2011, we salute you. (or, you're going to love this post so much it will change your perception of friday the 13th.)

as a short hiatus on the christmas news, i thought i would bring you some homework light, entertaining, and memory-jogging reading to do over the weekend. 

in honor of 2011 and all that she was to us, i have gone through the 254 posts from last year (i apparently had too much time on my hands in 2011) and picked out our most memorable moments.  get ready to 'member that time.

january:
that time i did my best to avoid living next door to a pervert.

february:
that time we bought our house.
that time penelope had a freaky brush with death.

march:
that time i turned twenty-five and met a lady at aldi.
that time i saw kobe at the mall.

april:
that time penelope turned one.
that time i said au revoir to wheat and corn.
that time i got my washer and dryer for free.

may:
that time we closed on our house.
that time i found a bag of cockroaches all hopped up on antidepressants.
that time we did stuff to our house before succumbing to laziness.

june:
that time my apartment managers stole and subsequently broke my vacuum.
that time my apartment managers forced me to talk to a jehovah's witness.
that time todd squashed a gerbil.
that time a bat almost ate me while i slept.
that time i got all intimate with our mulberry tree.

july:
that time we made $150 for not buying anything at ikea.

august:
that time i tried to kill weeds naturally.
that time we went to south dakota.

september:
that time we announced we were pregnant.
that time atticus moved out of his crib and i cried.
that time i puked in my own eye.
that time a mouthy lady on the plane got what was coming to her.

october:
that time penelope busted her lip open.
that time we flew on a plane.
that time we spent the weekend in california.
that time we announced the sex of our baby and also i looked like a douche on video.
that time i flashed my undies at the trash guy.

november:
that time a mouse most likely procreated in our ceiling.
that time penelope developed a lazy eye.
that time penelope got glasses.

december:
that time atticus turned three.
that time we picked out a name for our kid.
that time i about had a stroke while trying to hang christmas lights.
that time i picked up poop with my bare hand.
that time we were overtaken by spores.

a very van voorst christmas

for various reasons, this year todd's parents were able to celebrate christmas with us!  (they typically get to sweat the winter out in arizona...luckies.)  here are some highlights:

opening gifts....the anticipation is killing me.

it's a pearl buttoned western shirt, just like papa tony wears!

girlie loves her grandma!

i think she has papa tony pretty much wrapped around her chubby little finger.

got some bling...

and was way ready to put them on ASAP.

her favorite present was this little jewelry box that has a ballerina in it.  she kept filling it with bows and then dumping them out.

but the best part of christmas was the new pool of live books on tape.  which is all she really sees people as.

video vednesday: break your gun on a stump.

buffalo guy...step on your foot...ouch.  don't wake up.

last holiday decorating post, i swear.

you may think that i'm really late in posting this.  "yeah, yeah, christmas was like 2 weeks ago and we're all ready to cut the cord and move on to 'clean slate: 2012.'"  well, people, i can tell you that my house still looks exactly this way, so just consider that you're seeing these in real time.

our porch lights from the outside.  i felt really tech-savvy when i figured out how to cover our house number in microsoft paint.  so if you were planning on stalking us, consider your plans foiled.

the 'before' shot of our entry way.  yes.  it normally does look this sparse.  and recently i took down the baby gate, so there is even less 'furniture' in there.

another boring entryway shot.  you can see my millions of paint samples on the walls and also my three-year-old son wearing a baby girl hat.

OH GLORIOUSNESS THAT IS CHRISTMAS DECOR! AND ALSO A DECISION HAS BEEN REACHED ON THE PAINT COLOR!

well, hello big boy.  *creepy wink at inanimate object.*  (atticus comes down the stairs every morning and says, 'good morning green guy!')

this year, i spent seventy cents on dedicated wrapping items.  the brown contractor paper has been around for many christmases now, the jute string was leftover from a failed high school attempt at macrame.  so the doilies were my only expense, and i bought them from the baking section at hobby lobby and used a 40% off coupon. 

unless you were a gift recipient who expected extravagant wrappings, in which case, i commissioned blind italian nuns to crochet those doilies by hand from chinese silk thread.  and also i did not use a coupon.

celebreality monday.

i have a lot of annoying and sometimes super wasteful habits.  the more you live with someone else the more you realize that you're not 'quirky' like you like to think of yourself, but you're downright annoying.  (i realize this not because todd says it, but because i realize if HE did these things around me i would be irritated.)

..i hardly ever finish a task or project or book from start to finish.  at least without a lot of distraction and procrastination and large lapses in time in between.

..i sometimes pick my nose.  there, i said it.

..i always forget to turn off the hall light.  like, ALWAYS.

..i'm always behind on laundry, not because i have too much of it to keep up with, but because i hate laundry.  so then stuff sits in there too long and smells like old washer water and has to be re-washed.  which means it takes me even longer to get it done.

..i refuse to drink the last bit of insert-beverage-here from the bottom of the glass because in my mind it's mostly backwash.

..i refuse to drink the milk out of my cereal bowl because it's gross when it tastes like cereal.

..i don't really eat leftovers.

..i'm not super tidy and i leave my crap everywhere until it bugs todd so much he picks up after me.

..i leave half-empty glasses of water EVERYWHERE.  (i'm like that kid from 'signs.')

..i spend too much time reading books and magazines and blogs and the paper and not enough time reading my bible.  or reading to my children.

..noise makes me grouchy, which means i'm usually grouchy.

..i make todd wash his feet when they stink and fart in the other room, but make him rue the day he hints that my 72-hour pajama marathons are getting a bit out of control.

..i HATE taking naps, so i don't, which means that on days when i need a nap i get really and preventably unpleasant.

..i don't make the bed.  ever.


i'm sure there are many, many more, and maybe i haven't even mentioned some of my worst offenders...i'm not sure.  i'm really tired and i always seem less annoying to myself when i'm barely coherent.  BUT.  these are definitely some.

anyone else pick their nose and want to announce it on the internet?  what's your most annoying habit?

christmas FRIDAY!

i did pretty minimal prepping for christmas, other than conquering hanging the christmas lights on the porch, and decorating our tree after todd and my mom felled it.  i decided to be all 'good and memorable mom' this year and let atticus and penelope help trim the tree.  ahem. 

those ten minutes of memory making involved an hour of sorting ornaments earlier in the day, dividing them into categories such as: "belong to atticus," "belong to penelope," "belong to me but unbreakable so let the kids do it," "breakable so todd can participate by hanging them up high," "no one but me will ever touch these - they're lucky they even get to gaze upon them," and "where did i get this ugly thing?"

then, during naptime, i tried desperately to string popcorn and cranberries to bedazzle the tree with, only to get engrossed in a documentary about home birth and to call it quits on the garland.  not to mention, it was my first-ever attempt at popcorn-and-berrying and i used fresh, rather than stale, popcorn.  rookie mistake.  i'm pretty sure there are enough popcorn crumbs in the basement to feed the resident army of mice.

anyway, decking the halls: we set about our tree trimming shortly after dinner.  i had todd pick up some apple cider from the store and was all set for a cozy night of making family memories.  i had visions of the kids looking lovingly at each ornament before finding the perfect branch - nay, bough - for each treasure.  instead, the kids were basically grabbing fistfuls of ornaments as quickly as i could get the hooks on and sprinting them over to the tree where they'd pass them off to todd and dash back for what few new ornaments i had gotten hooked in the last 2.3 seconds.  and even though i had put on christmas music for a relaxing and memorable ambiance, it was basically all family force 5 christmas music which really only served to make the kids want to breakdance.  also, the cider initiative was a flop considering the kids weren't interested in anything but chucking ornaments, todd doesn't like cider, and i was too frazzled to drink mine before it got all cold and gritty-feeling.

here sis is trying to convince the tree that even a tree needs the right pair of pink mary jane sneakers to finish the look. 

ten minutes later, the bottom half of the tree was crammed with ornaments and the grown ups kids were ready to be done for the evening.  after the kids were in bed, todd and i finished with the top half of the tree and the 'finishing touch' ornaments (the kind you buy at the store in a ten-pack so they all match and make your tree look like you meant for it to look this way rather than found it on the side of the road last christmas after it had fallen off a bean truck.)

after all was said and done, i'm glad we got to include the kids this year in some of the excitement of preparing for the season.  and i'm glad it was only ten minutes.  and i'm really going to write a lot of christmas-related posts so i don't have to take all the ornaments off anytime soon.

christmas week!

i said it: it's CHRISTMAS WEEK here at home with the van voorsts.

what? christmas was over like a week and a half ago? and what? it's thursday already and that's an inappropriate time to topically dedicate a full week?  WHAT. EVER. Y'ALL.  i do what i want.

as it turns out, december was a bit of a whirlwind for us.  and i'm pretty sure we were the only ones on the planet who felt that way. 

the first weekend in december was atticus' birthday.  the following week, belated gifts and cards trickled in.  the next weekend, todd's parents came to visit and what was the first thing out of atticus' mouth when he saw them? 'where are my presents?'  that's when i knew he was (unfortunately?) old enough to understand christmas this year.  the following weekend was actual christmas, when we spent time at home as a family doing what else? opening gifts.  and last weekend, we went down to visit my side of the family, which involved three separate gift openings.

and while i am seriously considering getting a tattoo on my shoulder blade in tribute of my new fruit/veggie juicer (i'm thinking it will be a picture of a carrot with wings being juiced by a juicer with wings - thoughts?), i'm ready to have a breather from all the gifts.  atticus is getting a little too...expectant, if you know what i mean.  halfway through the month, todd was like, 'come january, he's going to wonder why no one loves him anymore.'  and for the next eleven months, that may very well seem to be the case after the veritable dharma drop that was december.

HOWEVER.  the thing i have loved most this month has been getting to see so much family!  so this 'week' (today through whenever i'm done) i'll be chronicling our many adventures to and fro over the season.

and also? i solemnly swear to you, dear reader, that i will leave my christmas lights and nativity set and live(ish) christmas tree up until i'm done chronicling, so you can rest assured that this won't go on forever...eventually the tree becomes a fire hazard, so i'm on a pretty strict time line. 

up next? admitting that it's 2012.  but not yet.  baby steps.

shamelsss self-promotion

hello paige's world.

i'm todd, paige's rib donor.

check out my blog:

www.onceforalldelivered.blogspot.com

my blog is my dumping ground for everything I've learned, am learning, and hope to learn regarding the historic, orthodox, Christian faith found in Jesus.

my primary motivation is to create a resource for my children to one day use and read so that i can pass on to them all that God taught me and continues to teach me.

so check it out.

***you will now be returned to your regularly-scheduled programming - already in progress

video vednesday: 1-900-OK FACE

that's not even enough numbers.

(our security settings don't allow me to see the ad at the beginning, so i apologize if it's completely inappropriate.  now on to the phone sex line commercial.)



WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!?!

thwr: #truestory

todd: if atticus had a twitter, i'd follow him.


and that's how we roll.