Awesome Christmas and New Years (mostly)

I'm so tired. I said that last time, but it's true again. I am feeling pretty good though! I'm tired because I stayed up stupidly late the last two nights.

I got a positive Covid test on Christmas Eve, so we've had to quarantine for the last two weeks. It hasn't been as bad as I would have expected. But not getting a single break from my kids for two weeks straight apparently has made staying up until all hours of the night to work on projects without--
--interruptions
--loud noises
--screaming fests
--requests to change bums or find devices or make life-altering decisions
--having to make food for someone
too appealing to resist. It really was stupidly late. I'm definitely not 20 anymore. But also not old enough to have overcome this bad habit.

(Christmas nails we did some time before Christmas:)

At the beginning of Christmas week, I was tired and had an extremely stuffy nose with the very slightest of coughs for 2 days. Since I was so tired, crocheting was actually a great way to pass the time, since I could sit around under a blanket and still accomplish something useful. So I crocheted A LOT.

Over the two to three weeks before Christmas, I made:

1. A Baby Yoda for Jules (the small one in the first picture--she's holding it in the second)

2. leg warmers for Emilia (she's holding them in this picture)

3. A unicorn hat for Cecily

4. A Baby Yoda for Mira

5. A Woodstock (Snoopy's friend) for Cecily

 

6. A Sailor Moon for Emilia

7. A shepherd to go with our "gingermans" nativity set (we already have Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, 3 wisemen, an angel, and two sheep). (I don't have a picture of this one)

Christmas Eve was pretty low-key. I finished up crocheted stuff and the kids played. Steve had it off work, so he worked on my website for a while and played with the kids for a bit. He may have watched football? I don't remember. He's watched football quite a bit over the break. That night, we had street tacos for dinner for the first time and EVERYBODY ate them with all the fixings in the little tortillas. It was miraculous. While we ate, we watched Mickey's Christmas Carol and then we watched Christmas Chronicles (Netflix original staring Kurt Russel as Santa) while eating junk food.

These are lego ornaments Cecily and Mira made one day before Christmas. Cecily's is the "ball" and Mira's is the candy cane.

Santa came that night and the kids woke us up at 7:30 to go through stockings. Then Steve made double chocolate muffins (which turned out really really yummy) while I went back to bed (I was still pretty fatigued from Covid).

This is the note that Mira wrote (but Cecily mostly dictated) to Santa:

It says,

"Dear Santa, (or Saint Nick)

Please put chocolate in ornaments

Also, thank you for all your gifts to us. :)

Merry Christmas,

Mira, Cecily, and Emilia"

We have ornaments on our tree made by Aunt Megan that hold a Hershey's kiss. Santa is supposed to fill them each year, but he forgets a lot. Apparently they thought he should be reminded. I'm positive Santa appreciated the reminder and got a chuckle out of it.

After breakfast, we opened the immediate family gifts. This was definitely my favorite part of the day. I had been looking forward to my kids opening their gifts for weeks and I had worked so hard on their crocheted gifts. It was such a joy to see them light up after opening each one. 

Even Jules was a joy to have around. In the past, my two-year-old children would open one gift and then want to play with it for the next two hours and be mad that we were "making" them open other gifts. They would also not really understand that if they tore the paper, there would be something fun underneath it. But Jules was sufficiently excited about her first gift--wanting to open it and play with it right away--enough that she was distracted with the rest of us took a turn opening something. But when it came back to her, she was excited to open another gift. It was easy to see she understood that something fun would be under the paper and she fastidiously ripped away pieces until she could get out whatever it was.

As soon as we were done opening gifts, I made the kids clean up the mess and put away all their new items. (I'm such a mean mom, I know. Haha. But I'm in a much better mood when the house isn't in chaos, so really it works out in their favor.). :) We finished just in time for my parents to show up. They stayed outside, but brought their gifts and the gifts from the extended family gift exchange, and Christmas treats that we were supposed to have the next day at the family party. They left everything by the door before knocking. We left our gift exchange gifts and our gifts to them on the porch, chatted from 15 feet away for a few minutes and they headed back home.

Later in the day, we did a Zoom meeting with them and opened our gifts for each other. It's always a madhouse when we do it when we're all together, so this was a nice compromise. I was excited to get a new double-waffle maker. Steve informed me that my Christmas list sucked this year, but I loved all my practical items that I received. I'm pregnant, so I didn't want clothes. It's the time of Covid, so I never wear jewelry. I never have time to paint my nails and I doubt that'll change for another two years. My current hobbies include making book covers and making more book covers and everything I might want for my business is better paid for by the business so I can write it off. Steve doesn't like giving practical gifts (because he doesn't like getting them, I suspect). But that's what I needed this year, so . . . *shrug*.

Christmas night, we cooked steak and homemade gluten-free mac n cheese for dinner and it was delicious.

Later, we had a Zoom meeting with Steve's family, including our nephew, Brant, who's currently on a mission. We did a quick scavenger hunt and talked about our favorite Christmas gifts and then they chatted for quite a while after that. It ended up being nearly a two-hour meeting.

The day after Christmas, we Zoomed with my siblings and parents. We opened our gift exchange gifts. It wasn't nearly as long as the Watts meeting.

This last week wasn't super exciting since we were still in quarantine. We hung out, used Christmas gifts (Cecily and Mira got a Nintendo Switch, everybody got new drawing utensils and pads, everybody got new books, Emilia got a new Steam game, etc.), ate a lot of junk food, and Cecily and Mira played in the snow until it melted too much. I only had 1 very easy cover and 1 paperback conversion to do for custom work, so I've made a few premade covers and worked on graphics and wording for my website.

For New Year's Eve, we got pizza from Main Street Pizza, a family favorite. They're all the way down in Springville though, so it took me a good 1.5 hours to go pick it up and made a quick grocery store stop at Reams (also in Springville). Man I miss that grocery store. Not something I ever thought I would miss. 

Steve also made savory chicken wings, we had Martinellis and dirty Dr. Pepper/Sprite (soda with flavoring syrups and cream). We played Codenames via zoom with Steve's parents and the Strattons and laughed a lot. We had so much fun, we decided to do it again the next night. All his siblings and parents were able to make it this time. I also Zoomed with my parents and played a game during Jules' nap that afternoon.

We had a whole list of other activities to do on NYE, but we only made it through playing games, writing down goals, and having a dance party. So over the last couple days, we've been doing some of the other activities. Last night, we all sat down and sketched together. Today, we made Spritz cookies and did a Lego challenge (everybody had 30 minutes to build a monster). We still didn't get to watching a movie or trying to make snow cones or playing HORSE with our mini indoor basketball hoop. I guess those will have to wait for another holiday.

On a less fun note, last night, an hour after she was supposed to be asleep, Cecily came upstairs to reheat her wheat bag which had gone cold while she was reading far past her deadline to shut off her lamp and go to sleep (as was Mira). She put it in the microwave and jumped around and jabbered while she waiting (as per usual) and then when the microwave beeped, she yanked the bag out. Now she's done this several times before, once managing to pull the microwave plate out with the bag and dump it on the counter. She's come close to pulling the plate out at least 3 other times in the last few weeks and every time, I warn her to be slow when pulling the bag out. Well, last night, she was in a hurry and wasn't paying attention and yanked the bag out again. Out came the plate, which shattered on the floor. But not only did she manage to break the microwave plate, but the glass cooktop of our stove  as well. Needless to say she was scolded. There was a lot of crying. And vacuuming. And tomorrow we get to spend $750 on a new oven. Happy New Year to us!

Two birthdays

 I'm so tired today. I'm feeling under the weather. AGAIN. I feel like I've been sick in one way or another for this entire pregnancy. Otherwise, it's been a pretty easy one. But it's definitely taken a toll on my immune system. I haven't been this sick this often in like 7 years.

Blogger is the dumbest for changing how things work. They're now putting my pictures into the post newest to oldest and it would take WAY too much time switch them all around. But that means I have to post my info backwards if I'm going with picture order. I HATES IT, my precious.

This picture is from this morning. Just a girl and her cat, sleeping contentedly. I hate waking up my kids. Sleep is like my most precious commodity, so taking it away from other people kills me.

Yesterday, Jules turned 2!

She wasn't aware of it being a special day, but we tried to celebrate anyway. We were going to go to the dinosaur museum before realizing that our membership had expired. $250 to renew it was more than we intended to spend on her for her birthday, so we decided to go to the Bean Museum instead for free. We were in the car before we realized that they closed when all the BYU students went home for the holidays. Steve came up with the last-minute idea of taking her to Build-a-Bear in the mall and letting her pick out her own stuffed animal.

She ended up picking a cat and some shoes for it. She's not as enamored with it as the other kids would like, but it was a good outing and gift in one. We intended to go out for ice cream after she'd napped and we'd had dinner, but she was adamantly against getting in the car again when she knew we had ice cream in the freezer. Plus I was feeling pretty run-down and yucky at that point. So Steve made brownies and we ate ice cream at home.

Jules found out about chocolate milk when she went down to Grandpa and Grandma's the last time and now she asks for it every day for breakfast. This is how she decided to drink it one day when I gave it to her and then went into the next room to do something. Because why use one spoon to mix it up when you can use six?

This last week was pretty low-key. I got all my cover work done in a two days and worked on crocheted gifts for my kids in my free time after that. I really enjoy crocheting. It's relaxing (at least when I don't try to cram 2 weeks of stuff into 4 days like I've done in the past). And it's quite rewarding. I'm really excited for my kids to open their gifts this year. My design business has let us buy more than usual for them and I know they will be so excited for all of them.

I am feeling a bit guilty for having so much when so many in the world have had a harder time this year than usual. We did sponsor a child through a local organization, but I want to do more. We'll probably pow-wow today as a family and see if there's anything we want to do as a family. Cecily especially has been overly concerned this year with how many gifts she's getting and whether she's getting enough and it's really annoying me. 

Last Sunday, we went to my parents' house for dinner to celebrate mine and Jules' birthday. My mom made waffles and sausage and spoiled the kids with ice cream and me with fresh berries to go on top. I was excited to get a 4-slice toaster and a ravioli maker. And Jules got a bunch of stuff that's kept her entertained all week, which was another great present for me!

It's hard to see in this pictures, but my mom also made a felt tree with a bunch of felt ornaments to put up on the wall for us. Cecily has enjoyed this one, too.

Cecily made a rainbow crown while we were there that was worth documenting. :)

Jules loves wearing glasses of any kind. We've finally trained her to not yank them off our faces, but we have old pairs sitting around, along with kids sunglasses, that she's constantly putting on. She looks pretty adorable in a pair of Mira's old glasses, don't you think?

I love it when my kids are hanging out together and not fighting. It's even better when it's not because of a device, but I'll take what I can get.

Two Sundays ago, we did our yearly tradition of painting an ornament for the tree. The kids picked penguins this year. Even Jules painted one (and LOVED it). She did a great job, if you don't mind the ruined shirt that I forgot to remove before handing her acrylic paints. These are in order from youngest to oldest, left to right. It's a fun activity each year, but it's also fun to see how the kids' art skills and creativity level up each year.

This girl cracks me up. She had the dishrag she's holding on her other leg just before I took the picture. That's an alarm clock between her legs as she's watching TV with the family while we fold clothes. She stole all the dishrags and layered them around her.

I told you in my last post that potty training was going super well.

It didn't last. The next day (Monday), she only managed to make it in the potty once. That was about how well it went for the next 4 days. She seemed very stressed out about the whole endeavor too. We would put a pull-up on her for naps and she would fight us for the dirty pull up when we tried to take it off. Like tug-of-war with hands wrapped around a urine-soaked diaper fight. So we gave up. We'll try again after the baby is born probably.

My birthday was on a Wednesday this year. My friend Gina took me out for Indian food for dinner. It was delicious. And the company was a balm to my soul. I really needed it.

I also got my hair done that day. Emilia has Wednesdays off, so she gave me a great present by watching Jules while I went. I got it colored and went brunette. I'm really liking it.

 If anything else significant happened in the last three weeks, I didn't take pictures of it. Haha. It's been a good December though. And I hope you all have a very merry, peaceful, and blessed Christmas!

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.