Vacation in December

It has been way too long since we've vacationed as just us (we had 3 weeks of vacation this year: 1 was a work-on-the-house addition week, 1 was at the beach with my sister's family, and one left), so with Daniel having vacation time available we decided to take this past week of vacation and just stay home. It was a welcome break after a whirlwind of Thanksgiving related trips and events.  Daniel had a list of projects he wanted to work on and got quite a few things accomplished!

On Monday he and the girls spent the morning outside getting things ready for him to gather leaves. They took a trip or two around the yard on the lawn-mower just for kicks. I spent a lot of that morning catching up on the mountain of dishes that had piled up over the preceding very busy days. I enjoyed being able to work without interruptions. :)  At one point I looked out the window and saw this:

He was giving his girls AND their dollies a ride on the lawn-mower (not mowing, just riding). During naptime he borrowed his dad's fancy riding mower with a leaf gathering attachment and got up a lot of our leaves, putting them on the garden for compost.

Tuesday day he spent the day helping a friend with an urgent project they needed his help and expertise with. That was a long day for me, but we're all glad he was able to fix their problem (which was a safety hazard). Because we needed to do it and since Daniel was going to be gone all day the girls and I did a major grocery shopping trip to Costco and Kroger. It was a morning and most of the afternoon ordeal and I was about done-in till we got home, but we made it and the coffers are restocked for a while!

On Wednesday Daniel spent a few hours in the morning and all afternoon getting wood from a friends' property to boost our firewood supply. There is still a lot left that he wants to get, but he was glad to be able to get what he did get in one day. (It is just cut, not split yet.) That morning I just did not feel like being home doing home-things so the girls and I went and did a little Christmas shopping. I didn't find what I was looking for at that store but did find a great gift for Susannah. She spied it first in the store and doesn't know I bought it. :) That night we watched the original Winnie The Pooh movie that I picked up for $1 a while back. Susannah has been asking to watch it and it was perfect for winding down the day together as a family.

That evening while waiting to eat supper Sylvia gave me the perfect opportunity to get a picture of how she sucks her fingers and holds her blankie.  She likes to make a "hole" in her blankie, wrapping the satin trim around the pointer finger of her left hand. This is how she snuggles, cuddles and sleeps. Sometimes she will wrap the little finger of her right hand (the one she sucks) AND the pointer finger of her left hand and snuggle that way. Aaaand... of course sometimes she sticks her finger up her nose to be silly. :)  

Thursday the girls and I spent much of the morning outside playing while Daniel worked on getting his load of recycling ready to take to the scrap metal place. It was an unseasonably warm day and it was good to get a bunch of fresh air and exercise before the cold front started coming in. That evening we watched The Sound of Music Live!, starting out with all of us watching and then we tucked the girls in about half-way through. Susannah loved it and has been asking to watch "the lady with the children" again. It was great to just sit and relax together.

Friday morning Daniel puttered around here doing different things outside and then in the afternoon tore the car apart to fix a leak in the heater core and trying to find a possible leak in the radiator. Thankfully the radiator did not have a leak!  I purposely made sure we would eat supper a little bit early so we could go on a family date afterwards. As soon as supper was over we got into our coats and drove to a small but very good Gelati (Italian ice cream) place. None of us had ever had gelati before but I've always had high recommendations from friends. It was a really fun and special treat. Daniel had Cookies & Cream, I had a scoop of Dark Chocolate (so, so, so good!) and a scoop of Mango (also good, but the Dark Chocolate was the best), Susannah chose Pomegranate since she wanted pink ice cream and that was the pink one she chose, and Sylvia had Strawberry. We all had tastes of each others' flavors and they were all yummy. The flavors were very true and fresh tasting.

Saturday morning was another exciting time! We went and got our Christmas tree. We had been planning to go to a tree farm, but spied a pre-cut lot while we were out Friday. We decided to look there first and found a very pretty tree to bring home. This is the first time we've had a fir tree and it is considerably heavier than the pines we've had previous years. Getting it to stay in the upright position was a little more of a challenge since it is heavier, but we finally got it up!

Saturday afternoon it started a wintery mix of weather and our church services were cancelled Sunday. We had a very relaxed breakfast (Daniel made us all eggs and toast), stayed in our pajamas for a while, I took a much-needed unhurried shower, and then had a time of reading Scripture and the Jesus Storybook Bible.

After that Daniel started stringing the lights on the tree. I caught this picture of Sylvia and Daniel. :)  The lights are on the tree now and I will work at decorating it this week. It is really pretty just as it is, too!

Since Daniel did not officially work on any projects Sunday we had a nice relaxing afternoon. Since he was home and everything was going smoothly, I mixed up a batch of gingerbread cookie dough towards the end of naptime (it had to chill in the refrigerator for a while). After supper we cleaned off the table and we all worked at making cookies. It was quite an adventure and I think Daniel got a little dose of what my daily life can be like sometimes. ;)  He helped Sylvia with her ball of dough and I helped Susannah.

Sylvia was all about poking the dough with her fingers and was finished before the dough ran out.

Cheesing at the ceiling instead of the camera!

Susannah wanted to try all different cookie cutters so it took a little longer for us to get through our dough and fill our cookie sheet, but we got there!

Then the fun part of adding the sprinkles!! That may well have been Susannah's favorite part. I got out all the sprinkles and sugars that she could use and let her go to town with them on "her" tray of cookies.

Some of her cookies were very well sprinkled!!

Sylvia was too busy doing other things to sprinkle her cookies so the first tray went unsprinkled. Daniel had fun doing the few cookies that ended up on a 3rd tray. I think he was secretly having fun. ;)

Susannah's cookie tray... and she wasn't finished yet! The large train cookie got lots and lots more sprinkles till she finished!

Susannah made sure that Daniel's cookies had enough of all the right colors of sprinkles on them.

While the cookies baked we got the girls into their pajamas. Before brushing their teeth they each got to eat a smaller cookie, fresh from the oven.

Today Daniel is back to work and both girls asked where he was when they woke up. The snow and ice are melting and pretty much gone (but a good possibility of snow in the forecast tomorrow! Yippee!). It is back to the reality of single-parenting for me and delving back into real housekeeping and homemaking. I think it was Tuesday afternoon that I decided we were going to use paper plates for ALL of the remaining vacation meals. Even though there were still dishes from cooking, utensils and cups to wash or run through the dishwasher, it was nice to be able to just open the trash can and have the dirty plates gone! Somehow we still generated enough dishes to run a dishwasher full every day. :)

Having this break between the busy of Thanksgiving and the upcoming busy of Christmas was so nice. It was great to not have to pack suitcases and haul our stuff anywhere. We got to sleep in our own beds, have all of our cupboard, freezer and pantry things at our fingertips, we didn't have to worry about the girls touching or breaking things that don't belong to us, and best of all we didn't have to pay anything to stay here or buy gas to travel anywhere!

I might just be thinking about suggesting that have staycation this week every year!

Christmas at the Beach

Daniel's parents gave us (their children) the gift of time together at a beach house.  We were all there for several days and it was really nice.  We had a great time together, and the one evening after the kids were in bed we played a gut-bustin' game of Apples to Apples.  Somehow a card with the word "underwear" was played and after that EVERYTHING was hilarious.  It was great to laugh so much.

Doing a new puzzle with Papa

The downside to this part of Christmas Vacation was the lack of sleep for me and the girls.  The first night there, I discovered that I'd left their pajamas at home.  I'd pulled them out and they were in the pile of clothes to pack, but they never got into the bag.  Since we were extremely limited with car space, we packed VERY lightly and that was the ONLY pair of pj's they were going to have.  The house was very comfortably warm, so I thought that they would be ok sleeping in shirts.
 

The first bedtime went well.  Sylvia fussed a little (the girls were sharing a room), but then they were quiet.  About midnight I peeked in on them and pulled their blankets up before going to bed myself.  I noticed that their room felt cooler than the rest of the house (a big cold-front was coming in that night).  When I left the room, Sylvia woke up and cried and cried and cried.  Susannah then woke up from the noise.  It is rare that Sylvia does anything like this, but the few times she does she almost always goes back to sleep after crying a few minutes.

That was not the case on this night.  I ended up holding her for a while and she would *almost* fall asleep on me so I would ease her back into her bed.  She would wake up and cry and cry.  Finally I had Daniel bring her pak'n'play into our room so she wouldn't be crying in Susannah's ear.  I ended up lying in bed with her on my chest for 45 minutes until she had calmed down and fallen asleep.  I very carefully put her in her bed and she woke up and cried.  I was flat out at the end of my awake rope, so I talked to her a bit and she soon went to sleep.  This was night 2 of way less sleep than I am used to at this stage.

When she was awake, Sylvia was a happy girl.

She made great forward strides with her mobility while at the beach house.

The next night was only slightly better in that Sylvia only cried for a few minutes before going to sleep... and staying asleep.  On the other hand, though, Susannah was awake throughout the night because she would kick her covers off and get cold.  About 6:15 the next morning she came into our rooms and she was simply cold.  I snuggled her in our bed (of course not getting any more sleep) until it was a decent time to get up "early".  That afternoon I googled the nearest Target and went and bought both girls footed pajamas - for $2.63/pr. on clearance. :)  That night we ALL slept pretty good.  {For some reason their room was considerably cooler than ours.  Their balcony door was drafty, too, which I'm sure did not help.}

Sylvia moderating a game of chess.

Friday morning Daniel took Susannah out on the beach while I packed everything back up again.  After lunch he packed up the car and we hit the road for my parents house...

Bedtime story with Grandma

Christmas Day

I had been working at getting gifts wrapped here and there, but still ended up with quite a bit to do when Christmas Eve rolled around (somehow rehearsals for 2 Christmas concerts ate up a TON of time and energy!).  I considered throwing each girls' stuff into a big box and only wrapping 1 box for each of them, but um, hello, that is SO not nearly as fun as opening multiple gifts!!

I caught Susannah just sitting and 

looking at the tree and gifts for a few

minutes one afternoon.

Our gifts were pretty simple this year (as they have been), but it was a lot of little items.  I think I went to bed around 3:30 Christmas morning.  I could've finished sooner, but I wanted the gifts to look nice.  I will confess to spending probably 30 minutes arranging and re-arranging the gifts under the tree in the middle of the night, because I wanted it to look pretty in the morning. :)

Middle of the night before Christmas.

This year I got to put out a wooden train that I snagged for just a few dollars a couple years ago.  A few of the wheels are broken off, but I think it looks fabulous under the tree. :)

I, of course, did not burst out of bed at the crack of dawn.  Susannah woke up first (around 8, I think?) and we got up and ate Cheerios for breakfast if I remember right.  Then we knew that if the day was going to go like it needed to, we had to get on with the gifts... what a shame. ;)

Sylvia got some new tights, 2 puzzles (that I took out of a puzzle rack that was a gift to both girls), and some rattle-y balls and turtles.

Back in the fall, a friend was cleaning out her attic and offered us a child's easel.  It is nothing super-fancy, but it allowed us to give Susannah a really "great" Christmas gift for nothing.  I had actually been considering finding one used, but I hadn't fully decided.  To go along with it, we gave her "art" supplies: paint, brushes, (short, fat) colored pencils (because she likes to break her crayons in half), a huge pad of paper, a huge binder clip to hold the paper to the easel, some window crayons, a small pad of stickers and some (needed) barrettes.  It was a lot of little gifts but did not cost very much.

After we opened our gifts, Sylvia went down for her morning nap and I started tearing around like a chicken with it's head cut off.  See... as soon as we could get left after lunch, we were leaving for a week.  First we were heading to the beach for a few days with Daniel's family, then heading to my parents' farm for a few days.  Susannah and Sylvia had a simple lunch, and Daniel and I snacked on the traditional Christmas Day shrimp ring and other munchies while we packed.  I was running on coffee, adrenaline and will-power.  About 2:30 both girls were getting fussy for their naps.  We loaded them into the car (it was not cold outside) and they both fell asleep while we finished packing.  We pulled out about 3:30, I think, and they slept most of the way.

More on this un-vacationy-vacation later. :)

Weekly Randoms

Sylvia enjoying a little time in the Johnny-Jump-Up.  She hasn't figured out how to jump in it and Susannah wants to show her how.  Today I had to stop Susannah from "helping" Sylvia jump!  :)

In a desire to add some better structure to Susannah's day, one day after lunch I very much on a whim decided that it was going to be the first day of school.  "School" is a very loose term, and the time of actual "school" lasts probably all of 10 minutes.  She loves it and I have to say that I do, too!

1st Day of School - Letter A

Sylvia was also needing some variety in her day, so I had Daniel get the "car" out of the attic.  Susannah tried it out first to make sure it was still in good working condition.  :-)

Sylvia takes a turn in the car.  Chomping on her fists - or any toy she can possibly grasp - 

is very common these days.  Maybe teeth, maybe exploring. :-)

Friday evening we took the girls to Grandma and Papa's house and then Daniel and I headed to the mountains for a 2 day mini-vacation by ourselves.  With Daniel's work being incredibly busy this summer and working on the house addition (his week of vacation really was not vacation for any of us), we desperately needed some away-time. 

This was the view from the front porch and living room:

We were lazy, but we did not eat lazy.

We took along Filet Mignon for one meal.

We had a Herbie-athon.  Yep, we watched

all four of these in 2 days. (Daniel had never seen them.)

We slept, talked, relaxed (both body and brain!), dreamed, and tried to take pictures of ourselves that we both looked decent in. :-)

We came home refreshed, blessed, thankful for the time away with each other, and excited to see our girls again.

Vacation In The Addition

Early this year, our home addition project looked like this from the outside.

Daniel's work has been exceptionally busy this past year and it has been hard for him to make great bounds of progress, but slowly and surely he has been able to get the plumbing, wiring and insulation finished, and this past week Daniel took a week of "vacation" from his paying job to work on another big step of addition progress: drywall!!





With some help from a guy at church (and his wife and a friend of theirs), Daniel's brother, Daniel's dad, and two other guys who gave us some of their time, almost all of the drywall was hung!!  All that's left is a few minor detail stuff.  "The guy" from church is also going to do the mudding for us, which is a huge help.



On Monday, Daniel and my brother (Glen, who was spending the week with us) finished getting everything ready for the drywall.  On Tuesday morning, they went to two friends' houses and picked up extra drywall that they had leftover from their own projects and were giving to us!  This is how much free-to-us drywall we had:

Soon after they got home, I noticed some dark stormclouds rolling in and went out to suggest that the drywall be brought in ASAP.  Then the wind started to blow, so we all worked together and hustled the drywall in just in the nick of time!

Daniel and Glen (on the left) working to clear

the living room of all of the tools Daniel had been using.

Looking into the foyer from the new living room.
(Also looking at the old front door.)
Stairs to 2nd floor on right, along with a foyer closet
to the left of the stairs.

Looking into the Living Room from the foyer.
I know it looks huge, but we have a piano and an organ to 

fit in here along with whatever "normal" living room furniture we'll have.

View from the other side of the living room.
Foyer on the left, stairs (wood-stove will go on the L/Rm. side of the stairs),
doorway to a downstairs "bonus" room on the right.

In the bonus room (downstairs).
This will most likely be a toy room and eventually

morph into a school-room and/or office.

Under the stairs is going to be a storage closet.

Hauling the sheet-rock upstairs was a 3-man job as it had to go

out the door, then back in and up the stairs.

We have a den upstairs. :-)  This room will be an

informal living room and where our t.v. will be since we didn't 

want it in the main living room.  The little "nook" over on the far

side is where I hope to set up my sewing machine, or possibly

have a nice reading corner.  It has south and west facing windows 

and is positively lovely!

View of the den from the sewing nook.
L-R: Doorway to master bedroom, closet, (stairs), doorway 

to 2nd bedroom/nursery.

Upstairs nursery/2nd bedroom.  I *love* the closet all the way across

the end of this smaller room!!

View of master bedroom from the master-bath doorway.
Doorway from den is right at the left edge of the picture, the 

walk-in closet is down on the left.

On Thursday and Friday they got almost all of the downstairs walls up!

This is the living room in progress.

I didn't get many more pictures taken, but on Saturday the "drywall guy" was able to put on the first coat of mud on all of the upstairs ceilings.  It was greatly encouraging to see it coming together so quickly!  This week is a bit of a lull, but hopefully things can keep progressing and soon be ready for paint!




I'm afraid Daniel didn't have much of a vacation, but I am really proud of him for giving a week of his vacation time to forward the progress of our house!!  I am SO looking forward to having more space and I am especially excited about the closet space... and the attic space that will be easily accessed through fold-down attic stairs. :-)  {Currently you have to climb a step-ladder and hoist yourself into the existing attic.  Not something I like to do at all as I'm just short enough that it is very precarious.}

During this week I stayed busy with my regular mothering and housework chores (as best as I could!) and also making and fixing meals for everyone who was there.  I stayed hoppin' busy, but I enjoyed it even though I was dog-tired at the end of each very long day.

Anyway, our life continues to be anything but dull and boring. :-)  Thanks for coming for the tour!

Monday Morning Bullet Points

• We're home from a whirl-wind vacation, spending a few days with Daniel's brother and his wife.

• I am not convinced that a "dry pail" (for diapers) stinks less than a wet pail. I tried a dry pail last week with a loose lid on top. Whew-wee, the ammonia like odors that wafted out threatened to singe my nose-hairs! I used mostly cloth diapers while we were gone, chucking the dirty ones into a plastic grocery bag, that too is emanating terrible, nose-hair-singeing odors.

• I haven't gone out to look at my garden since we got home, but the squash and zucchini plants in the kitchen grew 5-6" while we were gone!

• Our cats have fleas. Our cats are all outside, but the fleas jump onto us and come inside. GRRR. I need to try and treat the kittens (and adults) again and hopefully the mama cat won't lick it off this time.

• More rain is on it's way! The sky is getting darker and it's very rumbly. I should probably get off here and grab a few more things from the car before the skies open up.

• The highchair fits in the dishwasher. It's in there because Susannah threw up in it three whole times yesterday. I don't know why, though.

• Typing one more bullet point meant it's raining now. On my garden =D Yay!!!
  

Christmas Vacation

I have intentionally been scarce around here the past couple weeks. This December is a whole story in itself for another time, but I wanted to share this Christmas Picture of our cutie pie :)

I took this picture of Susannah Sunday afternoon (the day after Christmas). I specifically dressed her in a white shirt and red jumper because I remember similar pictures of my older sisters and wanted to do the same with Susannah. I think my Mom made the jumpers for my sisters - something I thought about doing and wanted to do for Susannah but it was impossible this year.


It has been a while since I've had Susannah at the piano, and when I sat her on the bench Sunday, all she wanted to do was turn around and play it instead of holding still for a picture :) Since then I have pulled her highchair up to the piano and let her have fun for a while - she loves it!

Another good reason to be scarce is pictured below :)


Yep, we were at the beach. With snow. With more snow than we got here at home!

We still have a lot going on (when do we ever not?) until life will hopefully settle back down to some sort of normalcy, so have a wonderful rest of the year!

A Day At The Lake

This past weekend was both a very busy and a very relaxing one. Thursday and Friday Daniel went with several of his uncles, his dad, his brother and a cousin (all guys) to the annual man-vacation to Lake Gaston. The man-vacation was for the whole weekend, but Daniel wanted to come back Friday night so that he could go with me to a large family reunion on Saturday. It's the kind of reunion where you want to go every year because that could easily be the last time to see your great - aunt/uncle so-and-so. Well, at least for me it is. My great aunts and uncles on my dad's side used to come visit us often when I was little, so they are definitely on my friends list, holding a special place in my memories. It is sad to see them further declining in mental and physical health each time I see them, when I remember my great aunts (2 in particular) trotting around, helping my mom pick peas or beans, and then sitting and visiting while we shelled or snapped... and my great uncles were always fun to visit with, listening to their stories about when they and my Granddaddy were boys. Of course my Granddaddy was a very serious man and didn't tell stories the same way they would :)

We had a good time at the reunion overall. It was a warm day (thankfully not BLAZING) and the reunion was outside. Susannah was not a happy camper for a period of time, a combination of being hot, tired and hungry. I finally figured out the hungry part and fed her, and that helped. She made me happy when she actually did fall asleep on a blanket we spread on the ground for her. I wasn't sure if she was going to sleep or not as she'd never slept outside before, plus there was lots of talking, clapping and whatnot going on. She didn't take a super long nap, but long enough to be her cheerful self for a bit before we had to leave. I wasn't able to visit with nearly everyone I wanted to, but we were able to chat with my Grandma for a little bit.

After the reunion we went to Rachel & Ted's (my sister and bro-in-law house, and then Gail, James & Bobby (another sister, bro-in-law and nephew) came later in the afternoon. Ted, James and Daniel went manly bonding, aka, groundhog hunting and Rachel, Gail and I visited and Bobby (4) played and looked at machinery books. It was really nice to visit with Rachel and Gail without a bunch of commotion :)

We spent the night at Rachel and Ted's and then on Sunday a bunch of my family (and us) went water skiing. It was a really nice day back at the lake! Wasn't too hot, wasn't too cool, and the water was a really nice temperature. It was cool to get in the first time, but didn't take but a minute to get used to it, and you weren't cold when you got out, either.

I'm not sure if we went to the lake in '08 or not, but last year ('09) just I went with my folks, but I didn't water ski since I was pregnant (but nobody knew that). So it's been at least 2 years since I skied. Make that 2 years, a pregnancy and LOTS of pounds have happened since I water skied last!! I really wanted to ski this year and I did, but wow, my muscles are wimpy! I think I finally got up on the 4th try and was totally pooped till we finished the round and made it back. Next year I'll have to remember to work on push-ups and pull-ups before we go to get those muscles working again. I was pretty sore Monday and am still "feelin' it!" today in my arms and one shoulder. But I skied! And it was great!! And I wish we loved closer so we could go again :)

The highlight (for me) was Susannah enjoying the lake :) She loves her baths, so I knew she would most likely enjoy getting wet, and she did :)



She went "swimming" twice, with a nap and meal between the two times.

Susannah "swimming" :)

The water was so nice, she never got chilly. She never fussed the whole time I had her there in the water! Now, next year she'll be a little older, and might actually realize how BIG the lake is and not like it quite as much, but I hope she'll still enjoy it :) We might go to a pool with my MOPS group on Thursday, and if we do I want to take her in with me. I wanted to take her into the lake, but of course I know better than to do that. The bottom's rocky and uneven, you can't see where you're stepping, and it would just be too much of a chance for ME to slip and drop her. In a pool however... :) (And yes, swimming lessons are in my plans for her in the next couple years!)

On our way back over the mountain, Daniel stopped and took some pictures. Here are some of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains :) How I miss them!! He said he could see 8 ranges from the overlook we were stopped at.