Jules turns 1, Christmas, New Years and school/work break

My mom tells me that people are disappointed that I'm not blogging more often. I wish I was more motivated to do it every week! I feel like my life is really boring right now. Also, I think I'm slightly depressed because of no sunshine. I don't seem to get excited about much so caring whether things get done isn't something I'm doing a lot of lately.

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!

Almost Christmas

I turned 41 two weeks ago. So that's a thing, I suppose. I didn't take a single picture. Haha!

I've been doing Christmas shopping, decorating the house, putting up lights, decorating a Christmas tree, etc. Giving cute babies a bath. ;)

Feeding babies and cleaning up after them. I do a lot of that.

I wanted some fresh greens to decorate my porch with and the Christmas tree lot gave me all their trimmings, so after decorating the porch, I also made two wreaths--one for me and one for my mom, and 4 table centerpieces to give to friends/the sisters I minister to.

Emilia had her second sleepover with friends on Friday night. That was a production. I had to go pick up one of them from school in Springville. Then I needed to make sure they had a snack. We were going to make spritz cookies and managed to get the dough made and colored and then the cookie press broke after one pan of cookies. Then I had to make dinner, and Steve took them for ice cream (Emilia earned it by cleaning all the bathrooms in the house by herself) while I stayed home with Jules. Then I had to get the younger two girls in bed, get air mattresses put up, and make sure htey all went to bed at a decent hour. For being 11 year-olds, they took a lot more work than I was expecting! I was exhausted by the end of the night.

My mom had us over for a birthday dinner for me and Jules last night. She went above and beyond and made two pans of gluten free strudla *and* gluten free brownies. I was in heaven.

Now I'm sitting in front of a fire on a cold, windy afternoon (this seems to be a pattern) and I'm feeling sleepy. Merry Christmas everyone!

Content

We spoke in church about a month after we moved in. I only ended up having about 4 minutes to speak before the meeting was supposed to end, so my talk got cut extremely short. I don't think I made much sense, but I think the feeling I was trying to get across worked. One of the things I mentioned in my talk was that I was in choir in junior high and high school. So as soon as sacrament meeting got out, the choir director for the ward hurried up and invited me to come sing in choir. I told her that Steve sang, too, because usually choirs are in desperate need of guys. Oddly, this one is not. There are WAY more men that come regularly to choir than women. And this choir director actually cares about the job and gets real choral arrangements and has us use good diction and posture and tells us where to take breaths and stuff. It's been so fun. And it made me think today. I started going to choir because she made me feel like I was needed. But it's been more of a blessing to me to be able to use that talent again and to have this way of feeling connected to the ward that I wouldn't have had in any other way. I wonder if she felt the need to ask me for her sake or for mine. And I wonder if that happens a lot in our lives. If we ask others for their service when needed, I think it often blesses their lives just as much as it blesses ours. I need to be better about asking others for help.

We've had a wonderful and busy two weeks. Two Tuesdays ago, we had family pictures taken. I wasn't as stressed about it this time as I was previous times, so I figure I'm either mellowing or getting better at this whole momming thing. You can see the pictures here: http://picti.net/vZLQn

The next day, I had my hair cut and colored (sadly I couldn't get an appointment before family pictures were done). I love how it turned out.  My mom watched Jules for me during my appointment and they had tons of fun together. It's nice we're close enough to family that my kids can know their grandparents well.

That night we had to pack for our week-long vacation to St George. We left Thursday after the kids got out of school and stayed until Wednesday afternoon. Nicole and her family flew in from Seattle and Heather and her family came from Colorado, so the whole crew was there.

Friday, my kids headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's as soon as possible and got in the pool. It was only about 50 degrees outside, but Grandpa had heated the pool to 90 degrees, so those who love swimming were totally up for it.

After two hours in the pool, we made them get out and everyone who'd arrived already (and the Coombs' who were already there) went to Cougar Cliffs Climbing Area to let the older cousins try their hand at repelling. Jane, Meg, Emilia, Mira, and Kate all tried a short repel. I think everyone who tried cried at least once. But everyone managed to go down the rope at least once except Emilia. She was really close. Her form was good and she was nearly past the hardest part, but then I could see her shift from focusing on the technical aspects of what she was doing to "I'm going over the edge of a cliff!" and she would just shut down. I was so proud of everyone for trying. I didn't do my first repelling until I was 26, so 8 - 12 year olds trying it was amazing. I got on the second rope to coach Emilia through it and it was so fun to do that short repel. I haven't repelled since we did Mystery canyon in Zions back in 2007 (? I think that's when it was) and I kinda missed it. :)

Me and Emilia

Me and Mira

After we got back to Grandma and Grandpa's, the kids swam for another two hours. And everyone got sunburnt. On the 22nd of November. 

By Saturday, everyone but Ryan had arrived, but Tristan and Nicole had to head to Tristan's side of the family for their Thanksgiving dinner. My kids got in the pool again in the morning and except for a short lunch break, swam until about 3pm. By that point, we decided they'd had enough and made them get out. Mira and Cecily both got a rash from the pool water which wasn't fun, but we slathered them in vaseline and that seemed to help. They watched a movie, we had a delicious dinner and we played a few games. Then the adults practiced a song that we were singing in church the next day and headed home kinda late. By that point, Jules had a fever, Mira crashed from a sunburn and a horrible headache, Emilia's ear had built up pressure to the point of fairly severe pain, and Cecily still had a rash all over her arms. It wasn't looking good. But we gave everyone pain meds and prayers and sent them to bed.

Sunday morning, everyone was better except Jules who continued to have a fever through Monday night, after which she ended up mostly covered in a rash (roseola, poor kid). Singing went well, we had a delicious lunch and then we decorated "gingerbread" houses. I don't love how mine turned out this year. Steve and I were in charge and it was really stressful and crowded and I just got overstimulated before I had a chance to even start mine, so I did something small and uncomplicated.

Emilia did a marketplace.

Mira made Santa's workshop (but then when they picked it up, it fell off the cardboard and broke--it was so sad--but they were able to kinda fix it).

And Cecily and Steve made a beach scene.

I was impressed with the creativity of the other builders this year though. Everyone worked hard and made some well-executed creations.

Monday we decided to take another trip to Cougar Cliffs to give the girls one more go at repelling. Cecily tried this time too and didn't get even as far as Emilia did, but I still thought she was awesome for trying. The adults got to do some longer repels and Meg even did the 100+foot-long one. The one I did was 200 feet. I didn't look down the whole time or I wouldn't have made it. 

Steve on the 100-foot:

I only have a video of me doing the 200 ft and it's too big for blogger to load.

The kids swam again that afternoon (not for 6 hours this time) while all the women worked on baking rolls and pies for the feasting on Tuesday. 

Wednesday morning, we decided to skip the hike that the Nelsons and Coombs' went on so we could take the girls to Frozen 2 with Grandma and Grandpa. Unfortunately, G & G forgot something at home and Jules refused to take her morning nap, so we ended up scrapping the movie idea and went to B & N for some hot chocolate and books instead before heading home. 

Thursday, we hosted my family for another Thanksgiving meal. Even though we had it at our house, my mom did the majority of the work. She cooked the turkey, two kinds of stuffing, squash and 3 pies and pumpkin dessert (though Alison did help with the desserts). It snowed that morning and Mira and Cecily went outside for a little while. We have a great sledding hill just behind our house, so that makes it really nice when Jules can't really be out in the snow yet.

There was more snow Friday morning and all three of the older girls went out for a while. Steve let me write for quite a while and did some laundry. Then we had an early dinner and headed to the Museum of Natural Curiosity for a couple of hours.

Yesterday was filled with a lot of running around, a bit of attempting to build storage shelves in our garage (which involved moving everything out of the way), working on some book cover business stuff and finishing up Black Friday online shopping. Then the girls went to the Childress's for a sleepover and Steve and I met up with his friends, Ryan and Heidi Cook, for dinner at a Thai restaurant that has terrible service but amazing curry. Next time I think we'll get take-out. After we got home and put Jules to bed, we watched the movie Yesterday. It was enjoyable, but not memorable sadly. It was fun to hear all the Beatles songs done well but differently though. And it was clean, too, as far as I can remember. Definitely worth the watch.

Steve cooked me an amazing dinner tonight since my birthday is tomorrow, but it would be harder for him to cook it tomorrow. We had ribeye steaks grilled in 32 degree weather, potatoes au gratin that Steve sliced and made the sauce for himself, and roasted zucchini and peppers, plus ice cream for dessert. It was perfect.

Now I'm tucked under a blanket in front of the fireplace and feeling content.

And the baby just woke up. Haha. Life.