A Jolly Holiday

 In spite all of the mess of 2020, we sure have enjoyed ourselves this December. (Side note, I'm writing this on December 21, but not publishing till much later, as we engaged in some risky activities this month and I don't want to invite condemnation.) We continued our tradition of using the advent calendar I made back when Matt was deployed to put one fun activity each day to celebrate Christmas.  Last year, some of the activities were things like Kids' Night Out Christmas party or packing meals for Rise Against Hunger-- things we usually do every year that aren't happening this year.  Some of them were "go to Joshua's first basketball game/Gray's first frisbee game", but they weren't relevant this year either.  So we repeated some of the activities, like story time, which the kids actually really enjoyed.  They each chose a book for me to read out loud to them, which brought back a lot of memories for all of us.  I really have a thing for children's books, so I wouldn't mind doing this every night!  We did get to do some of our usuals, though, and we added in some new traditions too.  Of course we watched a lot of our old favorite Christmas movies, but tried a few new ones too (Klaus on Netflix was really fun).  We also did the traditional attempt to read an advent lesson every night and even in quarantine times, we fell behind as always.  

With the beginning of December came restless, excited, antsy, impulsive children.  Sometimes we got the above...

...sometimes we got everyone playing on the trampoline doing a new game Gray invented called "monstah ball".  And then there were other times (not pictured for good reason).  But we made it through the end of school and all are so relieved to have a break.  Though I anticipate boredom setting in after a day with nothing planned.

Matt and I got to welcome in the advent season with friends watching Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb concert, which of course was a virtual experience this year.  It was pretty nice sitting on the comfortable couch having our fill of wonderful food and drink and conversation while we watched, though.

The boys continued with lacrosse.  They seem to come up with new ways to play every couple months.  Right now Joshua is playing in a 7 versus 7 league and both boys are doing skills/scrimmages on Sundays.  In addition, Joshua has started the pre-season Orange High lacrosse team and is loving the format of dividing the players into 4 teams that will compete over the next month in various ways for the coveted off season champion tshirts!

We've had some normal days too.  Had to get a pic of this sweet baby playing basketball.  

We did an oreo gingerbread house that was a hit.

And perhaps the most exciting pre-Christmas activity was our second annual adoption group Christmas party.  This year the Mussers hosted and we enjoyed Chinese takeout, hanging with friends...

...playing around the house and basketball outside...

...team pictionary...

...sibling nativity scene building...

...and a white elephant gift exchange.  We had sooo much fun and many times during the evening, I marveled at what a blessing it is to have these families in our lives and to be able to gather in spite of everything, all 25 of us, and celebrate together.  We loved it so much.  

We started a new tradition, the Christingle, passed to use from Constance and Oli in London.  We loved this meaningful activity that points to Christ as the Light of the world.  The kids definitely want to do it annually.

Another new favorite was playing Dreidel.  The Mussers gave each of the kids a set and they had some intense games wherein lots of candy was lost and won.  One time Matt sat down to play and Allie seriously told him, "Daddy, you have to bring your own candy."  She proceeded to win it all from him.

I got to sneak out for a chilly Christmas party with some other moms.  We did a white elephant exchange with beauty items, which was super fun.  

I am so proud of Julia, who really hates the idea of people watching her, for signing up to be in the Nutcracker.  Normally there are many soldier skaters, but in the covid times, sign ups were low and it was just her and another girl out there on the ice for their number.  She was so calm and did really well.  She is hooked on skating for sure now!

Only one parent could attend each performance.  The first night I got to go and we had a viewing party for the zoom live feed at home with Nanny and Pa.  It was a great experience for Julia and she can't wait to try a different role next year.

One of my most loved childhood Christmas traditions is making sugar cookies with Mama.  I was amazed this year at how little help the kids need now.  Joshua was there too (and Matt), but had to run out to a surprise birthday party.

We enjoyed a delicious dinner with the Bakers, just like old times.  And it wouldn't be complete without a dance performance from the girls and a few games.  Above is the candy cane game in which you try a candy cane that could be something tasty (blue raspberry) or nasty (dirty socks).

Our most recent celebration was our Christmas with Nanny and Pa.  Another wonderful meal was shared and we enjoyed opening some great gifts together and relaxing with games/ football on tv.  

The coveted hoverboard for Gray.

Our gift to Nanny.

Julia and her pogo stick.

Joshua was thrilled to get his requested box of snacks and a new lacrosse stick.

This portable balance beam was such a hit for Allie (and Julia!) and they were already giving performances by evening.  Thanks for everything, Nanny and Pa!

I didn't get a picture of this, but the Saturday after school, I got a sweet delivery from the room parent and her daughter in my kindergarten class.  There were a few gifts, a nice gift card, and lots of little cards from the kids.  I especially appreciated the kind and encouraging messages from parents.  This job has been such a blessing.  I am really thankful for a break though.  As I'm starting to relax a bit more these last few days, I'm noticing how much more patience I have and how I'm able to smile more and enjoy the kids more.  Standing at my computer for hours trying to teach definitely takes a toll and I'm thrilled for a little break that will hopefully refresh me for more zoom in January.  Our school will remain online for the foreseeable future, but Allie and Joshua supposedly will head back mid-January.  We've already received orientation schedules.  It will only be 4 days a week every other week, but I'm excited for them to have this change of pace and it should be a good time of learning and relationship-building with classmates and teachers since they will just have 50% or so students there.  I hope it happens!  Matt will also begin his VA job mid-January, so we will have all sorts of big changes around here.  He has already received the first dose of his covid vaccine with no problems at all and I should be in round 2 of folks to get theirs.  We know better than to expect the expected for 2021, but here's hoping there will be a big shift to normal life!

Speeding right through to Christmas

 Can't believe my last entry was Halloween and that was a whole month ago, and here we are starting to drag out the Christmas decorations.  November flew by with most weeks having at least a day off school or an asynchronous day.  There was the election buzz, date night Veteran's Day, lacrosse tournaments, Thanksgiving.  I didn't take a ton of pictures but overall, it was a smooth month with the usual play dates, grinning and bearing through online school, work, and a few activities.

Saturday afternoon girls' time...skating with the Bakers.  Julia has made loads of progress and started an extra Saturday practice for being in the Nutcracker on Ice.  It will be a mostly virtual performance, but she will be one of only two soldiers, so it will be an opportunity for her to shine.  She is so shy about people watching her do things (aside from performances at the Bakers') and will never try being in a play at school or anything like that, so I'm super excited for her to try this!  Allie is slowly getting the hang of skating too.  She is such a cautious kid and was priding herself on never falling on the ice...which can be attributed partly to her sense of balance, but mostly to her moving at the rate of an inch a minute.  When we take her to the public skating session, she spends about 20 minutes making one circle around the ice while holding on to the wall.  I'm just happy she doesn't scream like she did when we tried to get her to swim.  

Girls in their Mimi-made dresses.  Julia always makes a style her own.  :)  This was our one outdoor church service this fall.  

I don't know how I got this phantom finger picture.  I was booking it to zumba one day when Gray rode up beside me, on his way to find his buddy Will, and insisted we race.  Later found this on my phone.

This is what I call Gray living his best life in online school.  Sarcasm aside, it's been an organizational challenge for him to get everything done, on time, directions followed, all pages complete, and that elusive "submit" button pushed.  I have worked really hard with him and I think he's made progress, but still a ways to go.  I've also been working a lot with him on his writing, which has been a source of angst (well, more like anguish) over the years.  He has great thoughts, but needs some pushing to get them on the paper/screen.  With online school, there's no getting your paper back with red edits so you know what you missed, which makes it easier for him to say "oh well" and just turn in the same quality work the next time.  He's starting to get it, though.  They are currently studying Romeo and Juliet, and after seeing that he was attempting to answer the questions without having read the text, we have started reading it and discussing out loud.  Hoping that helps!  I've also spent a lot of time with Julia and fractions and- Thank you, LORD!- she is getting it and starting to see some success in math.  She has been so proud to find that she has been able to do some of her homework successfully on her own and have some good test scores too.  It is painstaking work and so nice to have progress!

Too much time on our hands = a bit of silly.

Allie was so proud of her little turkey!  I'm happy she is still getting to do some hands-on fun stuff during online kindergarten.  She got to see her teacher twice in the last month while picking up materials for crafts.  In spite of the challenges, she is definitely learning.  She is writing full sentences now (the queen of phonetic spelling!) and reading a good bit too.

Perhaps the most interesting part of our month was the lacrosse tournament weekend.  Bright and early Saturday morning, Matt and Gray headed out for Gray's games about 1 1/2 hours away.  They ended at lunch time and stopped by Cracker Barrel on the way home.  Meanwhile about the same time, I was dropping the girls off with the Bakers and heading to the tournament with Joshua for his afternoon/evening games.  On the way there, I got a call from Matt saying his wheel had fallen off his truck in the Cracker Barrel parking lot.  Yikes.  Thank you LORD he was not on the interstate.  I don't know all the inner workings of the truck, but some kind of big bolt must have been wearing away and then maybe with the addition of the extra big wheels and tires that he added a few weeks ago, it finally snapped and the wheel just- THUNK- fell right off.  So I dropped Joshua at the game, picked up Gray and Matt from being towed to the mechanic, and we caught two of Joshua's games before heading home to get the girls.  We definitely had some reflection on things to be thankful for, such as the various friends who took care of the girls, recommended a reliable mechanic, brought Joshua home.  Above is Gray during Joshua's game, riveted to his cat warrior book.  (Please let him finish this never-ending series soon!)  He's such a unique guy who is "all in" on whatever it is he's enjoying at the moment.

Day 2 of the tournament; I took both boys and we had to leave at 5:30am to get there!  I really enjoy watching them, though, and this tournament was really good about making sure the crowd was wearing masks and keeping apart, so it was fun to have a day outside somewhere different.  Above is Joshua on the left at his last game in which the coach told the boys to all switch positions.  Joshua played defense with a long stick and had the best time.  The team almost won and it was so fun to see their smiles and excitement out there, considering all the losses they have had.  One thing's for sure, my boys have learned how to get knocked down and get up and try again through sports.  :) After the games, I took the boys by Cracker Barrel to get some white elephant gifts and then to Subway to get food.  On the way home, I marveled at how easy it was to spend the day with them and how, when they were baby and toddler and I would travel back and forth between Durham and Fort Mill while Matt was deployed, I thought it would never be easy to go on a car trip.  I remember someone was always screaming and I spent half the drive launching food and toys into the back seat to try to keep them quiet.  I feel, just a little bit, like we have arrived.  

Again, too much time on our hands.  This was an effort to capture Raven "holding" the leash that Allie put around Gray the Pug's neck.

We had a couple day phase of fort building...with every cushion and blanket we own.  Good times.

Thanksgiving was great.  We gathered at Matt's parents for some really delicious food (I can't believe I used to not like Thanksgiving because the food was so unappealing to my picky tastes), conversation, and games.

Nanny was sweet to play with the girls, who were too young for the game the rest of us played for hours...

...Secret Hitler.  We had so much fun with this one and it really was a perfect game for this crowd.

And here we are approaching December and trying to get all ready for Christmas!  It has been great to have a couple days off from kindergarten.  Most of the teachers and our director were so hoping we could have a plan for going back to school in person in January.  It can be so tough trying to effectively teach little ones how to read and write through the screen and so often we are thinking how simple it would be if we were working right beside them.  But our board voted no on any plan for January, which was discouraging.  It's been nice to have this break to regroup a little and mentally prepare for more of the same.  My own kids are supposedly going back starting mid-January, so we shall see what new challenges and blessings await after Christmas.  For now, Christmas spirit, here we come!  Three weeks of school before break, plus (hopefully) some holiday fun with friends and family along the way.  As always, so much to be thankful for, including a new job for Matt on the horizon and (this week) my older sister and her husband getting to visit the child they have waited so long to adopt in Haiti.  Blessings abounding around here!  Happy Holidays!

Tricks, Treats, and more

 It's been a month of ups and downs...moments of challenge and times of fun.  Today had a little of both, which is appropriate since it's Halloween:)  Yesterday afternoon I was all geared up to take the boys to their lacrosse tournament today and we'd need to leave about 5:30 in the morning!!  But due to the hurricane flooding at the fields, it got canceled so I was looking forward to a real treat today...no VIPKID b/c I had expected to be out of town, no getting up at 5, no long day watching the boys (though overall I enjoy that...it's just a lot in one day), and the kids were all ready with their costumes, so Halloween here we come.  But Gray.  Gray was going to wear a pug mask and his beloved Patrick Mahomes sweatshirt, but this morning he decided he needed something more creative.  Since we have tons of paper bags from library book pickups, he settled on a homemade Groot costume.  Looked simple enough.  Long story short, after multiple series of him asking for my help, then being totally annoyed by me, we got it together, though I was still taping him together as his friends showed up to trick or treat.  He looked great, but he could barely see or move.  

We ran into him a little later and he looked like Groot had been in a fight.  He was using his head for a candy box.  Then by the end of the night he'd really come undone.  But he had the best time with his buddies and they all declared it the best Halloween ever.  

It was kind of a weird night b/c our neighborhood is usually packed and nearly everyone participates in handing out candy.  We always run out.  Not this night...it was kind of quiet on a lot of streets and we'd go blocks without anyone handing out candy.  At a lot of the houses, people put out candy on tables and often it was full-sized candy bars or ziplock bags of a handful of candy.  Some had creative devices to distribute the candy.

We have never gotten so much candy on any Halloween!  I guess people are feeling like they want to make up for all of the disappointments of 2020?!  The kids ended up with a ton of candy and we barely gave out half of our stash.  Joshua and a friend hung out in the yard and handed out for awhile but then Joshua packed it in to walk around with another friend.  I don't know what we will do with all this candy!  At the end of the night, the girls and Matt and I sat by the road and tried to get rid of some of it but most was gone by then.  

Before that, we met up with the Bakers and enjoyed walking around the other side of neighborhood with them.  We ran into lots of friends and enjoyed chatting and keeping each other company as the kids raked in the candy.

All in all, it was a good night and we get another treat...extra hour of sleep tonight!

Speaking of treats, I was so thankful to get a girls' weekend at the beach for my friend's 40th.  We had so much fun talking and laughing, dressing 80's and singing karoake, eating great food, playing "Truth or Dare" (really just having good conversation and sharing stories), and relaxing on the beach.  Ahhh.  There's not many better treats than that!!

As for tricks, Allie's still up to hers getting into stuff when no one's watching.  And Gray's still struggling to keep himself organized and to accept help.  It's been a tricky time to parent kids, having so much of a window into their daily lives and wanting to help them develop better skills but not having the time or knowhow to make that happen.  We've begun the 2nd quarter of school and I'm so determined to do things better, but I am not sure how.  We've had some weeks where it feels like everyone's getting kicked off their meetings, some of them seem to have just given up learning, and emotions are way too high.  Some days everyone needs my help and it's hard to get my own work done and it seems there aren't enough hours in the day.  But I know it would be like this if we were in school in person too, because I'd be gone all day, kids would have activities and we'd be struggling to get it all done by bedtime.  It's just a busy stage of life.

In my own class, we've started to teach the other kindergarten class too, so I've now got 40 kids to help teach but only reading this time.  It's been really fun getting to know the other kids actually and it's not as difficult as I thought it would be to teach the same lesson 8 times in a day.  Still can't wait to get back to real school in many ways.  Teaching kindergarteners to read over a screen is not for the faint of heart!!  There are sound issues, background noise, muting/unmuting problems, etc.  Plus for some of the kids, I only ever see the top of their heads!  But as always, we are making it and I feel thankful to have my job.

Other treats this month...

A visit from Mimi and GrandGene.  We celebrated Joshua, went to the pumpkin patch, took the girls ice skating, watched lacrosse grilled out.  Whew.  Fun few days!

Allie started ice skating lessons and is loving it!

The girls are still loving spending most days with their friends and we are so thankful for this social outlet.

Allie's still loving school and learning so much.  She also learned to tie her shoes in a matter of minutes.

Julia got to celebrate her best bud's birthday, just the two of them on a shopping trip and sleepover.

Allie had a successful cardiology check!

Gray is really enjoying cooking lately and loved grilling steak with Matt.  Lots and lots of steak.

The boys had such a good time playing in the rec league lacrosse here in Hillsborough and it was a treat to have lots of friends on their teams and familiar faces in the crowd to spectate with.

Joshua turned 15 and enjoyed playing with friends at the park and Nanny and Pa coming for dinner.  We are pretty proud of this guy and really so thankful he can manage so much now without our help.  

Joshua got his permit!  The thrill may be gone already. :/  But for a couple days there he was super excited to drive us home from practice.  Gotta get in those 60 hours now!

A fall festival with our little church...

I can hardly believe November is here and I know the holiday months will fly.  Here's hoping for breakthroughs and good news in many areas of our world as we head into another month.