Getting Christmas ready with a little naked bum

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Which is good. But I fell asleep trying to write this post once already, so I'm wishing I didn't have so much to write about. Haha.

I did take more pictures this time. I seem to forget every other post.

Cecily found our never-really-used popciscle maker and put a squirt of Torani syrup and water in them before I realized what she was doing. She and Mira were surprised that they tasted bad when they got them out. *eye roll*

This is a fruit fly trap that Cecily made one day. These two things personify Cecily so much. Wanting to be helpful. Having a slight understanding of what she's trying to do. Going for it full-boar. Not really caring if it works out, but super proud of her own efforts. I thought the fruit fly trap was funnier, mostly because Torani syrup is kinda expensive and because the fruit fly trap didn't require a lot of clean-up effort on my part.

I was hungry for something sweet last Sunday. My family has ice cream every Sunday night, but ice cream isn't my favorite way to consume useless calories. So Emilia and I made molasses cookies. Emilia's turned out very pretty, mine kinda flat and spread out. But they tasted good. Mmm.

Two Mondays ago, Steve and I went out for a dinner date and discussed our Christmas budget and getting the girls back into gymnastics and our medical insurance choice for the coming year. Mira has been asking for a while if they could do gymnastics again, but I didn't know how we were going to afford it. Our spending has increased since moving to this house. Kids are eating more. We're keeping better track of allowance money (so we actually have to pay them more, haha). Clothing is more expensive as they get older (and Cecily is REALLY good at destroying her clothes and shoes). We have a bigger house to heat and cool. Etc. 

But as we chatted, we discovered that if we go with the cheaper option for Steve's new insurance plans, we will be paying exactly the same amount LESS for insurance that we would need to put them in gymnastics. And I feel very blessed by a loving Father in Heaven. He sees our needs *and* our wants and blesses us for our efforts. And it was a testimony to me of paying tithing.

Emilia now has Wednesdays off of school. Thy junior highs in our school district decided they needed to give teachers an extra day to plan for online lessons, and they hoped that by giving the kids an extra day without exposure to each other in the middle of the week, it would cut down COVID transmissions. I don't know if it's working, but she's enjoying it.

Two Wednesdays ago, I told her if she would run errands with me, I would buy her some "new" clothes at DI and whatever she wanted for lunch. I was surprised and happy that she agreed. :) We found her some cute new stuff and I found some maternity clothes and a few items for the other kids too.

Not all of them fit, so me and Mira and Cecily went back to DI to exchange and find some new stuff that Saturday. Steve wanted some new polos, so I sent him a rainbow of options to choose from. :) Steve also had game night that week and Emilia had a YW activity via zoom. President Nelson shared a message on Friday that none of us was around to listen to, but I saw the results filling my Facebook feed. (He asked us to fill social media with thankfulness, I think.)

I put in an order that Thursday for our Thanksgiving dinner food, and it was good thing I did. When I stopped at Smith's that Saturday, everything you could think of for Thanksgiving food was gone. Completely sold out. Okay, so I didn't check on everything. But the things I was thinking of getting extra of were gone.

This past week has felt like an eternity long. Mostly filled with good things, but I'm exhausted.

I had planned to have this week of of doing covers, but then I got a request last week to do an extra cover, so I saved an easy one for this week. Then I had another client ask if I could do a last minute cover, and a third client say that they'd gotten a terrible cover from another designer and asked if I could do a nicer one on a time crunch. I wouldn't have had a problem telling the second and third client no, but I decided that i'd had enough of having to dry all of my loads of clothes 3 times. I'm going to have 5 kids. And this dryer not drying is making 2 days of laundry a week stretch into 5. So with Black Friday sales coming up, I said, "No more!" haha. But I figured taking on some extra work, so I could pay for it wouldn't be a bad plan. So I said yes instead of no.

I also ran a black friday sale in my book cover facebook group, so I needed to schedule posts for each day of the week starting on Monday.

Tuesday, I had to take my van down to Provo to get the windshield replaced. My registration is due by this Tuesday and I didn't know if they'd be working over the holiday weekend. I had to leave the van there for 3 hours, so my mom was kind enough to come get Jules and I and we hung out at her house for a few hours. We also got a free pie from our mortgage banker (it's a little weird, right?), so we went and picked that up before going back to get the van. The pick-up time was very near Jules' nap time, so she screamed at me until she fell asleep *while screaming* about 3/4 of the way home.

Wednesday, I needed to finish up book covers, the girls were home from school for Thanksgiving vacation, I needed to shop for candy for our gingerbread house making we planned to do Friday and for the potty training we planned to start Friday too, we needed to make 3 pies and jello and cranberry sauce, we needed to fold the laundry that I'd miraculously finished in only 2 1/2 days, and I wanted to exercise since I'd be stuffing my face the next day. :D

We ended up getting all that done except the cranberry sauce. Crazy, right?

Thursday, was, of course, Thanksgiving. We still needed to bake the turkey, make the rolls, make the mashed potatoes, make a fruit salad, and roast the veggies. Steve and I worked our butts off in the kitchen and the girls entertained Jules and we finally had lunch/dinner around 3pm. This was our spread:

I also finally remembered to take pictures of my fall porch decor. It's hard to tell, but those two round vine things are pumpkins that light up at night.

Friday, we set out to start potty training Jules. She's gone poop in the potty a few times already because she would tell me she was pooping before she actually did it. And she would get nervous every time we took her diaper off, so I figured we should try. Since Steve was home for the rest of the weekend, and so were the other kids, we all agreed to help with the task. After researching different methods again, we decided to throw everything out the window and just do what my mom did with Ben. We let her sit on the potty while watching TV until she went in there enough to realize what was going on. It's worked brilliantly.

She really is such an angel child (though an angel child going through the rebellious tantrum phase of the terrible twos). She had one accident on Friday and watched like 6 hours of TV, but she hasn't had an accident since. It's been crazy easy. We've left her to run around bottomless all weekend (and her little fluffy bum is so adorable), so we may have a few more accidents when I start putting panties on her, but this has been, by far, the least stressful potty training experience of my parenthood.

Friday, we also decorated "gingerbread" houses while Jules napped. My mom and Alison came out and joined us. Cecily and Emilia and Alison enjoyed it a ton. Mira got bored very fast because no one was helping her and I made the frosting too thick. I had an idea for my house and because there weren't other people around to help them, I kept getting interrupted and my house kept falling apart, and I was so frustrated by the time my mom and Alison were done and ready to leave, I almost gave up. Steve saved the day by offering to help decorate it. So I finished it. But it's not my favorite house by a long shot.

Friday night, I went to work on the third cover for this week, and realized that the program I use to make some of the items wasn't working properly and spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how to make it work. 

Saturday, we continued potty training. The kids wanted to play with Steve when they woke up, so I took the time to put up the new blinds we ordered in an online sale last week. Our kitchen and living room blinds were cloth honeycomb blinds that I'm guessing were put up around when the house was built 20 years ago. They were filthy. There were dead bugs squished in between the honeycombs. The strings only worked on the two smallest ones. On the bigger ones, one wouldn't hold on one side, so it would hang at an angle that sometimes went half-way down the window, and the other wouldn't let you put it back down without Herculean efforts and puzzle solving. It went surprisingly fast and I didn't even break anything on me or the blinds. 

Then we had lunch, had some friends stop by to pick up some D&D stuff Steve was no longer using, and we got our new dryer delivered!! Wahoo! When Jules went down for her nap, Cecily and I spent 3 1/2 hours putting up our outside Christmas lights. By the time we were done, it was freezing out there and I was SO glad to come in. While we worked, Steve and the other two girls put lights on our fake tree.

When we got back inside, I realized Cecily had been wearing Mira's winter coat. I'd forgotten that someone in Cecily's class took her coat home and never brought it back. The teacher had contacted them, but didn't get a response, so I had to run to the store to get a coat so that Cecily wouldn't freeze at school on Monday.

Then for dinner, getting kids into bed, and more work on book cover stuff while Steve and I watched the last few episodes of The Good Place.

Today, we had Zoom Sunday School meetings for me and Steve and Emilia, then held our own church, where we had sacrament and talked about building sturdy foundations for our testimonies. Then, after lunch, me and the girls put up our *inside* Christmas decorations. That took most of Jules' nap, too. We even decorated the tree while listening to Christmas music. It was a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I was so tired after all that though, that I fell asleep on the couch (like I said above) while Steve played 3 rounds of labyrinth with Cecily and Mira and Jules watched more Octonauts.

 All in all, there was ton of fun stuff that we did and I'd say Jules is well on her way to being potty trained. But man, I'm looking forward to a normal day tomorrow!

I despise colds, especially while pregnant

 Two weeks ago, we had a pretty busy week, but this last week has been super boring/normal. As per normal, I took almost no pictures.

Two weeks ago today, we had our Frohlich family dinner to celebrate October birthdays. I was reluctant to get together because I wasn't quite over my cold, but I was negative for Covid, and everyone else was fine with us coming, so we joined them. It was nice to be in the chaos of family for a few hours.

I had grocery shopping to do on Monday since we'd been isolating up until Saturday afternoon. But I also started feeling sicker again that day. So I masked up and sanitized and only went for a 20 minute run to Costco because they don't do pick up. I got online and ordered pickup from Smith's after that. Tuesday and Wednesday I was exhausted and my nose got so stuffed up and pressure behind my eyes was giving me headaches. I felt emotionally terrible, too, since I'd gone to the family gathering and hadn't worn a mask. I could have passed this yuckiness on to everybody. But I asked around at the end of the week and nobody had gotten even a hint of a cold, so I guess it ended up okay.

Tuesday was election day. We don't even need to talk about that. Just glad we're past it. I also had a couple of custom covers that week. I try to get those finished up by Wednesday, so I can make at least one premade cover during the week. The premade covers are the most fun because I get to run with what inspires me. But since I wasn't feel well Tuesday and Wednesday, I don't think I finished them until Friday.

Steve had game night Thursday. And Friday Emilia had an activity with her Young Women's group. They ate some fast food and went swimming for a couple hours. She really enjoyed it. I made monkey bread (or pull-apart bread) for my kids for the first time. I tried to make some gluten-free by making the biscuit dough myself, but they turned out crumbly and dry and they soaked up the caramel instead of sitting in it like the gluten-full ones (and they were still dry somehow). Totally gross. The other half of the pan, I used the normal Pillsbury biscuits and they turned out perfect. Fluffy and moist and perfectly caramely. The kids liked them except Mira, but Mira doesn't like most desserts, so I'm not really surprised.

Saturday, Emilia had to be up and at a devotional + service project by 6:15am. They did the devotional outside by the temple they're building near our house. And it was supposed to only be 40 degrees with rain. Ulgh. I'm glad it was her. I hate being up that early and I hate the cold. She was back by 8:30 and she said she enjoyed it. It only sprinkled a little bit she said. And they had Costco muffins for them, so that made everything better.

I also went down to my parents' house that day. They were cleaning out their garage and needed us kids to go through some stuff with them, so me and Ben and Alison were there. I wore a mask this time because I cannot seem to ditch this cold. (It's still hanging around over two weeks after I first got it.)

Like I said, this past week was quite boring. I only had one custom cover this week. I've been working on some premades and some stuff for my website. I want to update it to look more professional and sleek. So I picked out a color scheme and redid my logo. And I'm making premades that will compliment the color scheme. Now I just have to wait for Steve to get a fire under his butt to make the changes I want. He insists he can do it. But the whole *when* thing is pretty questionable.

Tuesday, the governor issued a statewide mask mandate because the hospitals are past capacity and people were still having large gatherings without masks. He also mandated no gatherings outside people you live with for 2 weeks. That 2 weeks will be up 2 days before Thanksgiving. I'm guessing even if he extends the restriction, he's not going to stop a lot of people from having Thanksgiving with extended family. Hopefully people will be more cautious about it either way.

Since we won't know until so close, Steve and I decided to just do Thanksgiving dinner with our household. If he lifts the restriction, perhaps we can plan a non-food get together with some of the extended family over the weekend. That would be nice. My kids miss their Nana when they don't get to see her for long periods of time. 

Good thing we can do Black Friday shopping from home now. :) Not that I do a lot of Black Friday shopping anyway. But this year we're hoping to get a new color printer and possibly a new dryer. Mine currently takes 2 - 3 cycles to dry a single load. It's not only annoying, but since we have so much laundry (5 large loads a week usually), and I like to do it all at once, it takes me three days to do laundry instead of 1.5.

Here are the few pictures I did take this week. Jules wanted strawberries for breakfast one day, but she always dribbles the juices down her chin and ruins her clothes, so I just took them off. As I watched her eat and hum to herself, I was struck with the notion that I'm really going to miss this when she's grown -- her humming and dancing to herself, her little bulgy belly and diaper bum, her fuzzy curly hair, and how she bites only the tips of the strawberries off and then puts them back in the container.

When we went shopping, I got Jules dressed and she looked adorable in her new coat and boots, so I wanted to take a picture to post to instagram (which I didn't do). I got this cute one.

But mostly when I told her to smile, I got this face. Haha.

I should also probably document that Jules currently LOVES the Octonauts (it's a kids TV show that Cecily liked when she was littler too--in fact, she still doesn't mind watching it). It's about humanoid animals that help non-humanoid animals in the ocean. They drive around a big octopus-shaped ship.

She asks to watch Octonauts and signs "octopus" at least 73 times a day. We also have a box of Octonauts toys I picked up at a garage sale a few years ago that she plays with daily.

I remember now that I did do a shopping trip to DI this week. I had a friend who had a really hard week and I wanted to take her some stuff, but I didn't have a basket to put it all in. So I decided to stop at DI on the way there. I found a TON of fun stuff. It was a great trip to DI. Some of the fun stuff I found were some new clothes for Emilia, including these shoes. She's decided she wants to have more of a "cohesive aesthetic" to her wardrobe. So I made her do a pinterest board and then looked for similar stuff at DI when I went. I found the shoes, two skirts, and 3 shirts.

We don't have any plans for this week. I have two custom covers and a bunch of stuff that needs returning. But nothing major. Love you all. Have a good week!

Halloween in Covid times and some other cool news

 It's been a busy few weeks!

3 weeks ago:

Cecily lost her other front tooth Sunday night. So she's now missing both of her front teeth. (Actually, they're both growing in pretty well now, so it's almost not noticeable anymore. But for a week or so, she was toothless and lispy.) :) Of course, I didn't take any pictures. I remembered after she was in bed. 

I had a free coaching session on Tuesday for my business. I had a client that is a business coach and she's opening up her clientelle to creatives and wanted more reviews, so she offered a short coaching session for free in return for one. It was fun to talk to someone new and she gave me some things to think about, so I would say it was successful and worth my time.

Wednesday, my parent came out to our house. We had a drain that kept clogging and we couldn't figure out how to get the drain plug out to fix it. And I'd hung a chandelier in my kitchen like 8 months ago that hung low enough to hit our heads on because for whatever unknown reason, the builders put the light fixture uncentered over the kitchen table. So my dad came to help me with the drain and with re-hanging the fixture. My mom does haunted gingerbread houses with the kids every year and we hadn't done them yet, so we decided to do those while they were out here. It wasn't until after they'd left that I realized I hadn't taken any pictures of them. Just these pictures of the bottles at the hardware store that my dad told me I needed to get, the plant I needed my mom's help with placing, and the houses we made.

Steve had game night that week and Emilia had a play date with her friend Tehani. Cassie Childress came over that afternoon, too, because the girls started Fall Break. She stayed overnight and the girls had a blast playing their hearts out. 

I captured the girls reading together one day and it was so precious.

Emilia had a Young Women's activity Tuesday night. Wednesday night I had dinner with my ministering sister. We ate at Aubergine, my current favorite restaurant. 

Steve took Thursday and Friday off, so he could get some things done. I also had my 20 week ultrasound that afternoon. So after Jules went down for her nap, we headed to the obstetricians. The lady who did the ultrasound wasn't as thorough (or as poorly humorous) as the guy who did Jules', but it took a lot less time. :)

They said everything looks normal except the kidneys were slightly dialated, but that often happens with LITTLE BOYS!

Yes, we're having a boy. Finally! Crazy crazy crazy. All the girls were excited, but Cecily the most. We bought blue sodas and airheads to announce it to the girls.

Friday after the girls got home from school, Steve took all four girls to St. George BY HIMSELF. Isn't he awesome? They had great weather, a German chocolate cake to celebrate Steve's birthday, and lots of  swimming on Saturday. 

I took the time to finish a particularly vexing cover, straighten the house, do some mending, clean out my garden and flour beds, and lay bark, clean out my garage so Steve could park his car in it for the first time since we moved here a year ago, shop for some items I needed to decorate my front table and Jules' room and for Mira's halloween costume, go to lunch with my dad, spray paint some items, and finish decorating that table.

Saturday night, it snowed. I was worried about the family driving home, but they made it safe.

This is how the front table turned out.

This is how Mira's costume turned out. I sewed it Monday night. She was Glaceon (a pokemon).

Tuesday I was still exhausted. I took a couple of naps that day. I had a headache for most of the day. Then before bed, I started coughing. I decided to get a Covid test done Wednesday morning. But they said it would take 5 business days to get the results back. So I had to keep the kids home from school Thursday and Friday while we waited. They didn't get to go to their Halloween parties and we didn't think we'd get to go trick-or-treating. With transmission rates as high as they are in Utah, even when I got a negative test result Saturday morning, we decided to keep our plans to not trick-or-treat.

Instead, we carved pumpkins Friday night.

Then Saturday, they dressed up and had a leisurely day. For dinner, we had Halloween-themed food (mummy hot dogs and orange mashed potatoes). Then we went on a neighborhood scavenger hunt. We just made up some items that we were supposed to find as we walked around. If people had candy sitting out, we let the girls take one, but mostly we just looked at the decorations and noticed costumes of those we passed. It actually made the night much more festive. More about the holiday and less about the candy. We may do it again next year it was so fun. When we got home, we put Jules to bed, ate the Krispy-Kreme donuts I'd picked up earlier in the day, and watched the Addams Family. Well, Mira and Cecily and I did. Emilia played Animal Crossing and Steve played a video game with his best friend, Ryan.

Oh, I did made jack-o-lantern and ghost pancakes for breakfast Saturday morning.

I've been planning an upgrade of Mira's room over the last few weeks. We've got five beds in there, which includes one trundle that you won't see. So I got 4 new duvets/comforters and they finally all arrived. I had a hard time with the one for Mira's bed. I tried to get one from England. It was mine and Mira's favorite, but they wouldn't ship to the US. I had a friend in England who was willing to ship it for me, but then they wouldn't take my credit card. It turns out, trying to buy a $25 blanket from England gets your credit card blocked by your bank. Idiots. Maybe if I'd tried to buy 17 of them or something. Or if I hadn't already bought three other blankets from other retailers that same day. I was super annoyed. So instead of that one, I purchased one from Wayfair that they could just ship to me. I found out a week later when it hadn't shipped despite showing that it was supposed to arrive that day, that it was suddenly discontinued and they refunded my money. Argh. So I purchased one off Amazon that isn't nearly as nice as the other two, but I got it two days later. This is the four of them together. I've also gotten some throw pillows and blankets that are on their way here. Then I need to make a bean bag chair, paint most of the room and repaint the beds. I'm excited though! It's going to be super cute, I hope.