Cousins and California

I'm so glad we were able to be in California for Bryce's wedding.  Everyone (except Josh :( ) was together for the first time in awhile, and it was so good seeing all the cousins together.  What a good looking family right?

I like this picture because it shows how much fun they had together.

   

 The weather was pretty good, the wedding was perfect, and we soaked in time with Grandma and Grandpa knowing they would be leaving for 18 months on their mission to Mexico City. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone got sick at one point or another (thankfully no vomit- just fevers and stuff).  It was a pretty exhausting trip for me with the kids being a little more needy and whiny and Aaron being pretty fussy for a lot of it.  And we brought a lot of mess and noise,

but I'm so thankful for all the aunts and uncles and big cousins and grandparents who helped us and put up with us:)

 And so thankful to be part of such an awesome family!

Flying Solo

My brother Bryce got married at the end of December in California and Josh couldn't get off of work so I braved the trip across the country with the four kids by myself.  My motto was "it may not be pretty but we'll get there!" and actually it went pretty well.  Santa brought the kids these little suitcase/backpack rollers and they were a lifesaver.  The girls were playing "airplane" on Christmas and were pretty excited to use them.

Josh drove us from his parents house to Chicago Midway airport the day after Christmas.  He helped us check our bags and then I felt confident enough that we could make it through security without him.  The kids were very good, and Sadie kept me in line- I bent down while the security line had stopped to put my id back in my bag and when the line started moving again she said, "Mom, you need to keep moving!!"

I didn't quite think through how late at night our flight was- we didn't get in to LAX until after midnight our time, and with a little wait and confusion about where Aaron's carseat was it was pretty late when we got to my parents house, of course with 9 o clock church the next morning!  But somehow we made it not too worse for the wear.  Aaron slept pretty much the whole time, which was great except then when we got home he was awake and I was exhausted.  The other hard part was that we don't all fit on a row anymore, so I sat with Aaron on one side while the big kids sat across from me.  One of the stewardesses was really helpful with them, Shane wasn't as helpful as I had hoped, poor guy was still not feeling great.

The flight back home went even better than the way there, and when we got off a guy with one little girl asked if that was my first time flying with 4 and I said it was our return trip, and he told me how well they all did and that he felt like everyone should have been applauding me as I got off the plane- ha!  I secretly felt like that too- we did it!

Little Readers

Shane and Marissa both hit fun milestones in the same week- Marissa read her first book and Shane read his first chapter book!  It was fun to see them both so excited about it.  

I have kind of been waiting for the right moment to introduce them to each because as a teacher I saw it backfire when kids rushed into things too early that they didn't really have the foundation for.  Marissa and I have been casually working on letter sounds and when I realized she had mastered most of them I showed her how to read some short words and it is really starting to click for her.  She has been reading the Bob books and is pretty thrilled by it all.

 When we went to the library the other day I mentioned something about chapter books and how I thought he might be ready if he could really read carefully and he was super excited.  So I showed him the Magic Tree House books and had him read me the first chaper of the first one to see if he was ready and he did really well.  He read the first and second ones out loud to me because I wanted to make sure he was understanding, and we may continue to do it that way for a bit because he really enjoys having me listen to him.  It was pretty cute when we got the first one- all weekend he was obsessed with it and kept talking about how wasn't I so excited that my son could read chapter books now etc. etc.  and he finished it that weekend.  Today he burst into tears because the library didn't have # 3 ready for us yet ( I had put it on hold earlier in the week and told him it would probably be there by Friday and he remembered first thing when he got home!)  But we found the Magic Treehouse website and he was pretty stoked about that- we'll see how long it takes him to read the whole series- brought back good memories for me and my days of reading Babysitters Club books and eagerly anticipating the next one!

Christmas 2015

Christmas this year was a bit different than ones in the past.  Josh had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, and we decided to spend it at Grandma and Grandpa Dettinger's house, so we opened up presents from Grandma and Grandpa Nebeker at our house on Christmas Eve morning before heading up.   

 The girls were super excited to put on and use all the things they got right away,

and Shane was pretty stoked about his legos.  Poor guy was sick and had a fever off and on for four days though.

 We had a lot of fun at Grandma and Grandpa Dettinger's house, and Santa brought lots of baby doll stuff for the girls, and minions and Octonauts stuff for Shane.

 Having Matthew there always makes things more fun, and we enjoyed playing Rummikub with him (our gift to him).

Sadie

Oh, Sadie.  This little girl can be quite the charmer, and also quite the stinker.  I wanted to record just a couple things she's said that I want to remember:

-One day she was in the kitchen and Shane and Marissa were playing in the playroom and she was trying to get their attention, so she yelled, "Guys, come here!  3, 2, 1... 6, 7, 11... come here now!!! Or I will spank yours bottoms and put you in time out!"

-During one sacrament where Josh was gone and I was big and pregnant and she wanted to sit on my lap, I told her no and she did not like that.  I told her we should think about Jesus during the sacrament and she very loudly said, "No!  I don't love Jesus!"  A few weeks later during the sacrament she said, "Mom, let me whisper something in yours ear.  Do you know that Jesus loves mommy??"

-One day at dinner she was talking about how she wanted to see baby Jesus.  I told her that Jesus is not a baby anymore and he is not on Earth.  She burst into tears and said, "I want to see baby Jesus.  I am NOT okay!"

And so I remember, this picture was taken at Meijer while Marissa was at preschool.  I had gone to the Y and had just enough  time to stop at Meijer before I had to go pick Marissa up (or so I thought).  I told Sadie that if she walked she could ride Sandy after, and she did and I found a shortish line that I thought would give us just enough time.  Well the man in front in the motorized wheelchair was debating with the cashier about whether or not the orange Ajax dishwashing soap qualified for the sale so she had to call about that and when she said no he asked if she could find if they had any of the yellow soap anywhere in the store... it was at that point that I figured I better leave the cart (with sleeping Aaron) there for a second while I let Sadie ride Sandy (which was close and in eyeshot) since there was still a couple in front of me.  As Sadie was riding, the older couple kept looking at me, and I smiled at them and thought they were probably thinking what a cute little girl.  Well as I walked back I realized that Aaron had chosen that moment to wake up and cry... we paid for our things and ran out of there, although somehow missing a gallon of milk I'd  paid for but there wasn't time to run back for it, so I booked it back to preschool and got there just as the last car in the carpool line was pulling up the curb.  And that's a good summary of my life these days:)

December

In December (like a lot of other months), I usually have a million things I want to do with the kids.  There are usually lots of fun things going on with the holidays, but this year with a newborn I had to keep reminding myself to slow down a little, that there would be other years for that.  I did still manage a few outings though.  My parents were here til December 2 so my dad came with us to the Gingerbread Festival at the History Center.  Shane and Marissa were at great ages to enjoy it this year, and we found a few favorites:

Notre Dame Stadium (can you see Touchdown Jesus?)

Snoopy's doghouse

and the lamp from A Christmas Story

I made my way back to the Y too, though babies have to be 6 weeks old to go to child watch so Aaron slept through a lot of laps around the track.  I really love the Y, it feels like a community and it has been fun to have people be so excited to see the baby and me after seeing me big and pregnant for so long there.

We put up our Christmas tree and a few decorations (and yes those are our Halloween buckets still up, we finally dumped the rest of the candy!)

We went to Breakfast with Santa at the Y

And Aaron and I got to go to VIP Day at Marissa's school where we decorated cookies and gingerbread houses.

Her main concern was about what would taste good on her house rather than looks so there were a LOT of marshmallows:)

Afterwards they did a few songs for us (that's her second from the left).  Also, as we were leaving to go to school that morning, she made sure to ask me, "Mom, do you have your feeding blanket so you won't show your boobs to my school?:

We of course had a lot of fun with Aaron inside,

and it was a pretty mild month weatherwise so we even got to go for a walk around the lake one afternoon.

Aaron's Blessing

We knew my parents weren't going to be able to be at Aaron's blessing since they are leaving on a mission to Mexico next week, and Josh has a crazy schedule again this month, so we figured we better go ahead and bless him in December.  

Josh's parents came out with Matthew and it was good to spend the day with them.

One of the things that stuck out to me about his blessing was that he would have the courage to stand for what is right.  He had just turned a month old a couple days before, and was starting to give out his first little tentative smiles.  He wore the same outfit Josh and Shane were blessed in, and we managed to avoid any blowouts in it- though Aaron is really the baby that I've had the least issues with in that area.  Thank you Aaron!