Let's start this post off by saying that I am so very happy that my school schedule aligned in such a way that I could take a break during December. I've been able to really slow down and enjoy the season. And I mean SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW down. I've been legitimately bored multiple times this month.
My brain keeps trying to give me suggestions for things to do like:
- Hey, lets learn how to make Hot Cocoa Bombs and make them for all the kids' teachers
- Let's cross stitch ornaments for all your siblings
- Twin Falls really needs a MOPS group
- Maybe there is time to join the Ward Choir before the Christmas Program
- Maybe its about time to write something for 51 Cent Adventures again.
And I have to keep saying, "Be quiet, we are RESTING. That means we aren't adding anything extra right now. Okay? Okay!"
So things have been really chill around here for the last two weeks.
But I still have a family and we still do things so there are a few things to report on.
First up is this dragon book that flowed out of Veronica when we came back from Utah on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. She sat down at my desk and started drawing picture after picture. She worked on it all afternoon and evening. I think she even stayed up a little after bedtime to finish it. On Monday morning she proudly showed me the cover that she'd made all by her self. She'd carefully sounded out each word.
After school on Monday Veronica sat down and told me the story. She had me write the story on the opposite page of the drawings. The story was about a girl who has a dragon that is captured by hunter and the girl has to save the dragon. The concept of a pet dragon borrows heavily from a similar story that Charlotte has been writing, but it went in a different direction from Charlotte's story. Here's one of the pictures of the dragon when it was captured. It has a muzzle so it can't breath fire.
Veronica took the book to school on Tuesday and her teacher read it to the class. I think it was one of the highlights of Veronica's school year so far.
Tuesday was Brandon's birthday. I'd had big plans for his birthday. In Twin Falls it's legal to BASE jump off the Perrine Bridge. I'd found out about a company that provided tandem jumps with a licensed jumper. I'd even paid the down payment to schedule Brandon's jump on his birthday. Well, the guy providing the jumps had to go out of town for the winter sooner than he'd planned. So that meant Brandon wouldn't be able to jump off the bridge on his birthday. (It's been rescheduled for May.)
That left me with a whole lot of nothing on Brandon's actual birthday. But it turned out okay. What Brandon really wanted for his birthday this year was a break from work. So in addition to taking Thursday and Friday off for Thanksgiving, he also took Monday and Tuesday off. Work has finally slowed down enough that he was able to take a long break and not feel guilty.
Usually I'm a mess the first Monday back from Thanksgiving. This year was a little better than normal. I was still tired and a little bummed to be back to reality, but since Brandon was home from work he could pick up the pieces that I was dropping. He made dinner and took care of making brownies for his birthday the next day.
On Brandon's birthday we got the kids off to school and then went back to sleep for a while. Around 9:00 or maybe 10:00 we went Christmas shopping for the kids. We usually go shopping in conjunction with Brandon's birthday, but the last several years its either been really early in the morning or later at night. So it was really nice to do it during the daytime.
We were able to go to several stores really quickly.
We went back home and I changed into work clothes and Brandon dropped me off at work. He went and ran some more errands and I just walked home when I was done with work.
Brandon picked the kids up from school and they were all excited to see him so early on his birthday. I'd been battling a since we came back from Utah and it was turning into a loosing battle. I spent most of that evening sitting on the couch trying to feel better. But I think that turned out to be a blessing in its own way. We weren't rushing around trying to do anything special. Brandon made hamburgers for dinner. It was nice and relaxing.
Here's his brownie cake with Binary Candles.
Wednesday was December 1st and I was still sick. I went to work, but that was about all I did. We had another relaxing afternoon and evening. I felt a little guilty for doing nothing at the beginning of December. Part of me wanted to do some sort of spectacular thing every day in December. But my cold wasn't letting me do that. So I just laid on the couch.
But really that was fine because the kids had plenty of things to do on their own. When Brandon and I had gone Christmas shopping the day before, I'd made sure we bought some "pre-Christmas" presents. These were things like Perler beads, cookie cutters, card stock, paint, and embroidery floss. I wanted the kids to have lots of supplies on hand if they wanted to create some Christmas-y things.
And that's exactly what happened. Charlotte and Lydia started making lots of creations with their fuse beads.
Lydia made this manger scene.
Here they are working on their crafts.
We went to McDonalds for ice cream again. While we were in the drive through line I was trying to think of something we could have for dinner when we got home. But I couldn't think of anything quick. So I decided to order hamburgers and fries with our ice cream. The kids cheered in the backseat.
When we did get home it was another relaxing craft night at the Illguths. Lydia decorated her tree.
Mom: 0 Trees
(But we did put away a lot of the living room clutter so we are getting closer to putting up our tree.)
I'm trying to remember anything specific about Friday. We were all pretty worn out by this point. Derrick had assumed that I'd let him stay home again on Friday because he'd had another shot. But none of the kids had had a reaction to their first dose so I was sending them to school. Derrick was not happy about that. Brandon ended up taking him on a big walk around the streets surrounding the school before dropping him off. The long walk helped calm Derrick down.
And Charlotte added things to her's too.
This is what I wrote on Facebook that night: December 2nd:
Barbies: 2 Trees (With ornaments!)Mom: 0 Trees
(But we did put away a lot of the living room clutter so we are getting closer to putting up our tree.)
I'm trying to remember anything specific about Friday. We were all pretty worn out by this point. Derrick had assumed that I'd let him stay home again on Friday because he'd had another shot. But none of the kids had had a reaction to their first dose so I was sending them to school. Derrick was not happy about that. Brandon ended up taking him on a big walk around the streets surrounding the school before dropping him off. The long walk helped calm Derrick down.
We'd tentatively planned to go to the Twin Falls Christmas Parade that night, but by the time evening rolled around none of us felt like going. I was still dealing with my cold and since it was the weekend I decided to pull out the nuclear option. I took Nighttime cold medicine at like 4:30 and was OUT for at least 4 hours. I woke up, wandered around the house a little bit. Read a little bit. And then went back to sleep for the whole night.
When I woke up on Saturday I felt much better. Which was good because we had a lot planned.
First up was our ward Christmas Breakfast. Our ward is pretty amazing in that they don't try to be amazing. Look at how simple the decorations were. Christmas table cloths and Red and Green Balloons. The balloons don't even have helium in them.
The food was pretty simple too. We had Ego Waffles, scrambled eggs, and sausages. The ward took care of all the food so no one needed to bring anything. (I *think* that was a covid precaution, but hopefully it sticks around as a tradition.)
Somehow my family ended up going through the food line first. (I thought we were standing at the far end of the room and after the prayer we were directed to line up through the door right behind us.) So we were eating while everyone else was still getting their food.
When I was done eating I went and sat with my friend Jen and talked with her about stuff. This Christmas Party was also doing double duty as a 100th birthday party for a woman in our ward whose 100 birthday was the next day. So someone took about 5 minutes to tell a little bit about the woman's life. It was pretty impressive. Then we sang Happy Birthday and someone brought out a small cake for the lady.
After that we sang some Christmas songs and then Santa arrived. All the kids could line up on the stage and have a chance to talk to Santa. Derrick was so excited and made sure he was up there toward the front of the line. He asked for a "Fishing Box."
Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica went up a little later. Charlotte asked for an LOL House, Lydia asked for Art Pencils, and Veronica asked for the big Lego Police Station.
And Charlotte posing with the tree. 
Charlotte spent some time painting the barbie house. (Which I've been informed is really a cabin where the family is spending the winter. She also installed a door and window. It's so so cute.
They eventually came home after going out to a reservoir about an hour south of Twin Falls. We had dinner and then Lydia wanted to paint a picture of what the sunset had looked like. So she did that. It was really pretty. (Sorry, the picture and the picture of the painting are on Brandon's camera. I'll have to get them off later.)
And that was the whole party. We left and went back home. We were ready to set up the Christmas Tree. Four years ago Brandon and I got in a little tiff while putting the tree up so every year after that Derrick brings it up. He'll say things like, "Okay Mom and Dad, let's put up the tree AND no fighting."
We got the tree up without any arguments. I always open up the ornaments and tell the kids the story of the ornament or the year that their Bestemor painted the ornament. It's a whole production, but none of us would ever want to skip it.
After the tree was done we moved onto other parts of the living room. Here's Lydia continuing the tradition of wearing the tree skirt.
We set up all the manger scenes and other things, but I didn't take pictures of each individual thing. That's okay because this morning Lydia made a movie with them all. Here's the movie she did mostly by herself.
After the tree was up the kids all kind of settled into their own things.
We'd ordered a real wreath from my neighbor's Jobs' Daughters group fundraiser. The wreath is gorgeous and I wanted it above our fireplace. But then I realized it blocked the spot where we normally hang the stockings. I was kind of stumped for a little bit until Charlotte suggested we hang the stockings vertically like her Barbie family did.
We tried it out and they look so great!
Brandon and Lydia went outside and put lights on our house. These are hand-me-down lights from Brandon's parents. We are excited to finally have lights on our house. I showed them to my siblings on Marco Polo and my sister Hillary jokingly replied back with something along the lines of "Having lights on your house is a sign you've made it in life - along with having a house with stairs." (We grew up in a one story house so as kids we just assumed that anyone with stairs was rich.)
I was feeling a little tired again so I laid down to take a nap. Brandon took the kids fishing because even though it was December 3rd it wasn't super cold yet and Derrick had been talking about fishing non stop for a while.
I woke up about and hour after they left. I thought they'd be back soon so I started making Mexican Chicken Soup for dinner. They didn't come home so I made a batter bread to try out the mini bread pans that my sister Emily was letting me borrow. They still didn't come home.
I figured they'd be home soon so I didn't think about getting into any big projects. I just laid on the couch and read. I realized I was bored for the first time in a really long time. It was the strangest feeling. I could think of NOTHING to do.
That afternoon by myself was such an unexpected gift. I'm sure that if I'd known ahead of time that Brandon and the kids would be gone for nearly 5 hours I would have planned out how to spend my time. But since I didn't know it would happen I was just left alone without any plans. And it's exactly what my soul needed.
I thought the kids would want to watch a Christmas movie, but really they were content to hang out and do all their little projects.
Here's a wreath the Charlotte added to the chimney.
After the kids were in bed Brandon and I stayed up and watched The Holiday. I saw the last hour of this movie when I was donating Plasma a few years ago and I've always wanted to watch the whole thing with Brandon. So we watched it together. It's probably one of the better modern Christmas movies. I especially like Kate Winsletts story line.
We were up super late so Brandon and I slept in late in the morning. When we woke up the kids had constructed an elaborate manger scene in the living room. Charlotte was a sheppard (with a broom for a staff). Lydia was Mary, and Veronica was Joseph. Christmas Baby was Baby Jesus. There were chairs standing in for Wisemen.
On Monday it was Charlotte's turn to not want to go to school. She'd really struggled with getting up for school the last several weeks and having dark mornings again isn't helping anything. Later we talked about it and she said she didn't like having to wake up and start getting ready for the day right away. So we decided to try an experiment. I'd wake her up at 6:30 and then we'd both go sit on the couch by the tree for a while. I could read my morning news emails like I do every morning in bed and she could either fall back asleep or just enjoy the pretty tree. We tried it out the next day and the morning went so much better.
On Monday night Brandon and I went to a Christmas Party at my office. One of the clinicians had planned it all out. All I had to do was bring some food. Here's the table ready for everyone. (Well, everyone that could make it. We had four employees who couldn't come.)
This was our first ever office party that involved family members. It's been so fun to see this company grow. In November I passed the two year mark. Back then there was just my boss, one part time clinician, and me. We were in a little three room office.
Last Christmas there was my boss, one full time clinician, two part time clinicians, one student, a receptionist, and me. We'd moved to an office with 3 therapy rooms, an office, a little break room, and a waiting room.
And now we have my boss, three full time clinicians, three part time clinicians, three students, two receptionists, and me. (And I feel like I'm forgetting someone in those numbers.) We've added the 4 room suite next to the office we were in last year.
I truly love the company that I work for. It's great to be part of something that brings so much good into people's lives.
The kids just stayed home and babysitted themselves. They are old enough, and my office is close enough that I wasn't concerned about leaving them alone for a while. I told them I'd rent a movie from Red Box for them to watch. They picked the Paw Patrol Movie. That made me laugh a little bit. Yes, they are old enough to stay home alone without a babysitter, but they will still choose a movie for little kids.
When Brandon and I came home we put the kids to bed. I realized that we'd received a package that had a pre-Christmas gift in it so I found that and opened it. It was this book of easy piano music for Christmas songs. We'd ordered a similar book for Disney songs back when we got our electric keyboard and the kids had really liked that book. It has the names of the notes written inside the notes and we have the notes written on the piano keys so it's really easy for our kids to sit down with these books and learn how to play a song. They've had a lot of fun with the Disney songs so I figured we should get a book of Christmas songs.
I looked through the book and was so excited by how many songs were in it. The kids were excited when they found it the next day. Charlotte started playing Fum Fum Fum and Veronica figured out Jingle Bells.
So yeah, I highly recommend this book.
On Tuesday I brought our old tree into the office. At the party my bosses wife had been talking about how they still needed to find a tree for the office. I told her I had one that could work. This is the tree that I bought at a yard sale for $6, then put into storage for a year, and then was so happy when I set it up and found out that it worked perfectly. This was our tree for 3 years and last year we set it up in our family room. But this year I didn't want to decorate the family room. It's now found a place at work. I set it up while I was on hold with an insurance company for an hour.
Here's a little book Charlotte made with fuse beads. She bound it with embroidery thread.
Here's a little table she made. I love the legs made out of paper clips.
The table was for a ginger bread house.
Look at how cute this is. Charlotte has somehow figured out how to heat up the sides of her creations to stick them together to make 3-D objects.
On Wednesday I had a great morning doing something fun for PTO. Most of my involvement with the PTO has been the behind the scenes stuff. We've been switching from a PTA to a PTO and that's meant filing for a Tax ID number with the IRS, changing our insurance policy, updating our filing with the Idaho Secretary of State's office, and getting ready to close our current bank account and open a new one. I'm good at this type of stuff and have learned a lot, but it hasn't exactly been "fun." But on Wednesday I was able to do something different.
Our president, Liz, has been working hard on teacher appreciation gifts. She ordered mugs with the school logo on them and picked up lots of goodies to fill them up. We got together to fill them up. I invited all the women who have told me "let me know if there is anything I can do to help with the PTO." Three women were able to make it.
The five of us had a fun time filling the mugs and putting them into bags. It's been slow going getting the PTO up and running again after a couple of rough covid years, but this activity was proof that we are getting a little bit of traction. We have a lot of plans for next semester.
Derrick has behavioral therapy on Wednesday nights. I haven't talked about how that is going recently. But it's going well. He has a male therapist right now and I think that helps. He's gone from 5 to 7 at night and it's dark most of the time he's gone. Dealing with the dark is probably the most productive things he is working on right now. Last night as soon as it got dark he wanted to go to bed. This year he's learning that he can still go out and do things even when its dark.
Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica had their girls activity at the same time. Brandon stayed home to be with Derrick when he got picked up. And I took the girls to their activity. Then I came back and picked up Brandon and we went on a quick date to Lowes and Home Depot.
Thursday morning Brandon was asking me what I had planned for the day. I was planning to go Christmas Shopping for him, but I didn't want to tell him that. So I was saying how I didn't have anything planned. He was a little bummed that I wasn't paying a lot of attention to him before he went to work. And I was thinking, "I've got to take care of these things first before I go shopping." He was like, "I thought you didn't have anything to do today. " So I finally had to be like, "Hey I'm planning to buy Christmas stuff for you as soon as you leave so how about leaving."
I was able to finish my shopping for him which meant I was pretty much done with all my Christmas shopping.
That afternoon Derrick had Speech therapy and Occupational Therapy. This is the first time they've been on the same day. He also has a new speech therapist. I sat in on their first session so she could talk to me about what my goals for Derrick are. She did a little informal assessment on him to see what he knows. I teared up during the assessment because Derrick did so well during it. I remember when he couldn't do those things. So it meant a lot to see him do the things. He could point to all the pictures that she described. She asked him to describe a picture and he was able to tell what was happening.
There are still a lot of things to work on (the difference between How, What, When, Where, and Why, and how to use past tense words), but wow, it's great to pause and see how far we've come.
On Friday we woke up to a skiff of snow on the ground. It really wasn't much, but Derrick and Veronica wanted to wear their boots. I pulled the box out of the closet and found their boots. The kids were so excited to get outside into the snow that they were ready for school 10 minutes before my phones "leave for school" alarm went off. This was a huge improvement from Thursday morning when we'd barley got the kids to school on time. Here are the kids enjoying the snow in our driveway.
Brandon took Friday off of work so he could have a lot of uninterrupted time working on the jeep. Here's all the pieces of the engine laid out. He was able to get everything cleaned and started the process of putting it back together.
I walked to work, but I was deep in a podcast episode and so I decided it to walk the long way. My normal route takes less than 10 minutes, but this other way took like 30 minutes. It reminded me of when I used to walk to work when we lived in Logan or all the times I walked places when I was in college. It was a little like getting back in touch with my younger self. I think I might do it again.
Work went well. I was able to get an account that has had insurance issues stemming back to June mostly resolved. That felt so good.
When I came back home I told the kids that I'd received an email from Britt who isthe lady in charge of the Living Nativity. She and I had been texting for the last several weeks about the Living Nativity. She'd asked if we were interested in doing it again and I'd quickly said yes. We'd just been waiting for her to say it was costume time. This email had all the instructions for how to come get our costumes starting that day. I told the kids and they immediately asked if we could go.
Derrick has behavioral therapy on Friday nights as well so as soon as he was picked up we drove over to Britt's house. We followed her directions on how to find the costumes. It was kind of like a fun scavenger hunt.
The girls were all so excited to pick out costumes.
We went home and tried them on. Mine was too tight and Brandon's was too short so we had to go back on Saturday and switch them out, but the kids were all perfect. The Living Nativity is next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It's going to be so great.
On Saturday we DEEP cleaned the kids bedrooms. It's become something of a pre-christmas tradition to purge the kids rooms of all the junk before they get new things on Christmas. Derrick's room wasn't too bad, but the girls are all pack rats. We had them push EVERYTHING besides the furniture out into the hall and then really evaluate things before they put them back into their rooms.
It took a long time, but it was so worth it by the end. Lydia and Charlotte's room felt like a completely new space. Veronica's was actually able to stay clean for longer than 3 minutes after we were done.
I threw away two trash bags worth of garbage and cardboard from Charlotte and Lydia's room. We also found no less than 20 pairs of socks - that's 40 individual socks - hiding under the beds.
When we were done cleaning we went to the dollar store to buy more junk. Okay that's a little harsh. We went there for our tradition of helping the kids buy gifts for each other. We've done this for at least 5 years and the kids always like buying each other gifts. This year I suggested maybe we could do something else like drawing names and making a gift for one sibling or drawing names and buying a $10 gift for a sibling. But the kids still wanted to do the dollar store.
Previously I would take the kids in one at a time while Brandon waited in the car with the other kids. But this time we did it differently. We all went in together and the kids pointed out things they liked. Then Charlotte and Lydia went around together and I took Veronica while Brandon took Derrick. That worked really well and was much faster.
We came home and I helped Derrick and Veronica wrap their presents. Charlotte and Lydia did theirs on their own. Here's our tree with presents under it. I love that the first presents under the tree are always the ones that my kids give each other.
Then we had a hot chocolate party. This was partially a reward for the deep cleaning, and partially just because Brandon really wanted to do it.
We had a quick dinner and then we went driving around to look at Christmas Lights. We went to the street out by Filer that is super decorated. We drove up and down it twice.
Then we drove back into Twin Falls and went to "The Candy Cane House." It's a house with lights set to music. Derrick's therapist has been taking him here and so Derrick was excited for all of us to see it. We didn't have a great parking spot so we'll try to come back another time, but we still loved it. It's just a small house, but they've done an amazing job with it.
This was supposed to be a picture of all the kids, but only Lydia showed up with the flash. 
Today was a good day too. Before church Brandon mixed up the sugar cookie dough that I'd been meaning to make all week. It chilled in the fridge while we were at church and after church we cut out the shapes and baked them. We'll decorate them Monday.
We just have 5 more days of school and then the kids are on Christmas Break. Then they will get to experience my relaxing December with me.
I hope you've had a chance to slow down this month. And if not I hope you find a way to slow down soon. It's really been so nice to just forget about the hustle and enjoy the season.
Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you think?