Hey, look! A new blog post! Can you believe it?!
If you couldn't guess from the unplanned hiatus I took from here, we have been BUSY. December was good, but almost more than we could handle this year. Since I last wrote (on Thanksgiving day?), we have hosted friends and family overnight, thrown a family birthday party, hosted our Sunday school class's Christmas party, attended parties with friends, attended Snowy Nights at the Botanic Gardens, driven around to look at lights, spent a weekend in Indiana, delivered gifts to our adopted family, decorated and undecorated our house (and helped at the church for both), cried at the sight of Santa Claus (the kids, not us), celebrated the birth of Jesus at church and with family, rang in the new year, recovered from colds, and cranked out two projects in the wood shop. As if our home life wasn't jam-packed enough, I have also been the busiest I've been at work since I switched to part time, to the point of taking home work on both the Christmas and New Year's weekends. On my days "off" from my "real" job, I've sat for hours at a time at the embroidery machine making sure everyone got their orders in time for Christmas. I think we made as much money in November and December as we did the whole rest of the year! Oh, and Matt ran 26.2 miles - in one day.
On top of ALL of that, we are finally (hopefully? maybe? pretty please?) coming off of Thomas's worst sleep regression to date, where not only did he not sleep, but he also screamed at the top of his lungs nonstop. Only when it was bedtime or during the wee hours of the morning, of course. We were so sleep deprived and running on so few fumes that it all came to a head one day and I nearly lost it. It was a Monday. I drove myself to work but could not pull myself enough to get out of the car; all I could do was cry. So I texted my boss that I was taking a sick day, made a quick trip to Walmart that was on my neverending to-do list, and went home to sleep the day away. My parents graciously kept Thomas two nights for us that week so we could catch up on our sleep. As I type right now, he is sound asleep in his bed and I'm crossing my fingers that he'll stay quite for at least a few hours. He is still not an amazing sleeper, but we've turned a major corner so I'll try not to complain.
Now you see why I haven't blogged? There just has not been any extra time at all. But I'm vowing to make January my catch-up month. And we're going all the way back to November's phone pics and starting there. Then I've got Matt's marathon to tell you about, our Christmas festivities, December's phone pics, the aforementioned shop projects, and some house updates that I'm majorly behind on posting!
Since I can't have a post without pictures, here's the one we ended up using for our Christmas card from our family photo shoot. The big kids were such troopers while the little kids had their fits and didn't cooperate. This isn't necessarily the best picture of either of them, but their faces are visible and there are no tears, so it's a winner!
Be expecting more posts soon! And if not, feel free to send me a text to remind me (ahem, Jenny).