Have I Really Been Gone THAT Long?

I do this every year. I get overwhelmed by Christmas--to the point of breakdown,--and I write lots of blogs in my head but cannot find the time to sit down at a computer. I feel like I start earlier every year and STILL never have enough time. A lot of the problem is that I've tried to go handmade for all the girls in my family the last couple of years. I can't wait to show you pictures of the some of the finished products, but would you believe that I have not completed these projects that I started a YEAR AND A HALF ago?! They were supposed to be given last Christmas, have now been deferred to this Christmas, and Jeremiah looked at me a couple days ago and said, "Step away from that needle {I am embroidering, not doing drugs in case anybody is worried :)} and go buy however many presents you haven't finished. You can give them the finished projects whenever they're done, but I can't live with you being the Grinch any longer."

It's sad. I really, really love embroidering. I love thinking about and praying for the gift's recipient as I stitch away. I love the sea of color choices and deciding on just the right combination each time. I love watching a project go from nothing to something finished (since there are so few things in my life as a Mom that are ever finished). I love the order provided by each little stitch paired with the creativity of the whole picture. I love the books on CD I listen to as I work...I JUST HATE HOW SLOW I AM AND HOW FEW HOURS ARE IN A DAY!

And now, as though I were not struggling enough, I fell this weekend and broke my butt. No really, you read correctly. It feels like my tail bone is shattered into a million tiny pieces--even though Jeremiah won't let me go to the ER and get an X-ray to prove just how seriously injured I am, because he says there's nothing anybody can do about it even if it is shattered. "Do you want me to make you a butt cast?" He's offered several times, with much too much of a smile.

It happened this weekend in Leavenworth (which is where all these pictures were taken). We went for the town lighting ceremony, a little sledding, and some hot chocolate.






I was staying safe, taking pictures on the sidelines, when baby girl Dapples got cold and wanted to be held by her Mommy. My strong-willed child so rarely wants to be cuddled, that I jumped at the opportunity--even with slick cowboy boots, standing on ice, with a camera around my neck. As I took a cautious step down a very tiny but icey hill, both feet went straight into the air and my arms gripped Dapples more tightly instead of breaking my fall. My coccyx took the brunt of it all, and I am truly wondering if I'll ever walk, sit, or lie down comfortably again. It happened Sunday evening, and on Monday morning the pain was so bad, I passed out twice just trying to get out of bed. I am not kidding--and I've never passed out in my life. Take care of your butt. It seems pretty useless until you can't use it :)

Fortunately, Jeremiah's best friend Tommy has been here visiting us. Bless his heart, he came for a manly adventure in Washington and yesterday he went to the grocery store, cleaned my house, and entertained my children for much of the day. I love you Tommy Tolleson!

I hope I'll be back soon, but considering how bad it has hurt to sit and write this post, I'm not making any promises. I'll leave you with our Christmas card. The front picture is from the Christmas tree cutting adventure and the back picture is the girls' awe at waking to find the city covered in snow.

Designed by Whitney--my best friend since second grade. If you'd like to order from her next year, give me your email and I'll pass it on to her. Thanks Wee!! We love them!

MERRY, MERRY CHRISTMAS BLOG FRIENDS!!!

Romans 7:19 At Work

{Keke, my little sister, talked to Santa about sending the girls some elves--to work mischief in our house throughout the rest of the Christmas season. They arrived via the chimney this morning, and these pictures are of that and some shots of this morning's breakfast. Food on faces, squinty eyes and all. At what age are they going to be mad at me for posting these kind of pictures of them?}

For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do NOT want to do--this I keep on doing. Romans 7:19, emphasis mine

This child. This child has been giving me fits.

It's as though things I thought we mastered at 12 months age, now, at 3 YEARS seem to be giving her trouble again. She does things...like playing in the toilet water, rubbing my face lotion (my one big extravagance in my make-up bag) in her hair, writing all over her legs with markers, knocking an entire row of shampoo bottles over in the grocery store, or jumping from the TOP of the couch-back and hitting her forehead on the coffee table--you can see the bruise remnants below.

When you add this behavior to the fact that she is pathologically clumsy, and falls somewhere around 1,425 times per day, I am not sure how she is going to survive much longer.

One of yesterday's falls happened at a most inopportune time. Before I exercise, I try to get my day's tasks started and the house decently straight (as in my bed made and the dishes in the sink), and everybody dressed...which means I rarely make it out of the door before lunch-time. It had been a particularly frustrating morning with the Dapples. The morning began with her standing up beside her chair at breakfast and just peeing all over the floor. "Oh, OK! Mary Aplin. Let me get that for you! Don't worry about the fact that I asked you 30 seconds ago if you needed to go potty?! If the floor's more convenient, then go right ahead."

As I'm Cloroxing the mess and getting her pajamas in the washing machine, I hear mother-Pace reassuring her, "Don't worry Mary Aplin, you're not going to get a spanking."

"Pace, you are not the Mom and are not allowed to decide when spankings will or will not be administered."

Mary Aplin also managed to perform a handful of the above tasks before I had them out of the door in warm coats, mittens on hands, blanket ready, and Locks rigged to a belt because I couldn't find his leash--All this so that I could take a run and work off some of the morning's frustrations?

There is an incredibly steep hill that I have to climb right out of our driveway. The girls wanted to walk up it (Praise the Lord!), so I pushed an empty double stroller to the top of the hill before they climbed in. As soon as they sat down, I noticed something was wrong. I couldn't move the stroller forward at all. I looked down to find one of the tires was "wallering around on the rim" kind of flat. Ugghhh. "Get out girls, I have to go back to the house and try to put some air in this tire."

As we headed back down the mountain towards our house, I hear a scream of pain behind me and turn to see Dapples, face plant number 435 of the day, on harsh concrete. In a panic I attempt to throw the stroller break on and toss Locks' belt/leash to Pace. I turn and sprint towards my screaming victim and then hear, "MOM!" out of Pace's mouth. I swivel mid-stride and see the double stroller picking up speed as it hurtles towards Pace and Locks, then gets turned because of the flat tire (thank goodness, sort of) and tumbles into the road. The shock of taking the curb flips the stroller, scattering my phone and car keys into the road as well. All of this, in front of a mini-van climbing up the road.

I gave up the run and we went back to the house and ate grilled cheese sandwiches instead.

While the falling incident was obviously not Dapple's "fault," there are so many other things that ARE. However, the baffling thing about Mary Aplin is that you can NOT stay mad at her. Two minutes after she gets in trouble, she'll come and tap on the side of my leg. I look down to the face blotchy with crying and wet with tears and she says, "Torry Mommy" (we've got a little lisp), just before she clutches my leg in a tight hug and cries harder. Over and over I hear Romans 7:19 play in my head as I go down to my knees and take her into a proper hug. My heart turns into a puddle as I feel her real penitence and recall all the times God has offered me Grace for "the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing."

Surely, she will never play in toilet water again...at least not for fifteen minutes :)

Let It Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

Just look at the winter wonderland we awoke to find this morning!


Can you see the Space Needle peeking through the storm?

The girls preschool was not cancelled, so I got to brave our STEEP hills covered with snow. I was talking to the girls about leaving their seatbelts securely fastened, because Mommy had never driven in snow before...As I cranked the car, guess what came blasting through my speakers, "Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!" It took my nerves away :), and made the drive to school feel more like a sleigh ride.

Thanks, Aunt Taylor for our Sou'Westers. Since they came from England, Mommy thinks they are the coolest things ever. And she just realized they are on backwards... ;) They were perfect for our first snowy day (and Dapples refused to take hers off once she got to school). Be back soon with a more substantial post (or maybe Jeremiah, I'm trying to get him to come back this week).

I'm Sure Stranger Things Have Happened...

...But I can't remember when.

Today we're going to talk about Pace. My first-born, my right-hand lady, my truth-seeker, my tender-heart. At her current stage, she can be hard to spend long periods of time with. It's not that we don't get along, and it's not that I don't firmly believe we have a beautiful lifetime friendship spreading out before us. It's that right now she is burdened by questions...and I get to field 95% of them. They aren't just questions that leave me wishing I'd saved my eighth grade science book (although there are plenty of those); they're questions about intricate heart matters--that I often cannot answer (Like, "When is God going to give me a perfect body and take me up in the sky?" Guess they're studying Revelation in Sunday school??). She hates the, "I don't know," response and usually comes back at me with, "Ugghhh, Mom, we are just not understanding each other right now." Well no, FIVE-YEAR-OLD, I guess we're not. I guess you're just talking right over my head. It's humbling and maddening at the same time.

Because of this daily diatribe, I have vowed to answer any question I can truthfully and to the best of my ability (As long as I'm not having a "Mommy cannot take ANY MORE questions right now. No, don't even ask if you can have more milk. That's a question." I hit that wall at least once a day; let's keep it real.). So recently, Pace has started asking me what different meats we eat are made of. Like the ham sandwich I pack in her lunch every day--"Mom, what's ham made out of?" "Pig." Yes! That was an easy one. "Mom, is an egg really a baby chicken?" I'm gonna tell you that answer got a bit more complicated--trying to be truthful (it is an egg and not a baby, right?) without launching into the birds and the bees at five.

Anywho, this had been going on for a couple of days when I went to pick her up from school and her teacher pulled me to the side and said, "I thought you should know that Pace is refusing to eat her sandwiches any more because they are made of pig." "What??!!!" My first thought was, "Dadgum Seattlites and their diets! What kid is turning my child into a vegetarian?" After questioning her, however, I discovered that the only dadgum Seattlite turning Pace into a vegetarian is...me.

She very innocently and tearfully explained to me that she did not know anyone else who didn't eat meat, but she never wanted to eat it again. She said that she loves all animals and can't bear the thought of eating one ever again. When told to eat her dinner that her mother made her, she had a gag reflex trying take down her baked chicken and apologized to me for not being able to eat it. When I explained that God gave us animals so that we could eat them--that eating meat is what makes her strong, she asked if God wanted people to eat Locks too.

Out of nowhere, my deer hunting, meat-loving, "It's not dinner if there's not meat on my plate" family had created a true convicted vegetarian--who has never even heard that word spoken. I'm sure stranger things have happened...but I can't remember when.

What Jeremiah and I have come to, I think, is that she is not old enough to make a decision like that for herself. However, the fact that she is so sweet-spirited and apologetic about the whole mess makes us want to work with her when we can. I've started making hummus roll-ups for her lunches instead of ham sandwiches, and if she wants the black bean and corn quesadilla at the Mexican restaurant instead of chicken, it's ok. When we have dinner at home as a family, she has to eat some of everything I cook--just like always.

How about I leave you with one last strange happening with Pace? Jeremiah and I came home from a date last weekend and our babysitter said, "I don't know if this will be an issue, but I just thought you should know... I was putting the girls to bed and Pace got really upset when I would not say prayers with her. I tried to explain that different people have different bedtime rituals, and I brush my teeth--just like her--but I don't say prayers. She then said, 'You mean you don't know JESUS?!'"

Try fielding that one from a career nanny with good references that you hired....Aggghhh!

[These pictures are of the girls riding the new bicycles they got for their birthdays. They saved up chore and birthday money and bought them with their own little stash (Thank you family for the money gifts!). It was a sweet day and Pace still goes in the garage on the days she can't ride "just to look at it for a little while."]

All For One...

...And One for All!!!

This past week has been a doozy. My Dad flew in on Tuesday. Konie followed him on Wednesday.

Then my Aunt Jan, Uncle Michael, (cousin) Kimberly, and (her husband) Kevin followed on Thursday. AND Saturday, I was throwing a double birthday party with a Three Musketeers theme. Would you like a peek at my To-Do List for the week:

I wrote it out because on Sunday I was having panic attacks about when and how I was going to get it all done. A list helps me like that. Even though I stayed approximately a day behind all week, I at least took comfort in knowing everything had an allotted time.

Konie's arrival on Thursday was an absolute gift from God himself. She cleaned and entertained and never said "No" to any request the girls made. I think she went into a comma each night from how ragged Pace and Mary Aplin ran her. On Saturday morning before the big party, we both stepped out of our bedrooms bright and early to start to work...And we matched :)

I've always been a sucker for a party theme, and Pace and Mary Aplin's request for a Barbie and The Three Musketeers birthday, was a party planning dream for me.

(I hope you can read the poem, because I am super proud of it :))

The invitations were from this seller on etsy. She was great, GREAT to work with and I love her stuff. The only complaint I have is that the actual invitations were smaller than I expected. She had the dimensions written in plain view, but I envisioned them as being larger. I bet she could make them bigger for you if you ask, though.

No I did not make their capes. They also came from etsy, but this seller.

Ok, so after all that set up and all that planning, we began the wait to see if anybody would show up. I had this horrible fear that nobody was going to come and the girls would be scarred for life. Why would they come? They don't know us. And most of the people out here don't strike me as the types to throw a themed kids' birthday party. They probably think I'm nuts. I just had to write a rhyme on the invitation didn't I?

Jeremiah got into the spirit and helped the girls work off some nervous energy as we waited...

And, since we were all dressed, we got a little family picture.

And slowly but surely (thank you Lord), they did come...

And they decorated Musketeer masks,

And played "Disarm the Musketeer" (Our version of pin the tail on the donkey, which Konie manned like a champion)

And ate birthday cake

And danced along with Barbie at the Musketeer Ball

And got scared of that weird Southern woman who is way over-animated

And everyone was so kind and we had such a good time, that I wondered what in the world I'd been so worried about all week.

By the end of the day, we were all feeling a little sugar-loaded, dazed, and confused...

But oh-so-very thankful and happy.