Closing out a decade

We are doing it!  Closing out 2019 and the 2010's decade with family-style.  Colter sang with his first-grade class.  He was too shy/embarrassed to sing with the group the morning of the performance.  So he sweetly sang the song for me the night before at bedtime.  You find him pretty easily in the picture below, he is pretty dead center of the group, trying to disappear under his jacket hood. 

I helped plan the company holiday party with a private screening of the new Star Wars movie.  Planning was a disaster.  I couldn't get the woman in charge of booking the theater to call or email me back in a timely manner.  Every time we talked or emailed she would forget every detail we had discussed and agreed on making the next conversation completely repetitive.  Or, she wouldn't respond because she was waiting for me to get back to her with the details we had absolutely agreed on in the correspondence before (number of attendees etc.).  It was so frustrating.  Still, I persevered and we pulled together a lovely movie night for Will's employees. 

Adell did her number in the annual Merry Little Christmas Show, cute as ever!

Lorien was home for the Christmas break.  We had Christmas day, got lots of presents, and made a mess with wrapping paper.  

Gingerbread houses were made.  I've figured out making houses isn't a treat or fun for Lorien any more.  For the last three years, she hasn't taken it seriously at all.  Preferring instead to kind of trash her house, one year she actually lit it on fire with hand sanitizer as an accelerant.  I think the novelty has more than worn off for her. 

Family snowball fight with Christmas wrapping paper. 

I've been working out at Orange Theory Fitness since October of 2018.  The workouts are so hard but so fun!  I've been really proud of myself for doing it for over a year (minus eight weeks around my surgery).  My endurance has improved, my mile has improved from just under 12 minutes to 10 minutes and 30 seconds.  I think I am stronger.  I know I feel better.  A couple of months before Will's wrestling tournament in Georgia he joined Orange Theory and has been working out with me!  We did a New Year's Eve workout together.

And at last, we saw 2019 off and welcomed in 2020 with confetti cannons!

The December Pre Game Show...

Will and the little kids walk to church every Sunday morning.  Church starts at 11:30 so they have plenty of time to get ready and enjoy the walk.  Next year church switches to a 9:00 am start...I'm not sure if they will have walking time.  Adell asks if the whole family can walk just about every week.  The big kids and I are not as able to get ready in time to walk.  For Adell's birthday, we agreed we would walk to church as a whole family one time.  We managed to get that done early in December!

Wyatt quit wrestling for about a month.  He decided to go back in December he supported his team at a scrimmage against De La Salle.

Adell got to have her friend birthday party on Friday the 13th!  She invited her closest friends for a cozy movie night at home.

Adell and I did a whole lot of Christmas shopping together one Saturday.  It was extra crazy because we were also running back and forth between shopping and Wyatt's first JV tournament.  We got a lot of shopping done and got an awesome deal at JCPenny (including some delicious chocolate)!

Wyatt got second place at his tournament!

Will and I were asked to be part of the entertainment for our church Christmas party.  We were one of the couples in a Dancing With the Stars tournament.  We were excellent and took third place...out of three teams.  Cool.

Lorien created our intro video.  She scripted, filmed, edited, added music, basically did everything to make us look good.  Our video and dance were funny and entertaining.  That was my only goal: be entertaining.

Thankful...

After three months apart, we got our Lorien Cara back home this week for Thanksgiving.  The kids have been so excited and counting down the days until her return.  We are all so happy she is here!  She is pretty happy too...but not happy about the cooler temperatures up here.  

In her absence, Clare took the time to grow taller than Lorien.  Impossible but true.

Wyatt didn't get to have his birthday dinner out to eat because I was recovering from surgery.  So once Lorien was here we took Wyatt out to Burma Burma for his birthday dinner.

After dinner, we hit up Will's empty office for shinanigans: office chair races, nerf gun wars, ice cream sundaes, and flying paper airplanes off the balcony. 

Thanksgiving morning I made everyone go on a walk with me.  No one liked it...except me.  Winning!

Thanksgiving dinner was a smashing success.  Everyone helped make the meal and everyone enjoyed eating the meal.  I love holidays at home with my people. 

Wyatt wanted to try out some Black Friday shopping.  So I took him and three friends to Target to see what all the hubbub was about. 

We ate leftovers for every meal for the rest of the week.

Since Lorien was home over the weekend, we also made a trip to the tree lot to pick our tree.  It was raining and the lot was closed Saturday night so we had to go back Sunday.  We picked a good one that only leans a little bit at the top.

It has been wonderful having Lorien home for the week.  She goes back home for two weeks to finish the semester then is back for Christmas. 

*edit update.  Lorien got a barf bug the night before she was supposed to fly back to Santa Monica.  She got to stay home with us for two more days.  She and I went to a favorite things party where she got to laugh with old ladies and pick up some great skin cream.  She also got to help me shop and run errands for a day.  It really was a treat to have her home for a week. 

Double digits!

Our Adell Becci is TEN YEARS OLD TODAY!  She's been on this Earth making our lives better for a whole decade.  We sure feel like a lucky family to have this cutie pie as our fourth child.  Happy Birthday, Adell!

The Garden Song...

When we lived in Redwood City we went to the library all the time.  Redwood City had the most charming downtown library with the very best children's section.  We loved that place!  Getting there, picking books, and checking out was an ordeal with three little kids.  I had to create a turn system for everything: who got to put the change into the machine to pay for our parking and who got to collect the ticket.  Who got to check out books first and who got to pull the receipt out of the checkout kiosk.  Everything had to be ordered and turned.  It was crazy.  Everything about being a parent felt crazy to me at the time. 

Every time we went to the library we picked out books and lots of music CDs.  We learned silly songs from different children's music bands.  We heard instrumental versions of rock songs.  We quickly found our favorites and would be repeat patrons for those items: Dan Zane, Tom Chapin, Laurie Berkner, Rock a Bye Baby Cold Play, and others.  Somewhere, I found the Garden Song.  I loved and hated that song!  The words cut right to my worried mother's heart.  "Inch by inch, row by row, please bless these seeds I sow, "  I thought of my little babies, my kids, that for some reason I had been left in charge of rasing.  (Where was the review process for that decision?!)  I thought of the world and how scary it could be.  I just wanted my kids to be safe and happy and the idea that I was the adult (with Will) who was responsible for keeping them safe and happy didn't seem possible. 

Truth be told, I often felt more like my kid's babysitter than their mother.  Do all mothers who were babysitters as teenagers feel this way?  I don't know.  Feelings aside, I was (and am) their mother and they had to make do with the parenting they got from me.  I made lots of mistakes and as my kids get older I remember the old mistakes and my kids reveal the mistakes I didn't even know I was making.  It is awesome.  But my kids still managed to grow: inch by inch.  And truely, for the most part, they are OK and I am OK.  Someday, I hope we will all look back and feel good about the process but I think the jury is going to be out for a while.  There is still a whole lot of growing to go for all of the kids and a whole lot of mistakes I get to make as a parent.  Sigh!

Last week, Clare reminded me of the Garden Song.  We found it on iTunes and enjoyed several listens.  All those feelings of scary wonder at parenting came flooding back to my mind.  I still feel like a fraud as a parent.  I don't think I'm doing anything right.  But my kids keep growing...so I love and hate those words all over again.  Someone is blessing these seeds to grow despite my worst efforts.  My kids are lucky and so am I. 

 Inch by inch, row by row

Gonna make this garden grow

All it takes is a rake and a hoe

And a piece of fertile ground

Inch by inch, row by row

Someone bless these seeds I sow

Someone warm them from below

Till the rain comes tumbling down

Pulling weeds and picking stones

Man is made of dreams and bones

Feel the need to grow my own

Cause the time is close at hand

Painful rain, sun and rain

Find my way in nature's chain

Tune my body and my brain

To the music from the land

Plant your rows straight and long

Temper them with prayer and song

Mother Earth will make you strong

If you give her love and care

Good luck babies.  We all need it!