A Busy But Special Week

I think everyone was tired from the weekend and were slow waking up Monday morning. Although Ellie was the first one up and ready, so she took Buddy out. Jackson was still in bed close to seven but he is pretty quick about getting ready and getting his chores done. Before Ellie left, she helped me for a bit getting the Christmas cards ready to mail out. I continued working on them after she left and then got on the bike. The twins watched the new Lion King movie while I was on the bike. Andrew ended up coming home early for lunch so he could take Buddy out. Miles went out back with him and ran around with Buddy. They are still a little hesitant with him, especially since he is becoming more “playful”. Andrew ended up taking Buddy to office for a few hours. After I got ready, I got the twins lunch and worked on laundry. Then after I got them down for a nap I worked on some food for brunch after Ellie’s baptism. I made a couple casseroles an d a couple pounds of bacon. Andrew picked up the kids for me which worked out great so I could finish stuff up and clean. He has been doing it during hunting season. He picks them up (usually with Buddy in tow) and then heads out for an afternoon hunt.

When Lincoln gets home, he is very good about giving me all of his papers. This day he showed me his get up for playing on the playground in cold weather. I guess he brought his ninja mask to wear either over or under his cap so it can cover his face. I’m sure his teacher enjoyed that J. Ellie took Buddy on a walk when she got home and delivered the head bands to the girls in the neighborhood. Jackson decided to get a cup so they could better measure Buddy’s food. We were joking that Andrew and Ellie are always thinking that Buddy needs to eat again since they are always concerned about their food. Later that afternoon we loaded up, including Buddy, and went to my parents’ house. Caroline and Jared got back into town earlier that afternoon so we got to visit with them and they got to meet Buddy. Caroline was in love…until Buddy started nipping at her. We ended up ordering La Fuente and then my mom gave Ellie an early birthday present...a ticket to the Nutcracker in Columbia. I also get a ticket for my birthday. I'm excited to share it with her. After that we headed home. I decided to get some wrapping done after we got home so Andrew took charge of the kids. I think they brought Buddy in because I heard a lot of noise upstairs. I wanted to wrap the presents for all the birthdays fist so that is what I was working on plus going ahead and getting a few of the large Christmas presents wrapped and out of the way.

The next morning was our “Friday” so the twins only had one day of school for the week. I went to Wal-Mart after I dropped everyone off and picked up 5 ½ dozen cupcakes for Ellie’s birthday festivities and a few other things. Wal-Mart didn’t have any sprinkles I liked so I used some of my own. But the icing had already hardened so sprayed the cupcakes with some water before I put the sprinkles on and it worked. Before I had to pick up the twins I cooked some more bacon for the brunch and got a pumpkin pie in the oven to take to my parents later. After lunch, the twins and I took Buddy out for a bit and then we went to Ellie’s school to share cupcakes with her class. The twins weren’t interested in talking to anyone (kids always want to play with them) because they were just there for the cupcakes. Ellie helped me hand out the cupcakes and then they sang Happy Birthday to her. Once Miles and Bennett were done we headed home and I put them down for a nap. While they napped I filled up the containers for our Advent tree and finished up wrapping the twins’ birthday presents before I needed to pick up the other kids. Caroline and Jared came over to hang out while the twins napped, plus they got to play with Buddy. Since I knew they probably would be lacking on naps the next few days, I wanted to make sure they got a good one. We dropped Ellie off with Kristin and Ashlyn after school and they went out to their house with a few other girls to celebrate Ashlyn’s birthday. Then they came back into town to eat at La Fuente.

We went to my parents’ house later in the afternoon and Amanda and her kids showed up soon after we did. They had dinner for all of us and then Andrew and Jackson had to go to basketball practice. We skipped Ellie’s gymnastics class. That night Ellie and I started watching a movie called Getting to the Nutcracker  that was about a dance company and their tryouts, practices and performances of the Nutcracker. We didn’t get all the way through it though. The next morning didn’t go quite as planned. I got up and was going to get the twins ready and get their breakfast, clean the house and then get on the treadmill. Well we discovered Buddy got out of his cage (I used to think that Andrew would just leave him out when he left in the morning but then Andrew discovered that he was getting out of the door on the top of the cage) and I wasn’t successful at getting him to go back in. Plus it looked like he had peed on the garage floor a couple times. So I had Lincoln get Jackson up so he could take care of Buddy and clean up his messes. Then Miles had some diarrhea and got a little in his pants. I had also told the kids earlier that they needed to get the trash out and they thought they would just wait until later. I have a keen ear for the garbage truck and I heard it coming down the street so I yelled at the kids to hurry and get everything out to the curb. The LaBeths were doing the same.  And it seemed like the rest of the morning went like that. I gave up on running and employed everyone in cleaning the house. They weren’t being the best behaved so they got a little lecture and they all pitched in. I went ahead and finished the bathrooms while they vacuumed and dusted their rooms and the rest of the house and helped pick up in general. Lincoln even convinced Ty to help him. They cleaned the basement and the bathroom down there. Then while Lincoln cleaned his room, he had Ty put his laundry away. After we were done, I did some baking. I made some chocolate frosted peanut butter bars to take to the houses for Thanksgiving and then made some cookies for the kids to thank them for helping me.

After we were done, we went to my parents’ house for a little bit. Andy and Autumn got in a little after we did and they all got to meet Buddy. Then we went back home to get ready for the Farwell family pictures that we were doing out at Tom and Mary’s. Lissy brought Briley and Carson as her assistants and followed us out there. Earlier in the day was pretty good but it was starting to get a little cooler, it was getting pretty windy and it started misting as we were driving out there. She went ahead and started with Annie and her family before we did a big family picture. Lissy was a trooper and worked quickly which we were very grateful for. And after we were done, Lissy and her crew went back to town while the rest of us went to Matthew and Kristin’s for Ashlyn’s birthday party. It was still about 1 ½ hours before the party started but Kristin had some food set out that we could snack on. She had some strawberries that were so good which I found a little unusual with the time of year. The kids got busy running around and playing and the rest of the party crew showed up little by little. By the time we got home, Buddy had been in his cage for over 5 hours but it didn’t look like he had an accident.

Ellie and I finished our movie and I stayed up too late looking through deals online. Then I woke up early the next morning so I got back on and was excited to find a deal that I thought was just going to be in stores. My mom was looking for it too, so I texted her at 5:30 and asked her if she was up. She was and she was able to get the deal too. I did get my run in on Thursday-had to prepare for all the food we were about to eat. When I came up from my run, Andrew had most of the kids out back with Buddy playing basketball. Ellie was still in her pjs. But it was 60 degrees out so they had to take advantage of that. I got ready, finished up our laundry and put it in the kids’ rooms for them to put away. Then I made a corn casserole to take out to Andrew’s parents and cut up the peanut butter bars. We ended up taking Buddy out there with us. We enjoyed a delicious lunch and the kids found all sorts of ways to entertain themselves. Ellie took some pictures for me.

We got back around 3:30 from there and then the kids and I went over to my parents. My whole family had showed up by then and the house was very full…and loud. We helped finish up getting the dinner ready and decided the adults would just sit down first and eat. But the kids caught onto us and thought they needed to eat too. Well, some kids did. I think Ellie and Jackson were the only ones of ours that did. The younger three were perfectly fine with just snacking which was fine because that just meant more for the rest of us. We didn’t have anything specific for the kids to do this year but they kept themselves busy. Ellie and Lincoln ended up staying the night while Andrew took the other boys home a little earlier to check on Buddy and do baths.

Friday morning we worked on cookies for the kids’ project. My dad had already made all of the cookie dough balls so the kids were responsible for getting them on the cookie sheet, bagging them up and tying to tags on. It was a bit chaotic but that is to be expected. The kids took turns coming in and out of the kitchen doing different jobs.  We took a break for lunch and finished up afterwards. Autumn and her kids delivered some over by her mom’s house while I took some for one of our neighbors and Kristin. My dad took some of the kids later that afternoon to deliver several too. After we were done, I went home to get things ready for Ellie’s party. Kaitlin took Ellie out on a little shopping trip for her birthday since they had her name. Bella and Carolina got to go with them and then Kaitlin brought them by the house. They wanted to stay here until the party but were tired. So I set them up in the basement with Eloise at Christmastime and hot chocolate while I got to work.  The pizza showed up right before the party started and we got all that set up and waited for the crowd to show up-47 of us all together. Ellie did get to open one gift before everyone came and it was her straightner. She was very excited.

Andrew’s family showed up first so we told them to go ahead and start eating before the others showed up. Soon, kids were everywhere-upstairs, downstairs, on the floor, on the chairs, playing with whatever toys they could find. After pizza, we moved onto opening presents. One of our presents was a small Zing bow which caused quite the problem later on when Andy got a hold of it and started shooting at people. He and Jackson had quite the battle all over the house. He also got the twins wound up because that is what Uncle Andy does. We let the kids play a little while after we opened presents and then we sang Happy Birthday to the big nine-year-old and they dug into the cupcakes. I over-estimated on the food all together. We had several extra pizzas and cupcakes. Andrew’s parents took a pizza home and then I took some over to my parents the next day that they devoured for lunch. But overall I would say it was a successful party and we fit everyone into the house. The basement looked like a bomb had gone off but we got it all cleaned up. Andrew sent the kids downstairs to clean up the playroom and they did a great job. I cleaned up the main floor and Andrew got the vacuum out. Then I took down Ellie’s decorations and put up the remainder of the Christmas decorations including our stockings.

Saturday morning got off to a rough start. Andrew headed out for a bike ride with a couple other guys. He was all bundled up because it was just 30 degrees for most of his ride. He ended up going 42 miles! After I picked up around the house, I got on the bike. Partway through my ride, Miles came in to let me know that Bennett had pooped on the bathroom floor. So I went to check it out and Bennett had pooped in his pull up he had on from overnight and attempted to take it off and clean himself up in the bathroom. So there was poop on the rug, the floor, the toilet seat and the sink. He had flushable wipes everywhere and even tried to use the hand towel to clean up. The big problem there was that he used toilet water to get the towel wet so there was toilet water all over the floor.  I got Bennett in the shower and got to work cleaning everything up.  I eventually got back on the bike but by that time I had to cut my workout short. We all finished getting ready and headed over to my parents. We were able to see Amanda and her family before they left.  Bennett started complaining of not feeling while we were there and he had some more diarrhea like Miles had had the days before. So Andrew came and picked them up and I went to eat at Pagliai’s with Heidi and Jeff. It was packed and we ended up at a tiny little table. It was great to see them and catch up before I had to head over to the movie theater to meet up with my mom, Sara and several of the kids. We saw The Good Dinosaur which was a sweet movie.  When we got back to my parents, the girls pulled out a couple board games to play. We ended up ordering Pancake City for dinner. We all headed home a little after dinner so I could work on getting things ready for the brunch after Ellie’s baptism the next morning. I made a quick stop by Wal-Mart first to pick up a few things and then went home.

I finished getting everything prepped the next morning. I had a couple breakfast casseroles, hashbrown casserole, bacon, mini muffins and cinnamon rolls, and fruit along with coffee and juice. So I was able to get most stuff ready so it was cooking while we were gone and would be ready when we got home. Andrew made sure the kids were ready to go and we were off. It was great that a lot of our family was able to be there-Ellie really appreciated it. I helped the kids get checked in for the kids’ area and we joined the rest of them for the service. Ellie’s baptism was at the end of service. Andrew said a few words and Ellie agreed that she had accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior and then he dunked her. She came up with a big smile on her face. It was so awesome and we were so proud of her for taking that stand in front of everyone. Afterwards we all went back over to the house and ate. As much as I tried to prepare, it still wasn’t all ready to go but my mom helped me finish up everything and it all turned out well.  Everyone ate, the kids played and people moved on kind of quickly to head home. Then it was time to clean up and take a deep breath. The last several days kind of felt like a marathon. But I was so thankful to be able to spend so much time with our families and celebrate.

The rest of the day was a bit of a catch-up day for me. Andrew spent the whole time at home which was unusual, but nice. I did my grocery shopping, put up the tree in Andrew’s office and picked up a prescription for Ellie and some movies at Walgreens. The kids took turns taking Buddy out and they gave him a bath. Other than that, it was kind of a lazy day that reflected the dreary weather outside.