Christmas 2016

This Christmas was a little bittersweet for me....we did all the regular holiday "stuff", but I knew the whole time this was probably the last year of having all three of my babies really believe in it all.  Hayden has already been asking shady questions about Chimmy (the elf) since last year so this has been coming for sure.  The other two have their heads in the clouds, and it might be a willful decision. When Chimmy finally showed up from the north pole, you have never seen someone more excited than Livi.  She could hardly contain herself.  I love how every morning she wandered the house looking for him.....and how she writes him notes all the time, and leaves him stuff.  This year she left him a pair of green tinkerbell boots that she thought he might want to wear.  (He did, and they were fabulous).  She leaves so many notes and treats it's like he's a Buddha statue in a nail salon.

 Both the first grades and the third grades put on the cutest little holiday concerts.  We loved watching them sing with their classmates....and this pic of Cale invading his friends' personal space is just beyond.

 Every year we make Christmas cookies, and then everyone asks for one all day, every day for three straight weeks until I don't care anymore.  It's way too much sugar but whatever.  I can't do all the things.

I love how excited they still get about getting the Christmas boxes down from the attic.  Everyone wants to help decorate our Christmas trees, but typically the girls help for a little while and then move on after an hour or so.  The last few years it ends up just being me and Cale finishing the tree by ourselves, which is kind of sweet.  I love that he still gets excited and wants to help me.  Daddy helps too, but he's more of a "walk around and drink coffee and sporadically carry heavy things" guy.

The kiddos were very excited that this year we did colored lights outside instead of white ones.  Momma likes white, but they love these so there you have it.

 This year I am the room mom in Livi's first grade class, and after their holiday party I had a bunch of left over ornament making supplies.  These supplies entertained us for a good three days.

(A typical scene from our kitchen table.  Mess, kids...and a kitty cat in the middle of it all with an Aussie under the table.)

 They managed to make it just past sun up on Christmas morning.  I love how excited they get to see their gifts. This year we were lucky to have Uncle Cupcake with us on Christmas morning so that was super fun.

 We always end up gifting them with too much, despite our promises to ourselves every year that we are going to take it easy.  It's easy to give them things because they are always so sweet and grateful.

 One of the special gifts Cale wanted this year was a giant teddy bear like the ones they have in Costco.  He put it on his list, but was a little embarrassed because I guess he thought a nine year old boy shouldn't want one.  Mimi and Popo ordered him one, and he was so excited to get it.

Their big gift this year was a ride on toy.  Hayden got a moped, Livi got a go kart, and Cale got a motorcycle which (to his momma) looks like it goes 400 mph.  A few weeks after Christmas and I can safely say he can absolutely handle this thing, but the day of Christmas I might have stood out on the curb all morning in my pajamas screaming "SLOW DOWN!" While I was on the verge of a breakdown, his Daddy stood next to me and said "Man.  That one is too little.  We should've gotten the big one." For the love.  This is why kids need a daddy.  If it were just me, I'd still have them inside watching Micky Mouse Clubhouse and wearing a onesie.

 I love these sweet times with them, and it doesn't go without notice that these are the best days.  We are smack dab in the middle of them, and I am fully aware.  I know these are the days we will talk about someday.  One day during the holidays we were heading out for lunch and I burst into tears thinking about it.  Shawn had to remind me all the years will be fun, and we have so much to look forward to....and he's right.  I just know this are good days we will miss someday.  

beach babies

If waiting three years between each blog is wrong, I don't want to be right.  Just kidding...I am in a deep shame spiral about the lack of record keeping I have done for this family.....these poor babies.  They had forty million pictures taken of them from birth to age four and from 4- now, approximately seven.  Life just gets in the way of writing and record keeping and memory keeping.  I guess it's a good thing to be focused on the memory making instead of the memory keeping but still.  I want them to have images of their little lives, but also my words.  So here goes.....for the fourteen hundredth time.
We took the babies to the beach for a quick trip right after Christmas.  The island was empty and foggy and so dreamy.  We did a lot of sitting around, eating, and not a whole lot of anything else.
Mimi bought Hayden a "grown up coloring book"...not like adult content (I'm sure you can actually buy those) but one of those ones with the really intricate flower and paisley designs.  Coloring those tiny designs with markers and then the fancy schmancy Prismacolors Mimi bought them took up most of their down time. We were telling Hayden she had to take care of her new colored pencils because we were pretty sure there were art majors in college who didn't have the big Prismacolor set yet.

 Lots of laying around, playing on the iPads, and just relaxing in general.  Mimi and Popo were there too and we were all equally worthless as far as activity level goes.

 As much as my kids hate posing for pictures, I made them do it because the beach was so super foggy that I knew it would make for amazing images.  You literally couldn't see fifteen feet away from you it was so foggy.  I told Shawn it was like the set of a movie.  Babies were grumpy with pics, but at this point in their lives know that the path of least resistance is to just slap a smile on and cooperate to make momma happy.  The faster they can get the pictures over the faster they can get back to running around doing their own thing. (Photographer kid probs)

 Mimi, Shawn and I decided we would have cocktail hour down by the water and let the littles play and get some energy out.  We were busy enjoying our drinks until Mimi and I noticed that the fog was settling into tiny little water drops all over our bodies.....and we cracked up about having a "fog mustache".

 This little one is one of the main reasons I felt motivated to blog again.  Those top two teeth fell out during her Christmas break, and yesterday she got her ears pierced.  If those two things don't make you feel like your baby is getting ready to pack a trunk and move to college, I don't know what will.

 Despite the water being roughly 16 degrees (or something) these kids can't hardly be kept out of it.

 I love that they are big enough to make me laugh every day with the things they say, but also little enough to still look for treasures wherever we are.  Half a sand dollar is a pretty big deal for a beach that's pretty low on shells.
(Just a side example of the kinds of things they say that make me laugh....the other day Livi and I were talking about diversity and how it's cool that we all look differently, talk differently....and she offered these sage words of wisdom. "Momma, you know everyone is the same?  No matter what color your skin is, or your eyes are...no matter what.  We are all the same on the inside.  Even Donald Trump probably.  And he's orange.")

I love having the kids off school for holiday, and not just because I love sleep so much I could cry.  Also because I kinda like hanging out with them every day.  When they went back last week it was  sad.  They're my little friends now.  I love their little words and ideas and stories and watching the way their little minds work on a day to day basis.  If I wasn't 143% sure I'd snap and have a mental breakdown, I might actually consider "online learning" (Livi saw a commercial on TV once and wondered why they couldn't just stay home and do that)

I'm glad we decided to go down for a few days during their break....it makes me happy to be down there when no one else is and the town is totally asleep.  It makes me feel like it's our little secret, but mainly we like not having to wait at restaurants, because: priorities.