Holiday catch-up part 1

It was so nice this year to be more active--I kept remembering how bummed I was last year when I was sidelined with a stress fracture during the holidays! Every time I got stressed out by how much stuff was going on, I just reminded myself that this time I was up and active!!!

We kicked off December with a visit to the candy cane factory, then hung around downtown for most of the day.

We decided to check out Dickens of a Christmas--roving bands of people in Victorian clothing acting out scenes from A Christmas Carol. We've always meant to go and never have, so this year it was! And it was cool to see but I'm happy that we never made a special effort in years past. ;-)



We also found the window hung with ornaments made by Juliet and Isaac's classes (their classes do a lot together because of the high-ability program, which is really fun for them. Funny story--Juliet's teacher is a super sweet tiny little lady--just this bouncy sweet little pixie, and Isaac's teacher is a little more of a hippie...super mellow and laid-back and really awesome. I love them both but they are so different! Anyway, at PT conferences Juliet's teacher--smiling nonstop--told me that she loved how Jules and Isaac always gravitate to each other whenever they get the chance, and it just warms her heart to see their sibling bond. Isaac's teacher told me that they like to chase each other and mock fight and she occasionally has to separate them! Sibling bonds, I guess!)



We walked a mile or so to the downtown library to warm up and burn some time...I always love this sign and finally got a picture in front of it since nobody else was around block it! (Normally it's totally obscured by tents for the farmer's market, but we waited until they packed up.)



And then we caught the holiday parade, which was HUGE! We left after an hour with more than half of the entrants still to go. I love a good brass band--it always gets me a little teary-eyed!



Speaking of teary-eyed, I LOVED listening to all the carols that the kids were playing pretty much nonstop all through December. And the duets! The duets!! I seriously had to start rationing piano time because it was such a hot commodity.



Matthew was totally blissed out by the fire a lot of days--he loved watching the flames and the twinkling lights on the tree. Very soothing to his little baby soul.



We went to our ward party one night and Nathan was so darn thrilled to meet this guy. So. Darn. Thrilled. Look at that grin!

 Lots of angelic sleeping babies in photos, which does not necessarily represent reality. He's getting better at sleeping in his crib, but...it's still a long road. Mostly because I have neither the time, the mental reserves, the patience, or the ability to survive on 2 hours of sleep that I had when I was really working to sleep-train some of the other kids.

He's so darn cute though! This is the day he turned 2 months old. So delicious.

Isaac started--and finished--the last Harry Potter book!

This is mostly what Matthew looks like...wide awake. :-)

 This was a busy month for performances--we attended Abigail's first band concert!

And Isaac's class play! He played a legislative branch and designed his costume himself. :-)

And Juliet's class play! She played Alice in Alice in Winterland. One neat thing is that the role of Alice was shared among a few girls, and one girl was sick the morning of the performance--Jules filled in for her with less than 15 minutes' notice and was totally off cue cards (for the 30 lines she covered for the other girl) by the time we saw her perform!

And a piano recital for all three of them--Isaac's first recital!

This was also a reeaaaallly busy month for parties--one night all 5 of the older kids had parties at overlapping times from 4 pm until 10 pm. That was a little wild.

And one day Abigail walked Luke to his friend's birthday party in our neighborhood and they were both SO excited by the novelty. :-) (Guys--having older kids is AMAZING. My own babysitter in-house?!)

Barely any snow in December, but we made do with what we had...

And some days we just stayed inside and snuggled.

One night we were planning to go to Indianapolis for the zoo lights, but the weather was terrible and we opted for a huge blanket snuggle pile while we watched Elf  and ordered the really good kind of pizza from Papa John's (a kind friend gave us a gift card when Matthew was born, so we splurged on the good stuff!).

And another night we braved the Annual Mess to End All Messes, otherwise known as making gingerbread houses...this year we used exclusively leftover Halloween candy which was awesome (I took it all away about five days after Halloween for this purpose).

  A random selfie before church one morning as we were scrambling into the car...I think the kids were already all out in the car and we were enjoying the 15 seconds of quiet!

 

She doesn't look too happy in this picture--and neither does he--but Abigail jumps at any chance she gets to cuddle Matthew. He's getting pretty big now and just about dwarfed her in church today when she was trying to balance him on her lap--hah! His motor skills needs to catch up to his weight. ;-)

Everyone always wants "Matty snuggles" at bedtime (except he might throw up on your pillow, so, you know, element of risk...).

Lots of Matty snuggles!

He's such a smiley little guy and then he goes totally stoic whenever you try to take a photo.

Okay, so here's the frustrating thing--I have another 25 pictures that I wanted to include in this post, but I cannot FOR THE LIFE OF ME get them pulled off my iPad, and I've tried emailing them, uploading them directly, nada. I have no idea why. So I'm hoping this is Part 1 and Part 2 will come later, but...I don't know.



So--we went to the Children's Museum one day. And had an awesome time. Took lots of photos, none of which I can post, thanks to technology (I'm just pulling this one off of Instagram).

The kids worked super hard at extra chores to earn money for their sibling secret Santa gifts. I loved, loved, loved this so much for so many reasons.

We made a gazillion loaves of cranberry-orange bread. (Actually more like 80 mini loaves). One of the things I was really distressed about last year (broken leg) is that we didn't do any caroling. So one night when it was -12 below and Neil was gone I baked 48 mini loaves, packed up all 6 kids, and we drove around town for several hours caroling and dropping off little breads. Then two days later we did it again as soon as the kids got home from school so we could finish up before the crazy ice storm started. Neil didn't ever get to join in on the fun, but we got to do our caroling and looking at lights and bread-bringing!



And each of the kids ate at least one of those mini loaves by themselves. Nathan probably ate about 5 over the course of all the baking days.


We had a delightful Christmas--my sister Mary Beth drove down on Christmas Eve and we made sugar cookies and fudge and a big elaborate Christmas Eve dinner (PICTURES WHERE ARE YOU?!), and then it was time for the Taking of the Pajama Pictures...

That second one embodies Christmas Eve energy like none other.

After we came home from church on Christmas Day it was time for the traditional eat-whatever-you-want-do-whatever-you-want all day thing. It's seriously my favorite. Lots of chocolate and puzzles and Legos. :-) Mary Beth was a good sport even if she doesn't want to see a puzzle again for a year! ;-)

And the next day was our anniversary!! 14 years!!! Seems both like yesterday and forever.

 Mary Beth took us all to see Rogue One that day--we went back and forth for a long time about taking all the kids but ultimately decided to take everyone. Nathan was a little bored in the first half, but loved the galactic shootouts in the second. I guess that's what happens when pretty much the only movies you ever see are Star Wars and you spent most of your second year of life thinking your name was Darth Nater--you're just thrilled to see Darth Vader lightsabering it up and not at all scared. Hmm.

Speaking of Star Wars, for the first few days of break the kids were building these huge paper airplanes that were actually Star Destroyers. At one point there was an entire fleet of them! Creative little kiddos.



We had quite a few sessions with the pipe chimes but this is the only photo I got:




And a miraculously sleeping baby--I think this was the first time we used his mobile and I was so excited about it that I kept texting Neil pictures because it magically made Matthew go to sleep (it's AWESOME and it's here--it's really amazing bc the clamp system lets you move it from crib to pack-and-play to play gym to carseat. I seriously wish that this was invented a decade ago when I was first having babies!!)

My parents came to visit for New Year's. I think this may have been the only photo I took--I was pretty tired out by that point in the holidays! But I loved seeing the kids draped all over my dad--it's obvious how much they adore him! My mom also read stories to the kids that morning so I could sleep in (Neil left for work around 5 am), but obviously I didn't get a photo of that! So just imagine a photo of my mom reading all the kids stories and letting me get a blessed extra hour of sleep. :-) (seriously...it was so quiet that when I woke up I thought they had gone somewhere with the kids! Matthew had a few really bad nights in a row so I was soooo grateful for that sleep!!)

Five for February, part II

In 2011 I decided to post 5 things I was grateful for every day during the month of February. I realize I'm quite late starting here, but I want to do it again.

So here we go today!

1) I'm grateful for my Nutrimill. I was grinding wheat berries into flour this morning and thought what a blessing it is to have this mill. I usually grind flour once a week and I just love the nutty goodness of whole-wheat baked goods.

2) I'm grateful for Nathan's insistence on ONLY napping in his crib. I have had other babies that were more flexible about where they slept and I certainly appreciated that flexibility! But Nathan's insistence on his crib forces me to stay home and enjoy the quiet mornings with Luke and Isaac. Those times where we snuggle up reading stories together in front of the fire are my very favorite part of the day.

3) I'm grateful for a husband who brings Nathan to me to nurse, then takes him away again and lets me sleep in while he makes breakfast and gets the kids ready for school (yes, I do know how lucky I am!). I have had a really hard time with fatigue while I've been on Zoloft and he is so accommodating and kind about it. That extra half-hour seems to make all the difference in the world as I'm groggily struggling to wake up every day.

4) I bought a new lampshade for my desk a month or so ago and every time I look at it I love it even more. I think it was maybe $5 but it is just perfect and makes me so happy!

5) I'm grateful for a good friend who carpools with me to preschool and church activities. She is always so dependable and as we all know, carpools are total sanity savers!!

iPad photo dump

 I love those little pursed lips! Sweet boy.

 I think I may already have posted this photo but I like it enough that I'll repost it anyway.

I took this photo a few weeks ago because I thought it was funny that my treadmill clock restarted after 100 minutes.

This week is the halfway point in marathon training. Guess what? Polar vertex = I have not run outside since New Year's Day. That's right, people...last week I ran a half-marathon on my treadmill at 11:30 PM (and I had to nurse Nathan at the 11-mile mark! Talk about it being hard to start again--I was so cold and stiff!!). My feelings about this are mixed: I love having my super-nice treadmill because there's no way I'd be getting my runs in otherwise, but goodness, that is a LONG TIME to be on a treadmill. And marathon training itself is interesting--I definitely don't think I'm going to be setting any records for an impressive time. I promised myself that if I was going to do this it would take a backseat to my family, and you know what? I'm obsessive enough that something like that is kind of hard for me. Most days I do my runs after the kids are asleep and Neil is working (maybe once a week I'll run during naptime, and only if it's a shorter run so I can still spend one-on-one time with Isaac while the little boys are asleep). But some nights Neil ends up not working and he wants to spend time together and I'd planned to run. I know, I know...but for instance, yesterday I was planning to run 7 miles but the weather was SO bad that he didn't go back to work, and it was a definite gesture of love to postpone my run and spend time with him instead. I know that sounds bizarre, but it's true (Neil may be the only one on earth to whom this makes sense since he lives with it, but he doesn't read my blog anyway).

On one of our many many snow days we broke out the fabric markers and decorated pillowcases for everyone. Isaac wanted a Han Solo Angry Bird, Jules a unicorn, Abigail a dragon, and Luke requested Yoda with a lightsaber (Luke really really loves Yoda and quite frequently will dress up in a Yoda costume and go around using this funny little Yoda voice and say, "I am Yoda, hmm?").  The kids all decorated one side of their pillowcases and then decided they wanted me to do the other side, after which they colored it in.

The other night I was watching Neil wash Nathan's face after dinner--Nathan was happily splashing and chortling in the water--and I just felt so much love and gratitude for my good husband.

Last Sunday Lukey and I were snuggling on the couch and he was just laughing and laughing. That kid has the BEST laugh and it is so gorgeous that all of us are always trying to get him to laugh. And his smile is so darling too!

I think all the laughing wore him out because literally two minutes later he fell asleep in my lap.

On Friday I felt a creative urge and so Isaac and I spent the afternoon pintucking my duvet and shams. Then I liked how it looked so I took the velvet left over from our Christmas stockings and made a few pillows. I'm slowly getting my living room back to a place where the colors are working together, and this velvet oddly works really well. It has a sort of weird sheen in this photo--definitely better in person.

One thing I have discovered in the last six months is how awesome Goodwill (a thrift store) is here. I used to just see it as a convenient place to donate items I no longer used, and then one day I had literally scoured EVERY store in town looking for a plain white dress shirt for Isaac to wear at my sister's wedding. It was summer and there was seriously nothing available--and it takes about 25 minutes for me to get to Target or the mall, so I was seriously annoyed about this. So as a last-ditch stop I tried Goodwill, and I found a gorgeous little GapKids shirt in his size...and I think it was a dollar or something like that.

Anyway, I have become very fond of Goodwill (every month or two I hit the 50% off first Saturday to replace all of the pants that my kids have inevitably worn through in the intervening months. Please tell me I'm not the only one whose children outgrow/destroy their pants this quickly! I've tried buying super-nice ones or pants with a lifetime guarantee, but I have to say, buying a pair for $2 at Goodwill is my current fave).

Anyway anyway, Jules and I put together these fun outfits on Sunday using Goodwill finds (excluding the jewelry). You can't tell in the picture, but her leggings are cuffed with sequins and they are the cutest thing.

I used to take photos of food a lot (remember Foodie Fridays?) but I haven't in a long time...I kind of miss that.

























So here are the boys making graham crackers one afternoon last week...

and here's dinner from Friday, maybe? Quinoa salad & whole-wheat pizza with roasted veggies.



Both were super good.

And these are seriously my favorite cookies ever--my neighbor brought me some a few months ago and I ended up hiding them in my room because I didn't want to share with the kids (I asked her for the recipe and made another batch the next day).

And just to round things out, on Saturday I was looking for some medical tape and ended up tracking it down in our 72-hour kit. As I was repacking the MREs, Neil asked if we needed to replace them--turns out yes, we did. So the kids asked if they could eat the MREs, and we just ended up eating them for dinner.

You guys. I do not recommend it. Definitely palatable in crisis, and in all fairness they might taste better when they are newer, but it's not an experience I am eager to repeat.  However, it was a good thing to do, since now we know what ones we liked more than others and we can restock accordingly.

And last but not least...this darling little smile.