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.