Jules turned 1 on the 19th. We didn't do much in the way of celebrations. I took her out for Costco pizza for lunch and Steve made her cupcakes, which she seemed to like. She's been growing so fast. She's still above the 95th percentile for height. She loves "kitty"s and anything she can fit entirely inside of her mouth and crocheted dish rags. She can walk along the edge of the couch and open drawers and doors that aren't latched. She figured out last week how to climb the stairs, but has no desire to go down them. She LOVES her sisters and is happiest when she can wander around them playing. She also loves food and still makes an "mmm" noise the entire time she's eating something she likes. She is so happy and content. She makes our family better and we adore her.
The kids have been on break since the 20th. And they mostly just wanted to sit around the house. I keep asking them if they want to do something and they either say no, or we can't think of anything we can do between Jules naps.
We did go to the butterfly biosphere one day. And Steve took them to the dinosaur museum one evening.
A friend (Gina) asked me to make gingerbread houses with her one night. You know I love making gingerbread houses. And it was fun to try it on a cake plate.
Steve is forced to take the week between Christmas and New Years off, so we took advantage of the time off and finished building shelves in the garage and storage room. We got all of the boxes unpacked, too, except the ones holding decorations. I need to be motivated to sprucing up the house before those will get unpacked. As it is, I'm kind of enjoying having an uncluttered, wide open space. Plus, everything is painted just the way I like it, so it feels more homey without even putting up decorations. I do still need a buffet/table for the front entryway and an entertainment center for downstairs, but we don't currently have the money to purchase those. I often feel motivated to decorate when I have all the pieces I need, so the downstairs probably won't get worked on until I have the entertainment center.
Of course, there was Christmas. It was a great Christmas this year. I feel like we did a good job of saving and budgeting, so that even though we weren't able to purchase all the things we would have liked, we were able to purchase a lot of fun, meaningful things which made gift giving feel more special.
Cecily lost her first tooth on Christmas day. Kinda fun.
I did do one thing differently this year that I think I will continue. Usually when my mom asks me to make Christmas wish lists for the girls, I sit down and go through everything I can think of that they would want. Then I give them a toy catalog that we've gotten in the mail from Toys R Us or Funfinity. By the time we're done, we have a long list of items they would love to have. For some reason, I thought that there needed to be lots of things on their list so all the people who wanted to buy for them would have lots of ideas. But what I realized this year was that letting them ruminate over every possible thing they might want only made them unhappy when they didn't get it all. So this year, I didn't give them any ideas. I didn't let them look at catalogs or search Amazon. I simply told them to think about the things they do every day, the things they play or play with regularly and decide if there would be anything that would help them have more fun. Their lists were small, so they got most everything on them, but it also gave Steve and I the opportunity to purchase a couple of things we thought they might like but they didn't think to ask for. And that was so much more fun than stressing over how to not disappoint them because they wouldn't get all the things they had visions of in their heads.
I loved watching them be surprised and excited by the gifts they opened this year. I hope we can do this sort of thing from now on.
Then there was New Years. When Nick and Wilda lived up here, we would go to their house New Years Eve and have appetizers and play games. Since they weren't here, we decided to host our own game-playing party. We invited like 30-40 people and had six people join us. It allowed us to have two 4-player games going for most of the evening and then we all played Drawful together just before midnight. It wasn't a hopping party, but it was a perfectly fun way to ring in the new year.
I usually do New Years resolutions every year, but as I said, I'm not feeling super motivated and I've had lots of goals that I've been working toward since moving in here, so I'm boycotting them this year. Maybe by next year I'll feel a drive to look at my five-year plan and make adjustments, but this year, I'm floating down the river of I Don't Care and enjoying my cold drink and snacks. :)
The kids had a sleepover with their friend Cassie on Thursday. Which means we probably got her sick, but hopefully not. Cecily came down with her fever that night. Before we picked her up, we visited Nana who had some fun science experiments for the kids to do. We made snow and clouds in jars. The kids soak that sort of thing up.
I am still making book covers, though I'm not selling very many of them. I'm terrible at marketing. I've written four chapters in a new book that I'm excited about, which is saying something since I'm not very excitable. :) Steve is studying to take the PMP certification test. He's hoping to be ready by March. Cecily is becoming a great reader, Mira is loving having a baby sister, and Emilia is getting used to her new school and is still obsessed with all things magical girl (a type of anime/manga). She graduated primary and went to her first day of Young Women's today. And I just realized I forgot to ask what she thought of it. Mira and Cecily both came down with fevers the last two days, so they didn't get to go to church. It would have been lovely to sleep in and just hang with them, but Steve and I had committed to teaching Cecily's class at church and to giving the prayers in Sacrament meeting today.
That's life!
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