Dinner at our house, christmas themed edition.

Each year we head on over to Shutterfly, connect our Flickr account and create our annual Christmas card masterpiece. We recommend using Shutterfly, especially if you are a Flickr user. Getting your photos over and usable is super easy (compared to uploading individual pictures on most other sites) and the quality of the cards/designs can’t be beat for the price.

For the last three years, we have also taken advantage of special offers from Shutterfly to create calendars, which we give out as gifts to family members. Everyone loves getting to see 12 months of our lovely little ladies!

Other gift ideas we’ve used in the past include Shutterfly’s photo books, which make great presents and keepsakes. If you have a lot of pictures you want to share, photo books are the best choice for sure.

The hardest part is finding the right combination of pictures to use! We spend hours creating our cards and gifts, tweaking the layout and picture selection — the possibilities seem endless!  We think we’ve found a great looking card for this year, so if we have your address keep an eye on your mailbox for this year’s Dettbarn Christmas card.

Ken Wooden, founder of Child Lures Prevention, says the TSA’s recommendation that children be told the pat-down is a “game” is potentially putting children in danger.

Telling a child that they are engaging in a game is “one of the most common ways” that sexual predators use to convince children to engage in inappropriate contact, Wooden told Raw Story.

Awesome.

Last year, preschoolers saw 56 percent more ads for Subway, 21 percent more ads for McDonald’s, and 9 percent more ads for Burger King than they did in 2007. And often, they’re bombarded with images of snacks and desserts—children see more than two advertisements each day promoting unhealthy menu items.

Our kids don’t watch much commercial TV (Netflix and PBS only), so they don’t see much in the way of ads for these places… and this makes me glad we don’t. Not that there is anything worth while for kids on the commercial channels.

Then you have these general guidelines for kids, which the IOM (Institute of Medicine, an independent advisory panel to the U.S. government) used to study over 3,000 possible combinations that fast food chains market as kids meals:

Preschool children should consume no more than 410 calories and 544 milligrams of sodium per meal, according to the IOM, compared to 650 calories and 636 milligrams of sodium for elementary school children, and 700 calories and 720 milligrams of sodium for older children.

The result of the study? Not good!

Only 12 kids’ meal combos met the IOM’s nutrition criteria for preschoolers, while 15 met the criteria for elementary kids.

So, what’s the best option? The Veggie Delite at Subway, with no cheese. Apple slices and 100% juice. 285 calories and 295 mg of salt.

The worst? Dairy Queen cheesburger, with french fries, Mountain Dew and chocolate Dilly Bar. 973 calories, 1,450mg of salt and 171 calories from saturated fat. That’s a kid’s meal? Really? That’s beyond bad for ADULTS.

Best and Worst Fast Food Kids Meals – US News and World Report. (via: US News and World Report)

I love Lucy.

Lucys first day | Flickr

Before the trip we practiced “sleeping over”…

and we packed the diaper bag, the food bag, the “kid packed” toy bag (ie. bag-o-random), baby gates/safety items and adult beverage box.

We drove to Albany Friday night and stayed with my parents and took off Saturday afternoon for the coast.  We landed about 3pm, had dinner and headed for some evening beach time.  The girls LOVED the beach instantly, which was a welcome upgrade from last year’s vacation!

Sunday, we woke up after a rowdy morning baby party in the room we decided to sleep all the babies.  We fixed that quick, but man were they cute waking up on the couch together!

Then we headed to Newport to First Beach/Easton Beach to the Save the Bay Conservation Center and touch tanks.  The kids were in heaven!

Then, after some nap time/playtime and dinner, we headed back to the beach!

Monday we headed out way out down sandy beach roads to third beach in Newport, RI, near Purgatory Chasm to do some tide pooling (strangely, locals didn’t know what tide pooling was?) and sea creature finding.  It was so peaceful and I felt like we were way way out.  I could have spent a lifetime there.  Stella especially loved it and was fearless finding and holding endless “herman” crabs.  Lucy loved collecting rocks!  I was secretly delighted.  Zoey took some warming up to the idea but was soon tipping rocks over too.

Off to dinner that night at Aunt Carries, a local seafood place that was packed and a relic from my lovely childhood on the Rhode Island beaches.  All the kids loved climbing the huge trees feet from the salt marshes, Stella loved the fish and chips and Jonas ate his first fresh lobster.  The ice cream might have been more fun for those of us looking at their delicious faces!

Tuesday looked like rain, so we headed west in the car for a bit to the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, CT for the morning.  It was awesome!  Stella “pet” some sting rays, the girls loved the giant frog and turtle lily pad pond, watching Beluga whales fly by in their enormous tank and running from tank to tank inside the building exhibits.  That night we brought home some fresh lobster and crab from the fisherman at Galilee.  Mmmmmm….

Wednesday was a slow Dettbarn day.  We visited the Point Judith lighthouse and took some amazing family photos.  The rocky beach was perfect for some earth science sampling- quartzes, metamorphic rocks and even some with graphite twisted in!  The views were amazing.  We hit up Crazy Burger for lunch.  LOVED this place!

The day ended with hanging around the house, some tired babies snuggling together and other shenanigans with all these characters…

Thursday was our Newport day.  I used to love winding in and out of the little shops when I was younger, but things have changed.  It was more of a “lets see how long this lasts” kind of trip with little shopping unfortunately.  Oh well…cheesy tourist gifts will be there when we are all old enough to pee in the potty and spend our own allowances.  We did make it to Bowen’s Wharf, look at boats, survey sea creatures for dinner at the Aquidneck Lobster Co. and watch surfers on first beach.  We even had some time earlier in the week to drive a self guided tour of the mansions (thanks android phone!) and out to ocean drive along the Newport Coast.

Friday was spent doing some last minute touristy shopping, hanging out with each other having popsicles and hitting up the beach one last time.  These are some of my favorite pictures!

Some of the kids…

Some of the Creeds…

A strange egg sack we found on the beach.  Any ideas?

Finally some pictures of me and my ladies!

And some last ones of our girls loving the sun, surf and sand.  Zoey was our water baby and loved running in and out of the waves.  At only 33 inches tall she was up to her neck, trying to jump over waves!  I had to drag her out of there- she’s a girl after my own heart.  Stella enjoyed the sea life the most on our trip and running around, flinging sand at the boys the most.  Lucy loved building and digging and building and digging and then collecting all rocks.  JD learned to boogie board and we both had a great time taking turns swimming/boogie boarding and watching the kids.  Lis and I even got to the beach for some girl time during naps, Nicole and I took an ice cream run and JD and I got to take an ice cream date one night too!

Then came time to say bye-by to the beach and hop in for the ride home

We were on the road early Saturday and drove straight through to Buffalo- 8.5 hrs.  Not bad considering our drive last year was 2x as long!  The one thing I love about our girls is that they can make even a boring, desolate thruway parking area hilarious by streaking up and down a narrow grass strip feeling the wind in their…err…hair.  We got home and they destroyed the house I cleaned top to bottom the day we left in about 5 minutes flat, pooped their pants massively and then after they were cleaned up and fed, snuggled into Daddy

We made it to the twins’ 2 year old check up!  They were beyond cute and healthy as can be.  Dr. Tony talked to us about “competition potty training” between the 3 of them, Stella’s speech delay and Zoey’s plateauing head circumference.  He isn’t concerned about Stella’s speech at all and Zoey’s head is measuring on the chart finally!  Zoey was so cute- she wore her doctor stethoscope to the appointment.  They all love going to the doctor and we love Dr. Tony too.  His advice is golden.

He also mentioned, which I didn’t recognize until recently, that Zoey is indeed the “stronger, more exploratory” twin, which is going to highlight Stella’s shyness even more.  I guess I always knew that but its like when you see someone everyday, you don’t see those subtle changes.  Until recently, they both did their own thing, but now, I see that Stella is more dependent and comfortable in social situations when Zoey is around.  In fact, she hardly interacts with the speech therapist unless Zoey and Lucy are there.  Unfortunately, this means that they often speak up before she does when Stella is asked a question, which I am sure adds to the speech delay.  Here are some pictures from our visit:

JD and I also celebrated 8 years (what the ..?) of marriage on Tuesday!  To celebrate we took a cooking class together at Delish, went shopping, out to dinner and to brunch at Left Bank.  We are so lucky to have family that wanted to take the girls overnight Saturday so we could be a little less responsible for a while.  We did a lot of TV watching and sleeping in which was such a luxury!

Saturday we had a great lunch with the Dettbarn/Barnes girls too and set up Lucy’s new bed set from Aunt Chris and Uncle Bill.  Her favorite part is that she can climb under the sheets.

We are starting to get some great flowers from the garden…

We went to the aquarium touch tank on Monday to gently pet (harrass) some sea creatures like hermit crabs, horse shoe crabs, lobsters, clams, starfish and spider crabs.  Stella and Zoey were again fearless of the animals and Lucy was more interested in playing with Joe and Jonas on the carpeted stairs by the tank!  We watched the sea lion show afterward and then went to “Man-back Bagel” (manhattan bagel) with our buddies and JD.

My shy babies eating lunch

We explored the new tree stump left over from the dying tree on our street the town cut down…

We enjoyed some blue grass/country music at the Children’s concert series Tuesday night (and I enjoyed the vignette app on my phone as well…)

Today was a bit of a lazy morning with some swimming with our buddies.  Lucy and Joe are hilarious.  Lucy ran all the way to Joefa’s house yelling “JOEFA!!!!!” and then home with a one pound bag of pretzels and just a diaper on.  Yup, I’m that kind of mom- letting my kids streak all the way down my street!  Then she wanted to wear my rain boots.  What a gal.  So fashion forward for her time.   I LOVE it!

Also, I have to record it here, if only for my own record.  I’ve been running for a month and half now and I am now comfortably running over 2 miles, even in hot temps!  Whoo hoo!  My first 5K will be Labor Day weekend.  Hoping I can hold to it, even on vacation next week.  Running on the beach at dawn can’t be that bad, can it?