Dec 19

December felt like it flew by in record speed. I don't know if I was stressed, or frazzled, frustrated or depressed or what was going on ... but I didn't do as many things as I hoped to do leading up to Christmas. I was frustrated at my children way more than I probably should have been, and I definitely need to learn to let the little things go.

Anyway, it seemed like in a blink of an eye, there were only 6 days left until Christmas!

 

It also happened to be: wash Jade's gross blankets she won't part with day. She was very upset that she put them in washer and I locked them in there and then filled them up with water!

These are a bit blurry, she wouldn't stop moving trying to get into the washer.

She promptly had a little diva meltdown and yelled, screamed and cried at the washer and tried desperately to grab at her blankets through the glass in the door. When the washer was finally finished, she grabbed them and tried to take off with the soaking wet blankets. She was even more upset with me when I took them from her again and put them in the dryer. Needless to say, she was very happy when I finally gave them back to her nice and clean.

We have had this massive pile of stuff that had nowhere to go and needed to be taken to the DI, etc. that was just piled in this spot by the stairs. I finally had a chance to sort through it all and get it 100% cleaned out. It was awesome! Once it was empty, we decided it would be the perfect little nook for Ethan's desk to get it out of the kitchen. It was always trashed and an eye sore in the kitchen, plus it made room for the table we put in there. We did lots of de-junking and DI runs, and it felt so good to fill up trashcans (we have 2 here!) two weeks in a row.

I came downstairs one day and stared at my beautiful, bushy bright green tree, and realized it wasn't very bright green anymore. It had died and I was so sad. It was a light greenish gray and I was so worried that it would look terrible for Christmas. I was so tempted just to go and get a new one, but didn't end up doing that. It didn't look as bad as I feared, but it didn't look (or smell) nearly as good as the week we decorated it. I don't know why it died, we had cut the base, made sure it had plenty of water, sang it lots of songs and whispered lots of love to it ... but it just didn't want to last as long as I wanted it too.

Later that night, Kace had a Christmas party at her house. We had started an ugly Christmas sweater party last year, and so that carried on into this year.

Kace had lots of games for the kids to play. Stacking smooshed mini marshmallow snowmen was a lot harder than you would have thought.

The boys threw marshmallows through the wreath and tried to make it in the bucket, and lots more activities.

My boys in their sweaters. Lincoln's didn't even last long enough to walk through the front door. He started pulling on it in the car. It started out as a tinsel wrapped present, but ended up as a tinsel belt

Mart's Nanan knitted this sweater for Ethan a long time ago, and I don't know if it ever even fit him. But, it fit Jade and she rocked it. :)

Ethan showing off his elk sweater.

Kace and Ryan were excited to show off their sweaters this year, since they didn't really participate last year.

Me and Mart rocking our new sweaters. Not that you can see them ... :) Mart's has a darth vader helmet on it.

Ber doesn't like the idea of dressing ugly on purpose, so she just does her own thing and dresses up cute instead.

It was pretty chilly that night and I had to coax Stella out of my spot. She was perfectly content burrowed under my blanket. At least she warmed up the spot for my cold feet!