Christmas Catch Up

So, it's been a while since I've blogged, and I have to be honest -- I've been feeling a little bah, humbug so far this Christmas season.  Perhaps it's because the weather has not been very wintry {although it's hard to complain about 65 degrees and delightful} or perhaps it's because I no longer have a houseful of believers {the gig is up for the older two for sure and possibly number 3 as well}.  Whatever the reason, it's taken me a bit longer to get into the Christmas spirit this year!  But with Christmas parties, and ornament exchanges, and gift giving on the horizon I'm sure things are going to start picking up.  :)

But first.  There's a little bit of catch-up that needs to be caught up on.  Starting with one little tidbit that got left out of our Thanksgiving recap -- and was quite possibly the biggest event of the week!  {Other than the baptism, of course.  And maybe Thanksgiving day itself.}  While Scott's parents were here, they were super troopers and helped us rake up and bag all the leaves that had fallen and cluttered up our lawn.  The kids kind of helped, too, and after a couple of days of work, the curbside was loaded up and ready for the yard waste pick-up to come rolling around on the Monday morning to collect the fifty bags we had filled with all our efforts.  You would not believe how excited the kids were to watch this show!  They came spilling out of the house as soon as they saw the truck pull up and then proceeded to stand and stare as the guy loaded bag after bag onto the truck.  It was hilarious.

Ready for Pick-up.

Once Grandma and Grandpa left the next day, the kids were finally ready to switch gears from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  Last Saturday we loaded everyone up and drove over to the Home Depot to pick out our tree for the 5th year running.  And once again, we went with the Fraser Fir.  The weather was a balmy 67 degrees or so, and even though it felt odd to be getting the tree in such conditions, it was MUCH nicer than freezing to death while being outside in the cold to do our choosing.  Once home, happy chaos ensued as we brought up all the bins of Christmas decorations and ornaments and lights.  

 

 Getting things set up.

 There's no such thing as too many lights for Ethan.

One of the biggest {unforeseen} hits of the unpacking was finding all of our Christmas books wrapped up and waiting in a box.  I had seen this idea last year {to wrap up Christmas books and let the kids open one present each night in December to read a book at bedtime} and decided we'd try to implement it this year.  As we were putting everything away last year, I had the kids help me wrap up all the books so they'd be ready to go when Christmas rolled around again.  Well, maybe it will just be their tradition to open every single book while decorating the tree and then throw the wrapping paper on the floor while they stand around looking through the books and not really helping with anything else.  Because that's kind of what ended up happening.  But that's okay -- it was kind of cute to see them so excited about all the books they haven't see since last year.  

 

It took a few more hours, but eventually all the ornaments were hung and the tree was finally finished!  {And with only a couple ornament casualties to boot.}  The stockings (minus Alex's -- whose still isn't finished) were hung as well and the Little People nativity set was taken out to be scattered all throughout the main floor and not really played with by anyone.  I'm really hoping I'll be able to find and gather up all the pieces once the season is over! 

To round out our Christmas launching weekend, we went on a family walk around the neighborhood last Sunday after dark to look at all the lights.  Our main objective was to make it to the "crazy house," which is on the other end of our subdivision and which goes ALL OUT in the lights and figurines department.  It is seriously nuts.  Every square inch of their lawn and rooftop is filled with STUFF.  There's a Christmas countdown clock, a train, a ferris wheel, and a nativity scene just to name a few.   It was impossible to get a decent shot of the whole spectacle, but this should give you the gist of it.

 That's Grace clowning around for you.

It was the perfect night for a walk -- no one even really needed a jacket, and everything was merry and bright until the return trip home when Grace started acting up and then proceeded to run away from us a few different times.  Scott had to keep chasing her down and finally ended up tackling her on someone else's lawn a few blocks away from our house and carrying/dragging her the rest of the way home.  Fun times!  And a lovely way to end the weekend. 

Other than that it's been business as usual this week with Jane FINALLY making a breakthrough on the potty-training front and Alex being a climbing monkey from sun up to sun down.  He seriously climbs on everything, and on Friday alone he fell off the kitchen table twice and down the basement stairs three different times -- and somehow managed not to get even a bump on his head!  His favorite perch these days is the computer desk where he likes to wiggle the mouse around and hit buttons on the keyboard in order to make the desktop picture appear where I've plastered our family Christmas picture.  Then he likes to point excitedly and say "Mama!"  Hahahaha.  It's good to know at least one child loves me.  

Yesterday found us at the kids' school playground so they could run around and play for a bit and I discovered that apparently you can go from running a half-marathon to barely being able to run a mile in a mere 2 1/2 months.  Boo.  I've been having problems with plantar fasciitis on my right foot so I decided to take a break from running for a bit to see if that would help to heal it up.  Well, it's been about a month now since I've run at all, and I decided to test it out yesterday by running a leisurely mile.  Let me tell you I felt like my lungs were going to burst and I was going to die!  Hahahaha.  I will definitely need to baby step my way back to being a "runner."

When we came home from the playground, I started baths for the kids as I tried to figure out what to throw together for dinner since there weren't a lot of options in the house.  I was planning on calling it a pancake/cereal night, but since Sophie threw a big fit about wanting Sloppy Joe's instead I sent Scott to the store to grab some hamburger buns to complete the meal and boy am I glad I did!!!  Not 10 minutes after Scott got back, there was a knock at the door and when I opened it I saw the sister missionaries from church standing on our front porch.  After a split second of blank confusion, I remembered that I had signed up to feed them dinner last night and had totally forgotten to write it on the calendar and thus TOTALLY forgotten all about it.  Aaaaahhhhh!!!  Thank GOODNESS, we had more to offer than just pancakes!  And thank goodness, I had already started cooking up some frozen corn I had found in the freezer and we had enough stuff in the fridge for Scott to throw together a salad as well.  Hopefully, we played it off well enough that they didn't realize we were doing things on the fly, but suffice it to say that I was completely mortified for them to see the messiness of our house and the grossness of our bathroom!  Let's just say that no one got any Saturday chores done yesterday.  SO embarrassing!!!  Hahaha.  Oh well -- what can you do?

After the sisters left, it was way past time for the two little ones to go to bed and after dealing with a massive meltdown from Grace about wanting to go to our friends' house for a party {which was not going to happen now}, I decided to de-stress by making some No Bake cookies.  These remind me of my childhood.  I LOVED these and remember always begging my mom to make them.  Ethan REALLY loves them as well and so do Scott and Grace.  Since there's peanut butter in them no one else can really eat them but that's okay -- there's just more for the rest of us.  Hahahahaha.  This is one "recipe" I've had memorized for a LONG time. 

{1 stick of butter; 2 c. sugar; 1/2 c. milk; heaping spoonful of cocoa powder -- Let come to a boil on medium heat and then cook for about 5 minutes.  Turn off the heat -- add 1 tsp. vanilla; giant, huge, heaping spoonful of peanut butter; 2 c. or so of oatmeal -- and then mix all to together and spoon out onto waxed or parchment paper.}

The only problem is I never can get it to turn out quite right these days.  I don't know if it's an altitude problem or an individual stove problem, but it always seems that I cook it a little too long and it starts to dry up and harden before I can turn it out onto the paper.  A splash of milk mixed in fixes the problem, but still.  I'm annoyed each time I make them that I can't get them to work right from the first.  Hahaha.  Oh well.  They still taste delicious so that's all that matters. 

Ethan ran to get the camera for me to take a picture for the blog.

And that's a wrap.  This week will be another busy one!  There are cards to finish, ornaments to make, shopping to do, and parties to attend.  It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  :)