Happy Holidays

We have just finished our three days of our Christmas extravaganza. It was very fun, eventful and generally happy. Julianne complained of a sore throat for two days and I kind of denied her throat hurting hoping that it would go away. My denial failed to cure her and on Christmas Eve I took her to the doctor and she indeed had strep throat. So she did not attend my sisters Christmas eve festivities. D and her stayed at home and wrapped presents, ate White Castle (the only restaurant open), and spent some time together. She was feeling much better after she had her first dose of antibiotics so it was hard for her not to go to the dinner since she was feeling better.

Christmas morning we woke up around 7 ish and got the kids up and trickled downstairs to see what Santa had brought the girls. Our dog Tucker somehow did not end up in the basement that night, an adult oversight, and ended up eating all of Santa's Christmas cookies and the reindeer's carrots and we think he peed on Julianne's American Girl doll book that she received with her other Santa gift. So he had a great Christmas. Anyway, the kids enjoyed their Christmas morning, complete with opening presents, watching others open presents and eating a delicious D style breakfast. Julianne actually threw up that morning and for the first 2 hours was not feel well. After she threw up she felt better. We think it might have been from her antibiotics. D's mom and step dad came in the morning and enjoyed our breakfast with them. Around lunch time we went to my dad's house and opened more presents, ate and visited with family. We did not have too much excitement except my brother severely cut his finger on a beer bottle. My mom (a nurse) was there so she helped wrap it up and monitored his finger (it was pretty bad and could have used a few stitches).

The next day we celebrated Christmas with my mom and brother and sister. It was a nice intimate night filled with opening presents, eating and rave dancing (the kids, ie. lights out and crazy dancing). I relaxed and cleaned the next day. My mom came over to stay at our house on Saturday and she left this evening. She is staying at my sisters house tonight because she is being induced tomorrow. She is actually due on the 31st but will have the baby tomorrow. So we do not know what the sex is so it will be fun to find out.

Here are some pictures of our holiday extravaganza.


Julianne and her threw-up can


Nathan and his new doll (louis). I love this doll. It is growing on Nathan. When he first saw it he threw it on the ground and did not pay much attention to it. We had to keep showing him the doll. Now he sleeps with him so that is good.




All the cousins


Some rave dancing

All the family

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Having a fun, eventful, and not perfect Holiday season
-Spending time with my entire family
-Having the kids enjoy their new presents and more importantly seeing them excited about others reciving gifts
-Having my mom spend time with us
-Having a great husband and kids

I think we are ready

I think that we are officially ready for Christmas. I have shopped, made cookies and buckeyes, made all the homemade presents I am going to make and decorated the house. The only thing I have not done is wrap the presents, which will be a good opportunity to make sure that I have everything. I have so many bags hidden all around the house that I have not gone back through them to make sure I have everything. I actually feel pretty relaxed and excited for the next coming days. My mom is coming into town today and staying with my brother for a few days, then my sister and then she will be staying at our house the last part of her visit. It will be nice to catch up and to visit with her and the rest of my family.

My neighbor is coming over tomorrow night to wrap presents. She said that she and her girlfriend used to do this every year together (I guess she now works full time and does not have time this year) to make it more festive so we are going to do it for the first time. It should be fun and I am looking forward to wrapping and having someone to do it with.

We had our good friends up from Knoxville with their two kids for a visit on Saturday. It was a bonus that we saw them last weekend in Knoxville but we did not get to see their oldest daughter since she was at grandma's. We had a great visit and I took a picture of their family and I think it turned out pretty nice.

They also took a photo of our family and if you forget what I look like here is our family.


We just got done decorating cookies this evening and they are very cute and creative. Mallory took her time and decorated every part of the cookie. Julianne had fun thinking of her own ideas and trying to decorate as many cookies as she could. Nathan had one cookie that he took a bite of at the beginning and it turned out to be his cookie that he decorated, ate, decorated, ate and continued this pattern until it was all gone. I actually took way to many pictures of him tonight but he was just too cute eating his cookie. Here are some of the pictures.









Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Dove candy wrapper saying: Your presence is often the best present (I love that quote, it is kind of how I try to live)
-fixing our electricity line (the screw that holds the electric line close to our house (it adds tension) was pulled from our house a couple of months ago so the line has been loose and I was worried that the weight from an ice storm would pull the line down and the lines would come out of our house) and our handy tall neighbor helping us (we could not have done it by ourselves).
-seeing the cookie decorating progression of our children through the years
-loving Nathan's persistent personality

Does anyone have a Hood?

We now have a hooded doctoral degree man in our household. The hooding ceremony was special and not too long. He was hooded by his advisor who is a little shorter than D and therefore D had to squat down in order to receive his hood. D was very happy that he participated in the event and it will be a memory he will always have. We had a great weekend in K-town. I got to see my former book club friends/co-workers at my friend's Hanukkah party. The host, Katie, had delicious food and we got to play the game dreidel. I had a lot of fun. It was also fun to stay later and see all her quilts, her other homemade crafts and especially her beautiful fabric. She just opened up her own Etsy store of which I have already bought a headband. I love the headband and D said that I looked like a 50's mom when I am wearing it so I think that is a complement since I really would love to go back to that time and live a simpler/less technological life. On Friday we cleaned, patched drywall, caulked windows, and hand scrubbed a dirty deck at our old house. It was nice to be back in it and appreciate the house for what it is. The hooding ceremony was on Friday and then we went to our favorite restaurant with our good friends. We had a great time and good conversation. Saturday morning we got up, ran and then drove back to home. The drive home was much more calming since it was not raining and I knew that I was going back home to see my kiddos. It was a great visit and I would have liked to say a day longer to visit more people and to go to Market Square to shop at my old favorite stores.


D and his advisor

When we got home the kids were extra excited to see us and because they knew that we were going to get our Christmas tree. We got the tree and then decorated it on Sunday. So we had a busy fun filled weekend. The kids did well with Mimi and I knew that they would not have any problems. She does a great job watching them.

Tonight I am going to finish my Christmas shopping with my good friend Jill. It will be fun to shop with a friend and to visit and catch up on things. I cannot believe that Christmas is just around the corner. I just have to buy stuff for D and I am pretty much complete.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-having a safe drive to and from K-town
-seeing old friends and catching up
-coming back to our kids
-seeing how much the kids enjoy decorating the tree and getting out all the old ornaments.

No time to blog

Well I have been extremely busy as has everyone else in this world. I have mostly been busy getting ready to go to Tennessee for D's Ph.D Hooding ceremony. It will be fun and memorable. We are not taking the children since we are staying at our old house which does not have any furniture. Plus the kids still have school and hauling three kids down there and having them sit during a serious ceremony would not be very much fun for myself or for them. So D's mom is coming to watch the kids. We are very thankful that she is willing to do this and enjoys spending alone time with them. She will have fun. So since we are spending the night in our abandoned house I will be bringing all the supplies to sleep/shower/eat and do a few chores in the house. Additionally I have to clean my house for D's mom to stay in. So I have spending all my free time this week cleaning and getting little bits of chores done so that I am not having a breakdown today. So things are running smoothly. I have pretty much all the things packed besides my clothes and toiletries.

It should be a great weekend. I am attending a Hanukkah party full of latkes and dreidel spinning. This party is with all my former book club/co-workers so it will be a good time to catch up with everyone. D will be playing poker with his Tennessee buddies so it will be nice to catch up with his friends also. Friday is the hooding ceremony and then we are going to our favorite Tennessee restaurant, Pasta Trio. We always look forward to eating there. Saturday we will be heading home and will be looking forward to seeing our kids. We still have to get our Christmas tree and decorate so we will be spending the weekend at home doing all that stuff.

I have also been trying to fit in making homemade presents for my nieces and friends kids so that has also taken up a lot of my time. I am hoping that after this weekend things will settle down. But I also have more Christmas shopping and then my mom will be in town the next weekend so it will probably not slow down until after the holidays.

Last Sunday we went to see Santa at our local park. The civic association hosts a visit Santa event where you do crafts and games then you go on a carriage ride to see Santa. Santa was very friendly and knew a lot about the girls like what their dogs names were, what Julianne's teachers name was and even what their names were. So the kids were very shocked and had a great experience. Nathan was not too happy with Santa and refused to sit on his lap but I kind of expected it. It was a fun night and we will definitely do it again. The girls also decorated ginger bread houses with their cousin and Grandma. It was really fun. The houses were already constructed and all the kids had to do was decorate them with a ton of different candy/pretzels and cereal. I had a lot of fun and really wanted to decorate one of my own but settled on decorating different sides of the girls.





Last week Mallory slammed her dresser door into Nathan's face and he got a cut and then developed a small black eye. He was hamming it up in these pictures so the pictures were pretty cute and you can kind of tell he has a black eye.



Last Friday Julianne shared her book she created at her class's show-n-tell. She created a hard bound book the past week weeks called "The cats". It is basically about a cat who does not have friends and then finds some friends at school. It is probalby about 20 pages long and she wrote all the words and colored all the pictures. She put a lot of effort into the book and has a lot of pride in it. It was very cute and I will keep it forever.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-sharing experiences with my children
-seeing Julianne's expression when Santa knew important facts about her
-seeing the joy that Julianne has when she writes and completes things

Nathan's lungs

Well it began yesterday when Nathan started to get a runny nose. I knew what would happen next. He started to cough and then the wheezing began. He was coughing so much last night that D and I decided to give him a breathing treatment. He sleep fairly well last night but I was a little worried because he was breathing heavier and his coughs did not seem very productive. So we tried to bring him into bed with us so that we could hear him. Well that did not work and it never does. After about an hour of him moving, trying to talk to us and sitting up in bed I took him back into his bed. This morning he slept in and his breathing seemed to be more labored than last night. We was doing his belly breathing like he was the first time (in October) his breathing troubles occurred. This episode seems to be the same severity as the first one. He had another smaller cold/breathing episode in November but that was more coughing and wheezing and this is more of the belly breathing/wheezing. So I gave him another treatment this morning and it did help his wheezing. He is now taking a nap so we will see how he feels this afternoon. He is still his crazy moving all around kid despite his breathing difficulties. I think he got a little scared while we were upstairs after I changed his diaper and I was cleaning his diaper and he either fell or could not find me and he stared crying and kind of was gasping. I calmed him down and that helped.

I finished the girls second skirts on Saturday and they wore them yesterday. I think these turned out much better since the fabric does not have appliques on them. The girls seemed to like them and Julianne asked me if I would make one for her American Girl doll. So we will see. I am currently getting Sock and Glove animals ready for our trip to Knoxville. I have to do something in the car or I get too nervous and anxious that I am leaving my children and that something bad will happen to us (pleasant I know). So it basically takes me one-way trip to complete one animal so I will be getting those ready for the trip next week.



I did a mini photo shoot with Mallory today and these were the pictures. She was not really too into it so I may see if Julianne wants to participate later.




This was her at the end looking not too thrilled.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-getting back to a routine with the kids
-Nathan and his drive to do things for himself (he insisted on holding the nublizer nozzle and he now can get on the potty by himself)
-homemade smoothies