravy from the pot into the sink. I continued washing and rinsing the dishes but soon noticed that the sink was not draining, so I turned on the disposal. I then noticed that there were some "chunks" stuck around the drain that I was going to have to help along into the disposal. Now, my eyesight is not the best so when I thought the unidentified chunks looked like bananas, I had to lean in close to take a second look. Yep, indeed there were bananas clogging the drain. "Mom," I asked incredulously, "why are there bananas in the sink? Where did they come from?" As  soon as the question was out of my mouth, we both heard the lightbulb go off in our heads and Mom said, hesitantly, "I think I know what happened to the gravy". About 5 minutes of laughter ensued. I haven't laughed that hard in a long long time; my stomach was cramping up. When we were able to talk normally again, Mom explained her "faux pas"...she had some leftover banana pudding in the fridge in a tupperware container. When she pulled out the gravy she had made (also in tupperware containers) she assumed that the banana pudding was also gravy and dumped it in the pot. Now, there are still several mysteries remaining here including a)how she did not notice as she was dumping the banana pudding into the gravy that it wasn't gravy b)how nobody noticed any chunks of bananas in their gravy and c)why Mom is cursed when it comes to banana pudding (last year on Thanksgiving she inadvertently baked a large tray of pre-prepared banana pudding). Hey, banana pudding in altered forms: it's a Thanksgiving tradition.

Max enjoyed Thanksgiving, much as he enjoys every day. I sure am Thankful for this little turkey though. I'm also thankful for a big and healthy family, plenty to eat, and sunny days in November.

Watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with Mimi.

The rest of the weekend passed by in a blur of hacking, cough drop consuming (thank goodness I got those free at CVS), complaining, whining, and Clemson-football losing (let's not talk about it). But no good Southern holiday is complete without a little bit of this:

Perhaps next year we'll just shoot our own turkey.