Easter 2017

Trying, TRYING, to get back in the groove with posting about holidays and random life events and such.  The masses may not care about seeing a photo of my family in our Easter attire, but I hope that one day my kids will.  Doing it for the kids.

So Easter this year!  Honestly I feel like we're still trying to figure out this whole holiday thing now that we're living in the same city as my parents.  When we were living in KC, we'd come back home for Easter and stay the weekend.  We'd dye eggs and do an egg hunt.  The kids would have their Easter baskets.  There was Easter themed breakfasts and lunches.  All together just hanging out.  Now that we are in the same area, we don't have to spend the entire holiday weekend together.  So do we?  Do we not?  How does this work?  Oh the first world problems in my life.

Our friends hosted an Easter themed party at the beginning of the month.  The following weekend we went to the Easter egg hunt at Elsie's preschool.  On Easter weekend Grandma 'Nita brought over some Easter treats Saturday morning and we hosted a family at our house for dinner and egg dying. On Easter morning there were Easter baskets and I attempted to make bunny cinnamon rolls (didn't work), we made it to church (a touch late, because I thought the service started at 9:30, it was 9:15, whoops!), and followed that up with brunch at the country club.  Also that evening our col de sac threw together a glow in the dark Easter egg hunt.  It was a pretty big pinterest fail.  Rain was looming so we couldn't really wait until it was dark, kids were getting tired, and the glow sticks in the eggs honestly didn't glow all that much anyway.  But we had a good time and the 14 kiddos found all the eggs in approximately three minutes flat.  Whatever works!

The one thing we did not do this year, was go have our picture taken with the Easter bunny.  I just couldn't work up the motivation to drag my kids to the mall so that Thea could scream, Elsie would be uneasy, and we'd spend too much money on a crappy photo.  I feel a little bad, simply because it is just something you do with kids, right?  But none of them even asked so I think we'll live.

Christmas Day 2015

The good news:  We went from waking up every hour the night before, to a four hour stretch, a three hour stretch, and hopefully a bit more.  The bad news:  We're sleep training Ferber style.  I hate hate HATE hearing her cry.  But less than 48 hours I've already seen vast improvements in Thea's sleep and this last time I laid her back in her crib there has been ZERO crying.  We'll see how today goes, but things are looking much better.  I might actually start to feel human again!

Anyway, back to recapping Christmas.  I had imagined the girls sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting to come down until we let them.  Watching them squeal and giggle as they found their stockings and such.  Reality was Thea had me up a ton in the night, and by the time her and I got up everyone else was awake, had eaten and were watching TV.  Not the most magical beginning to Christmas morning, but I appreciate Christopher letting me sleep.

The girls were excited to find a note from Santa, and that he and the reindeer had eaten the snacks they left out for him.  They were adorable as they pulled the little gifts out of their stockings.  Elsie especially got overly excited about each item.  "Wook!  Oh my gosh its a thing yay!  Wook mama wook!"  Sometimes she hadn't even figured out what it was yet, she was just so damn happy to be emptying the stocking.  After they had a bit to enjoy their little trinkets, we took them up to the playroom to see their gift from Grammy and Papa.  A new teepee for the playroom.  Then it was back downstairs so I could open a gift from Chris.  He got me this canvas.  I'm in love with it.  I just need to find a desk for the study so I can get it hung on the wall!  Then the girls spent some time rolling and jumping on the bubble wrap my gift was packed in.  Eventually we packed up and headed to my mom's for breakfast and presents with the whole family.

Per the usual, we had chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, bacon and strawberries.  Thanks to all the steroids Elsie was on, she was ravenous and ate a ton!  And while I mention the steroids, Thea also woke up with quite the cold Christmas morning.  Coughing and boogers like crazy.  So her and Elsie were quite the pair with their crabbiness.  After breakfast it was on to gifts.





With a smaller family, we do gifts one at a time, oldest to youngest.  We had nothing else planned for the day, besides more eating, so we had to make the gift fun last!  Honestly I like it that way, and unless the family gets a whole lot bigger (which I don't anticipate) I think we'll always do it like that.  It's fun to watch each person open their gifts and enjoy them.  Ryann's most treasured gift of the morning was a Monster High Doll.  That girl has been asking for one for well over a year.  I think they are kind of awful, but it was truly the only thing she really wanted.  Elsie, again, was excited about everything.  It was so fun to watch her.  Thea, well, I think she was just feeling pretty miserable and ready for a nap.

As soon as we were done opening gifts I put Thea down for a nap.  Truthfully I can't remember how the rest of the day worked out for her, but I do know she took a pretty epic four hour nap.  The rest of the day was spent doing more eating, watching Polar Express, playing games, making dinner, and more eating.  When we left my parents we tried to take a quick drive to look at more Christmas lights, but Thea just wasn't having it.  So it was home and time for bed.

I truly can't wait to see the chaos that ensues next Christmas when Thea is mobile!

annual cookie day 2015

I'm currently choosing blogging over a clean house or a nap because I'm sad that so many of our family memories have gone undocumented the past year.  Granted, thanks to chatbooks I've got my instagram feed to look back on.  But they generally don't tell the whole story.  So blogging.  It's one of my 2016 goals.  Which I intend to blog about when I'm done playing catch up from December!

We had our fourth (I think) annual sugar cookie baking day just before Christmas.  This year my sister (Auntie) got to participate as well so that was fun.  But for some reason the girls were just not cooperating at all.  Ryann was pissed because we wouldn't let her eat all the dough.  Elsie just wanted to do everything her way right then, and was also licking EVERYTHING, and Thea was doing her baby thing.  So I was a little peeved at first.  When we did finally get to the sprinkle phase the girls loved it.  Elsie may have used so many sprinkles that the cookies were like rocks but she was super proud of her work! 

I'm hoping that as they get a little bit older they might actually be helpful?  I mean I know half the fun of baking for them is eating dough and licking spatulas, but come on...

I'm so sad that we were unable to find more of our matching aprons for the day.  Maybe my mom should just whip up matching ones for all of us for next year.  Sounds good, right mom?  :: winky kiss face emoticon :: I love you!

Hopefully Auntie can join us again next year.  I'm sure it is just going to be a crazy hot mess when you add a one year old to the mix!

fall fun

We had another stretch of not so great sleep (from anyone, I swear) plus a ton going on.  So I'm trying to play a little catch up over the next few days.  Or however long it takes me which is going to be forever and I'm never going to be 'caught up'.  Oh well.

As I started typing this I realized I never posted any photos from our Cider Days adventure (back in September!).  It was our first attempt at taking Thea to any sort of event.  I was nervous that she'd be a complete mess, but she did us a solid and slept nearly the entire time in the carrier.  There was camel rides, an exotic petting zoo, bounce houses, some food and a craft fair.  And cider.  But seriously.  Just cider.  No donuts, no slushes, no exciting cider items of any sort.  I was disappointed.  But all was forgotten when I ate a funnel cake drizzled with nutella.  Yummmmm.  We spent way too much cash, but had a good time, and it felt good to get out of the house and really do something.

Then a few weeks ago we headed out to the pumpkin patch.  It was no KC pumpkin patch, that is for sure.  But we went when it wasn't busy at all so that was nice.  I had high hopes that Thea would again sleep through most of the outing in the carrier, but no dice.  She absolutely could not stand the wind and was gagging and screaming like a crazy baby.  So we ended up grabbing the car seat and lugging her around until she passed out.  The big girls did a bounce house, a little train, and a giant slide.  Plus just some running around and getting dirty.  We snagged a wagon full of pumpkins, drank a cider slush (making up for the lack of one at a cider event!) and headed home.  Maybe next year we'll be up for the hay rack ride, but we'll just have to see!