1. Christmas has come and gone and it was lovely. I ended up being cancelled for at least part of both of my pre-Christmas weekend shifts. That was lovely because I got to spend time with my family and clean my house. Also, because I didn't have to work until Christmas night at 11 pm, I got uninterrupted Christmas time. Huzzah!
So here are the best of the Christmas pics:
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| It's Cheeky Monkey. |
Gummy Bear was a sheep in this year's nativity play. He was darling, and "baa"ed with gusto.
The Monkey was quite interested in the goings on.
And here is the whole tableau. Bear is on the bottom left, between the shepard in the blue and the shepard in the grey. They had a real, live baby this year.
Because the church was as packed as I have ever seen it, we took the opportunity to get some pictures of the family filing out. My dad and stepmom were able to make a quick stopover for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. It was lovely having them here.
My mom and stepdad were here, of course. We had Christmas Eve presen-opening and Christmas dinner at their house, since ours is a wee tiny house.
And hey, look, a picture of me and my husband!
As I was going through our pictures this year I noticed that we didn't have a lot of family pictures. I have been trying to remedy that, but most of them end up kind of like this:
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| So close |
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| Da da da da dadada AFRO! |
This was a few days later, but I just love this picture. How sweet are they?
Also, a rare moment where they are both on my lap and no one is screaming or pushing the other one. The boys had a blast and Bear was very into Christmas this year. Monkey is mostly confused but happy to get presents. Today at Target we were walking through the "team huddle" where all the Target employees have their daily chat when Monkey yelled "Mama, are we Jewish?" Yes. That.
2. I have been having a lot of moments lately where I notice that I am getting older. Yes, I know, 33 is not "old." At some point in the last year, though, I have started to notice little things like my eyelids aren't as perky as they used to be and my hair has some grey. Since I don't feel all that different that I did when I got married 9 years ago, sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself and think, "right, so I'm not some young thing anymore." I don't think much about it since I don't spend a lot of time with a mirror lately.
The other day I was running water for a bath and happened to get a glimpse of my belly as I leaned over to turn off the water. Normally when I see my stomach, I'm standing up or lying down. While it's not exactly what I would call flat, it's not so bad. Take my advice though, after 2 kids, your stomach may surprise you. Time, as they say, marches on. I'm OK with it, but it took me by surprise this year.
3. Aside from relaxing our "dining out" budget, my job hasn't really changed the way we lead our lives. This is largely due to some loans we are paying back as a result of nursing school. We have decided to splurge on a pop-up camper this spring. After the great success we had last year camping with the boys, we decided we wanted something a little easier than the tent this summer. A pop-up also allows us to extend our camping season by several months on both sides of the summer.
I have a friend from nursing school who is looking to upgrade their pop-up to something with hard sides. We are looking to upgrade our tent to a camper. It's perfect, really. So, we look forward to adding a new vehicle (like thingie) to our family in March. We are also planning our first family trip to Walt Disney World in said camper this fall. I am so excited I can hardly stand myself.
