The Hustle and Bustle

Shopping
My Christmas shopping began on Black Friday. And I loved it. It is so fun to share that day with my sisters and oldest nieces. This year, my niece Caitie experienced a right of passage as she came with us for the first time. Here we are celebrating the moment at Walmart at 5am...
She was so fun to shop with as her eyes were wide with the wonder of it all. Here we are, not as excited, later in the morning when we were in a seemingly eternal line at K-mart...

(Why can't I make cute funny faces for the camera? I think I'm going to start practicing in the mirror so I can look cuter for these kind of shots.)

I love shopping. It can be so exhilarating to hunt for your "prey" and catch it, at the lowest possible price. But, especially at Christmas time, my love for shopping and love of stuff has the potential to turn a holy day into nothing more than an opportunity to get more stuff. That is not what I want our Christmas to be. And it's not what I want my life to be about. So this year, in an attempt to tame the beast, I am returning some of those great black friday finds.

This doesn't mean I am completely done with my Christmas shopping. I laughed at the deejay that I heard talking about people doing "last minute shopping" last week. "Last minute shopping" is when you are still shopping on the 23rd. Believe me, I know all about that.

Wrapping presents
None down. A bunch to go. Tate asked if this year, I would have all the presents wrapped before Christmas morning. Oh how I long to be the kind of person that has presents wrapped and under the tree for weeks. But, Lulu would just open them and eat the paper, so I think I'm off the hook on that one.

Holiday Baking
I don't like baking. I guess all the measuring annoys me. Emmie went to someone's house once and they made cookies. She came home and said excitedly, "Mommy, we made cookies! And they didn't even come in a tube!". I want to be someone who turns on Christmas music and merrily does holiday baking, but I'm just not. But for my kids sake I am determined to bake something with them this year. Something that doesn't come in a tube.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland
It's cold here. So, thanks to your encouragement, I wore my Elmer Fudd hat out in public. Once. And then I lost it. Dang.

Holiday Social Worker Visits
Is that not a common holiday activity? Well, it is for us this year. We have a new social worker coming to our filthy lovely home this afternoon for a post-placement visit. I envision a quiet conversation in an immaculate house. But, of course, that is delusional. If I can just keep the dog from nudging her in the crotch and the laundry from eating her alive, I will consider the visit a success.

Reason enough to party

Though we still had some sickness lurking about (and still do), we didn't let that keep us from a weekend of partying. The first was a "Christmas Girl Party" with the sweet Hillman girls...
The party included:
Toasting, even Lulu got in on the action...
A spa treatment, and again Lulu got in on the action...
Presents...
Emmie got her best friend a shirt that says "My Best Friend Rocks". Should we be embarrassed about that?

And of course, at the party there was Loveliness...
Then our small group from church had it's annual Christmas Party. This is usually at our house, but we moved it to another home with Tate still sick with an "as yet unknown virus". Not exactly what we want to give our friends this Christmas. We left him at home alone with a movie while we went just around the corner. That had my stomach in knots the entire time. But the kids had a great time opening gifts from their secret Santas...
Especially Jack.

And the adults also had fun with our annual White Elephant gift exchange. This is also known as Dirty Santa, which sounds inappropriate for a church function, but I assure you, it is not. Bill ended up with a bag of lima beans. Serves him right because I begged him to steal the Bath and Body works antibacterial soaps and Ghiradelli chocolates on my behalf and he would not. A lesson learned: give your wife what she wants or you will end up with beans.

The final party was at our house with students. Here are the girls...
Another party, another White Elephant gift exchange. I got fuzzy dog slippers. Emma loves them. This time, instead of beans, Bill ended up with three drawings in marker and a broken cell phone charger, a fate even worse than beans. Every year I am excited for these White Elephant exchanges. But there is just one question: WHY???

As for decorating the outside of the house, there's snow, that's good enough right? My thought on outside lights is simple. I'm going with a minimalist theme this year. I'm just turning on our front porch light. You know, to represent the star in the sky that Bethlehem night. Yeah, that's it. Also on the decorating front, I braved the perils of our storage room and emerged with none other than Mary herself. So, the Holy Family is reunited and on our front porch...
With the parties, the decorating, lingering sickness, and my nemesis (The Laundry) I haven't done a very good job so far of keeping this season as simply focused on Christ as I desired. But I take comfort in this: He is with me while I do (or don't do) laundry. He is with me while I take temperatures, administer ibuprofen, and make trips to the doctor. He is with me while I blog and shop and referee fights and complain about the frigid cold. In all the activities of my day, He is with me. And He will be with me forever. "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel"(which means God with us). Matthew 1:23.

He's not meant to be a plaster statue on a front porch afterall. He is meant to be the King. Of the universe, yes. And of my heart as well.

Snow Days, Schmo Days

Greetings from the Household of Sick. This week we had three, count 'em, three snow days. It could have been so fun and festive. But strep throat was kind of a party-pooper. As of now, Tate is the only one still sick. Emmie is back at school. And Jack has been totally fine. Though he kept saying his stomach hurt. And his left ankle hurt. And his right elbow hurt. Oh, and it felt like little bugs were eating his hip. He doesn't like to be left out of things.

Thanfully, Miss Loveliness has also been Miss Healthiness so far. But she hasn't exactly been Miss Cleanliness. She's wearing the same outfit today that she wore yesterday and to bed last night. Maybe I've done that a few times this week as well. And her hair, though cute, is not exactly well-coiffed...
You would think since I have been totally housebound for a week that I would have cleaned the house and done laundry. Nope...
What we did do was watch movies. The kids had so much screen time that they actually got sick of it. That never happens.

But hopefully life can get back to normal soon. Whatever that means.

"10"

Luci May is 10 months old today.
As I was thinking about writing this post, I was reminded that I didn't commemorate my other 3 children's birth date each month during the first year. I started feeling a bit bad about that. I did keep a journal for each of them. Tate has a lot of entries, chronicling most of his firsts. Em's is not quite as full, but respectable. And Jack's journal is just plain pitiful.

Here is an excerpt from the third entry in the journal. He is 14 months old. It reads, "Let me try to remember the milestones of your first 14 months...Okay, I don't know when you started rolling over. Or when you got your first tooth. Or even when you started crawling." Poor, neglected child. In my defense, my Dad died that year and we moved across the country. Plus, I had a two year old that I was trying to keep from drinking tylenol and wiping poop on the walls. Who had time to journal?

So, should I feel guilty that Lulu now gets a blog post the 9th of every month? Naa. It's not like my other kids are complaining about the attention Lulu receives. They are part of the reason she gets so much attention. Case in point: I found this creation today lovingly made by a big sister...
Plus, that's just the way it is. I'm a blogger now and writing posts like this are in the 10 commandments of Blog Land. Sure, I wish I had written down more and taken more pictures when the others were little. But it doesn't mean I treasure those memories any less. Maybe I treasured them more because I was just living them, instead of thinking about how to blog about them. Who knows? I do know that most of us moms dish out heaping plates of guilt on ourselves and I'd like to cut back on that in my life. Maybe that can be my holiday diet.

So without further adieu, I give you Lulu Fest: the 10 month edition...
This has definitely been a month of exploration because this little crawler is on the move. And fast. Lulu would like to recommend the top toys of 2009 that she has discovered...

(The dog's water dish)

(A sifter, found in the toybox kitchen cabinet)

(the onions in the other toybox pantry)

(paper or wrappers, any kind will do)

(the laundry basket)

(Mommy's hoodie strings...our version of apron strings)

(the doingy door stopper thing)

And the number one toy of 2009: a wet diaper. No picture of that because of course she has never found that laying in the middle of the living room floor and tried to eat it.

No matter where she roams and what she tries to get into, before long she always ends up here...
clutching onto my legs. It melts me.

While we are on the subject of how she has the ability to melt me into a little puddle, she still does the "flirty": her little head tilt and coy smile. I was in a panic a couple of weeks ago because I thought "the flirty" was gone forever. For about 4 days, she stopped doing it. Even Gunga couldn't get it out of her. It turns out that Lulu doesn't feel too flirty when she has a cold. I guess it's hard for anyone to be flirty when you have snot constantly dripping out of your nose. Now that the cold is gone, the flirty is back...And I am happy. When she's 16, I probably won't be as excited about her being flirty.

My sweet friend Rhonda, met Lulu for the first time recently and said "It's like her face was made to smile." I couldn't agree more...
Love that smile. Love that baby.

It never snows in Ethiopia

But it snows here, that's for sure. Right now we are living in a winter wonderland...
I like God's version of Christmas decorating around here.

School was canceled. The University was even canceled. So the whole family is home. I love snow days! Although, this snow day isn't exactly what I envisioned. Emmie, though better, is still sick...
So no playing in the snow for her. But I thought she was probably well enough for us to get a family picture in the snow, something I have wanted to capture for two years now. This is a perfect snow for that. I even did my hair for the impending occasion and got up my nerve to wear my Elmer Fudd hat. I've had it for over a year and still never worn it out. I keep thinking someone will come up to me and say "You wascally wabbit!" and I chicken out.

The coats and hats were laid out with care and visions of perfect pictures danced in my head, when another one bit the dust. Tate, who I thought was just fine, suddenly was feverish and miserable...
And it wasn't just a ploy to get out of a family picture session. Though I wouldn't put that past any of my family members. Even Bill.

But, all was not lost. It was time for Lulu to experience her first big snow. So we bundled her all up...
(Can you say "Ralphie" anyone?) And plopped her in the snow...
The two sick ones and the one who hates being cold (like his Momma) experienced this first from a distance. No matter how they are feeling, they don't want to miss out on anything with their baby sister...
She politely endured it...
But wasn't her usual smiley self...
Until she saw her fan club cheering her on from the front door...
Then Lulu got her groove back...
As for me, I decided to go ahead and publicly be seen in my Elmer Fudd hat anyway by you, my bloggy friends...
What is your vote, yay or nay?

There was someone who truly enjoyed her time in the snow, though...
So another snow day, another day that doesn't go the way I planned. But, as I wrote early on, we are all home together. And that's enough.

So this what all the fuss has been about...

I don't get too upset about my kids being sick with the cold or flu, at least not the older ones. I like having them home from school. And calm. And I haven't seen what the big fuss has been about H1N1. I thought I had it a couple of months ago and it wasn't fun, but it was really not a big deal.

But I get it now. Emmie has something that seems suspiciously swiney. Yesterday I knew she was sick when she said she didn't feel like going to dance. And then she had to stay in bed while 25 student women gathered in our home. Let me digress to show you pictures of that. If you wonder why I love our work, well these faces are why...

(guess who was the center of attention?)
(but poor, banished Ruby got some attention too)

It was pure torture for Emmie to miss out on being with these girls and get attention of her own. But she had a fever and was lethargic, so partying was not an option. She wasn't terribly sick, but enough to keep her in bed most of the day. Things changed in the middle of the night when she showed up next to my bed crying and complaining of not being able to breathe. When I heard her wheezing and the scary cough and felt her blazing forehead, I understood the making of a germaphobe. It's one thing when I'm sick (I don't particularly like being miserable), but when one of my babies is miserable that's a different story altogether. As I held Emmie in the night and cried out to the Lord, I was reminded of the deep hurt I have when my children hurt. And the deep fear I have of harm befalling them. My mind turned to those who know this pain on a much deeper level than I do.

We made it through the night without a visit to the ER, so that's a bonus. Em is not as bad today, so I'm thankful for that. But the boys have sore throats now, so we'll see where this goes. We are in "protect the baby" mode. Which is no small task since they are used to smothering her with hugs and kisses every chance they get. We haven't resorted to using these...

or these...
YET. But I'm afraid it's still early in the game.

Speaking of games, we are also recovering from a bit of heartsickness over our team's loss last night. In a spectacular defensive effort, they didn't come up with the upset in the end. But I love that our boys share a love for Husker football...
And we're starting Lulu early too.

Things have gone from bad to worse...

We are still in decorating mode, but we have a few problems. First I found this suspicious scene...
Notice how Santa is no longer just lurking on the outskirts of the nativity scene (in the previous post), but now he is smack dab in the middle of the action. Even replacing Mary herself.

And now another Mary is MIA. We have a nativity we put outside and somehow, while in our storage room since last January, Joseph became a single parent family...
I promise we have nothing against Mary around here. I don't know what the deal is, but I can't very well put the Holy Family outside like that. This is history we're talking about here. Pretty important history.

I don't really want to put anything up outside anyway because, of course, I waited until the temperatures became frigid to think about decorating the outside of the house.

But there is good news. Our quirky Christmas tree is looking a bit better after we tried to hide it under a sea of ribbon and decorations...
Not bad for a mangy eyesore.

On getting a new tree for next year, I believe I have my three older children on Team Missy as well as my friends Rachel and Kristin. I think the only person on Team Bill is Dave Ramsey.