Christmas in pictures

We had a fantastic Christmas Eve and Christmas and today as well. It really was the best holiday season we've had since we had kids. I just loved it. Here's some shots of how the days went.

His stocking treats were no match for him. Gone so fast.

She got a giant Elsa doll that is nearly as tall as her and she carries it everywhere.

Favorite gift by far, the toolset his cousin gave him. He had some sort of tool in his hand the entire day, generally the hammer, and was very bugged whenever his siblings wanted to play with them, as they thought they were super cool too.

She loved the several stuffed animals she received.

After he cheeseball grinned for this he grabbed the camera to see how he looked. They learn so young!

Playing hungry, hungry hippos

We had a Christmas miracle! It stopped raining for the entire day until the evening, for the first time since Monday. Much joy occurred on the new trampoline because of this.

Trying out the trampoline as a napping location.

She was going for the serious look, but really she was in heaven.

She doesn't know it, but this is the last hurrah for this toy box. I built it when Spencer was under a year old and we just don't have room for it anymore. It was an excellent spot to watch Aladdin today.

A shot from Christmas Eve dinner. We always do a simple dinner patterned after the Last Supper. We sit on a blanket on the floor and have crackers and cheese and sausage and juice and read the Christmas story and sing a few songs. This year we started it off with a video from LDS.org portraying the Last Supper and the kids just loved it. It's a fun tradition.

We have this awesome full-size New Testament with pictures that I received as a gift I think at my bridal shower. It's pretty fun to read the Christmas story from it. 

More hammer love.

See? Never without it.

I have so many shots of them jumping, generally in different sets of clothes each time, which is amusing since it's all in the last two days.

Talk about blackmail shot. Spencer jumping in his underwear and butterfly wings. Also, Aaron is totally capable of climbing on and off of the trampoline, but it's terrifying to watch and I'm so not comfortable letting him do it by himself yet. He figured out the zipper on the net basically on the first try. Nothing stops this kid.

things are coming together

This week has been a lovely culmination of lots of prep work from many other weeks. I finally was able to meet with the midwife that I'm going to use for this pregnancy. She's fantastic. I spent almost two hours there, which was crazy, but we just chatted and got to know each other, and it was lovely. Her office is in her house, so it's very low key and I like that.

Spencer's Nativity

Grandma sent outfits. They're adorable as always

We finally closed out the saga of the fender bender we had back in October with a reimbursement check for the full amount of our rental car, which was nearly $1500, so that was a pretty huge deal. It's always nice to have the next semester's tuition money reappear in the account. As a side note, despite the fact that Fall semester at Clemson is already over and Spring semester starts in a few weeks, we actually can't pay for Spring tuition. It doesn't matter how many times we experience this phenomenon, the slowness with which the university gets their transactions put through for every aspect of student life still blows my mind. They are so slow pokey.

Spencer's Three King

Spencer had his Christmas program at preschool yesterday and it was just darling. My friend is the music teacher there and she did a phenomenal job, as did the teachers and the kids themselves. This pregnancy has made me super prone to getting teary-eyed, or maybe it's just motherhood in general, but it was super touching to watch him sing and know all the hand motions and just obviously be there enjoying himself. You spend so much time these first five years with your babies and see every aspect of their growth, and then suddenly you send them off to let others teach them and help them develop, and seeing the success and growth happen there is incredible. He loves his preschool, we love it, and I really feel blessed to have him there. I have tons of videos, but they're full of the other kids as well, so I think it's better not to post them here. Suffice it to say they were all adorable.

Three kids in the cupboard

Naptime in the cupboard

And now we are just in the countdown to Christmas. The kids are so excited. This year is just the best yet for the magical part of Christmas coming together, and I'm relishing it. So here's to an excellent week and a fantastic holiday.

Aaron may have died and gone to heaven when I let him stand in the big part of the cart.

It's good to be on the other side of this week

Wow, this has been a stressful week. I had insurance reimbursement complications I dealt with. Also, without going into tons of details on here, I had my intended prenatal care provider fall through for some very frustrating reasons. I had to start a search for a new one, which was very frustrating as my area of South Carolina is particularly underserved by midwives, which is my preferred method of prenatal care.

But after some very frustrating days where I heard lots of we still need this paperwork or we're not sure about this, please give us more information, I just heard yesterday that we will indeed be reimbursed for the biggest rental car bill ever, which is great news. Once the check arrives, this two-month long car repair saga will finally end and that will be a relief.

Also, after another couple days of multiple discoveries that we live too far away to get service from such and such care provider, or that I just don't trust them for my care, or that I can't afford them, I finally found a new midwife that I can work with, that I can afford, and surprise! I am going to do a home birth. Should be exciting. I'm both excited and nervous, but we'll have all contingencies in place and mostly I'm just so excited to not have to go anywhere when I'm actually in labor next June. That sounds like heaven. Oh the stories I have of driving an hour during transition and things like that. Not this time.

So here we are on another wild ride for this last pregnancy. Don't quote me on that in a few years if it changes, but for now we think this is our last baby. I'm relishing, or at least not hating, every moment trying to soak it in as this phase of life closes. It's both an exhilarating feeling and of course there is a twinge of sadness. When is that not the case? I seem to be coming out of the crazy I-feel-horrible-all-the-time phase, which is wonderful. I'll take it. It's been a rough six weeks. Here's hoping it really is the case.

It's very nice to have food taste normal again and not be nauseous all the time. I mowed the lawn yesterday, as our lawn mower broke two months ago and it was a total forest out there and I wanted it trimmed for the winter one more time. So I borrowed a mower from a friend, and I felt like a totally normal human being while doing it. No extra exhaustion. No weird twinges. Just normal work. That hasn't been the case in ages and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Pregnancy symptoms last long enough that you start to forget that you've ever felt okay and can function like a normal human being without requiring multiple naps a day. Aaron's pregnancy was pretty hard, so even when I got out of the first trimester, it didn't get easier. I'm endlessly grateful that it appears this pregnancy will be a bit easier than that. This first trimester has been hard, but I found some treatments that helped and I've made it through. I'm 12 weeks today, so not quite out of the first trimester, but close. Feeling good again is awesome. I'll take it for as long as it lasts.

What do you blog about when you're just hanging on for the ride?

I try to blog once a week, but I have put it off for days and days because I just haven't had the oomph to sit down and type. There's a few reasons for that. My eyes are very light sensitive this pregnancy, particularly to computer light, so I spend as little time as I can on the computer, which is unfortunately still a lot of time. It seems to trigger the migraines, so that's not nice at all. Also, my kids go a little crazy when I sit at my computer, so that's another reason to avoid it during the day, but then at night the headaches are more prevalent, so yeah, I'm just not prioritizing computer time.

Anyway, aside from that this really has been a lovely few weeks. Thanksgiving was delightful. We had some friends over we just love and it was low key and casual with lots of tasty food that we munched on the whole next week because Bill was working extra so it was mostly me enjoying the leftovers. No complaints on my part. Pregnancy makes me a bit sensitive to food, but the Thanksgiving food all tasted great to me, which was miraculous and super enjoyable.

So far December has been lovely. I thought last year Spencer got into the Christmas season, but this year is much better and Genevieve is old enough too, so we're really getting into that magical phase with kids where Christmas is an incredible experience. He is all excited about what Santa is going to bring him and he's a huge fan of our December the 1st countdown to Christmas. He tells me all the time about how Jesus was born in a stable and other details he's learning.

We started a new tradition this year after I found a really nice product on a blog I follow. It's called 25 days of Christ and it is a kit of Christmas ornaments, wooden, one for each day of the month of December up to Christmas. Each day includes a scripture, a short movie from the LDS website, and a quote from a church leader. You can paint the ornaments if you like or leave them naked wood, which is what I did this year, and it's the kind of program you can do year after year. I totally love it and the kids are really getting into it. We do it each night before bed and they can't wait every night. The kit was totally reasonable in price as well. They sold out for this year, but if you're interested, the website is 25daysofchrist.com.

I'm hoping to go see a live nativity this weekend. We'll be watching the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, but sans kids because it doesn't start until their bedtime. So I keep looking for opportunities for them to experience the spiritual part of Christmas and so far there have been some good times. This really is my favorite time of year.

Re-prioritizing

Every time I get pregnant I lose the desire to be productive. I could curl up on the couch and read books for nine months and be completely happy, while everything falls to pieces around me. Since that's not really feasible, instead I take a hard look at some of the things filling my time and suddenly find great ways to streamline or cull things out that aren't important to me anymore that hadn't even crossed my mind just weeks ago.

Such is happening at the moment. I've been in a DIY kick for several years now and have tried my hand at lots of different things. I've made my own hair and skin and cleaning products, baked many things from scratch, and generally just found tons of ways to avoid commercial products. I'm feeling that come full circle of late.

I've never really wanted to be a loud advocate of the stuff I'm doing like I see on some of the blogs out there where they post these lifestyle things, but I have really enjoyed it. In case I did ever come across as holier than thou, sorry friends. It was unintentional. I do like the idea of using less chemicals. I have a pretty bad family medical history that I feel some urgency to avoid increasing my own risk for developing those diseases. But I also try things out because I enjoy them. When that enjoyment disappears and it starts just being a burden, it's time to readjust and check the priorities.

So I cloth diapered for a long time, through three kids. It was economical and worked. I liked a lot of things about it. But it's not working so well anymore with the current washer and sensitive-skinned kid. And the quantity doubling next year when baby number four arrives further discourages my desire to continue. So out it goes! I've been fiddling with different DIY shampoo/conditioner options for years. I've never found something that I can really say I love long term. So bye bye to that for now! Some other things are staying. I like making my own soap. I like making my own face products and still enjoy the experimentation there. The results I've gotten have been way better than previous store bought products. So that stays. What it comes down to is if I don't love what I'm spending my time doing, I'm reevaluating and making changes, and it feels good.

The Race

There was a time in my life where I identified myself as a runner. I ran a lot of races. I started to pick up some speed. I actually won the age division or was in the top three in some races. The coolest award I got was when I finished first in my age division at the Top of Utah Marathon and got a trophy that looked like a moose. It was hilariously awful and I kept it around for quite a few years. I really loved running and actually feeling like I wasn't limited but my height, which was my struggle in several sports in high school.

Once I started having kids running petered out of my life. I'd run a little here and a little there, but I could never get the distance up enough to hit that point where I remembered running for miles feeling like I was just gliding along. It's a pretty amazing feeling, but it turns out it takes a lot of effort to get there.

Aaron's pregnancy particularly laid me out. I had a mix of symptoms that completely worked me over and by the time I had him I could barely walk down the sidewalk let alone think of exercising. But about six months after he was born, around Christmas time, I had a conversation with my brother Josh and we decided that we needed to make a goal to race a race together so that we could both kick the horrible fitness we both suffered from. He had been working on his PhD for upwards of eight years or more and it hadn't been nice to his body either.

So off we went to start training for a half marathon. Bill was on board as was my sister-in-law Kelly. We made this little Google spreadsheet to track our times and it was awesome to see all of us improving and adding on the miles. There were quite a few hiccups along the way, but we aimed for a fall race, so we had a lot of room for those errors.

Unfortunately, three weeks before the race Bill suffered a stress fracture, so he didn't run for those three weeks and managed just one run the week of the race, which made him pretty sore, so he wasn't confident how the race would go.

Josh finished his PhD literally six days before the race. He packed his apartment up and drove it all to my parent's house in Utah from Texas and then turned around and drove straight through to our place in South Carolina. Literally he got two hours and 45 minutes of sleep Friday night.

I hadn't announced it yet, but this month I also found out I am pregnant, and the initial pregnancy exhaustion hit on quite a few runs, so my times weren't nearly as great as in training.

Basically all of us were a little shaky and uncertain but hopeful for a good race. And you know what? We did have a good race. A great race even. It was an interesting course that wound around some of the parks in downtown Greenville and felt a bit like in looping circles, but we never ran on the same trail more than once, so I was actually impressed with how they got the miles in. The race was the least supported long run I've ever done. It's only my second half, but I've done some marathons and I was surprised with how few water stations there were and I didn't see any bathrooms, but thankfully all of us did fine despite that. The stations they did have were great and the beginning and end of the race were really well supported, so I'm not too bothered. A gel would have been nice about halfway through, but we survived.

We were able to run together for the first eight miles before Bill slid back a bit. His three weeks off started to wear on his endurance. I was worried he'd hit a wall, but we found at at the end that he actually did pretty well, just had to slow his pace a bit, so that's great. Josh and I stuck together until mile 11 when he said we were at 1:43 and we might be able to finish under two hours. I pretty well took off at that point trying to attain that goal. I felt like this race I wanted to run together as long as it was feasible, so I hadn't run as fast as I might have earlier on, but I also didn't want to poop out in the last few miles, so I was very okay with the pace early on. However, when the opportunity arose to speed up, I found I had quite a bit of juice left, so it was fun to pick up the pace.

We finished the race by running a lap around the local baseball stadium. They announced our names as we came in, which was fun. I was in a bit of a dead spot, with no one around me, so I took the chance to really up my pace and try to catch the group ahead of me. It felt so good to finish fast. We didn't quite hit that two-hour mark, but I finished in 2:02, Josh in 2:04, and Bill in 2:15. Based off of the injuries, lack of sleep, and my pregnancy tiredness, all of us were super pleased.

They had tons of food and we all got medals and a mug and a shirt, so overall it was as fun race.

The week in pictures

 Some presents from Grandma Suzanne for Halloween.

 The kids all got capes and they love them.

 Sometimes going to bed in her real bed isn't nearly as nice as sleeping in a patch of sunshine.

 He just wanted to go running too.

 Look at that mop! I actually chopped his hair off this week.

 I still don't know what this actually is. I came upon him in the Botanical Garden running down the road. I first thought he was a dog since he was just moseying along down the road, then I got closer and realized no, definitely not a dog. It looked more like a fox, but gray and much bigger than I normally have seen. Didn't really look like a coyote except for the color, but who knows. He was not shy. He just hung around looking at me like he was wondering what I was doing there.

 Trying on costumes from the box we had in the attic. Genevieve is a butterfly, Spencer a bumblebee. Well, half a bumblebee. :)

This kid is serious about his pudding.

A rather uneventful week

It boggles my mind how expensive car repairs can be. The estimate for the repairs on what felt like a minor fender bender last weekend is $3000. That is crazy to me! The other guy's insurance will cover everything, plus two new carseats and a booster seat, plus a rental for the time it takes to fix it. Seriously, it's so much money. There are many forms of insurance I dislike, but car insurance is really making my life easier right now. We're just waiting for all the parts to come in to get the van in for repairs. 

This weekend we headed Greenville direction to do some shopping. We ended up at Steak 'n' Bake for dinner, which is not somewhere I would go again, but it was okay for one meal. Aaron was hilarious there. I find myself forgetting regularly that he's not a little baby lump anymore. He has opinions and wants to do everything everyone else is doing, and eats normal food like everyone else. This is him chowing through a grilled cheese sandwich and fries in comfort. lol. He is actually my biggest eater of the three. That kid can put down food like no other. He was all over playing with the cardboard truck they gave him and generally having a grand old time going out to eat, which we don't do very often. 

Aside from that, we haven't had much happening this last week. The lawnmower is on the fritz, so my lawn is half mowed from when it stopped in the middle of mowing, and looking like a jungle. My fingers are crossed that once we fix the mower we'll only have to mow one more time for the season, but no guarantee as it's supposed to be 79 degrees on Friday. The weather is being exceptionally fickle of late. I was a bit shocked by the 40ish degree nights the last few days, but I could be done with 80-degree temps too. I guess I'm like everyone else and just can't be satisfied with what the weather throws us, lol.  Good times.

Oh, I did run 11 miles Saturday morning. The half marathon is in two weeks. Bill is still uncertain whether he can run it. Fingers crossed on that, but I'm not thinking about it too hard. I've found that it doesn't matter how many times I train for long races like a half marathon, any time I run more than 10 miles in a training run, it is grueling mentally. Often physically too, but definitely mentally. It still just seems like a long time. Of course it is, but when you run lots of miles, sometimes your perspective gets distorted. So yeah, 11 miles is a LONG run! It's a big accomplishment. Go me. lol. My brother is driving in to run the race with me and hopefully Bill, so that's going to be awesome.

A little of this, a little of that

 I got to go with Spencer's preschool class to a farm nearby called Denver Downs. It's pretty pricey for normal entrance, so I jumped at the chance. We had a great time. He picked his own pumpkin and jumped around in a hayloft and played in a corn kernal pit and slid down a big slide and generally had a great time.

Aaron is a food lover and it makes my heart happy. He is as messy as they come when he eats, but he just delights in it, so we go with it.

Here's a bit of a peak at Genevieve's new bed. She adores it. I have more work to do on Spencer's before I take real pictures, but the kids are really happy that I built this for them.

 It was pretty rainy yesterday and Bill was out with the boys running an errand when a guy coming to the Clemson game slid into the back of him on the slick roads as he was coming to a stop. It wasn't a huge accident. The slick roads helped the impact as our van just slid too instead of rebounding really hard. But there's a good amount of damage. We have an appointment tomorrow to get it inspected.

Running Update

Bill and I started running at the beginning of this year. It's been a great change. We've both lost some weight and generally gotten in better shape, we feel way better, and it's been fun to train the last few months for the half marathon we're running on Halloween.

Bill just ran into a hiccup. Whoops, no pun intended, lol. He thinks he sprained his ankle on his Thursday run and, not realizing that, ran again yesterday and totally aggravated it. So now he's hobbling around hardly able to walk and hopefully we can get him healed soon. Such a bummer.

Hurricane Joaquin didn't make landfall this week like some expected, but it did contribute to a crazy rainstorm that we've been in for the last three days. We're basically floating away. Our yard and carport are under inches of water. Thankfully it rains a lot here, so everything we have outside is pretty well rainproofed. I haven't had to move much of anything to keep it from getting soaked.

Despite the rain, I had a nine-mile run scheduled yesterday. It has only been in the 60s, so the rain is way colder, but I got myself out and going in between conference sessions yesterday. It happened to be a Clemson game day as well, so despite the crazy rainstorms the tailgaters were out in force. I generally run around the university because it has the best roads and trails, so I wound my way through all the revelers, got a few high fives and shout outs along the way, and got my run done in about a nine-minute mile.

Bill and I have seen our mile times significantly decrease in the last month. We found a multivitamin that has made a huge difference, and we're in such better shape after nine months of running, so that was actually a slow run for me, which was nice. I didn't want to be fighting my lungs and exhausted legs at the same time as dealing with all the rain, so I took it slow. Nine miles still feels like a long distance, so I was a bit worried. I can't describe how nice it feels to be back feeling like I can actually run fast. I haven't been at that place since before we got married, so it feels amazing to finish runs closer to eight-minute miles than nine and some even faster. The last half marathon I ran was in 2008 and I ran it in 1:39, which is sub-eight minute pace. After so many years of pretty weak efforts at running, due to a combination of grad school and three kids, it feels amazing that I can imagine getting back to that kind of pace again. I had wondered if I just had gotten past my prime for those kinds of times. Turns out that's totally  not the case and with a combination of a serious training program, better nutrition, quality supplements, and efforts to get decent sleep (haha!), the speed is coming back.

And just for kicks and giggles, here's what I looked like after my run yesterday. I was completely soaked.

It's one of those good phases

We had an excellent weekend. It feels like we've hit one of those good phases in child rearing. This of course means that something huge will come up like next week, but for now, today, this weekend, it feels a lot more smooth.

Spencer and Genevieve are so fun these days. I had a girl's night Friday night and decided to take Genevieve along. She charmed everyone there and when we tried on all the clothes (it was a Lularoe party), she tried on her own little dresses and twirled in them and just had a delightful time. She even got to bring one home, so that was cool. Afterward she was so happy and told me, "Mommy, that was a really fun party." Just having my little girl be old enough to express that kind of thought to me makes me so happy. I foresee lots more awesome girl's nights out with her when we leave the boys to their devices. :) She is really great to have one-on-one. So well behaved, such a lover of life, interested in everything around her. It's awesome.

Spencer is also amazing one-on-one. He's in preschool now and completely flourishing. He skips his way out every day to tell me what a great time he had. He loves his teachers and he tells me about his friends, and about what he did at his stations and how they do all these cool things. I'm so, so glad we decided to put him in preschool. I knew he would love it, but seeing it play out makes it that much better.

And then we've got Aaron. I don't think I can ever even do justice to what a perfect addition he has always been to our family. He is the sunniest little guy. He is walking everywhere, exploring like crazy. He could spend all day puttering around the yard and be happy as can be. He eats like a champ. Literally, at dinner tonight we had pork chops and a cauliflower mash thing like mashed potatoes. Amazing, btw, but Aaron just dug in and ate an entire pork chop on his own. He's 14 months old. This kind of blows me away. It is so easy to make him laugh. We hardly have to do anything to get him to giggle at us and he definitely inherited Bill's ability to do something funny at just the right instant to make everyone laugh. He's already got that perfect sense of comedic timing.

We went to Stumphouse Tunnel yesterday, which is an unfinished train tunnel turned outdoor monument. All the kids, Aaron included, were so excited to walk all the way to the end of the tunnel. It is amazing to have three independent kids able to walk wherever they want. We've spent so many years carrying babies, and I'm sure we'll do more of that, but for now our three are at a perfect point and I just love it.