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| Dutch style New Year's Eve- ollie bollen and banket |
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| Celebrating Christmas with the Jongsma Family |
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| Celebrating my Mom's 60th Birthday! |
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| In the bleak mid winter |
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| One of many snow day movie afternoons with the neighbors |
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| Julia is OBSESSED with the Frozen soundtrack |
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| Queen Elsa |
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| 35th Birthday! |
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| New hanbok |
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| Sleeping baby, so precious |
We kicked off the new year by celebrating Christmas with my family. We opened presents New Year's Eve and enjoyed being all together. By 9:30 pm Nate and I were the only people awake, my family knows how to party- Happy New Year! I went to bed by 10 because I knew Stephen would wake up. I think he woke up around midnight and ended up in bed with us. On New Year's Day we visited the Winebrenner's and saw their new baby, Zac. He is adorable and Cardale seems to enjoy having two younger brothers. We also celebrated my Mom's 60th birthday! We left the kids with babysitters and had an adults only meal at a nice restaurant. I can't remember the last time we did something just the adults, it was nice! Steph and Mom were sick, but they rallied and we all had a nice evening. My siblings and I contacted Mom's friends/family and collected memories to put into a memory book. I enjoyed reading about my Mom and the impact she has made on people. And Mom really appreciated the gift.
We were ready for school to start again on January 6, but just kidding we ended up with 2 snow days. And the day before Christmas break was a snow day too. My friends and I dubbed it the longest Christmas break EVER. And my two oldest were even gone for a week in Florida during break. It was a nice Christmas break though with the kids. This winter has been crazy. Nate has had many scary drives to/from work. I think the kids had school the whole week of January 13. Then they had only two days the week of the 20th. This week they only had two days of school again. We do have alot of snow, but it has been the negative wind chill temperatures that caused the school cancellations. The kids were mad about the last couple of snow days. They know that too many snow days means more school in the summer! Snow days have lost their magic.
Nate's plant has the outage this winter and he is on night shift. He works a 4 nights on/1 night off rotation until March or whenever the outage is done. We're all tired of the outage and we still have the month of February to go. Because Nate is working so much we are not doing foster care until the outage is done. And our family was getting tired and just needed a little down time.
When Nate was driving home early one morning in the snow, he hit a wheel in the middle of the highway. It was a full wheel, with the metal insert and everything. It ripped up the underside of his car and totaled it. Thankfully he wasn't hurt. But, we are now car shopping and we hate car shopping. Mostly because Nate has no free time for us to really search around. It is a blessing that he is on night shift because having one car hasn't been a huge headache. He is home from work by the time I drive the kids to school. And an older couple from our church just lent us their car while they spend a couple months in Florida. We are blown away by their generosity, we don't really know each other that well.
I celebrated my 35th birthday this month! Nate and the kids gave me a Starbucks gift card and a pedicure gift card. Nate also bought a birthday cake for me. I teased him because he chose whipped cream frosting instead of buttercream. Does he not know me at all? Whipped cream? Gross. Ha! The day before my birthday Isaac asked me if I had made my cake yet? I laughed and informed him I was not going to make my own cake. He then said, "Well Dad doesn't know how!" I think he was truly concerned there would be no cake to eat. The night after my birthday Nate and I went on a date. We went to a local brewery. The brewery doesn't serve food so we got some Thai food from next door. Nate tried some brews and I tried the hard ciders. We then went to the Peterson's house to play cards. Rebecca's birthday is the day after mine. I think we are meant to be bosom buddies, ha! (Anne of Green Gables reference) I had to postpone the party I was going to have with friends because of the weather. Winter can be done now!
Isaac is now a toothless wonder, he lost both of his front teeth. It is adorable. He already had a hard time saying l's and r's, having no teeth isn't helping but it is darn cute. Isaac's favorite thing to do is pick Stephen up and carry him around. Stephen is not a fan and protests loudly. Caleb and Isaac got the movies Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 for Christmas. They love the minions and now go around imitating minion talk which really sounds like nonsense talk. Awesome. Actually the minions are pretty funny.
Julia saw the movie Frozen over Christmas break and she talks about it all the time. I downloaded the soundtrack and she asks multiple times a day to listen to it. She stands next to the ipad and sings along. Her less than perfect pitch is pretty cute. She also likes to wear her Cinderella dress with her blanket as a cape and pretend she is Queen Elsa. Julia's birthday is in March if someone wants to give her a Queen Elsa dress... Or the movie if it is out by then.
Caleb is progressing well in his piano lessons. I think he picks it up quickly. However, he suffers from the oldest child perfectionist syndrome. He is supremely frustrated every time he has new material to practice because he can't do it right the first time. Oh how well I can relate... Caleb is doing an after school sports program once a week. They do a variety of sports/games and he is having fun. He went sledding with cadets last week. School was cancelled that day because of too cold temps and yet the cadets still went sledding. He thought it was great. The kids usually play outside every day at home even with the cold temps. The snow hill in our cul de sac is a great sledding hill.
Stephen is 14 months old now. He shows some separation anxiety, but not much. He is quite affectionate with other women. During the fellowship time after church he wanders around. If he recognizes someone he'll hold his arms up to be held. Sometimes he does this with women he doesn't know. I think his goal is to make women rethink their decision to be done having kids. He'll hug their necks, nuzzle their faces and just be adorable. He also likes the game where he is being held by one person, holds his arms out to the other person to be held and goes back and forth between the two. Stephen's molars have been coming in so he hasn't been sleeping great. The past couple of night have been better. If he wakes up before 6:30 am he ends up in our bed and usually goes back to sleep til 7:30 or 8 am. He hasn't taken a morning nap for the past few days, so maybe he is down to one nap a day now? I gave him some peanut butter and he seems to be fine with it. I'm happy to have another protein source to feed him.
Groundhog Day is coming up and we're all hoping there will not be 6 more weeks of winter!
