what's up weekly. (So Much News!)

Oh my goodness, you guys.  SO MUCH has happened in the last two weeks since I last popped in.  First, St. Nicholas came on December 6 and filled our wooden shoes.  ("Klompen," for those of us who try to be more Dutch than we really are.  I'm so lucky to be Dutch by association.)

St. Nick left chocolate coins, chocolate windmills, candy waffles, coffee candy, and Dutch cookies for us, so naturally we had to eat some of it with breakfast.  

Then, I made my monthly grocery run.  And then, since Todd took the day off work, we got to decorate the Christmas tree together.

Then after tree decorating, the big kids kept the Christmas festivities going by doing a bunch of their biology dissection assignments with Todd.  Merry Christmas, ya filthy (formaldehyded) animals.

Okay, that was all just St. Nicholas Day, and we still have 13 more days to cover, so I'll pick up the pace.  Luckily, most days weren't quite so eventful.

Santa's cutest helper.

That's 25 pounds of baby in what Atticus calls my "baby tactical rig."  I've been carrying the babies in the Ergos when they get fussy.  It's so fun to cuddle them, but it does get painful quickly.

They seem to enjoy it though!

Ophelia turned three on Sunday!

This girl, I tell you.  She is so funny.  She loves chewing on frozen teething toys.  She often carries around two babies and rocks and pretends to nurse them.  (I realized the other day that she's never seen me mother just one baby at a time!  To her, mothering involves two babies.)  She loves wearing princess dress up and black rain boots.  She holds her own with the bigger sisters.  She poops like four times a day and is very independent about using the potty at this point.  She is full of compliments - last night she told me she loves my "booiful happy face."  She's a total card and loves making the big kids laugh.  She loves telling people that she's "Hoey."  She is pretty easy during school time, either playing independently or sitting on my lap and listening to the older kids' read alouds.  (Or fighting with Juni.) She loves the babies.  She is snuggly and fiesty and a complete gift.

On her birthday, we had our big church Christmas celebration.  First was our regular Sunday worship service, during which Penelope accompanied one of the hymns on the piano for the first time!  She did an amazing job!  After the service was our big Christmas feast, and then a merrymaking time in the afternoon where folks got to share music or jokes or other performances.  Penelope played Hark, The Herald Angels Sing from the hymnal, and Callista played Joy to the World.  It was so fun to see them sharing their talents!

My parents came down to join us for all the festivities, and after we all arrived home from church in the late afternoon, we celebrated Oey's birthday together.  She seemed pretty pumped about it.

 

She was so cute opening her presents.  It was obvious she's been to a birthday party or two in her time - she knew exactly what to do.  She cracked me up opening her presents - here she is, opening a ball from Rocco.

Let's zoom in, shall we?  Like I said, pumped.

She demanded a hug from Rocco after she opened the ball.  It was so sweet.

I love this photo - surrounded by her siblings and loving every second of it.  (The little chair she's sitting in was the gift from me and Todd.  I found it for free on Marketplace - isn't it so cute?!)

After Oey's birthday, we jumped feet first into full-fledged Christmas.  Christmas break is in full swing, both trees are decorated, many of our presents are wrapped and under the tree, and the kids' rooms are even strung with lights.  The kids have spent a lot of free time this week prepping their Christmas Eve gifts for one another - they do their own little Kidland gift exchange on Christmas Eve, the rules of which stipulate that all gifts have to be made (or at least free).  They've been busy elves.

Todd took this photo of me eating my breakfast one morning.  It has become a social event this week, since I have been sleeping in and eating after the kids are already up.

The babies turned seven months old!

These babies are such a joy.  Eulalie makes constant noise - spitting, babbling, gurgling, fussing, laughing.  She is also always wiggling.  She loves people, and hates being left to play independently.  (She also hates being tired, which sets in about 35 minutes after she gets up from nap.)  She is usually already awake when I go in to wake them up from nap.  She likes to go to sleep on her belly with her thumb in her mouth, but I often find her in different spots in the crib after she's rolled and wiggled all around.  When I come close to her, she flaps her arms wildly and kicks her legs and squeals.  She is just full of life and energy.  

Knox is calm and quiet and smiley and thoughtful.  He is friendly and more observant than interactive.  He has the biggest smile, and has two tiny teeth, but he has only laughed once!  He is a great sleeper - he loves to stick his finger through a hole in his crocheted blanket and then suck on it, and he falls right to sleep that way.  He is like Todd - he barely moves in his sleep, so he has already left permanent body-sized divots in both ends of his mattress.  He is super interested in food and loves trying little bits of my dinner.  He is my gentle giant.

I love them both so much.

Laliebeans smiling and spitting, Knox rolling to his belly so he can see everything a bit better.  That's them in a nutshell.

We still took an afternoon to move ahead in Farmer Boy, even though we're on break.  I love reading the Little House books in the winter.  (Fun fact: all the kids but Oey are in this photo.  Look at funny Lalie on my lap!)

We're hopefully getting a trundle bed soon so we can tuck Lolo's bed away during the day.

I've been trying each day of break to pick a project to tackle.  Early in the week, I attempted to start sorting the garage, since the weather was beautiful.  But I hit a snare early in the project, as I don't currently have the shelves I need to do the job, and when I went to order them, the gift card I had didn't work, and then I spent the entire afternoon inside trying to troubleshoot ordering the shelves.  When I finally did get back out to the garage, a solicitor pulled up and trapped me in a conversation.  And that's how I still don't have garage shelves but we'll be getting a new roof.  (I KID.  I KID.  Todd, don't have a heart attack, I sent him packing.  Unlike the Kirby salesmen that one time.  I mean, those two times.)

Anyway.  I finally just ordered the shelves without the gift card, and I'm hoping they arrive today so I can put the boys to the task of building them and then maybe doing some of the garage organization for me.  They're boys, so it hasn't taken long for them to go a bit feral without the routine of school.  I'm hoping the fresh air, sunshine, physical labor and full schedule will be a blessing to them.

I've also taken Atticus out for some driving practice, organized the clothing storage bins, and undertaken the position of Kidland Bank Teller.  (Christmas requires extra staffing.)  Today I hope to make a grocery run and get started on sewing the babies' Christmas stockings and Christmas Eve jammies.  I am loving all the time I have to tackle projects over break!  Discretionary time is my favorite kind of time.

So with that, I will sign off so I can go put together my Christmas menu plan and grocery list.  Have a great weekend!

what's up weekly. (Thanksgiving break, Christmas tree shopping, and Atticus' birthday!)

Well, hello.  Fancy meeting you here.

I didn't post last week because I typically write my Friday posts on Thursday night, and last Thursday was Thanksgiving.  It was a full day and I just wanted to let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving, you know?  But that means I have two weeks, including a holiday, to fill you in on!

We took the entire week off of school.  It has finally started getting cold, so I wanted to use the first couple days to get everyone's cold weather clothing pulled out and washed, and all their warm weather clothing washed and packed away - a project I had tried starting the week before, but suffered a setback when the dryer was out of order.  So the laundry situation around here was insane for a while.  I'm still only nearly caught up - I ordered the last items of clothing that we need, and they should arrive next week and then we'll be all set... for a couple of months anyway, until the weather changes or the kids grow out of their current sizes, whichever comes first.  I still need to get out their cold weather shoes - their available options at the moment are sandals or snowboots.  Maybe I'll get to that this weekend... Always something.

We also were still fighting Crud over Thanksgiving week.  We have had the weirdest bug going through our house - Rocco was the first one to get it around his birthday, and it has been slowwwwwly working its way through everyone.  Some days everyone seems fine, some days they're spiking fevers, some days they sleep all day, some days their cough is really chesty.  And through a single day they might cycle through all of those states to varying degrees.  I've come to suspect it's walking pneumonia, but by Thanksgiving week I still wasn't sure what was going on.  Rocco was finally on the mend after falling pretty hard, but Atticus had a cough, and Finneas and Penelope had kind of waxing and waning fevers for a couple days.  By Thanksgiving, the kids were under the weather, but not so much so that I was convinced anyone was super sick.

But now I'm confident we're sick.  And if Rocco was the prototype, we each have 2-3 weeks of it to look forward to.  The three biggest kids are about on week 3, I'm headed into my second week, and the three little girls just started their coughs and headaches a couple of days ago, so we may be in for another few weeks yet.  Todd and the babies haven't shown signs of anything yet - KNOCK ON WOOD.  I just desperately don't want the babies to get it.

But anyway.  Back to break week.

In addition to clothing swap and Thanksgiving prep, the kids and I went to pick out our little basement Christmas tree at Home Depot.  We discovered last year that the quality and selection is so much better the few days before Thanksgiving, rather than waiting until after to get one.  So I took all the kids out for a quick adventure.

Knoxaboxen

Laliebeans

We need two carts just for carting people at this point, and we still don't have much leftover room for actual merchandise in there.

On the way home, we stopped at a friend's house so Finneas could get instructions for his first paid non-family job: cleaning out litterboxes while our friends were on vacation.

Then came the actual day of Thanksgiving!  My parents came down (my sister's family couldn't make it because they, too, were under the weather) and we all had a great day together.  

On Saturday after Thanksgiving, we headed out to the nearby tree farm to pick out our big living room tree.

It was pretty cold (it was the first snow of the year!) so Todd stayed in the car with the babies while the rest of us picked out the tree.

As a side note, I am taking advice from a friend and watering our trees with hot water this year - she said it keeps the sap from hardening over the cut end and preventing water uptake.  So far, so good - both trees are drinking an entire tree stand worth of water every day and not slowing down.  So we'll see if it's worth it over the season - heating up kettles of water takes time and forethought so if it's not worth it, I won't bother with it next year, but it really does seem to be working.

Unwrapping the tree, which I should have done before putting the tree in the stand but didn't.  The kids named this one Branch, because it's a tree and also because that's the name of a character in the Trolls movie, and they think the tree looks like it has Troll hair standing up on top.  I vote for the name Pine-Apple.

Lolo got this picture of us getting the lights on the tree.  Rocco is dressed like a little helper elf!

And that brings us to this week.  I stayed home from church with Penelope on Sunday, since she was running a fever again, and the start to the week has been rocky.  I started coming down with the Crud on Saturday, and it is definitely not a joke, so I understand why the kids are really struggling extra with the jump back in to school and "normal" life.  (We don't often take sick days unless it can't be avoided; more often, we just rearrange the week's workload to give us a few lighter days while they recover.  But that's not exactly possible with an illness that is lasting this long, so we're just doing our best to keep going even when it's hard.)  

Yesterday was Atticus' 16th birthday!

I couldn't even begin to list all the things I love and appreciate about him.  He is responsible, kind, good natured, easy going.  He is artistic and funny.  He loves history and politics and playing with babies.  He is a hard worker and is respected by the people around him.  He's interesting to talk to.  He's seriously just the best.

He was pretty lowkey in his requests for birthday meals: pancakes for breakfast, lasagna for lunch, Domino's for dinner.  Unfortunately, I hadn't been grocery shopping in nearly five weeks, so I needed to run to the store before breakfast for a grocery pickup.  Also unfortunately, I slept terribly and woke up with a splitting headache, so Todd kindly picked up the groceries.  Once the ibuprofen kicked in, I had my feet under me, but I still need to do my big shopping trip.  Maybe I'll go today, or maybe Todd will, depending on how I feel.  (He has the day off and has offered to go.)

Today holds other fun as well:  first, it's St. Nicholas Day, so I'll fill you in on that next week.  The shoes are filled and waiting for the kids, and we'll have cheeseboard for dinner and watch Miracle on 34th St.  We will be decorating the tree this morning as well.  The big kids are also going to be starting their first official Biology dissection work today.  So... I am very glad Todd has the day off so I can disappear while it happens.  I thought I'd be okay with it, but once I opened the delivery from the homeschool science company, and thought of cutting up a rubberized fish on my dining room table, I lost my chutzpah.  So we'll see.  There are seven different specimens - maybe I'll get up the nerve eventually.  But for today, they'll be doing Biology lab with the headmaster.

And just like that, another two weeks is in the books.  Knox looks as shocked as I feel.  How does the time go so quickly?  I read the other day that we are happiest when time is moving the most quickly, and it moves the most quickly when we are busiest, and I thought that rang true, especially when we're busy with things we love.  I also watched a movie this week in which one of the elderly characters mentions they haven't been busy since 1978, and I just found that such a sad thing to say.  I am so grateful for this pace of life that keeps us engaged.  I much prefer it to the alternative.