December and 2020 Highlights

December brought lots of baking, plenty of sugar, new books, a return to substituting, hardly any pictures, and a little bit of snow. I made soft pretzels from scratch, baked countless cookies, and had an impressively airy sourdough loaf. I enjoy spending time learning new skills in the kitchen, and my kids continue to get more helpful and more fun to cook/bake with. 

I'm proud of those bubbles because my sourdough starter worked so hard to make them.

The class adjoining Matthew's needs a sub every Friday, so I've started filling in each week. Even though I'm not in the same room as Matthew, I get to walk him into school and wave to him throughout the day. Now Fridays and Wednesdays are the two days that he'll go willingly. I still find myself carrying him inside, washing his hands for him, and sitting with him for 20 minutes or so until I can leave without him dragging along behind me by my leg. I can't tell if the situation as a whole is improving or not, though if he goes tomorrow it will be his first time going for an entire week!

Getting to go to school with my bud!

I am no artist, but this job requires me to draw anyway. 
I was pretty pleased with how this guy turned out!

One of my bigger accomplishments as a parent, has been getting my kids to be completely obsessed with Harry Potter. There isn't a day that goes by without someone shouting "expelliarmus!" to disarm one of their siblings or perhaps Michael jumping off the toilet and yelling "Dedalus Diggle!" They would all be worthwhile opponents in a game of HP trivia (as long as it's only books 1-4, as I haven't let them read/listen to the last 3 yet). Matthew has personally read the first three books and they have collectively listened to 1-4 more times than I'd even guess. One day they were raking outside when I noticed that there was suddenly a lot more shouting. I opened the front door to find a full blown game of quidditch taking place in my front yard. I've never been so proud.

Alright, let's talk about Alex for a minute. He is independent to an extreme, enjoys laughing like a maniac, thinks he and his brothers are hilarious, has gotten super into building, loves naptime, can frequently be found with a stack of books, and has a pretty good memory for songs. Lately it's been Jingle Bells that he constantly treats us to. Back to how independent he is, I was in the garage working on laundry or taking out trash and when I came in, I found that Alex had cracked an entire carton of eggs into a pot and mixed them up. There were surprisingly few shells and not too much egg on the floor, so we fished out the shells and cooked up the eggs! That guy is totally going places. 

Andrew makes fun of how many pictures I have of Alex sleeping, but come on, he's so cute!

I love it when they work together on something

The queen of dress-up. She has on my boots, little bo peep's bloomers, Olaf's body, batman's belt, a pirate vest and shirt, fairy wings, little bo peep's hat, an army soldier's hat, and her dance bag. It must have been one good adventure.

Making gingerbread houses round 1!

I guess we ended up with two copies of this book, and I found them reading it in sync and next to each other. 

Making ornaments with friends

Gingerbread making round 2!

A few years back, we started a tradition of driving around to look at Christmas lights with jammies and hot chocolate. My sister altered some Polar Express themed invitations to be the tickets, and we print them off every year for the kids. Somehow they attached it with Andrew coming home from work, so they actually think that he gets the tickets from work. This year we thought we'd up the ante and string some Christmas lights inside the car. It was all magical and exciting until Alex screamed. I initially thought Michael had kicked him in the face. Michael faces forward and Alex faces the back of the car, so this would be possible. Upon inspection, I found tiny pieces of a broken Christmas light in Alex's mouth. Seriously?!?! We never found the majority of the bulb, but our working theory is that he bit the light, got shocked, and swallowed the bulb. Kids, man! He seems alright, but if his stomach starts flashing red and green, I think I'll probably take him to get checked out. 

Dogpile on mom. All day every day. 

Christmas Eve!! 

We are in this magical phase where none of the kids really believe in Santa (we've tried not to encourage it much) and yet they almost kind of do, like they really want it to be real so they still put out cookies and carrots even though they know that mom and dad are the ones who fill their stockings. It makes Christmas Eve so much fun as everyone wants to help "get things ready" or put on Christmas themed PJs or clean up so Santa doesn't trip (my favorite one and quite legitimate). This year, we consolidated all gifts from mom and dad into one so that we could get them a trampoline. Their stockings still had a few snacks we don't normally get, LEGO baseplates, and some books (thank you homeschool funds) and while it felt like only a little as we put things out, I'm always impressed with my kids ability to be happy with just a few "small" things. In fact, while I was making breakfast, I peeked into the playroom to see why it was so quiet and found them all lost in a new book. It made me all kinds of happy. And, I'll admit, so did seeing their faces when they saw the trampoline for the first time. Andrew and I might have stayed up until 1:30 putting it together, and it was well worth the awesome surprise. They spent almost the entire day jumping with each other. As the got cold or hungry, they would come inside only to rush back out as soon as someone said the word "trampoline". It was an awesome way to expend all that extra Christmas energy.
 

We closed all the curtains and put wrapping paper over the doors so that no one would see the trampoline until they had opened their gifts from their grandparents. It took them a surprisingly long time to notice the wrapping paper, and an incredibly short time to rip it all off and run out to jump. 

Our last adventure of 2020 was going sledding near Beaver Creek on New Year's Eve. It's a bit of a drive for these perpetually car sick kids-3 throw ups- but rewarded us with some epic trips down the hill. Alex had the biggest adventure of all when he was completely wiped out by a large man flying down the mountain. Thankfully he's pretty tough and recovered quickly. Sometimes I wonder how many concussions he's had in his short life. Considering that it's about a 3 hour drive each way, Alex was doooone being in the car as we neared home. He suddenly started shouting, "stop! I need to pee! Stop! I need to go pee!" He still wears diapers 100% of the time so this had us all in a fit laughing. 

2020 was actually a really awesome year for us. I finally made it a goal to run a half marathon and checked it off even though my actual race was canceled. 

We took 4 family trips (2 trips to Utah, 1 to South Dakota, and one camping in Lassen) and saw my younger brother get married to my awesome new SIL. We saw almost all of my siblings (a truly impressive feat), saw all of Andrew's siblings, and spent three weeks in South Dakota while using minimal vacation time since Andrew worked remotely. 

 I read 42 books. Six of those books were about personal finances, and after reading them I made various tweaks to our finances and set new goals which all went/are going well. 

I transformed my kitchen cabinets from a multi-toned brown eyesore to something I really don't mind looking at. 

The kids spent a ton of time playing together and seem to really have developed their friendships through all of this togetherness. I've been very grateful for their built-in playmates during all of this time of isolation and distance. 

We finally got all of us bikes working/purchased the right size for kiddos, and have been on a few family bike rides including once biking the four miles to church. Additionally, we did a fair amount of hiking and the kids' stamina has definitely improved. 

We've made hundreds of pizzas, built garden boxes, played in the mud, increased our adaptability, and learned new skills. In short, we've been incredibly blessed and we recognize that hasn't been the case for everyone. I hope the new year brings you what you're looking for, and that even it if it doesn't, you find something good to be grateful for. Love to you all!