The VP Visits Istanbul

Our Family with Vice President Joe Biden

Right smack in the middle of the holiday season, you know right in between Thanksgiving and Christmas; the Vice President of the United States came for a visit!! Even though it was a really busy time (added on to the holiday stresses), everyone worked incredibly hard and made his visit a huge success! Way to go Consulate Istanbul! I decided to just do this post after I had finished with the holiday fun to make it seem less random. So here are some fun pics of the event. Enjoy!

This is definitely not a chance that comes around every day-to meet the Vice President!! Or ever for most people. So, no matter your views on politics, we wanted to make sure we took full advantage.They had a meet and greet where we got to take the family! We enjoyed being able to teach the boys more about our fabulous US of A, and the offices of President and Vice President. Hopefully we were able to help Porter see how lucky we are to be Americans, and the great respect that we have for all of the Founding Fathers. (This worked well in conjunction with our then upcoming trip to Philadelphia)

Anyway, as the time for action actually came-we opted to leave Ronan home. For several reasons (not the least of which was that he woke up at 4:00am that day and was in a pretty grumpy mood) we decided that it would be better for all involved to let him stay home with a babysitter. I felt awful leaving him, but really- it was better this way. Trust me. I'm hoping that this isn't his only chance.

As you could imagine, there was lots of security, hence lots of the "hurry up and wait" game. This is the boys and I in stage 1. We waited here for about 30 minutes before we moved to the next room to wait some more! I was on my own for most of the morning since Daddy was off doing something important with logistics, or motorcade, or something…

(one of the other reasons we left Ronan home, corralling all the boys without help and making them be on their best behavior was going to be a challenge to say the least)

My camera setting was on black and white unfortunately.

This couch was a beautiful purple and brown! I loved it!

Once we jumped through all the hoops we ended up here to wait for another while. It was a good time to snap some pictures.

Porter, in true Foreign Service fashion…

waiting patiently for some fancy event that he doesn't understand, but making the best of it!

as long as he has his Nintendo I guess-

Overall, we were very impressed. Joe Biden was fantastic with the kids. He invited them all to come up on the stage and sit while he spoke for a little while. In his remarks he was thoughtful and gracious, and made an effort to thank all the FSO's for their hard work.

He even gave Miles a special shout-out! At one point Miles started to fuss a little, and the VP stopped what he was saying, turned to look at little Miles and said "I know, if I was your age and had to wear a tie I'd be crying too!" Everyone laughed, it was really cute.

This was before Miles got too fussy and the CLO took him to the side-and before Porter started looking bored...

Enter the "ok, now I'm bored" look!

Then he came and sat in the front with the kids for pictures. Unfortunately, this was the best one I got with both Miles and Porter in it. The little girl in the front fell down and the VP reached to help her up. So the better one of Porter and Miles, the VP is bent over and you can't see him. Oh well, we'll take what we can get.

After he sat with the kids, he then invited everyone to come and shake his hand individually and get photos! We've heard that he doesn't always have time to do this individual time, so we felt very lucky! Like I said, overall we had a very nice time and thought he was very gracious and great with the families. Next time we'll bring Ronan too. I promise!

Last, but not least is one of my favorite shots of Noah with Air Force 2! He was involved in tons of logistics for the whole affair and by all accounts did a great job! Way to go Babe!

D&R Fun, (and I don't mean the bookstore in Turkey)

With a house full of 5 bounding boys, lots of Holiday Spirit, and good friends it turns out that it was easier half of the time to just make sure one of the adults had a camera out. Therefore, I got all of this post from Ashley. I just couldn't leave out the rest of the fun!

Ash was great and pulled through on Christmas Eve where I did not. Here we are helping the kiddos decorate sugar cookies for Santa. (Of course we had to join! This is one of my favorite things to do at Christmas)

The boys all did a great job. Santa was very impressed with their handiwork I'm sure.

This year's theme seemed to be "heavy on the sprinkles"! Good thing Santa loves sprinkles!

Little G L.O.V.E.D. baby Miles! It was so adorable. He couldn't get enough of him. I think he loved having someone around that was even smaller than he was!

Ash pulled through big time with this shot from Christmas Eve! This was the only one we got "pre-microwaved" of his PJ ensemble!

Now this shot had to be included for two reasons. 1. Look how beautiful the Christmas ham was?! Ash did a great job with the fancy cherries and pineapple. 2. It is a HAM!! Living somewhere without pork has been hard. Our family LOVES pork. Needless to say, it was delicious!

I mentioned also before that we got to see the big light show. These are some of the fun ones that were along the route.

Cinderella's Carriage

It was a lovely setup, and we were thrilled to be out "seeing the lights"!

Lastly, we all enjoyed getting to know what a house with 5 little boys feel like! We had a terrific time. A special treat for sure!! We got to have lots of silliness and playtime together.

Here is Gavin lovin on Miles.

We also got to enjoy "Naked Noodle Night" with them. aka, pasta and red sauce makes for a big mess with little boys. Such a cute tradition. Now, if only I could get my boys to eat any sauce on their pasta! (hence, they are still wearing their shirts. boo.)

Mommies and babies. Trying to eat dinner. Yup, seems about right! It just wouldn't be a normal night without wrangling and eating at the same time!

Food coma Ronan-

Love this one of X-man

These silly boys had so much fun together. They played and played! They even shared an air mattress the whole time and had fun being sleepover buddies as they fell asleep each night. They were into all the same toys and Mommy certainly enjoyed Porter talking to Xavier about them instead of me for a little while! Beyblades, Pokemon, Bakugan, Legos…it was a good time.

Still on the hunt for that perfect picture of our kids together. However, this one ranks among the top ones! 3 of the 5 looking straight at the camera!! Not too shabby!

We love you guys! Such a fun trip, and terrific memories. Can't wait to be close again!

Only 5 1/2 more months!

Philadelphia Zoo

When we were home for Christmas we took a day to go to the Philadelphia Zoo! Our kids LOVE zoos, so we are always up for fun; but the weather was 50 degrees and beautiful. Icing on the cake! This was the first time any of us had been to the Philly Zoo, and it was terrific!

Being that it was Philadelphia, they had a wonderful Bald Eagle enclosure. It was very fitting, and a great tribute to our National Bird! They had the American Flag flying right in front of him as well, but I couldn't get a good picture because the sun was in the way. boo. It was pretty majestic though!

All of the enclosures were really great to view the animals.

Ronan loved the tigers!!

A group favorite was the Polar Bears! They were out and very active. They were probably loving the chilly weather. This is one of my favorite pictures of Porter. Silly boy!

X-man and Porter. They were being good listeners this time. Both looking directly at the camera AND smiling! Good job boys!

Porter is such a goof. He LOVES to put his head in these kinds of things.

Silly Monkey indeed.

Tim and his cute boys

Little G is so adorable! I wanted to just eat him up the whole time we were visiting!

Beautiful miss Ash, Gavin and the giraffe

I think my favorite part of the day though was seeing the flamingos with shoes on!

The animals were all out and active, which is always so much more fun than when they are hot and sleeping. The lions were fantastic. I didn't get any shots of the Males, but they were beautiful.

The "gang" out on the hunt for adventure!

All in all, one of my favorite zoos to date I think. The animals were great, and easy to see. There was a good variety of the "good" animals. I loved that it had some fun American history wrapped up in it with all the historical buildings on the grounds. And last, but not least- it was flat!! After pushing strollers all around some pretty hilly zoos over the last few years, this one was fantastic! It was a wonderful pleasant stroll throughout the whole thing!

We had a wonderful day, and will definitely be going back the next chance we get!

Who has the best job ever?

Uncle Tim. That's who.

We got to go see Tim at work one day as a special treat! Let's just say, the outing was a huge hit with my boys! You drive onto the property and it smells like chocolate!

There were giant M & M's everywhere we looked!

We got our picture taken with a few friends-

and thoroughly enjoyed munching on some ultra "fresh" M &Ms.

It was amazing how delicious they were coming straight from the factory! Yumm.

I enjoyed my favorite Pretzel ones:)

Lastly, we got a big kick out of one my favorite signs ever. This would be some roadkill I wouldn't mind eating!

Thanks so much again Tim and Ash for a fantastic adventure!

Porter said it was his very favorite part of our trip!

I guess it has perks to know a real "candy man". We had a blast!

The Year of the Great Pajama Pants Debacle!

If you've ever wondered what would happen if you put pajama pants in the microwave,

(I know, it is a common thing to wonder about)

here is what happens:

well, if they are made out of synthetic materials at least

So, just for the history books-

These are Porter's Christmas Eve pj pants. I guess we let him drink a bit too much before bed. He usually is VERY good. He hardly ever has bed wetting accidents. Like maybe 3 or 4 in his whole life. Well, Christmas Even 2011 happened to be one of them. Poor guy. Anyway, he came into our room at about 3 am and said his pants were wet. We helped him change his undies, and took the pants to dry- to try to salvage them before the morning so he could still wear them in the all the morning pictures. I rinsed out the top part and hung to dry for a while thinking that they might have time to dry. I didn't want to go downstairs to the dryer unless I had to. Well, with a quick check at about 4:30, they were still pretty wet. Noah took them downstairs and put them in the dryer. Even after a while though it wasn't really doing much. So. He took matters into his own hands. It was a pretty good idea I guess, to a 4 in the morning brain. So anyway, he took the pants and put them in the microwave for a couple of minutes!! It worked. They were dry in nothing flat. He brought them back up, put them back on Porter and we all went back to bed. Crisis averted.

That is until we all woke up and turned on more lights! As we waited at the top of the stairs Porter said "Mom, why do my pants have black stuff all over them?" Upon closer inspection, they not only had black singe marks, but holes as well where the fabric had literally just been fried! We couldn't believe it! It was such a bummer, yet also so hilarious at the same time. We were all laughing so hard, I almost cried! It was an awesome story, really.

Poor little Porter. I don't think he thought it was as funny as the adults. Well, we let him wear them anyway, and you can kind of tell in some of the pictures if you pay attention. The holes started to get bigger and bigger though, so he opted to change halfway thru opening presents. We promised him some new Christmas jammies, and moved on.

It might go down in history though, as one of my favorite Christmas stories ever. It was pretty awesome looking back. Definitely doesn't happen every day. Next time we'll know. Don't put pants in the microwave!

Holiday Adventures

Little G reaching for a Candy Cane- notice they are all at the top?

Love this picture!

Last year we stayed in Istanbul for the holidays. We had a great year, and were thrilled that many (most) of our friends also stayed in town. This year, we decided though, that we wanted to head to the States! This time we went East Coast style, seeing as we went out West for our trip this summer.

We had a fantastic time!! It was full of lots of laughter, late nights, delicious food, date night adventures and of course all the best Holiday traditions! There were a few casualties, namely a pair of pajama pants and two dead gold fish, but those are stories for a separate time... We stayed with our besties Tim and Ash, who happen to live right by Noah's Mom. Everything trip-wise went extremely smoothly, and we arrived to twinkling lights and big hugs, just a couple of days before Christmas!

Miles especially was excited to celebrate his first ever Christmas!

Here he is opening his Christmas Eve Pajamas

I completely intended to get better pictures of the other boys, and one of all the littles in their pjs that night, but in the excitement it just didn't happen. Mental pictures will have to do.

Santa did manage to find us though, and he brought both of our little families a pretty good stash!

Miles loved opening his Christmas morning presents just as much as Christmas Eve!

The Lego obsession is really starting to take hold in our house, Santa did well I think.

Ronan got this Imaginext Spaceship. A couple of our friends have it. He ALWAYS wants to play with it when he sees it. Needless to say, he is thrilled to finally have one of his own!

Miles was the best age for the fun, he loved ripping and pulling the paper and bows! So cute!

I love this picture too, because it gives you all a nice view of his cute red hair that is filling in so nicely! We love our little ginger!

Now, this is a shot of all my boys deep in Christmas morning concentration, coincidentally the only one I got of them all together!

All Miles wanted was a bow apparently.

X-man got this awesome guitar-they all loved playing with it!

So, I did pretty well with the camera up to this point, and then I got pretty much nothing! So you'll just have to imagine the other fun and the fact that our friends were indeed there with us! I really can't believe I didn't get any more of all of us that morning! Oh man.

Now, here is the Sunday morning Christmas Sweaters shot. I tried to get them all looking and smiling. Really I did. This one is pretty sweet though, so I'll take it!

Porter and Miles were in a smiley mood though! Such cute brothers!

Now we can't forget the American food…Of course we had to eat at our favorite spots! They just opened a new B-dubs, and we were happy to enjoy one of our favorite East Lansing traditions! YUM!

We plowed through those 50 chicken wings in nothing flat! You would think we hadn't eaten in a week! Love the wings and the company. A good night indeed!

Now, for some of the big excitement on this trip:

it was a SURPRISE for his mom!!!

She had no clue we were coming, and we showed up on her doorstep on Christmas Eve!!

It was so fun to surprise her, and she was blown away! It was great, and we were excited it all worked out without spilling the beans!

She had not met baby Miles yet either, so this was the best part!

We got to do lots of fun things with our buddies, and the boys loved getting to have constant buddies for two whole weeks! I'll do a few separate posts for a couple of the things we did, but we also just loved hanging out and playing together at home!

Ash is a supermom and whipped up some awesome homemade playdough. I have never done this. I don't know why! It is WAY better than from the store. I'm sold!

We drove to see the big Christmas lights display on New Year's Eve, which were terrific! We were so happy to see a fun display of real Christmas lights! Being somewhere that "feels Christmasy" makes all the difference in the world!

Then of course we had Chinese take out for dinner, which was delicious and got some pretty ridiculous fortunes from the cookies. Porter was disappointed that his was more of a "statement" than a fortune. Such is life though, you never know what you're gonna get!

Porter and his dumpling. He was very excited to eat it, as you can tell.

Happy New Year 2012!!

These silly boys in their cute New Year's attire! They loved using their noise makers! We had black-eyed peas on New Year's Day again this year, and are hoping it brings us as much luck and happiness as it did for 2011!

We had such a wonderful trip. We always love every second that we get to spend with these guys, and this trip did not disappoint! We laughed A LOT, had some fun adventures, continued our streak of being cursed while going out to eat together (at least I didn't cry this time- don't ask), watched movies, ate way too much delicious food, the men played some good basketball and Ash I even got in a bit (though it is never enough) crafting time!

Thank you so much again for everything guys! We love you all to pieces and missed you the second we left! Thanks for the holiday memories 2011!