Journal: December?!

TODAY

Out my window:  Sunny and warmish.  We had such a really cold snap a couple weeks ago (like, it got down to single digits one night), it froze all the leaves that were still on the trees and now they aren't dropping.  Hoping for no significant ice in the near future...  Looks like it's cooling down some again tomorrow for the week.

Clothing myself in: Jeans and a new red hoodie from Old Navy with a gray tank under it.  Old Navy, Maurices and a little bit of Target here and there.  That is what you will find in my closet, folks. 

Around the house: Over the course of the holiday weekend we've gotten our indoor and outdoor Christmas decorations up.  It makes me smile.  I am always ready to take decorations down come the Epiphany, but oh how I like them when we first get them up.  We're starting to have items that the kids remember and ask about each year and I just love that we are developing those traditions.  Although if someone asks me to wind the snowman music box one more time...

The baby/toddler: Cute.  Hilarious.  Tenacious.  Loves to climb on the counter and "help" while I am cooking (sigh).  Has napped for about 10 minutes the past two days and fallen asleep on Aaron's lap before 7pm (sigh).  He has soooo many words and sentences, but not necessarily more sounds, so he is getting a little harder to understand...

 

The kiddos:  My sister and I took her and my kids to the local science museum over the Thanksgiving break and OH MY we had fun.  We were there for almost 4 hours and the only reason we left was because they were closing.  I foresee going back again sometime in the next 4-6 months (or sooner!!)

In the kitchen: Spaghetti, Honey Chicken, Meatloaf and Bean Enchilada casserole are on the menu this week.  Yesterday I made some roasted brussels sprouts and broccoli and it was so.freaking.good., so I think I will be doing a repeat of that soon.  Maybe some broccoli salad?  I made some for Thanksgiving and already want more.  We've been making fried potatoes with relative frequently of late as well.  Yummo.

Crafting: blah.

Been chipping away at the Christmas shopping.  Probably 80% there. 

Up next: wrapping.  blah. 

Learning:  meh.  Science museum?

Reading: I have our Advent Picture Book a Day selections all ready to go, and am super excited about those.  Started The Family Under the Bridge with Gemma and am reading (and loving) My Sisters The Saints myself.

Watching: Had to break out Elf while we put the tree up last night after kids were in bed.  Keeping up with Gold Rush Alaska, and have caught a few episodes of Eat: The Story of Food which was really cool.  Have DVR'd a few things (Up, the second Ice Age movie and Horton Hears a Who) for the kids to potentially watch.

Bringing me joy: Advent.  The coming holidays.  Christmas decorations.  Clem, in all his cute glory.  Afternoon with my sis (et al) at the science museum, it really was so great.  My super great hubby.  The kids, even when they make my eyeballs want to pop out of my skull.

Thinking about: 

Pictures to share:  

Clem likes to color.

 Turkeys

 

Found him sleeping like this one night when we went to tuck him in.

Advent Picture-Book-a-Day 2014

A dreary, cool Saturday morning the weekend before Advent begins seemed the perfect time to grab our stack of books, the library books I've requested thus far, and the laptop and make our Picture Book a Day plans for the year!  I have books selected up through Christmas Eve, and will probably request some more Christmas books as well as some Epiphany-themed ones to round out the season. Thought I would share here what I have so far:

11/30 (First Sunday of Advent) - This is the Stable (library)
12/1 - Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree (library)
12/2 - How the Grinch Stole Christmas (own)
12/3 - A Gift from Saint Franics: The First Creche (library)
12/4 - Mortimer's Christmas Manger (own)
12/5 - Santa's Secret Story (own)
12/6 - Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend (own)
12/7 - (Second Sunday of Advent) B is for Bethlehem: A Christmas Alphabet (own)
12/8 - Mary (library)
12/9 - (the apparent beginning of our Ode to Tomie dePaola) The Night of Las Posadas (library)
12/10 - The Friendly Beasts (own - we also own the Paola version)
12/11 - The Legend of the Poinsettia (own)
12/12 - The Lady of Guadalupe (library, unfortunately)
12/13 - Hanna's Christmas (library)
12/14 - (Third Sunday of Advent) The First Christmas (library)
12/15 - Apple Tree Christmas (library)
12/16 - Great Joy (own)
12/17 - Just Right for Christmas (library)
12/18 - Christmas in the Big Woods (library)
12/19 - The Night Before Christmas (library)
12/20 - Winter Story (I purchased this on a whim because I thought it would be fun for the [day before the] first day of winter...we'll see....)
12/21 - (Fourth Sunday of Advent) Mary's First Christmas (library)
12/22 - Christmas in the Stable (library)
12/23 - Silent Night: The Song and its Story (library)
12/24 - The Christmas Story (own)

Journal: Winter is cold

TODAY

Out my window:  Cold.  Winter blew in this week.  Like, it has hardly been above freezing since Monday evening.  My pansies and mums are dead.  There is ice on the lake.  The winter birds are here (or haven't left, rather.  They are definitely making themselves known at the bird feeder.)  It's cold.  I wasn't ready for this.

Clothing myself in: Jeans and a tank and a long-sleeve T.  I hate winter clothes.  I am always so...cold.  Or if I am warm and comfortable I look like a slob.

Around the house: I have a box of donations I'd like to take in before Christmas.  We got a new ceramic pan from Aldi (we find the neatest stuff there) and were able to swap it in and swap out two of our non-stick pans.  Win-win, less kitchen clutter and less potential chemicals flaking off in our food.  Starting to think about Christmas, shopping, etc.  Wanting to keep things simple this year.

 

The baby/toddler: He thinks "poop" is a very funny word.  He will say it in this sweet, coy little voice and then go into this maniacal laugh.  It is funny.  Sort of.  Until he does it at Church after Communion when the music is over and it is very quiet.  And we're sitting in the front pew.

 

The kiddos: Gemma missed a little school this week.  She had a nasty cold and spiked a fever one evening.  She was back at it this morning (after not a little bit of protest) but seemed to have a good day and seems mostly better.

In the kitchen: Batch of White Chicken Chili tonight, and I have regular chili on the menu for next week.  Some tostadas probably, and a batch of Sesame Chicken with rice, and some Fish Muffins and Aaron shot a pheasant the other day so we will probably fix that this weekend with some other stuff on the grill.  I feel like baking, but I suck at cookies and we don't do a lot of treaty things around here, or bread.  Maybe I will just turn my oven on and leave it slightly open to warm up the place a bit.

Crafting: Oh seriously?  For real??  Nope.  No.  I think my crafting bone fell out.  Did I ever even have one??  I mended a couple things, but heaven forbid that should "count".  Who put this category on here anyways?  Probably someone crafty.  Figures.

Learning:  The usual.  I think I mentioned this last time, but Kolbe really seems to be making progress with his letter writing.  I am very curious as to how he will do with Kindergarten next year... 

Reading: Gemma has been reading a story from this saint book every night.  I like this book a lot.  If you are looking for a gift for someone between 3-8 I would highly recommend it.  We have started Happy Times in Noisy Village as well.  Trying to think of some chapter books I can start reading with Kolbe.  Suggestions??  The usuals for me.  I need to get back into some fiction.

Watching: The back of my eyelids most nights, it seems.  Keeping up with Gold Rush and catching an Alaska: The Last Frontier now and then.  Seems there are a few new Survivormans coming up as well.

Bringing me joy: Early mornings, before anyone else is up, praying morning prayer.  Theoretically.  Doesn't always work this way but when it does it is nice.

Thinking about: Christmas.  Materialism.  Advent.  Snow.  Winter, BLAH!  School.  Education.  Family.  Sin.  Life.  I really run the gamut some days. 

Pictures to share:  

Creativity.  Sometimes I wonder why we even bother with toys.  They typically spend well over half their time doing this type of stuff.

Boys in their new coats.  I was the mom rushing to the store with her poor son in his thin hoodie on the first 24 degree morning to buy a Winter coat.  Oh well, at least he likes it!  A lot.  He (Kolbe, Clem's is a hand-me-down) has told me no less than a dozen times how great he thinks it is.  He is so easily pleased.

Journal: Halloween 2014 + November

TODAY

Out my window:  Cool, cloudy, dreary.  Autumn.  November.

Clothing myself in:  Jeans.  Tank.  Hoodie.  I call these my "work" clothes.  Sounds more professional that way...  

Around the house: A bit more decluttering.  It is ongoing.  I've said it before, but the more we get rid of, the less I find that we really "need."  I'm also finding that we are finally getting to the point in our declutterization (that's a word, right?) that I am spending far less time organizing our things, and far more time just living.  This is what really draws me to minimalism.  To that note, I really enjoyed reading this short article, The Simple Joy of One. 

 

The baby/toddler:  He had a fun Halloween.  Oh he was SOOOOOOO excited to be Spider-Man and just for Halloween in general.  You'd think he remembered it from last year, although I don't see how that would be possible.  He was probably just taking his cues from sis and bubby.  I didn't think I was going to be able to convince him to dress up, but when we went to Target to get Kolbe's costume they were BOGO, and it seemed silly not to walk away with a free costume we would use, so I let him look around, and drew his attention to the "blue (he loves anything blue) Spider-Man."  And boy did he bite.  It was all he talked about the past few weeks.  He was a very enthusiastic Spider-Man the day of Halloween, and had a blast visiting our friend Bernadine and grandparents before dinner.  By the time we donned our costumes to trick-or-treat he was a bit less enthusiastic, and about halfway around the neighborhood he was just weeping with tiredness.  We actually had to cut it short with him (at which point he wept the entire way home, the entire way through his bath, and the entire time it took to lay with him while he fell asleep, which was pretty short, but still...), and as it turns out he woke up the next day with a fever.  Thankfully that was short-lived, and he still got to enjoy most of the day.  He is still talking about "Ha-ya-YEEN!!!!"

The kiddos:  They both had fun Halloweens as well, Gemma as a pony and Kolbe as a blue robot (Optimus Prime, but he was adamant that he was just a blue robot).  We got a lot less candy this year, probably hit at least 1/3 less houses due to either lights not being on or people just not being home.  Not sure if it was due to Halloween being a Friday, a HS football night, or what.  But honestly I am actually grateful for less candy.  Although it makes it harder to pilfer...  I did toss a lot of the junk stuff after they were in bed Friday (makes it easier with Kolbe's dye allergy), which I felt mildly bad about, but I also feel mildly bad about giving them dye-laden Skittles, so oh well.  Last year I ended up throwing the rest of our Halloween candy away after Easter (we packed it away for Lent and the kids forgot about it).  Don't think that will happen this year.

Oh, oh, OH!!!  And for the first time ever, we -- by some amazing miracle -- actually got the extra hour of sleep that the time change brought.  I don't know how but the kids slept in AND we slept in (until 6ish new time, haha, perspective...).  It was glorious.  Clem has been a pretty early riser since then though.  Oh well.

Clem was just sick for a day (about 24 hrs) with his fever, Kolbe caught it the next day and now seems better as well.  Gemma was a little under the weather last week (although not enough to miss school) so I am not sure if that was a less severe version of what the boys had or if she will be going down soon.  I am betting on the former.

In the kitchen: Lasagna and green beans, Crispy Chicken salads, Fish a la Foil (a new recipe from my neighbor involving white fish, swiss cheese, shredded carrots and green onions, YUM!) and leftovers, as we are still eating on stuff Aaron grilled last weekend.  I spilled an entire cup of hot tea on my recipe binder last week while trying to get a jump-start on dinner one afternoon, so that was mildly stressful.  It dried alright, and I reorganized it, grouping main dishes by meat (chicken, beef, etc.).  I am not a huge recipe person, but I have enough that it is helpful to have them organized in a user-friendly way.

Crafting: uuhhhhhhh, I dyed some pumpkin seeds to use for a craft with our little pre-school co-op.  A couple teaspoons of rubbing alcohol+food coloring of your choice in a jar with the number of seeds you want to dye.  Lid the jar tightly and shake them around, adding color until you get the desired shade you're going for.  I dried them in a very low-heat oven and they turned out really great.

Learning:  The usual.  Kolbe has really taken off with writing and drawing.  Just like Gemma, he is reaching a point where he spends a good portion of his time during the day with his color box and paper.  He has started asking me how to spell words and today he wrote Gemma a letter that said, "Dear Gemma I hope that I really love you so much."  I hope that she likes it, he spent like 45 minutes pouring his heart into it.  Last week I thought I'd see how he did writing on the kindergarten lined paper and was amazed how he took to it (we work specifically on handwriting once a week).  He is making great progress with his letters.

Reading: In November with the kids.  One of my favorite pictures books.

"In November, at winter's gate, the stars are brittle.  The sun is a sometime friend.  And the world has tucked her children in, with a kiss on their heads, till spring."

And The Clown of God, as I think it goes so well with the stewardship renewal this month. 

For myself, still working through The Hidden Power of Kindness, Clutterfree With Kids, Theology and Sanity and a few others.  I am making progress, really, I'm just reading too many things at once.  And it has been too long since I've read any fiction...

Watching:  The World Series.  Well, last week anyways.  The Royals played a good season and an especially good postseason.  I was surprised how emotionally invested I was. in the series.  Anyways...  Hoping to maybe make a game at the K with the hubs next Spring.  Now that baseball is over we have Gold Rush and there have been some new Survivorman episodes and we have a bunch of Alaska: The Last Frontier from last season and this on our DVR.

Bringing me joy: November.  As much as I despise winter, November and Advent bring me so much joy.  This may be my favorite time of year, although November and Spring are probably a tie, for different reasons.

Thinking about: Advent.  I'm doing a presentation with our moms' group at Church this week so it has has me thinking (and planning).  Trying to decide what will work best this year for our family.  Starting to also think a bit about Christmas gifts...

Pictures to share:  

One more from Halloween.