The most memorable anniversary and birthday week to date

What a week! Surgery Monday, anniversary Tuesday involving laying on the couch all day, more convalescence Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday because hey, this was just a minor surgery with little recovery. Unfortunately not my experience, but it is what it is. Yesterday was mine and Spencer's birthday, and while it was pretty low on my list of good personal birthdays, it was really fun to celebrate with Spencer, so I'm going to talk about that instead.

Friday afternoon I picked up Spencer from school and told him Saturday was his day and he could pick whatever he wanted to eat and tell us what activities he wanted to do. I'm not sure I'll be able to fulfill all his dreams quite so easily in the future, but this year he was a pretty easy case.

He wanted German pancakes for breakfast, but he wanted to make them because he knows how. Except he wanted Bill to put them in the oven, because ovens are hot. Smart kid I've got. 😀  Then he wanted breakfast dessert. I told him every other day of the year there's no such thing but today, today he can have dessert after every meal. lol. He picked fruit snacks, the special ones. Turns out those are the normal ones. Again, it's never going to be so easy to fulfill his wishes again.

Lunch he wanted some muffins and maybe some crackers. I asked him what kind he wanted and he said well, I'm not sure. I'll get back to you on that. I figured he'd be super happy if I made him chocolate muffins, so I pulled out a recipe I had saved to try and made him some double chocolate chunk muffins, which of course went over supremely well. 😂  They were so tasty. A total contender against Costco muffins but they didn't make us feel like we'd been punched in the gut after eating them. Chloe got in on the action of eating those and boy was she a fan.

Dinner he wanted Little Caesar's pepperoni pizza and red chocolate cake with red icing. Red is his current favorite color. I planned to make some red velvet cake, but had a surgery recovery hiccup and ended up napping for a couple hours in the afternoon, so Bill made it instead. He popped the cake in the oven and only then realized he'd completely forgotten the red food coloring in the cake. Whoops! Spencer wasn't too disappointed. We made red frosting for it and it ended up being so tasty. Now we just owe him a red cake sometime in the future. Bill is thinking Valentine's Day.

It was rainy all day so we stayed inside. We're going to take a trip to the children's museum sometime soon, but we haven't told him that yet. For yesterday all Spencer wanted to do was watch Magic School bus, so we did that pretty well all day long and he was happy as could be. We opened presents at some point and he got some Legos and a ukulele, which went over fantastically well. He loves it so much and it makes me happy.

I was going to go to a Lularoe party my friend was hosting and take Spencer along because hey, more treats, and he loves doing novel things by himself with a parent, but due to that unfortunate surgery recovery hiccup I was concerned about getting too far from home if pain hit again, so we stayed home. That was pretty well the only sad thing that happened to him all day, which is awesome because at this age sometimes there's a lot of not fun things in the day, but this birthday was great.

Maybe someday I'll want to do some more things for me on our birthday, but this year this was just perfect. It was laid back and easy and best of all, the kids were happy pretty well all day. That ranks high on my list of good days. Kids make celebrating so fun, and the day went just about perfect, especially considering my less than functional health state.

Spencer is fantastic. He's growing up so fast and learning so many things. He's a great helper. He's independent. He reads like crazy and loves it. He's getting to the point where it's more companionable to be with him as opposed to always reining him in from doing crazy little kid things. I can't think of a better way to explain that, but he's just in a fun phase and I love it. I can trust him in a lot of ways when he's not in sight of me, and that's a wonderful thing. Here's to another great year. Six is looking pretty fine.

National Championship Parade

It's been real fun to be a Clemson football fan the last few years. As much as we love to watch from home, actually going to the games is a bit out of reach at this phase in life. It would be way hard to take all the kids, not to mention expensive, and it would be a really long time for someone else to watch all of them for as long a time as it would be for Bill and I to go alone. So we content ourselves watching from home and figure someday our kids will be at better ages to go to the actual football games.

So we've watched all season long and it was just so fun to watch the success happen. The national championship game kept us on our toes the entire game and I have to say I was trying not to get my hopes up because we lost but just a bit last year and I was afraid it was going to happen again. But then it didn't and that was the best thing ever!

We took the kids to the celebration parade yesterday. It was so fun. So much cheering. Lots of singing the fight song. Lots of Go Tigers! The kids had a great time and I was glad we made the effort. As I look at these pictures I laugh because Bill and I both look exhausted. Ha! We are. Oh well. S'all good. One of these days we'll sleep again.

Our one snow of the year

We may have scarred Spencer's love for South Carolina this last week. He is well aware that we are moving sometime this year once Bill finishes, and that wherever we move is going to be a lot less temperate a climate than Clemson, SC. Well, when we got hit with a pretty decent snowstorm by South Carolina standards this weekend and the kids had a grand ole' time playing Saturday morning, and then a few hours later the sun came out and it started melting, he was devastated and informed me that he didn't like South Carolina anymore and we needed to move right now to a place that gets more snow. 😂  My poor child that would just as soon wear only underwear at home and regularly tries to go outside without much more on. Colorado or Vermont or Canada or wherever else we end up is going to be quite the shock to the system, lololol.

Nevertheless, it was a fun little snowstorm, the best kind of snow for snowball fights and building snowmen. We had a great time playing in it for awhile while Chloe napped. And then I rolled my eyes Monday and Tuesday as the school district cancelled or delayed school while the roads were completely dry and Genevieve didn't get to go to preschool, much to her dismay. But whatever. That's part of the experience living in a sun-loving state that doesn't really do winter. And there are some very good things about that. I have no complaints about light jackets in January. The mountains in Colorado are calling, but I'm going to enjoy the beach and the warm water while I have access to that before we answer that call.

Christmas and New Years

I sat down to blog and journal tonight and realized I haven't written a thing about Christmas or New Years or really much of anything we did the whole month of December. It turned into a social media rollback sort of a month for me as I was busy with other things. I looked at Facebook, but not regularly. I posted occasionally but not a lot because I was doing other things. I found myself realizing hours later that I didn't have my phone anywhere near me. Truly it was delightful. I have to figure out the right balance because I do like keeping up with the goings on of my friends and family on Facebook, but not feeling tied to devices was a remarkably freeing experience and I really enjoyed it. I read not one but four thick books this month. I created. I played with my kids. It was lovely.

But anyway, Christmas. New Years. Christmas Break. This year was great. I've mentioned it before of late but I'm really feeling a simplify kick. We're coming to the end of grad school. May is the goal. And then August so we can start the kids at their new school. Then next Christmas so we can participate in that graduation ceremony. Basically Bill is hard at work writing his dissertation as well as prepping to teach and doing a multitude of other things. He will finish when he finishes and it is very hard to know how long it will take. But we see the finish line and he's working as hard as he can to get there.

Chloe at six months

How that relates to Christmas is I didn't feel a strong drive to give a jillion things and add to our stuff list. We went with new nightstands and lights for the kids as well as a Lego table and stools and some new Legos. They got a few miscellaneous clothes and games and things from grandparents and cousins. All in all it felt just about perfect. Lots to open, but not too much. The kids were so excited. This is really the first year they've truly gotten the magic of Christmas time. They were excited to see Santa. They loved the parties and the advent calendars. We did our annual 25 Days of Christ thing with scriptures and movies about the Savior. They remembered that from last year and really enjoyed it. They were so incredibly excited for Christmas Eve and to wake up Christmas morning. Bill and I had a delightful time creating all the magic. It was awesome.

Christmas morning the three older ones got up and Chloe actually slept way in. We opened most of our gifts before she woke up and we brought her in. She's even old enough to be excited by the others' excitement and that was fun. Truly, this was the best Christmas we've had since having kids. It really was magical.

By the time New Years rolled around I was honestly beat. Chloe has slept through the night since day one, but just the last few weeks she seems to have forgotten how. Her crib is in my bedroom because there's nowhere else to put it if we want to preserve some of the good things that work right now with our other kids. So I can't really do anything but get her and take care of her multiple times a night and I'm dragging. We watched a lot of movies and shows throughout the day. We had promised the kids they could stay up until midnight but in actuality I was dreading it. It went well though. We watched the Clemson game, which was super fun. The kids watched the Jungle Book. When both wound down we found a New Years countdown on demand on Netflix and danced around until "midnight." It ended up being about 10:30PM. Then the older two went to sleep. Aaron was his crazy self until about 11PM and Chloe was up and down all night because hey, why not! I can't say it was the best New Years I've had, but for a first time even celebrating it with our kids, not bad. It can't help but get better when we get our effort on and do more fun things, lol.

So anyway, now Christmas Break is winding down. Genevieve started back today. Spencer goes back Wednesday. I kind of feel like shouting "I survived!" and doing a few fist pumps. I'm still figuring out this whole vacation, all four kids are at home thing. We'll get there. It's all good. This holiday season is in the books and onward and upward to an awesome 2017.

Lots of Pictures

Most of my photos end up on my cell phone, and it's hard to take cell phone shots of moving kids, so some of these are a tad fuzzy, but this is real life around my house. Lots of no clothes days, lots of cut Chloe, lots of treats this Christmas season. It's been a good month so far. 

She rolled over a few times when she turned five months old. Now she seems to have forgotten she knows how to do that, but she's also very close to sitting up on her own. Baby development is weird.

Ice cream cones! I'd say that's probably my kids' favorite treat at the moment.

Reading with dad, sitting in his lap. Pretty much Aaron's favorite thing. The sitting in his lap part at least. Bill doesn't love it because they wallow around too much and it is uncomfortable, so when Aaron gets a chance he always looks like a cat that caught a mouse, so content. 

This girl. She is so cute. It's ridiculous. And that hat is also ridiculous and I love it. 

Got Genevieve some new leggings. She's in heaven. So many crazy pattern mixing days of late. She was so excited she wouldn't stand still to take a picture, but oh well.

Saturday morning cartoons. Genevieve was thrilled we let her hold Chloe for a few minutes.

Sometimes we watch a movie while we eat. Not very often, but when the littles are asleep sometimes the biggies get to do cool things.

New outfit from Grammy Becky. So adorable. 

She's sitting so well in her high chair.

Those cheeks!

Spencer was ecstatic to go see Santa. And these are the best pictures with Santa I've ever gotten.

Genevieve loved the idea of Santa but the bounce house next to him was way more exciting. We had to convince her to come over and then she only wanted to sit with Bill. I'm betting this will be here last year of being skittish of Santa, but we shall see.

Aaron wanted nothing to do with sitting on Santa's lap. I have no idea how we got even this decent of a picture. Magical photographer right there. He liked the candy cane though.

Boys, oh boys

This is a parenting post if ever I've written one. My apologies but it's the only thing on my mind right now so either I write a random gross parenting story or don't blog, lol. You can see which one I picked, obviously.

I'm drowning in pee I tell you. My oldest is quite fastidious and he hasn't done me any favors to be prepared for the two year-old being potty trained but overly confident about his aiming abilities, which are in fact quite poor. I swear I wipe up messes five times a day and my bathroom still reeks of pee. The real problem here is his height. Aaron potty trained so young that he's not tall enough to aim right. So give it a year and we'll be fine, but in the meantime I can't find the source of the stench.

Let's talk about how bathrooms in old homes aren't helpful at all in the cleaning efforts either. And living in a humid climate. That's three strikes against me, right? The fight is real and constant y'all. I appreciate the lack of diapers. I'll appreciate more the lack of puddles and stench and don't even knock my hopes out with comments about how it's never going to get better. Hahaha! I'm not going to accept that. I have one example to prove that boys can use the bathroom without being disgusting.