happy new year!

welcome, 2013!

i've been having a bit of an issue with uploading photos to the blog, so i haven't been posting much, because it's just not as fun. i do think it's time for an update, though. 

december passed by rather quickly. we enjoyed the season of advent as much as possible. originally, i was going to do a special activity every day. i ended up doing it a bit differently. a friend told me about truth in the tinsel, a daily advent devotional for kids, so i decided to do that with love. it's an ebook and each day has a scripture reading, devotion, and instructions for making an ornament. i modified some of the crafts for love's abilities and to use materials that we had on hand. we certainly didn't do all 24 days, and we did more at the beginning of the month than the end, but it was a great way to observe advent, and something that we can do in future years as well. 

instead of scheduling an activity for every day, i made a list of things we wanted to do together and we went through the list for what worked on whatever day. we didn't get to everything on the list, and i'm okay with that. here is what we did get to:

- visit the train display at our local mall
- make homemade "gingerbread" play dough
- make salt dough ornaments
- drive around and look at christmas lights
- watch a christmas movie and eat homemade pizza (we watched the polar express)
- send christmas mail to grandparents
- visit the local botanical gardens
- read new christmas book ("room for a little one" from my sister)
- get christmas books from the library
- color in christmas coloring book

we also enjoyed observing advent by lighting our way of light wreath each day and moving the wooden mary a little closer to bethlehem each day. love learned "away in a manger" with motions as we sang it each day after devotions.

the four of us were home together for christmas, and then we traveled to visit family last weekend.

unfortunately, the flu struck our home just before christmas. jobot came down with it the friday before christmas, it hit love on saturday, and jeremy and i got it on sunday. christmas eve found me crawling into bed with a fever and chills, huddled under piles of blankets and snuggling close to jeremy to get warm. it was a bummer. thankfully, we all felt pretty good on christmas morning. we opened our stockings, had a nice little gift exchange, ate some cinnamon rolls, and headed to church. some friends came over in the afternoon and we had christmas dinner and played games. it was a good day.

we went light on the gifts this year, which was the usual for us. jeremy and i decided to get a few things that we needed. they weren't surprises, but i wrapped them up anyway. we got ourselves a nice pair of scissors, a food scale, and i got a pair of tennis shoes and jeremy got some new slippers. we gave jobot a pair of booties for his cold little toes, and we gave both kids a set of wooden blocks. love was given a water bottle and...the big gift which several family members went in on together...a wooden dollhouse, doll family, and furniture! i really think this has been as much fun for me as it has been for her. jeremy did well with my stocking...vanilla almond tea, which i have really been enjoying, a beautiful new mug, and a bar of lavender soap. all things that add a little luxury to life. the best gift was that jobot finally started sleeping through the night, starting on christmas night. it is amazing to sleep all the way through the night again!

of course, more than enjoying the gifts and the family time, we basked in the reality that God is with us. we recently came across a prayer by max lucado, which we have found very fitting for this time. here is an exerpt from the prayer:

"Jesus, the world sure seems dark. i have a good eye for silver linings, but they seem dimmer lately.
your world seems a bit darker this Christmas. 
but, you were born in the dark, right? you came at night. the shepherds were nightshift workers. the wise men followed a star. your first cries were heard in the shadows. to see your face, mary and joseph needed a candle flame. it was dark.
dark with herod's jealousy. dark with roman oppression. dark with poverty. dark with violence.
oh, Lord Jesus, you entered the dark world of your day. won't you enter ours? we are weary of bloodshed. we, like the wise men, are looking for a star. we, like the shepherds, are kneeling at a manger.  
this christmas, we ask you, heal us, help us, be born anew in us."


and to continue the prayer as we enter this new year...may the light of the world shine brightly even through the darkness of our lives. may the hope of Jesus be born in us as we walk on this earth, and may Jesus be invited and faithfully enter into our lives.

happy new year!

lately

what have we been up to lately? oh, just the usual. you know...

playing with homemade slime in the sink...

lining up trains in empty egg cartons...

dressing up like a princess...

finding trains "resting" in our slippers...

learning how to use scissors...

looking cute...

riding a pony for the first time and loving it. (she saw another girl riding the pony and looked at me and said sweetly, "mama, pretty please i want to ride the horse". how could we say no?)

being goofy. (the eyes were a birthday gift that love picked out for jeremy at the dollar store. "daddy wants those eyes!" apparently he did. haha. they came in a pack of twelve, so we've had creepy eyes rolling around our house for a week now).

waiting for papa at the airport. he just left yesterday after a fun-filled twelve day visit.

making sure we are prepared for winter...

enjoying lots of time with papa.

 

the kids and i have a cold, so we have been laying low around here. wiping noses, snuggling, waking up more during the night, missing social events, and soothing a frustrated baby who can't eat and breathe at the same time. we also had a short incident of the stomach flu from love. short as in 

(thankfully) only one episode of vomiting. unfortunately, the episode occurred on monday evening during dinner out at a restaurant. she went from happily sitting at the table to walking around hunched over and moaning and crying and saying her tummy hurt. and then all of a sudden we were those people...the ones who were sitting in the middle of the restaurant whose kid vomited all over. and yes, that was my husband who was examining the vomit in his hand and actually asked me what i thought a chunk of it was. seriously, he did that. (sorry, that's probably too much information). we sat there awkwardly while the servers brought towels upon towels, assured us that it wasn't a big deal and that it had actually happened three other times this week. we packed up our food, our just opened bottle of wine, and i took our girl to the bathroom and changed her clothes. it was an unfortunate outing to have forgotten baby wipes and an extra shirt...but we made due and used a baby blanket as a shirt. sometimes you just have to get creative, right?

i'm not such a happy mama when it comes to staying home with sick kids. especially when i'm feeling under the weather myself. i'm ashamed to say i was pretty grouchy this morning before jeremy left for work. i think there may even have been some words out of my mouth that went something like, "i am thankful that i can be the one to care for our kids during the day, but today i really don't like my job."

but...i had a few more swigs of coffee and said a few prayers, and i was "back on the rails" as love would say. the morning went okay and jeremy even got to come home early. he is working...but he is sitting on the couch next to me working instead of being an hour away. i like that better.

activities with a toddler, and other things

it is so good to be home. the adjustment is taking much longer than i expected it too, but it gets a little better each day. yesterday i stocked up on some essential grocery items and right now i have a chicken cooking in the crock pot. after we eat some of it for supper tonight, i will shred and freeze the leftovers for use in future dinners and i will make chicken stock with the bones. that makes it feel a bit more normal around here. yesterday we drove out to the farm to get our raw milk and eggs - oh how we missed them this summer!

i have had a crazy urge to organize everything in our house, so i have been doing quite a bit of that. it seems a bit silly because {confession} i still haven't even unpacked all of our clothes from our summer. but...it makes me feel good about being home and it makes our house more organized, so it's actually a good thing.

my hubby had a couple of pre-semester classes this week, and he officially starts his new semester next week. i am going to be taking a class at the seminary as well! it is a class about photography and spirituality...definitely sounds like something i will enjoy. i'm also going to be taking another class specifically for spouses of seminary students, as well as taking a music class with our little one. so...with all of that going on, next week we will really start to settle into a routine.

i am loving this age with our little girl and am so excited that she is so interactive and communicative these days. since we've been home, i started doing a "special activity" with her each day. at the beginning of the week, i plan out an activity for each day and write it in my planner. if i need any supplies for the project, i will write that in there as well, but my goal is to keep the activities simple and to use things we have in the house as much as possible instead of buying supplies. we usually do our activity after breakfast and reading time, but i find that i wake up looking forward to it. when i say that it is "special activity time", our girl gets a huge smile on her face - i know i'm doing something right! i will share about some of these special activities on my blog from time to time (maybe weekly?)...hopefully they will be an inspiration for someone else. some of the ideas for activities come from my head, but many of them come from the toddler's busy book by meadowbrook press. we received this book as a gift (thanks brent and jenny!), and i find that it is a great resource for simple activities to do with a toddler.

wednesday's activity was "sticky feet" - i taped a piece of contact paper on the floor sticky side up, and we walked around on the sticky floor. it was quite fun!

on thursday, i used masking tape to make a road on the floor. this activity was a hit. i was surprised when she drove her car down the road without any prompting! we also walked on the road and she walked her wooden duck push toy down the road. she tried so hard to stay within the lines, it was cute.

i love seeing her learn through these activities, and it is also fun to have something specific to do with her, as well as having some more structure to our days.

it is so hot and humid here today. baby has been running around in just her diaper. we spent a short amount of time outside this morning. we don't have air conditioning, so it is just as hot inside our house as outside. despite the heat, i was working in the kitchen for a little while this morning, so to keep the little one occupied, i filled up a couple of plastic bins with water, gave her some towels, kitchen utensils, and her toy animals and let her at it! she had a good time.

and her curls. oh the curls!