5 Miles

We hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating the New Year coming!  We didn’t do much to welcome in the New Year. We rented a stack of DVD’s that we’d wanted to see throughout the year, ordered a pizza and stayed in.  Between baby sitting costs, not knowing many people, us not feeling well, and a busy week, well, it just worked out best this way. Unfortunately, James did not get his wish for a 2005 baby.

Looking ahead, 2006 is going to be an interesting year of change for us! I know I’m looking forward to it, but also a bit aprehensive! I know enough to know that I should be worried!   Wishing all of you a great new year!

WOW! Did I miss a few days or what?!?  We hope you all had a blessed and wonderful Christmas.  We had a wonderful time at my parents house, about an hour north of here. We went up Christmas Eve Day, to spend the day with them and Heidi & Doug (my brother & sister). We had a fun time talking, eating, watching football, playing games and napping! Will had fun with so many people to play with! 

Christmas Day was also great fun, Will was at an age where he enjoyed the process more then last year. We had debated how we’d do gifts + church + breakfast. Plus, we had gotten Will a train table, and we knew once he saw that, he wouldn’t really want to see anything else!  We set up the table the night before, and let him see it (and play with it) right away. He walked into the living room and said “Ohhhhh! Will’s Train!” (Every time we go to a place with a train table, he’ll ask “Will’s train?” and I have to remind him no, that place is sharing the train with him).  He had fun playing with that while we opened stockings & ate breakfast.  Then Doug arrived, and we started to open gifts.  I thought Will would be completely taken with the train, and not want to see anything else he got, but he did well. He got just enough in gifts to keep him occupied during the gift time, but not too much to overwhelm him.  His Aunt & Uncle did VERY well in picking gifts…if you are looking for good ideas for preschoolers, let me share what they got him!
Aunt Heidi took advantage of working with kids at her office, and got him a VERY popular game with the kids called Cariboo.  Will loves playing with it. Plus, it is a game Mommy can play with him to make educational, OR, he can play with it by himself.  (A win-win toy!).  Uncle Doug got him a Leap Frog Word Wammer. It’s a bit advanced for him right now (it encourages building 3 letter words), but has an option for just letters/sounds that he loves. He can build words with it, if guided. It’s nice to have it on the fridge for him to play with, while I am working in the kitchen (I just have to keep reminding him to keep the letters on the fridge).  Our good friend Jill gave him a stuffed tiger & tiger book + tiger ears/tail so he can dress up like a tiger. He wasn’t a fan of the tiger ears, but loves the book & animal. Grandpa got the Calvin & Hobbs gift set, and so this Tiger has been named Hobbs.  He had gotten a nativity from his Grandparents earlier in the month, this was something we played with all month in talking about the REAL reason for Christmas.  While he was much more interested in the animals, I felt we made a start! Will played with those toys and the train ALL day! 

We ended up spending the night one more night, so we could enjoy Christmas evening while Will slept.  It was a nice time, and we enjoyed the time with my family. It was nice to come back Monday and have the day to put away the tree (it was VERY dead, and were the train table will probably go).  Plus, it’s been nice for James to have a ‘short week’.

I love this day! It’s not that winter is my favorite time of the year…it is that this is the shortest day of the year. From here on out, the days are getting longer! I know that may not seem like a big deal, with the coldest part of the winter coming. But it still encourages me. In Indiana–up until now–I could take heart that each day the sun would be coming up a bit earlier, and it’d be a bit brighter each morning.  Now, with Daylight Savings in effect, we’ll have that ’spring forworward’ where it’ll get dark again. But, we’ll adjust (and learn how to change all our clocks as well)!

Will was singing Silent Night, Holy Night while looking at that book I mentioned yesterday. About all I could under stand was "Si night….holy night..<bunch of gabled stuff here>….Jesus Lord of dy birth…" It was sweet to hear from the other room. As my mother-in-law said, at least he got the important parts!

We have Christmas music on most of the time right now.  This has created a few funny memories:

• Will singing "Santa, Baby" to me the other morning.
• Will head banging to "Holly Jolly Christmas".

He is also enjoy the classic carols/hymns. We got a book at the library that illustrates "Silent Night, Holy Night". I love to hear James singing that to him each night as he’s going to bed.

This morning’s temperature was 3. 3 little degrees. We’re supposed to get up to a toasty 17.  That’s cold.(And I won’t even mention the wind chill…the temperature alone makes me want to stay insdie!)  That killed the idea of me taking Will outside to play in the snow & enjoy the sunshine.  We’ll be doing good to make it from the parking lot to the store, if I even decide to do THAT much.  So, since he was getting antsy, we pulled out his Christmas gift from Uncle Randy & Aunt Shari.  They gave him a  Play-doh set that has a dog that wags it tail and you can pretend to be a vet with.  Growing up, we NEVER got any of those Play-doh sets (I always thought the hair cut one was SO amazing! Boy, I wanted that one!). So I thought that was a cool gift.  You can tell this is our first child, and RD & S have only one child who is younger then Will. (Those of you who have older kids are just laughing at us right now, aren’t you?)  We never realized what a horrible gift that really is!  First off, play-doh is a MUST supervise activity when your table sits on light tan carpet (and you don’t want to be picking it out of the carpet).  And the toy.  Oh my…now I know why we didn’t get them growing up. Play-doh gets stuck everywhere. And it looks like it’s going to take toothpicks to get the scraps out of the crevices.  (And I have no idea where I put the toothpicks when we moved in here!)  Thanks Uncle Randy & Aunt Shari! We’ll make sure we return the favor next year!

(Will did really enjoy it, we got over an hour’s worth of play out of the set and the dough. He LOVED the dog, and was just laughing at parts of it. We also had fun making “snakes” & letters out of the dough, and balls he could smash.  He didn’t want to stop, but he was getting ready for a nap, so we cleaned up to have a snack…a bribe was the only way I knew to get him to stop!)

I am very sorry for my lengthy delay in posting! It’s been a crazy week. Some high lights:

• Last Friday was James’ office Christmas party. They had it a hotel downtown, and were able to get discounts on rooms.  We decided to have a night away before Baby #2 comes. I took Will up to Grandpa & Grandma’s house, for his first time to spend the night without Mommy & Daddy (how did it happen that he’s over 2 years old & we’ve never done that?!?)  It was a fun night, and nice for me to just go up to our room when I got tired by 10:30.  
• Saturday we went to see The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.  I reviewed it below. Then we got to go get Will, and visit our friends in Marion at the Annual Hufford Open House.  I enjoyed that party more then the office one! J It ws fun to see all our Marion friends again!
• Tuesday night was our “Pay back” night. We joined a baby sitting group with my MOPS group sets up. We’ve been able to have free baby sitting on the 1^st and 3^rd Tuesday night of each month, for free, while 3 couples in the group watch Will at the church. This time, it was our turn to watch the kids. There were “only” 22 kids (could have been over 30), and it was nice to get to know 2 other couples better.  And it went much better then it could have! 
• The rest of the week was kind of busy with things wrapping up for the holidays. I was also extremely tired. I really try not to use this blog as a spot to whine/complain (you can hear the “but” here, can’t you?).  I’ll just say I’m at the point in this pregnancy where I’m not sleeping well. And enough of you have heard about my itchy skin…I’ll just say it got worse. There was a suspected Urinary Tract Infection during this time as well. This is why you didn’t get new entries…they would have been me complaining about how tired I was and how bad my skin itched all the time!   The good news is the UTI has cleared up, the itching has lessened a great deal(it gets worse when ever I’m sick).  I’m still not sleeping well…I’m hoping that’ll get better soon! I have another month to month and a half of this, it’s too early to be this tired all the time, isn’t it?
• Friday & Saturday I finished up Christmas shopping! I had everyone done except James, and I need a time where he could watch Will, and I could just go browse/explore the mall for the best deals and finalize what I want. Friday I left the mall exhausted, determined to go on-line to get what I wanted.  I tried to order it, and discovered what I wanted was on back order or would cost too much to ship to get by Christmas. So, Saturday I went back, with a better plan of attack. I have specific stores to go to, with specific items in mind. It went much better, and I am happy I am done! 

As I look ahead to this week, I have 2 cookie exchanges to bake for (YUM!) and a rather empty looking calendar. I’m looking forward to using this week as a time to talk more about Christmas, and “Baby Jesus Coming” with Will. I’d like to start the tradition of baking Jesus a birthday cake (it’ll be a simple one), and need to figure out the best time for that. We’ll go up to my parents house for the weekend.  We decided to not do Christmas cards this year…we want to keep in touch with all of you, but are going to wait until Baby #2 comes, and send out our holiday greetings along with birth announcements. I couldn’t handle the thought of doing cards + announcements a month apart!  So, please don’t feel slighted!  We love to hear from you!   

Oh my, so much has happened in the last few days, and I just have been too tired to keep everyone up to date. I am sorry!  I will say this much: we saw The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe this weekend.  I HIGHLY recommend it for adults. Kids…well, you know what scares your kids. But the White Witch and her "minions" are rather scary looking.  James and I felt it stayed very true to the books, yet did a good job condensing it into a 2 hour movie. And I even liked the parts I skip now in the book! Go, if you can! It was worth it! (If I was good & had more time, I’d put a cool picture from the movie poster or something like that here.  You’ll just have to do without though!)

Tonight was the first REAL snowfall of the year…we’re expecting upto 8 inches (ok, that’s a big deal here!).  We got enough this afternoon, James had to shovel the driveway to get the car in when he got home from work.  Last year, Will fell in the snow his first time out, and was scared to be in it the rest of the winter (plus, he wasn’t too steady walking).  This year, he really enjoyed it!  He had fun helping James shovel. 

Last night at MOPS, our Pastor’s wife talked about Christmas Traditions and memories. It was a fun and interesting talk, where she reminded us how much these mean to kids down the years, and how we, as Moms, have the power to set the mood in our homes.  One idea was to put a small tree or string of lights in the kids rooms. Will LOVES the Christmas lights on the tree, and we have extra strings, so I decided to put up a string of lights in his room tonight. I hung them while he played with his train. 

When I was done, I asked him what he thought.  He looked up and said, "Good job, Mommy!"

You may have seen on the news what happened in South Dakota on Saturday. They were going to implode the tallest building in the state—but there were some problems.  Some friends of our live in the area, and have some FUNNY suggestions for fixing the problem…one is shown in the picture here. Click on the picture to see their other suggestions.