post crazytown

Well, living through the eyes of children continues to be one of the most fascinating experiences ever. It's like reliving your childhood with a grownup brain. I do love Christmas time, even though I complain about being stressed out. I love the music, the Christmas lights, the fresh pine smell in our house and the focus on the birth of Jesus. 

I live under a rock because I don't have cable and only listen to positive uplifting podcasts and have unfollowed anyone on Instagram and Facebook that posts anything negative, controversial or angry, so I get to ignore all the bad things going on out in the real world and just focus on my little Christmas world filled with peace, love and wrapping paper. Dan thinks I'm oblivious and uninformed but I have lower blood pressure than he does. Just putting that out there.

Here's a pic we got from the Living Nativity at church. Everyone is kind of looking and smiling. 
A Christmas miracle.

They had pajama day at school Friday. Thanks again Auntie Wendy for the PJs! 

Winter turned 8 Friday! I found a cool locket at a thrift store and put this picture in it to remind Winter that even though she gets in trouble a lot, Mommy and Daddy still love her so so much. Dan took this. I had to train him in the art of selfie taking. I'm like, no higher, higher, like way up in the air. See how we don't have double chins now? Now he knows.

These are from Mya. The most sparkly shoes in all of Target. Perfect. 

Church Sunday... Dan loves Christmas so much. He suggested we dress up and get there even earlier than we usually do to make sure we were able to sit up front. We were the first people there besides a few greeters. He was super happy. So we sat up front with our four kids since there was no nursery or children's church. They did pretty well for the most part. They dropped their crayons and water bottles a gillion times but our friends sitting behind us returned them happily. It was a lovely service.

This is one of my favorite people, Darla. My kids love her too. I tried to get a pic of the 3 matching red dresses. They were serving free donuts at church. Addie agreed to take a pic as long as she could keep eating her donut.

Christmas Eve started out great. 

I got some pics of the kids... 

I dressed appropriately.

And they all went to bed on time, I cleaned up the dishes and waited 'till they were all asleep and took care of all the Christmas things like emptying the bowl of reindeer food that Addie left outside. She checked it first thing in the morning and was so excited that they ate their sparkly oats. Thanks Mrs. Kolby! I wrote the goodbye letter from the elves with a crayon with my left hand to make it look legit. I taped Christmas jokes all over the house from the elves that my awesome neighbor friend gave me. Thanks Melissa! Then I filled the stockings and put all the presents under the tree. I was done by 9:00 and feeling completely awesome and exhausted.

I got in bed around 10:30 after watching an episode of the best show ever, OUTLANDER! And started to drift off to sleep. Addie has a cold and was coughing around 11:00 so I put some baby vicks on her and turned on the humidifier. The neighbors were having a party and everyone was leaving around 11:30 so I wasn't able to get back to sleep.  

Around 12:00 Addie starting coughing again but couldn't stop and ended up puking all over the place. Awesome. (She has a strong gag reflex) She got it in her hair, on the sheets, on her bedside table, a couple of crafts on the floor and on the carpet. It was impressive for such a small amount to hit all those surfaces. So I bathed her, put the sheets in the washer, scrubbed the table and carpet, threw the crafts away and went back to bed around 1:00. Our washer does a great job washing but it's super loud and right next to my bedroom. It kept me up until 2:00. I think I slept until 4:00 when Angus started yelling at Mya in his sleep. The kids were up at 5:00 and that was that. I reminded myself many times before Dan came home that I wouldn't have too many Christmas mornings with them as little kids full of Christmas wonder and excitement. That helped me not yell at them... too much. 

Christmas was a success. I made cinnamon rolls from the can, which the kids love. I told them the night before that I bought some and was planning on making them. They all yelled, yaaaaaay!! And then I heard Winter say, "Oh man I drooled on myself." They really do love cinnamon rolls. 

We had to wait to open presents till Dan got home at 8:30AM which seemed like an eternity. I thought the presents under the tree would motivate them to be good and not fight but they pretty much fought until Dan got home. At one point Winter stomped upstairs and screamed, "WORST CHRISTMAS EVER!!!" But I knew she would change her mind once we started opening presents. 

Oh and I read them the story of the birth of Jesus from the toddler bible while they were eating their cinnamon rolls. No one was really listening but I felt super proud of myself. It's probably the first time I've done that. I always intend to but usually forget and remind the kids about baby Jesus somewhere during present opening which is pretty pointless. 

Dan made prime rib for Christmas dinner like he always does and we invited my vegan mom and aunt over to eat with us. My brother and his son came too. My mom, aunt and bro aren't big drinkers so they brought sparkling cider. They ate their salad and veggies and drank sparkling cider and we ate our prime rib and drank wine and we all had a great time. We make it work. Merry post Christmas to you all! Happy almost New Year! 2019 whaaaatt?