Merry & Bright

From our family to yours, Merry Christmas!



I'm currently lounging on the couch watching the kids play in their fort after a morning watching Elf. A lazy morning turned into a lazy day when our plan to visit with family were cancelled due to Adam's sister and her kids coming up from Atlanta and promptly coming down with the flu. :( Our fingers and toes are crossed that they all start feeling better soon so we can see them before they have to go back home. We love spending time with family, and Aidan, Logan and Lorelai really want to play with their cousins!

In happier news, I've successfully achieved a (mostly) stress-free Christmas season for the second year in a row! After years and years of holiday stress getting the best of me to the point of not fully being able to enjoy the season, I think I finally have things figured out. They keys are simplicity and online shopping. Oh, and setting the bar just a little bit lower for myself. :)



We've shopped for others, donated gifts, decorated our house, read Christmas stories, watched Christmas movies, listed to Christmas music, enjoyed our elf on the shelf, trimmed my mom's tree, made chocolate covered popcorn (my version of "baking"), and I've personally enjoyed some eggnog. I think our bases are pretty covered as far as holiday festivities go. The last thing we need to check off the list is opening presents and hanging out with family!



Now we just need to wrap the last few gifts and wait for Santa to arrive. Hopefully he'll bring a Christmas miracle and our family will feel better tomorrow (and no one else gets sick!).

Thankful

To be honest, this year hasn't been the greatest. Too much death, sadness, pain, and frustration. But amidst all of that emotional turmoil is when it's probably most important to be thankful and focus on the positive. Because regardless of how sad you are, there's ALWAYS something to be thankful for.

I really do have so, SO much to be thankful for. And as always, these amazing little people are at the top of my list.



Lorelai: "I'm thankful for Mommy and Daddy and the boys. I'm thankful for Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma Ellie."

It was on Thanksgiving 5 years ago when we found I was pregnant with her. I so love that I always have that memory to look back on every Thanksgiving.




Logan: "I'm most thankful for family."




Aidan: "I'm thankful for my family, the toys we have, TV..."


We're hanging out at home this morning and then packing up our broccoli salad, purple cauliflower and apple crisp and heading to Adam's parents for our "Turkey Day Feast" as Lorelai keeps calling it. So of course I'm thankful that my awesome in-laws are handling the turkey this year. :)

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Not a pumpkin picking post

I've talked up my love for farm fun many (many many) times, so it's no surprise that we made our way back to our favorite farm for their corn maze and other activities.





But we almost didn't make it. Between soccer on Saturdays, neighborhood picnics, rainy weekends, and our trip to Great Wolf Lodge at the beginning of the month, it was down to the wire--we went the Sunday before Halloween.





I had every intention of us picking pumpkins off the vine--something I was so mad we missed last year. But because we waited so long, it was really slim pickings. The pumpkins some people were coming back with were fugly. So after all my ranting last year, not only did we not pick our own pumpkins, we didn't get any at all. Total fail.

But that just left us more time to do all the fun farm activities they have. Top of this list, always: bouncing!








There was also sliding and riding (holy wow, that tractor ride went through part of the corn maze this year and bounced us around like crazy! I think my bruises might still be healing!).






Pedal carts...



Goats (awwww!), football, pumpkin slingshots, tether ball...




Little brother hits big brother in the nards, then points and laughs. :)


We had hours of fun on a surprisingly warm fall day. I almost didn't even miss the pumpkins. Maybe the yummy kettlecorn distracted me. :)

Halloween '14

Halloween kind of snuck up on me this year. One would assume a Friday Halloween would be ideal--all week to anticipate, and then no alarm the next morning. But one would be wrong, if you're me. A busy week at work completely distracted me, and the (very unusual) 5:45 wakeup call from Lorelai the next morning had me completely regretting the extra candy and later bedtime.



We also completely neglected to get any real pumpkins, so I had to go with fake ones on the porch. We put off going to the pumpkin patch until the weekend before, and by that time, it looked like really slim pickings on the field (based on some fugly ones people were bringing back), plus we were busy doing other things at the farm. So I figured I'd just stop by the grocery store on the way home one day that week...but it completely skipped my mind. Who forgets to get pumpkins for Halloween?!

At least the costumes were easy this year. Lorelai had been asking incessantly to be Elsa, but I told her probably not--those costumes were expensive! But just my luck, my sister-in-law had a beautiful Elsa-ish dress that no longer fit Lorelai's cousin Luca, so she brought it to us when we met them at Great Wolf Lodge. Lorelai LOVES this dress. It also has hip things (no idea what they're called) but that makes the dress lean more towards the Cinderella side, so Lorelai left them off for Trick-or-Treating.






Since she couldn't do a bounce house at her school carnival or run around a park with a full hoop skirt, we put together a second costume with her butterfly wings and a tutu.




Aidan and Logan ended up deciding on beards from Target, without any real plan. They just really liked the funny beards. In hindsight, we totally should have gone the ZZ Top route because we have a couple of play guitars--oh well. People assumed they were Duck Dynasty guys, but they were just non-specific bearded men. Grandpa and dad, according to Lorelai. Or, bearded Man...Chester United fans according to me (since they wore their jerseys to go with their Man U beanies they had to wear to keep the beard elastic in place).





Since the kids got almost a whole bucket full of candy last week from ToTing at my work, we only hit a few houses on Halloween night. Then they just hung out on the front porch giving out candy. Fun was had by all!

I'm still here

Hello...anyone still there? {Dusts cobwebs off this long-neglected blog of mine...} I'm still here. I've just been completely unmotivated to write anything. Or take many pictures. Or do anything with the few pictures I have taken. Sigh.

But we've been busy! The boys started soccer, we went to Great Wolf Lodge on their fall break, gave Lorelai's room a complete makeover, rode ponies at a neighborhood cookout, went to our favorite farm for some fall fun, did school projects, took Logan to urgent care for an infected wound, went to birthday parties and Halloween parties and fall carnivals and overloaded on candy. Whew!

So I've got lots to write about, and a handful of half-written posts that sit neglected on my computer. I just need to find some motivation and make time to finish them.

I miss my little blog and I know I will regret not documenting our happenings lately.

Eight.

Today, my sweet Logan turned 8.



I feel like birthday posts are getting increasingly harder to write without becoming redundant. I mean, I could write mushy gushy mommy brags all day long because my kids are just plain awesome, but I won't. :)

Pretty much everything I wrote last year for Logan is still true. Doing amazing in school, great brother, kind, sensitive, sweet. He's an awesome kid and I couldn't be more proud of him.



So instead of copying and pasting from last year, I thought I'd do an interview with him.

• Favorite person in the whole world? "My mom" (awwww!)
• Favorite color? "Orange"
• Favorite TV show? "Teen Titans Go"
• Favorite sport? "Soccer"
• Favorite book? "Mark of Athena" (in Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series)
• Favorite food? "Burritos"
• Least favorite food? "The chicken you make" (gee, thanks buddy--I make a lot of different kids of chicken dishes...)
• Best friend? William
• What do you want to be when you grow up? Logan said "I don't know" so Lorelai chimed in and said she wanted to be a princess when she grows up. For what it's worth. :)
• What are you really good at? "Soccer"
• What would you buy if you had $1000? "Magic (The Gathering, like Adam collects) cards and a phone"
• If you could have one wish what would it be? "To have super powers, like to be able to control the wind."

This year, we had a small birthday party at our house with his local cousins and three friends from class.



He got a new bike (a day early, since Lorelai ruined the surprise, ha!), some books, and a birthday trip to Frankie's Fun Park today.






We played arcade games, rode go carts, did the batting cage for the first time, and played putt putt.









Happy birthday to my (not so) little Logan! I love you more than words.

It's still summer

Gotta be honest—all this talk of it now being fall kind of makes me mad.

I know Labor Day is supposed to signify the end of summer, but it's an unofficial end—one that I refuse to accept. While I don't hate fall by any means, I'm not eager to welcome any sort of cold weather. At all. After the winter we had last year, I can't imagine many people would blame me. ☺

So I'm hanging on to every official day of summer, right up until September 23. And every warm day after that, for that matter!













Pictures are from Aidan and Lorelai's birthday pool party. I could really use a LOT more days like that one. Perfect summer weather.

2nd and 5th

We're about a month in to Logan's 2nd grade year and Aidan's 5th grade year, and so far so good!



I did end up meeting Logan's teacher and she seems really great. Very communicative with the parents and enthusiastic. I love the program she's using for classroom behavior (ClassDojo) because I can see throughout the day exactly how Logan is doing. What's also kind of cool is that Logan's 2nd grade classroom is the classroom I was in for 2nd grade many years ago. :)


Happy about school, mad about the camera in his face :)

And it turns out Aidan did have a friend in his class from last year, we must have just missed him on the roster during open house. Regardless, he's easily made more friends like I knew he would. And he loves the setup they have now in 5th grade where his class is paired with another class and they swap teachers for different subject areas. One does Social Studies/ELA and the other does Math/Science. He likes both teachers and is doing well with his testing so far.


Aidan started off the morning with no sling because his arm was feeling much better, but worried about the bus and worried people would bump into him, so he ended up wearing for the first couple days of school. He's been sling-free ever since.



After what seemed like a bad start to the year, things are really looking up and I couldn't be happier.



PS: 90% of the pictures I took with my good camera ended up completely blurry and unusable, and I'm so mad I don't have a head to toe pic of Aidan for his end of the year side-by-side. GRRRRR! At least I thought to also take a couple of pics with my phone, otherwise I wouldn't have a single picture of the kids together.

Don't Cry

Don't Cry

Please don't cry over my casket
For I am not there
Please don't cry at my grave
My soul has been set free
I know it's hard not to cry
I've been down that road one too many times

I have no more pain
I have no more sickness
And I would not change a thing
As I walk through the gates of Heaven
Mom Dad our brothers and sisters
Will welcome me with open arms
Here I am free of that pain

Don't blame yourself
It was my time to go home
This is where I'm supposed to be
Don't dwell on things which you cannot change
I will always be in your heart

I will always be watching over you
When that day comes for you to come home
I will be there to welcome you
With open arms
And walk you through the gates of Heaven
You will be greeted by our family & friends
Who came home before you
Until that day I will be watching over you.

-Author Unknown

***

It's been two months since my dad passed away, and I can thankfully say that I'm doing much better emotionally.

We had a very small funeral service for him on June 19, which was absolutely gut-wrenching for me. I don't have much experience with death, so even just being that close to his ashes especially after not having seen him in so long was almost too hard to bear.

During his service, I did nothing but heave ugly, loud sobs. I can't even remember the last time I cried that hard. It seemed like every prayer, every word spoken, pulled at every emotion I had buried deep down inside long ago.

The sermon was the hardest, but it was also cathartic in a way. The Reverend didn't know my dad--she only knew him through talking to my mom. But everything she said was perfect.

"Because we are created in God’s own image, we yearn for relationship, and beauty, and a sense of rightness about the world. Because we are human, however, we tend to get off-track. Fear, anger, disease, confusion...all kinds of brokenness can get in the way of our longing for relationship, stability and home."

"...the gifts of connection and stability for which we long were gifts that sometimes eluded him. That is its own particular kind of loss for those who loved him, and we mourn that today as well."

"We yearn for God because God yearns for us, and God has brought Bill home. That doesn’t mean everything will be easy for those of us who remain. There is mourning to do. There may be the work of forgiveness and reconciliation yet to go. We humans always wound each other, even with the best of intentions, and whenever someone dies there may well be wounds that need healing, sorrows that need soothing, joys that need to be remembered."

-The Rev. Sarah Ball-Damberg (excerpts from her funeral sermon for Bill Kehoe)

I debated with myself about whether I would actually go to the service. Part of me thought I lost the right to mourn him when I cut him out of my life. Part of me thought it would be too hard. All of me was scared. And I was right, it was too hard. It was scary. But it was closure. Almost as if the Reverend's words and the prayers we said transformed my tears from pain to healing. I do take comfort that he's in a better place, free from that fear, anger, disease and confusion that plagued him in his life here on earth. As the Reverend said, "Bill is at rest in the God who made him, cherished him, and cherishes him still. Thanks be to God. Amen."

Between May 31 and June 19, not a day passed that I didn't cry at least once. But the poem above, which was included in his memorial bulletin, really resonated with me. My mom told me that it's exactly what my dad would have said, and I am able to take comfort in that. I still have some moments of sadness and pain, of course. I'm still working on healing my wounds, soothing my sorrow and remembering the joys. But time heals. I'll get there.

Funeral service bulletin. Photo circa 1986.

Four years old, and not a baby

This girl, oh my. Sweet, sassy, smart, funny, silly, loud, opinionated, friendly, loving. And now she's four!





When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she said "I don't know." When I asked her again, she said "Grandma." Another time, she said "chicken nuggets." And then when I asked her yesterday, she held up seven fingers and said "I want to be this many. Like Logan." Well I can't help her with the last request, but the rest was done and done. We had a pool party for Aidan and Lorelai on Sunday with both Grandmas, and then we went to the pool again tonight and had a Chick-fil-a picnic.





Most of me is devastated that there's almost no baby left in my baby. A fact that she's quick to point out whenever I call her baby instead of sweetie, by the way. She just doesn't understand that she'll always be my baby.

“I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living,
my baby you'll be.”
-Robert Munsch



These days, she likes:

• Going to the pool
• Coloring/drawing
• Super Why
• Watching videos I've taken of the family on my iPhone
• Fairy books (big girl chapter books)
• Baby dolls
• The color purple (just not her purple shoes...???)
• Bossing people around
• Arguing/throwing fits for no reason
• Being held by Mommy

Yes, my big (43lb!) girl still wants me to hold her. And it's still the same request as when she was little--"Mommy, hold you." And even when she wants me to hold her while I'm trying to make dinner or shop for groceries, it's super hard to deny that request. It's just about the only holdover from her babyhood. Sniff.





Age 3 was certainly a challenge, as I expected. But fortunately, I don't think it was as bad as it could have been. We obviously had our fair share of ridiculous typical 3yo behavior, but nothing that made me go insane.



I know we're now out of the woods yet as far as tantrums go (as evidenced by last night's bedtime debacle). But I'm looking forward to age 4. Seeing her emotions mature (hopefully!). Watching as she learns more and gets ready for kindergarten next year. Helping her become more independent. Watching her imagination grow.

She's remarkable, and very loved and spoiled. Happy 4th birthday to my sweet baby girl!