A Mini Thanksgiving

So, when did it suddenly become December? I keep getting Grinchy every time I see Christmas decorations up, until I realize that it's actually time for them. The holidays have been blasting by ridiculously fast for me this year, and it's been hard to keep track of what's next.

Luckily, I remembered that Thanksgiving was coming just in time to get an appropriately themed book from the library to read to Kiddo and buy a turkey before they had all disappeared. Dellie was really excited about all the food we were going to eat ("we have to have cranberries, Mama!") and I thoroughly enjoyed having her actually track with the basics of why we celebrate by stuffing ourselves silly with food we never would eat otherwise.

And yes, we did bacon-wrap our turkey.

Family photo

This year's celebration turned out to be nice and small, which, in the end, was I think exactly what my little family needed. We're currently braving some unexpected stresses - one, my mom wound up in the hospital right before Thanksgiving week due to effects from chemo treatment (at least that's the best guess). We also are still sitting on our haunches waiting for Josh to get a job somewhere. We had originally set a timeline of mid-November for getting our future decided on (should we stay or go), but God decided our plans were not what He had in mind.

We watched football, Dellie taped and colored her very own "rocketship"

Post-dinner backyard hockey

So each day we wonder if we'll find out what we're supposed to do and how we're going to pay for another day's rent, but we also feel that God has very clearly told us to be patient and wait for Him.

We originally flip flopped between going back to Colorado to visit my family and get away from our world for a bit, but ultimately decided to stay here. And staying home, keeping it small and simple, and spending the time skyping with family and watching football was a really good thing for us. It gave us the chance to actually just stop and be thankful for what God has done for us these past years, and look forward to the good that we believe He has for us. He hasn't done anything except good in our lives these past years, so I think I can believe He has no intentions of changing that pattern anytime soon :)

How was your Thanksgiving?

Halloween 2015

This year marked the beginning of Kiddo deciding her own costumes. Not gonna lie, it makes me a bit sad. Somehow the concept of Halloween came up a couple months ago with her and she decided from that moment on she was going to be a princess.

For a while she was pretty comfortable with wearing one of her dress up princess dresses (which is quite nice, being handmade by my mom and all), but I was given a Sophia the First dress as a hand-me-down and decided to save it until the last moment in hopes of a big reveal right before Halloween. (Also to ward off any chance of her wearing it incessantly throughout the month of October.)  

Reveal was more of a success than I imagined it would be. The first official costuming time came and I took the chance - here's how it went down:

Me: "Dells, I know you've wanted to wear your yellow princess dress, but would you like to wear this (whipping out Sophia dress) instead?"

Kiddo: eyes huge, heavy breathing for a full minute. "...Really?..."

This girl took the. best. care. of this dress for a full week. She went to great toddler lengths to make sure she had her matching crown, "ambulance" necklace and appropriate foot gear every stinking time she got dressed. So even though it was far from any wonderful ideas I would have had for her costume this year, the outcome was totally worth it.

Here's some pictures from the events we did. I may have gotten close to zealous with all the potential fun to be had, especially since Dellie was even more excited for Halloween than I was.

Her first choice for a pumpkin was the "bumpily one."

She was eventually persuaded into a more paint-able pumpkin, which she painted with just as much gusto as last year.

We went to a pumpkin patch with some friends, complete with haystack maze,

tractor ride (which she loved so much she waited 20 minutes in line to ride it again),

and another pumpkin of her very own to cover in complementary stickers.

On Friday, we went trick or treating with all of Dellie's church buddies in Downtown Mesa.

She clearly had no fun, what so ever.

And Friday night we dressed up ourselves and the house for a quite fantastic Halloween shindig,

which included a giant fake spider (in honor of all the real giant spiders we can't seem to get rid of in our backyard),

along with Hockey Vlad, a pregnant cow, and, by this time, Cinderella (she got tired of being Sophia, apparently). On a side note, I don't recommend The Fly (the 1958 version) if you're looking for a hokey Halloween movie.  There were only two good parts, but they weren't worth the hour and a half of backstory.

Whew, you made it! How was your Halloween? Any trick or treaters? We had about five, I think. No complaints - just means more candy for me :)

The Holidays of 2014

Happy New Year!

Today begins life back to normal for most, and the same goes for this little family in most respects.  Josh doesn't start school for another week, but his work does, and so our home routine has begun again as well.

This Christmas we decided to stick around home instead of travelling back to Colorado. Here are the highlights of Christmas and New Years for us!

Kiddo loved decorating for Christmas this year.

In continuing with the Christmas-tree making tradition, we created our tree out of chicken wire and garlands.

The end result was a little Seuss-ian in nature.

A few days after surgery, I thought I was well enough to make the half-mile trek to the park.  Turned out to be too much too soon, but it was worth getting some fresh air for all us humans and dogs.

Some shots from the one Christmas party we made it to. Not shown are everyone else's pictures with a small Dellie head in the corner.

Dellie's two favorite Christmas presents.  She's becoming ridiculously fond of school buses over the last few months, and we've obliged.  What this means for her future, I'm still not sure.

and lastly, we took a much needed day trip to Flagstaff to play in the recently fallen snow on New Year's Day.

Dellie was beyond excited to get to make a snowman "like Daniel Tiger" and slide around snow piles like "Peter from Snow Day."  

Mom and Dad were beyond excited to feel some of the childlike wonder of fresh snow themselves.

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and new year as well!  I'm definitely excited to be finished with the last year.  As far as my outlook on this year, I'm not quite sure.  I'm hopeful for the possibilities - getting pregnant, Josh graduating and finding a great job in a great city.  I'm also quite a bit fearful of the possibilities, if none of the above come to pass.  What I do know is that God is asking me to walk in hope this year, trusting in his perfect, good, loving nature.

Post-Surgery Update

Thanks everyone for all the kind words and support over the last few days! The texts, comments and conversations I have gotten to have with each and every one of you has meant the world to me. Seriously.

the obligatory and contraband pre-operation photo.

The surgery went really, really well.  The possibility of finding endometriosis had been tossed around prior to surgery, and I was nervous that the cyst would turn out to be a symptom of that.  But the cyst was simply a dermoid cyst, and there was no sign of endometriosis anywhere!  We are beyond thankful that things, as a whole, are looking good, and I no longer have to share my abdomen with my undeveloped twin.

Recovery so far has been better than I could have imagined. I've already downgraded my pain meds to only at night and can basically function normally - just a lot more slowly and gingerly.

My favorite part has been getting to enjoy breakfast in bed - originally it started because I didn't have the fortitude to get out of bed without the pain meds kicking in first.  Now I just let it happen, because why not?

I'm looking forward, yet completely terrified of the moment the bandages finally come off. The doctor said the scar in my belly button would hardly be noticeable.  I'm beginning to wonder if I even have a belly button any more...

* * * * *

In other news, we're almost done with a "Dudes" Christmas special!  It was about as last-minute as you could possibly have done it, but I'm proud that we squeezed it in.  We will be posting it on Facebook when it is finally live.

A wonderful Merry Christmas to all of you, and thanks again for your prayers, well wishes and love!

A Day in the Life of a Brand New Two Year Old

For a couple of months leading up to Kiddo's second birthday, I got asked by more than one person if we were going to have another birthday party like last year.

The answer, unfortunately, was no.

This year's birthday was quite a bit smaller in scale [excluding presents. We're considering renting our neighbor's house for extra storage].  The reason for this, if you really care to know, was the Army.  Good ol' National Guard decided to schedule their weekend right over Kiddo's birthday and there was nothing to be done about it.  Not that I'm complaining.  I get what doing the Guard means when it comes to your weekends - you get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

So we stuck to a day of at home fun with Mimi and Papa [who flew in for the occasion], and an evening of presents and yummy cake when the Hubby returned home from duty.

But, luckily for you, a cake was still made [!] and a whole bunch of cute pictures are here to go along with it.

Not all great days begin great...

But a little breakfast pick-me-up will do the trick!

Then on to play...

More play,

And more play.

Kiddo helped decorate her cake [and by decorate, I mean eat].

For this year's cake I wanted simple, but cute. 

Decorating with rainbow M&M's for a child who's learning colors was, actually,

a better idea than I expected.

Expecting her to understand blowing out candles, however, was not so good. [I spared you the pictures of her bawling, but she lost it as soon as we starting singing.]

So we figured out that the way to salvage the situation was a little practice with her Dada.

Which in the end, made all the difference in the world.

[Yum.]

Happy New Year! [And a Peek Backwards]

There's a trend plowing through Instagram over the last couple of days of people posting short videos of their favorite photos over the last year, and while I haven't actually done one myself, I've really enjoyed getting to watch all the others.  I figured instead, I would do a little flashback of our year via blog [oh joy!].

Here are my top ten favorite moments of 2013, pictures and all!

[10] My child turned one.  This was a big one for me.  The first first birthday for our family, with a fun, Dr. Seuss themed birthday and all.  It's wild looking back on those photos of her - she wasn't walking, hardly talking, and barely registered on the scales.

[9] Valentine's Day. I remember the husband and I were in the middle of a rough emotional patch for some reason, and waking up that morning to a house full of hand cut hearts from my Honey just melted me.  Then I found out he wrote both Dellie and I our own poems, and I decided I had to stay married to this man forever.

[8] Making new friends.  I got an amazing opportunity over this last fall semester to hang out at a dear friend's house every week.  Both our husbands were busy the same evening, so kiddo and I would go over to her house to share dinner and build a deeper friendship, both for the adults and the children.

[7] Our fifth anniversary. We celebrated with some quality fun at the aquarium and finished the evening at Ted's Hot Dogs. It was fun doing something a little different and more family-oriented to celebrate just how much our marriage has evolved over the five years we've spent together. I know in the big scheme of life, five years is a drop, but I feel sort of accomplished that we made it this far, and with no signs of stopping any time soon.

[6] All the fixing up that happened in this house.  In some ways, they really shouldn't be considered favorite moments, but they are definitely a memorable series of events that happened over this year.  First, the water heater, which resulted in a week of freezing showers and three holes in the wall. Then the fridge, which took six repair visits and probably a hundred dollars in spoiled food before finally getting a new one.  Lastly, the pipes in our kitchen sink blowing apart because someone [ahem] plugged the disposal with potato peelings from Thanksgiving.  Oops.

[5] Dealing with my c-section.  I spent a good chunk of this year working through to a healing place with how my birth experience went, including sharing my own story to the whole wide world.  I am thankful for how much love and support my husband gave during all that time, and thankful that I have come to a stronger understanding of God's sovereignty, love and faithfulness through my struggle.

[4] The movie making extravaganzas.  This year my husband made ten short films, and I got the chance to help out with many of them in one capacity or another.  The best part was discovering an interest in editing, which I really hope to get better at over this next year.

[3] Our surprise visit for my dad's birthday.  I learned a few tips on flying with a one year old, and we really enjoyed getting to surprise family and friends.  The cold weather was also a huge bonus :)

[2] Watching kiddo fall in love with water.  Which is a good thing since we live in one of the hottest cities in the U.S.  She enjoyed playing in pools and splash parks so much this year that she gets almost morose when we don't let her jump in the fountain at the mall.

[1] This moment.  I still well up with all kinds of happy wife and mommy feelings when I see this picture.

Christmas Decorating: Year Two

I can't believe we decorated for Christmas the weekend after Thanksgiving.  It was far too early to decorate for this family, but we did! And I'm sure you've been waiting all year for the reveal of this year's Christmas tree.

[Background on the tree - we decided to start a tradition of creating a Christmas tree every year.  For the full details, head over to last year's decorating post.]

This year's tree was inspired by... my child.  I thought it would be really fun to have a tree she could play with, as a way to start being involved in the Christmas season.

cost: $20

supplies: felt, embroidery floss, buttons, velcro

inspiration: here and here

So this one was definitely more expensive than last year's practically-free-tree.  This is largely due to my jumping in maybe a little too far to this project. *Wink*  Originally the plan was to just stick a 2D felt tree to the wall with ornament shaped felt pieces for her to mess with to her heart's content, but then I saw THIS.

And I had to make one myself.

Three weeks later, it's done.  And it's almost everything I dreamed it would be.

It's cute. 

Kiddo loves playing with it.

Unfortunately, so does the cat.

As a whole, I am really pleased with how this year's tree turned out.  While it did take three times as long to make as I had planned, the end result was something that was worth the pain both figuratively and literally.  The buttons have turned out to be a little advanced for Kiddo's fine motor skills, but I'm going to assume that won't be the case next year. This tree is definitely something that will be coming out each Christmas until it gets destroyed - hopefully by small children loving it to death and not by the cat jumping out from under it to scare the dogs.