Very Merry...

We just wanted to wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas, Hanukkah and a Bright New Year. It seems like the years just keep going by faster and faster. Sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes it not. (Like that fact that my not so much a baby anymore is going to be turning ONE next month. Where did that year go???)
We love you all!
The Poulsons

Crisis Averted

Despite the influence of Dora the Explorer (curse her multicultural cuteness), a recent crisis was barely averted in the Poulson household. A recent Dora episode brought her do gooding to the North Pole. See, Santa had lost his bag, and his lack of bag was preventing him from delivering his toys for good girls and boys. Luckily there was a plucky Hispanic youth in the proximity who had a knack for solving problems (by the way, out of the context of a kid show, wouldn't you lock Dora up in a mental institution? Her "best friend" is a monkey who wears boots, which is problematic in and of itself. Then she is always asking these questions followed by long pauses that she answers herself. I have talked to psychiatric inpatients who had less convoluted stories). Anyway, the bag was located and the day was saved ( I vow here and now that should I ever meet the person who wrote the "I'm the Map" jingle I will eat his still beating heart after I rip it out of his chest. I think that's fitting for writing the most annoying, pointless, yet catchy bit of music created. If I hear it once it haunts me for at least 48 hours afterwords.)

Some friends of ours let us a package to increase our Christmas spirit. In this package was a story about Santa's bag, as well as a replica of said bag. We thought this was very sweet of them and brought it up to our room.

The next day that bag caused a panic...

Liam came rushing out of our room dragging the bag along with him.

"MAMA! MAMA! Santa forgot his bag! Santa forgot his bag! We have to get it back to him hurry Mama hurry! If we don't get it back to him he can't bring me my Word World toys!" (Insert panicked crying here)

Now, you can't be the mom of a 3 year old without learning to think on your feet.

"Umm.... Santa got a new bag and gave us his old bag so you can dress up like Santa. He will use his new bag to bring you your Word World Toys (What is Word World you ask? See Here)

A thoughtful expression on Liam's face tells you he is not sure if he is buying what you are selling.

"....Ok Mama Ok. Tell him to come get his bag so I can get my word world toys and Dada can get guitar, drums and microphone." (Liam wants Rock Band for our Wii about as much as I do).

Crisis averted and Christmas saved. It might have been easier if Jen was a spunky Hispanic youth who hung out with a talking purple monkey who wore boots.

Nothing better than a 3 year olds Christmas program!

It is times like these when I think how lucky I am to be a mother of two beautiful boys. It has been so fun to watch Liam grow and find a little of who he will be one day. Another Josh Groban? Probably not. But in my eyes, the cutest 3 year old EVER!
(I just clipped these so you didn't have to watch the WHOLE performance. And a special thanks to "ollie" for being our Hershey family. You are the best!)

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

The Tree!

Last year we went to a local nursery and found our perfect tree. This year we opted for our 4 ft. Fake tree that we could put up on the end table so a little someone would have a harder time destroying it. I found this quote that fit perfectly: “Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.”
Owen was really into trying to rip off all the ornaments the first week, but now it's lost its luster, or maybe it's because there are no decorations on the bottom foot of the tree any longer???

Liam did a great job as you will see! I can't believe how big he's getting.

I was sad that it wasn't going to be the smell of pine throughout my house this year, not as sad that I wasn't going to have to vacuum up the needles every day and thinking we saved ourselves some serious carpet cleaning since I know Owen would have figured out there was water in the base; currently his favorite thing to do is find a toilet seat that has been left open and go swimming with his hands up to his shoulders at ANY chance he gets.
SO I think we'll stick to this tree for the next few years till Captain Destructo finds it a little less intriguing.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Liam and his singing!

Best Buy Blues

The Poulson blog has been left dormant for quite some time. This is due to the fact that being the OCD person that I am, I made Nate take our computer in to Best Buy two weeks ago because one of our drives wasn't working properly and it's under warranty until January.
So off He and Liam went and were told it would take an hour and they could stick around for it to be done. (Not the worst place for two guys to be stuck for an hour. I can think of a lot worse!)
An hour goes by and they are told it's not fixed yet and they need some more time and to come back that evening to pick it up.
We call that evening and they say that they have to install a new disc drive and that it won't be ready until the following day...5 days later I get it back, bring it home to find that they have pretty much restored it to the factory settings and we were going to have to re-install all the programs again.
I decided to let Nate do this. He gets home and starts this "little" project. 2 hours later our computer has crashed and the screen is now black. (*%#@)
So back to best buy Nate goes this time it's 9pm. He gets back an hour later empty handed with no diagnosis and no ETA.
3 days later, I call to get the status to which I'm told they can't figure out what happened and that they are going to have to really Factory restore it. PROBLEM we didn't get it backed-up before we took it in. (BAD IDEA!!!)
So I ask him what my options are to save our data and pictures and basically there are two.
1-do nothing and lose it all.
2-let them back it up for a small charge of $159.99. (@%*!)
to which I reply that ludicrous and I don't think I should have to pay $160 bones because they screwed up my computer.
He calmly states, well you signed that you knew you hadn't backed up your computer before bringing it to us and that this is company policy...but, he understands my frustration and will speak with an advisor and call me back with an answer in an hour.
3 hours later Nate calls to get an "update" and is told that the supervisor wanted to look at it first and found that when they restored our computer the first time, they has removed our virus protection and in the time we set up the computer, to the time it crashed, we got a virus.
A VIRUS??? we kept telling Liam that the computer was sick, but now it has a virus. Why would anybody want to give my computer a virus. That is so lame.
Good NEWS though, Best Buy said since it was "technically" their fault they fix it and wouldn't have to delete any of our programs.
We got it back. Two hours later were up and running and are now back to normal, except for Nate's itunes, (that's going to take awhile.)
We were able to get our laptop to access the Internet, but all my pictures were on the PC so hence the reason for no posting.

To re-cap the past month,
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with some friends the Banzhaf's and the Morgans. There were 8 kids under the age of 3. But they seemed to really enjoy themselves.

We had Liam Thanksgiving program at school.

Decorated our tree, and the house.


Went to Hershey Park to visit with Santa and to see his reindeer. To which we were told that Rudolph's nose only glows Christmas Eve.

Here are some of the pictures from these events.



Here are some of the pictures from these events.