I'm (no longer) dreaming of a white Christmas

Because it came!
For the first time ever in my whole life (that I can remember), it didn't snow until Christmas Day! It was exciting. And white. :D

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The Sunday before Christmas, I got all dressed up to go to church and then Cecily needed a nap, so I had to stay home with her. I was pretty festive, though, See?

I talked about in my last post that I was thinking about getting the kids a pet for Christmas. It didn't happen. The shelters weren't open on Saturdays and they didn't allow adoptions on Christmas Eve, and Steve couldn't come with to pick a pet out any other time. And going by myself, I just got freaked out about the time investment. So I decided that although the kids would probably LOVE a pet, I just wasn't ready yet. Maybe in six months or a year when I don't have a destructo-child (ie. Cecily) on my hands, I will feel more up to it.

On the 23rd, Nick and Wilda kindly took my two oldest for 24 hours. Their cousins, Jane, Meg, and Kate were also there and they did a mini, Christmas, "cousin's camp." The girls did crafts, ate at Grandma's Crazy Restaurant, and had fun swimming, going on a chalk-walk and just playing together. On Christmas Eve, the parents were invited for dinner and the Nativity "play" put on by the girls.

Emilia and Mira were shepherds, Kate was the angel. Apparently Mira's "sore afraid" face was classic, but I missed it.

Jane was Mary, Meg was Joseph, and little Laef was baby Jesus.

The shepherds came and saw the babe lying in a manger.

Then the wise men followed the star (that's Kate).

The final scene with everybody.

The girls all did a great job. We could tell they practiced hard to make it special. Grandma's costumes were high-quality, too.

Mira and Kate in their matching PJs from cousin's camp.

On Christmas Day, we stayed at home. The girls were nice enough to let Steve and I sleep in until 8:30 (since we had stayed up until 1:30, this was especially nice.)

They were anxious to open their stuff from Santa, and then we had cinnamon rolls and bacon for breakfast. (So healthy, I know.)

Here is a picture of the girls before opening the presents from us and Grandma and Grandpa. We tried very hard to not give them a ton of new toys this year. They rarely play with the hundreds they already have. We got them clothes, art supplies, a stuffed animal each, and a small outdoor play area.

A very quick video of the girls saying Merry Christmas. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=823900357651439&pnref=story
All morning, Emilia kept saying, "But why didn't you get us any toys. Toys are the fun stuff, Mom."

Cecily was SO tired. She was terrible all morning.

Cecily sitting on the enormous gift from Gma and Gpa. It was a 7 ft trampoline.

Mira's favorite gift.

Emilia did like her new books, though.

Did I mention it snowed? Here are the girls outside playing in it. This was Cecily's first experience with it, and she didn't know what to think. Mostly she just stood there making noises. Like, "Uh. This is kinda terrible. What do I do now?"

Steve helping her come inside.

On Saturday, we had Christmas with the Frohlich side. It was a lovely gift-opening and food-eating fest. And Emilia got the toys she was hoping for on Christmas Day.

Nana, Cecily, Elijah, Grandpa, Mira.

Haylee, Lincoln, and Dylan.

The whole crew...

This is a stuffed cat that Alison wrapped for Cecily. Epic wrapping job, little sis!

Mira had a fever all day yesterday and still has it today, so I'm guessing she has the same bug Emilia had over a week ago. So I'm home with the younger two girls. And next week, church goes back to 9am! Can I repeat that, NINE in the morning. WAHOO! All this last year it's been from 1pm to 4pm. With kids that nap, I rarely get to attend. And if they don't nap, they're little beasts. Plus, your whole day seems devoted to getting ready for church. Which isn't totally bad, but I like having my Sunday afternoons to relax and enjoy my family. So I am super excited about this change.

Something I didn't mention before is something that is hard to write about, especially since I don't want to bring sadness to anyone reading. I want to document it though, so I'll be brief. Throughout this last week, my Grandma Richau was in the hospital. She broke her hip on the 19th and then had surgery on it. On Saturday morning (the 27th) around 12:15pm, she passed away. It was a hard week for my mom and all those that loved Grandma, but I'm confident she is in a happier place where her body will work again. I pray that peace will be with my mom and uncles at her passing. I love you all.

I hope everyone had a week filled with lots of love, family, and good things. Merry Christmas!

My kids are cute.

Last week, I didn't post. I was feeling tired and selfish and worked on writing my book instead of writing a blog post. So, for that week, It was pretty normal. We stayed at home most of the week. Saturday, we cleaned and then went to play with our awesome friends, the Childresses. This picture of Cecily is her admiring Camber Childresses phone, which was playing Let it Go.

I did this to Emilia's hair for church on Sunday. Wilda was sick, so we stayed home and had leftovers for dinner. Pretty lazy day.

This last week, we were all sick again. Emilia had a fever on and off for 3 days, so she missed her Christmas party at school and laid around on the couch a lot. The rest of us just had runny noses. Four runny noses can go through a lot of Kleenexes. Just sayin'.

Monday, for family home evening, we painted wooden nutcracker ornaments for our tree.

Here is the crew with theirs

Me and Cecily with mine.

Emilia wanted to take a picture, so here is Steve with his, close-up.

Mira is our little tomboy. She likes Spiderman and other superheros, Star Wars, dragons, and Lego video games. She also currently loves giving kisses and hugs and when she gets upset, she needs to be cuddled in order to calm down. Such a dichotomy, but I love it.

Mira "riding her dragon."

Cecily found our Pretty Pretty Princess game one day and put on every piece of jewelry. When I hid it so she wouldn't lose all the pieces, she found the dress-up box and put on all the dress up jewelry.

Mira clipping the earrings to Cecily's pajamas.

Emilia was dancing to a song she was singing in the background.

She's so cute.

Putting on the dress-up jewelry.

Mira has been big into taking pictures lately, too. Here is a lovely one she snapped of me the other morning.

Thursday Steve had friends over to play LOTR card game and Saturday he went to help a friend build a computer, so the girls and I went shopping and to the "treehouse" at the mall.

We're thinking about getting the kids a pet for Christmas. I would rather have a dog, but I'm not sure we're prepared for the time investment a dog would be. I guess we'll see when I go to the shelter this week. Wish me luck!

Emilia's Thanksgiving Program (finally)

Emilia's Thanksgiving Program was back in November, but I finally got Steve's SD card to get the videos off of it. A few of those are below. Here is Emilia eating some celebratory ice cream after the program. She thought that wearing a headband with feathers was pretty awesome.

This is the invitation and a turkey she made that week. You'll have to click on it to see it close enough to read.

This first video is the first song they sang. Emilia is really hard to see because she has such blond hair and she is in front of the bright white background. She is on the top row, forth from the right in the white backdrop section. That probably makes no sense, but I don't know how else to describe it.

This is the last song they sang. She LOVED this song. Sang it every day for a month. It's kinda weird if you ask me, but she was very proud of it.

This one is Emilia saying her part. I'm just going to put a link to it, since I already posted it on Facebook. You can watch it even if you don't have a facebook account. Just click on the link.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=821590517882423&l=1264926055803649757

There were like eight or ten more songs, but if you want to see those videos, you're going to have to come see me when I have my computer. :) Happy Thanksgiving/Christmas!

Busy week, long day

We are having a ridiculously warm winter here in Utah. I took a picture of my car's thermometer to prove it. This was Tuesday, I think, but the rest of the week was nearly that warm. You are all jealous of me (except those of you in AZ, maybe).

Unfortunately, I was not able to take my kids to the park at all because the illnesses didn't figure out that they had to stay away because we're not ready to be all bundled up in our beds yet. Mira ran a fever all day Monday, so that meant Tuesday (my birthday) we had a bunch of grocery shopping to do. The family took me out to dinner that night.

Mira had a fever again on Wednesday, so we stayed home again. I didn't mind the napping part of her being sick, though. That never happens anymore. So I think on Wednesday, I did some writing while the girls napped. My mom, dad, and Alison were sick this last week, too. Dad ended up getting it so bad, he contracted pneumonia and laryngitis. So, Thursday, my mom was supposed to hang out with us, but she was still sick and didn't want to share. That was fine with me. We missed being able to spend time with Nana, though.

I ended up taking Cecily and Mira with me to the Scholastic warehouse sale (better than Christmas, if you ask me), and Ikea. They were so good. It couldn't have been fun stuck sitting around waiting for me to pick out books and decide whether to buy bookshelves or a desk. I did treat them to a tasty lunch at Ikea, but as Mira informed me, "Lunch isn't enough fun, Mom."

Friday, Emilia had a friend over to play after school. And Friday night I drove up to my mom's house, because Saturday I had to be at the airport by 6am. I flew out at 7:30 and was either on an airplane or at the airport for the next 12 1/2 hours. (So 14 hours total.) That included 4 flights, 3 states, and 2 offers of peanuts, cookies, or pretzels. I did, however, get to ride one of those speedy carts at the Minneapolis airport, since I had a spritely 96-year-old in tow.

As I flew over ND, I thought, "Wow. I flew all this way and I'm not even going to leave the airport."

You can see the capitol building from the airport...

...but not much else.

The view from the plane

Today we drove up to my parents' house again to have a birthday dinner for moi. It was an opportunity for grandma to see everybody, too, but I think it was all a bit too busy for her. I enjoyed gifts and brownies, though. Mmm.

Happy Thanksgiving.

This week was better. I'm not even sure why. Maybe because I had Thanksgiving to look forward to. And Emilia was home all but Tuesday. Steve had Thursday and Friday off. So the whole family was around for most of the week. It was nice.

1/2 the Frohlich Clan. I was going to take a picture of the other 1/2 but not everybody was sitting. And then we prayed and the food distracted me.

We spent Thanksgiving day with my family, Friday with Steve's family, and Saturday we spent most of the day unsuccessfully trying to get out of the house to get a Christmas tree. We finally got everyone in the car and to the tree lot around 1pm. I was past caring about a tree at that point, so I told Steve he had to pick it out. He didn't like any of his options at the tree lot, so we drove to Home Depot instead. They had a ton of small trees for $20. We decided to get a small tree because of the tornado we call Cecily. My hope is that if the tree is up on a table, she will be less tempted to pull it over, climb it, or pull every ornament off the first 4 feet of the tree. I just didn't want to fight with her for a month. So we ended up with a small tree for $20 and it's a nice tree. It smells good, too. My favorite part.

Friday we made "gingerbread" houses at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I think the girls enjoyed it. Steve and I made one together and I'm proud of how well it turned out. We make a good graham cracker engineering team. :) That night before we went home, Emilia decided her house was a gingerbread man trap. She was very excited to see if she had caught anything the next day. When she found out that we weren't going to be there really early in the morning to check on the trap, she was very upset. Thankfully, Aunt Cindy was kind enough to very seriously take directions from Emilia for checking the trap and guarding any caught gingerbread men.

Mine and Steve's (left), Emilia's (center), and Mira's (right).

A close-up of the stained-glass (melted gummybear windows).

Emilia also has gotten this rebellious streak lately. But she's so funny. She always tells us when she's misbehaving. Friday night, we got the girls in bed and Steve, as he was shutting the door, said, "No reading." An hour later, Emilia shows up downstairs wearing a hat and a dress/blanket and starts asking me questions about Saturday.
"Why aren't you asleep?" I ask her.
She just keeps, literally, saying, "Hmm.  Hmm.  Hmm.  Hmm. Hmm. Hmm."
"You don't know?"
"I do, but I don't want to tell you," she says,.
"Did you stay up reading?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to have to take away your reading lamp, since you didn't obey."
"I know. That's what you should have done if you didn't want me to read."
"Umm...no. You should just obey your parents."
"Oh."
That kid.

We had a cold that we passed around the family this week. That's why Emilia didn't go to school on Monday. It was a pretty short-lived cold. It was only bad for 1 day for me. Cecily has it the worst, but that's not really surprising since she is the littlest.

I also thought I should make a list of things I am thankful for. So here you go:
My home.
A husband who works hard to support us and who helps out around the house.
Three girls who are healthy, and sometimes happy. (Although not usually all at the same time.)
Christ. His example and his words guide my life, and his atonement makes me whole.
So much beauty around me.
A free country, brave soldiers, a good upbringing.
Family. All of them.
Food. Tasty and abundant.
Vehicles that work.
A heater. And warm blankets. And wheat bags. Socks.
My health. Skills, opportunities, and a sound mind.
Friends.
Plumbing. Internet. Hospitals. Netflix. Refridgerators and freezers. Vacuum cleaners. All those little things that you don't think about.
A warm winter (so far).
Steve's new job. And good health insurance.
Sleep. Dreams. Hope.

I'm sure there is more, but I won't bother you with them.
I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!