Thoughts

I am currently on day 8 of one wretched mother of a headache. Since it hurts to read, be in the light, etc., I have found myself just thinking quite a bit. Not a bad thing really. Here are a few of the thoughts rummaging around in my head right now:

1. Kids are really loud. This is not helped by the fact that Woo's ears are all clogged up for some reason and so she can't hear well which makes her talk louder and forces me to talk louder to her and forces the television to be turned up excessively loud as well. Bother. I take her to the doctor in the morning. She has no other symptoms of anything else, but I'll probably find out she has double ear infections or something like that.

2. I need to do a better job of saying "yes" to my kids. I am the master of saying "no". I can say "no" to any thing at any time, with no problem whatsoever. This comes in handy, but it's not always a good thing.

3. I love the scriptures, but it turns out that listening to the scriptures can put me to sleep just as well as reading the scriptures, if not better.

4. I have a lot of goals for this year and I should probably write them down so that they stop swirling around in my head so much. It's kind of keeping me up at night. Maybe I'll blog about them sometime soon since I am sure you are all on pins and needles wondering what they are.

5. My girl has her very first orchestra concert tonight. I am excited to see her play her violin. She will be adorable.
 

For Posterity

It has been miserably, freakishly cold here for the past several days. Apparently we are experiencing something termed an "arctic vortex". All I know is that whoever sent us this weather can take it back. The lowest temperature I saw was Monday night when I went to bed and that was -12 degrees with a wind chill of -35 or so degrees. So, that meant that school was cancelled both on Monday and Tuesday. That would have been just fine if all of this hadn't piggy backed on to their winter break from school. We've had a long time here at home. This has also been a reminder for me why I will never live in Alaska. That, and the fact that there is virtually no sun during the winter. However, as I type this it is now a balmy 20 degrees, so life is looking up. Plus, two of my kids are back at school today and that in and of itself is cause for celebration. The other kid had a nasty fever last night and is recovering up in his bed, but he's easy to have around and so I don't mind so much.

The temperature Tuesday morning.

Sleep

Christmas morning:

Doug: Tyler, how did you sleep last night?

Tyler: Terrible.

Doug: Why?

Tyler: I slept with one eye open all night.

Tis the Season . . .

 For Herman the Elf and Jason the Nutcracker to spend a little quality time together.

 For these three to head off to the zoo on Christmas Eve in super frigid temperatures so that mom could get Christmas stuff ready at home. Tiger was extra thrilled about this outing.

 For the kids to wear their animal hat/gloves/scarves that Aunt Sandy sent.

 A bear and leopard?

 A panda?

For Tiger to spend Christmas day in his new Iron Patriot costume and then spend the evening at Grandma and Grandpa's house eating tasty food, opening presents, and playing Apples to Apples. Grandma even got out her teacups for an impromptu hot chocolate tea party. It's been a good season.

5 Things

I am feeling very whiny today. I'm not ready for Christmas, my house needs to be cleaned, I've been eating junk for days and so I don't feel the best, and I am having issues with my thumb. You don't realize how much you use your thumb until it hurts to use it. Plus, It's my right thumb. The one with which I do everything. So, since I am feeling so whiny I have challenged myself to think of 5 things for which I am thankful. Here it goes.

1. Granite counter top. Cooking, and especially making bread, on a granite counter top is heavenly. I can never go back to any other material.  Tis the season for baking you know.

2. The winter solstice has passed. That means the days are going to slowly get longer and that one day my sunshine will return.

3. Tiger has been in a good mood all day. He woke up so cheery and didn't fight at all when it was time to go to church. He was also so proud of himself after church and told me that he focused so good in Primary. Sweet boy.

4. The weather today was delightfully warm and I was able to throw all of the kids outside to play. They kept trying to come back in, but I wouldn't let them because this is the last warm day we are going to have for quite awhile and they needed to get their energy out.

5. A husband who is home from work all this week. I love it when he is home.

Checkin In

It came to my attention today that I have not been blogging. It's true. I have felt a distinct lack of things to say and of things I want to share. Sometimes when life is not going the way you want it to you have to step back a little bit and be thankful for what you have. That's where I'm at. I am trying to focus on the positives of my life, take care of my little family, and just do the things I am supposed to do. I haven't even been taking any pictures, so I don't even have that to fall back on. But, here's what I have been doing.

1. Painting, painting, and more painting. Every inch of my entire house (minus the siding) has now been painted. It has been a year and a half of non-stop painting. Thankfully we are almost done with just a few touch ups to worry about. Apparently I haven't let my children know how much work this has all taken because the other day I noticed distinct markings on my newly painted banister caused by a pair of size 12 jeans sliding down this said banister. When the boy was confronted he nonchalantly stated, "Well, can't you just re-paint it?" I think the fire shooting out of my eyes at him let him know very clearly what I thought of that comment.

2. Lots and lots of time fixing things throughout the house. This, along with the painting, has taken all of our free time and weekends for the last year. I am done. Done, I say!

3. Being overcome with the challenges of raising a couple of kids with ADD, one more so than the other. It is exhausting and it is something that I don't understand at all. My girl is pretty good about it all. She can be pretty easily redirected and she can cope fairly well, at least on most days. My little man on the other hand is not coping well and it is very challenging for all of us right now, but he has always had his challenges and so we are just adding this to the pile and trying our best to help the poor kid out.  After all, it could always be worse and we're very grateful it's not. However,  ADD + Anxiety = Exhausting.

Since we are pretty much done with the house, and we aren't moving right at this moment because it is winter, I am trying to get back to doing the things that I like to do. Hopefully blogging will get thrown in there more often.  We'll see. First I have to get through Christmas. This time of year is insanity.

To end, here are the 5 photos that I have taken in the last 2 months.

 Learning how to knead dough.

 Tiger has a severe dislike for church. Here he is at his baptism preview one Sunday night. I think his face clearly shows how he felt about that.

 "Hey mama, take a picture of me with my Lego guys."

 These brothers are the best and they just love each other so much. Here they are snuggling on the couch and watching a little "Elf".

Halloween 2013

For Halloween this year the kids dressed up as a Roman soldier, an Astronaut, and Flo from the Progressive Insurance commercials. Sadly, Halloween night was not the ideal night for Trick-or-Treating. Although it was fairly mild outside, it was pouring rain but luckily these kids are die hard and nothing was going to stand between them and their candy.

Doug was the man of the night and took them around the neighborhood. They had a great time and came home soaking wet, but loaded with candy. The next night we decided that we just didn't quite get enough on Halloween so we hooked up with some friends and went Trick-or-Treating again in their neighborhood because their neighborhood had postponed Trick-or-Treating on Halloween due to the weather. It was great because the weather was delightful and we had lots of fun with our friends. Plus, I was able to take pictures of the kids outside in their costumes.

Here's Flo. My sister made this apron a couple of years ago for her own costume and she was getting rid of it. As soon as I saw it I just knew that my Woo needed to be Flo. Doesn't she look fabulous?

Sparky has had a phenomenal history teacher this year and he had gotten the kids totally pumped about history. Every day Sparky comes home from school and excitedly tells us all about the ancient adventures that he had learned about that day. That is how he decided on this costume. He has really been enjoying learning about ancient Rome and so he just had to be a Roman soldier for Halloween. He totally pulled it off.

My little man has more costumes than he knows what to do with and so I couldn't really justify buying him a new one. At first I told him that he was just going to have to pick one out of the costume box, but then I remembered that I still had a couple of Sparky's old costumes so I let him pick one of those. He chose the Space costume for Trick-or-Treating. I say he's an astronaut, but he insists that he is the Space Police. Either way, he is cuteness in orange.

After three nights of begging for candy (counting the Trunk or Treat at the church) we found ourselves with quite the load of candy. Never fear, we always put it to good use. Every year I bag it all up and put it in the freezer and then throughout the year we use the candy for movies, lunches, etc. It is awesome and we are definitely stocked for the year.