Christmas Time (was) here...

The week before Christmas was busy, busy, busy! The kids and I made a few treats to take to the few people we know in the Valley (it took us like 2 hours to drive the half-dozen plates around, and we were only partially successful finding people home). It was fun to make them, and they LOVE helping with stuff like that! (one picture is in the post below)

 The weekend before Christmas my family all gathered here and we spent some time together, even having our own 2-day Christmas party, complete with a park trip, a crazy Girls' night out, a cousins' present exchange, getting a babysitter for the kids while all the adults went to Jump Street and dinner, and watching some old family videos (1995) that I recently found and edited. (They were thought to be lost for the last 10 years) All of it was awesome!

Some of these pictures are presents from Phil & Sophie when I inadvertently left my camera at their house...

As soon as my family cleared out (Emily and Jason and their boys had been staying at our house), Jeremy's parents and Chloe came to stay with us for 2 days. Chloe wasn't feeling well most of the time, but we still had a good time with them, and got to go out to eat, check out the temple lights, watch some family movies from Jeremy was a kid, and do a mini present exchange. It was so nice to see everyone and have some fun together!

Christmas Eve we sang some Christmas carols together as our little family and read Luke 2. The kids were so excited but went to bed pretty easily. We were up a little later than we should have been. We told them not to get up and come in our room (and barricaded the living room with some chairs and a blanket, so there would be less chance of peeking!) until there was a "6" on the clock (as in 6 AM). So when Jaina saw a 6 on the clock, apparently she woke Reilly up and designated him to come tell us it was 6.  The "6" she saw was on the wrong end: 5:46. I guess I should just be grateful it wasn't 3: or 4:46... I had started getting a cough and drainage the night before, so I was mostly just grateful it was time to get up and I could stop tossing and turning.  Jaina and Katy got a "Princess Castle" from Santa, as well as some little Disney princesses to play in it. They're the new ones with dresses that clip on (think of a chip clip in a dress shape) instead of the little rubbery silicone ones. Mommy is VERY happy that she doesn't have to help dress the princesses! Jaina also got a carriage to go with the castle/princesses and Katy got a Dora backpack with a flashlight, pretend cell phone, and a beanie Boots to carry in it. Reilly got two different Angry Birds games, one of which was a Star Wars Angry Birds set. He was pretty excited!  Here are just a couple pictures.

You can find quite a few other Christmas pictures here -
Facebook Album: Holidays 2012
You might have to scroll down towards the bottom.


I was feeling kind of icky most of Christmas. We had invited Phil & Sophie over for dinner, but thankfully they ended up not being able to come at the last minute, because I started running a fever that evening, and over the next 6-7 days I'm pretty sure we all had the flu. Like influenza. Maybe not (we never got it checked) but it was a nasty little virus, even if it had another name!

Post-holiday Blahs

Well, Christmas is over. I love Christmas, but good riddance! That sounds awful, but Christmas Eve I started coughing, and neither Jeremy nor I felt very good on Christmas day. By Christmas night I had a fever and was pretty miserable for the next several days. I'm still not feeling that great between interrupted sleep and this lingering icky cough. I'm so thankful for the existence of Tylenol and Motrin, which I finally started taking so I could feel functional even though I wasn't completely yet. The flu has been making its way through our whole house and I am tired of being sick! Also, Jeremy has missed several days of work, which isn't something we can afford right now. Such is life. I am ready to move on though. Bring on 2013!  I'll keep trying to update sort of chronologically though...

The last week of November was mostly filled with lots and lots of packing! You wouldn't think there would be that much to do, but I guess we -had- been living there for 4 months. (Which is longer than we lived one or two places...) Plus my parents are thinking about selling their house sometime in the next year or two, and they were ready for us to take all the stuff we had been storing at their stuff since we got married. The nice thing was that some of our kitchen towels and pot holders had gotten pretty scary-looking, but I found some brand new ones from our reception in a few of those boxes. :)
Between all the storage boxes, all the stuff we had been using to -live- since August (including my computer set up) and the several pieces of furniture we were taking with us, we filled up a medium-sized enclosed trailer, my Dad's truck, and my van. (Well, it was mostly full of kids, but all the extra spaces were filled too). My parents took the big load down and the kids and I followed an hour or two later. I wanted to be there when everything got unpacked, but really, my timing was perfect. We got there just as they were finishing up, and we weren't in the way...
The first two weeks here were pretty chaotic as we tried to find all the essentials and unpack everything. I'm so grateful that Jeremy is an efficient unpacker or we'd still be living out of lots of boxes... (instead of just a few) Within a couple days I got Reilly registered in a charter school here, and so far he loves it! He was sad to leave his first kindergarten class and teacher, but excited to be in school period. This kid needs stuff to do! Here he is at his school in Pima on his last day there, and with his teacher, Mrs. Ruland.  Sometime soon I'll try to get pictures of him at his new school...

Our house has come together over the last several weeks, and we rushed to get our Christmas stuff up so we could enjoy the season. I'm not much of a decorator, especially when it's not actually our house, so we are usually happy with homey and somewhat clean!

 

These were all taken about 2 weeks ago, so some strides have been made in the boxes. Also, the girls' room is still rather under construction. I'll try to take a picture of that soon. We've really been enjoying living together as a family again, and as much as I love the Christmas season, I'm excited to put the decorations away and try to get some good routines (and chore charts!) going...

Some of the fun activities we've been up to (other than unpacking):

Playing at the swings at our complex

Stuck!

Celebrating Jaina's birthday!

Trying to take Christmas card pictures

Play-dough!

Homework!

Talking to grandmas who are not quite so close anymore

Bass Pro Shop

Katy in her new big girl bed!

Making some Christmas treats

Checking out some of the parks close to us.

I Can Never Think of an Interesting Title... (November)

November was a pretty busy month for us, especially as it drew to a close (but more about that later). We did a lot of fun things during the first half. First two-thirds?
Emily came up (over? down?) from Virden several times and we made ornaments (salt dough and gingerbread), gingerbread houses, and other messes. The kids had a blast with each activity, and I actually enjoyed getting to paint some ornaments. Props to my mom for baking all the pieces for the gingerbread houses and getting all the supplies together. If it was up to me, it probably wouldn't have ever happened... That is why my children have grandmothers, (and an aunt who loves crafts!) I guess...

One of the days Emily was there my Grandma came over to let us all give her birthday wishes. She had just gotten her hair done, and looked so cute that we had to take pictures with her!

We've been enjoying getting to see David and Nicole once or twice a week while we lived there. They came down to do laundry, so they would spend several hours there at a time. I can't believe they've been married for like 9 months now!

I spent one of the first weeks of November feelings pretty awful with a terrible sore throat. I never had any fever, or really body aches or any other problems except some headache and a nasty-looking and -feeling throat. Of course it got the worst on Sunday and I didn't end up getting in to get it looked at until Monday afternoon. I had a very positive strep test! :(

(don't worry, this is not MY strep test...)

I haven't had strep since I was like 13, but was paranoid I was going to give it to everyone else. Surprisingly, no one else ever got it! I was pretty grateful for that, and for penicillin. We really try to avoid antibiotics (As a family, we've only taken 2-3, I think, in the last 6-7 years) but I am so thankful that they exist! It took several days before I was feeling back to mostly normal, probably since it got so bad before I was able to get it cultured and start killing it with drugs. I really had been trying everything else I could think of (no sugar, plenty of vitamin D and fish oil, doTerra essential oils, both topically and internally!) Maybe that's one reason I didn't feel too bad other than my throat. Who knows. I'm just glad it's over!
With all the packing and getting ready to move to Mesa, (especially since my parents decided they might want to sell their house, and feel like they've been storing our extra stuff long enough) I went through several of my old toys. The kids were pretty excited that I let them play with some of them, though I admit I was a little overprotective. Anything I still have (especially with 4 younger siblings) is something I carefully protected and packed away... Here is Reilly with the littlest pet shop-type toys I made out of Model Magic and painted about 15 years ago, and all of the kids with some of my Grand Champion model horses and the barn that I assembled and painted myself...

Thanksgiving weekend was great this year!! We had all of my family there on Thanksgiving. Well, except for Jeremy. :( He was up in Mesa and had already started on of his part-time jobs and had to work (in Mesa) the night before Thanksgiving until late and then the night OF Thanksgiving for the Black Friday sales. So he didn't come down for the actual day of Thanksgiving. (But he came down late Friday night so we were all together Saturday).

Thanksgiving morning my dad, me, and all my siblings (and Sophie!) did the Pima Turkey Trot. It was almost too warm! (in my opinion) I didn't get a very fast time (41 minutes) but I DID jog (obviously slowly) for 95% of that! It was my 2nd 5k (the first was before Katy was born) and I hope that I can keep doing them here and there.

The rest of the day was pretty crazy. My kid had slept at their other grandparents, so after we finally got home after the race and I hurried to shower, I went and picked them up and made it back just in time to eat. All the food was SO delicious, especially Emily's homemade rolls and my Grandma's chicken stuffing!
 A few hours later we ate a 2nd Thanksgiving dinner with Jeremy's family, and it was super yummy too! Both turkeys were pit-roasted, which is my absolute favorite way to have turkey! We were stuffed and kind of laid low that night...

The Friday after Thanksgiving I signed our lease (we're renting from someone that lives in Pima) we had a Batty family reunion in the afternoon. It was also pretty low-key, but nice to see and visit with some people we don't see often otherwise. My kids had a blast outside playing in the leaves with their second-cousins-once-removed... (I think that's right - they're sons of my dad's cousin)

That afternoon we put up my parents' Christmas tree. The kids thought that was great. And my parents thought it was great because they didn't have to do it! That evening I took the little ones back up to Jeremy's parents and put them to bed there before turning around and going back. We stayed up too late and played some hilarious games together, which is something we hadn't really done before. It was really fun, except my mom kind of injured her back during the last few rounds of "Do You Love Your Neighbor?". It's crazy that we have enough adults to play things like that...

It was nice to have Jeremy there on Saturday. I was sick again and stressing out that it was (still) strep and that I was infecting everyone. Thankfully, whatever it was, my body killed it off and I was feeling much better by Sunday. At this point we didn't know it, but we were starting to pass around a little tummy bug (not a bad one), which is why this picture has everyone but Jason in it. (He was trying to be comatose in the basement). I'm glad no one was very sick until the end, and glad that we were all able to be together. It was the first time since March (for David & Nicole's wedding) and weddings are always a little or a lot crazy, so it was our first chance to hang out together. I'm so glad that we all (mostly) live in the same state right now and can see each other more and not miss out on things.