(Almost) Monthly Wrap-Up

Wow, my last weekly wrap-up was on November 12, I've been slacking . . . let's see, what have we been up to?

A never-ending cold. I had the longest-lasting cold I have EVER had! It took forever to get back on top of things, and I had to make sure to not push too hard or I'd get to coughing and not be able to stop, and then get a headache. So, we slowed down on things like read-alouds for school, and non-"essential" chores.

Thanksgiving - we had a lovely, quiet (as quiet as it can be with our 3 chatter-boxes daughters) Thanksgiving that was "just us". The big girls were on the schedule to tell children's story at church that week and we decided it made more sense to just enjoy our immediate family than have a rushed trip to visit extended family and rush back for church. The big girls asked to be in charge of Thanksgiving dinner, and made us a lovely meal of angel hair pasta with red sauce and alfredo, raw veggies and dip, sweet potato fries, probably something else I'm forgetting . . . and homemade chocolate orange ice cream for dessert. It was a nice day. I got an inexpensive tablecloth and had it on the table that day and after we ate I passed out Sharpies and we each wrote something we're thankful for, and the date, I plan to use it every year (if not ON Thanksgiving, near Thanksgiving, for those years when we do travel to visit family on Thanksgiving) and keep adding to it.

Decorating for Christmas - when we lived in MD, I always used the weekend after Thanksgiving to do my Christmas decorating, but it's been abit more sporatic since moving to PA, since we sometimes are gone for Thanksgiving (in MD all the relatives lived close enough that we just went to whoever's house for Thanksgiving dinner, not the whole weekend). But this year since we stayed home, we got to decorate on the weekend after Thanksgiving again. The girls had decided that this year they wanted a small, simple tree with just lights and I found a nice inexpensive live potted plant/tree that I can hopefully keep alive as a plant after xmas, we shall see . . . I like how it looks though. I gave the girls the choice of Advent wreath or Jesse tree and they chose Advent wreath this year. They inherited my love of candles, I think I'll have to figure out a way to incorporate candles into a Jesse Tree display to convince them to do that again another year LOL.  We're reading Jotham's Journey, and loving it!

School - we're reviewing a Spanish program, Little Bit and I are reviewing a preschool nutrition program, our slowness going through history so far worked out nicely to have us studying the Pilgrims near Thanksgiving, so that, combined with me not feeling good, meant I slowed things down abit more and spread the Pilgrims out over 2-3 weeks to take us right up to Thanksgiving. We thoroughly enjoyed an audiobook about the Pilgrims that gave alot more detail into their lives than I ever remember hearing. It conveniently gave us a great children's story for the girls to tell on the Sabbath after Thanksgiving too :) Now we're moving on into Benjamin Franklin and such.

We've had some lovely warm weather for lots of outdoor play, this time of year I try to make sure they soak up any good outdoor time we get to store up for when it's cold and icky!

Dh's office Christmas Party.  The big girls were quite proud of themselves. They chose to participate in the $5 gift-exchange game (everyone brings a wrapped, unmarked $5 gift, they put them all in the middle, everyone gets a number, and when your number is called you can either choose a gift from the middle and open it or steal someone's already-opened gift. If someone takes your gift, you get to steal from someone else or get one from the middle).  Sassy happened to choose a box of chocolates from the middle, and when someone took MiniMe's original gift, she stole another box of chocolates (both were Witman's samplers) from someone else. So they were now both happily sitting there with "twin" boxes of chocolate. But then someone took MiniMe's from her. There's a rule you can't re-steal the gift that was just taken from you but it took the 2 of them about a split-second (and slight nudge from Daddy) to get around that rule. MiniMe took Sassy's box of chocolates, which left Sassy free to legally steal "MiniMe's" chocolates from the guy who had taken them from MiniMe. Everyone thought it was hillarious, and the girls were quite proud of themselves.

This past weekend dh and I celebrated our 14th (!!!!) anniversary! As usual, the big girls got to spend the weekend (plus . . .) at Mama and Papa's. I tried to convince my parents that in the interest of "fairness" they had to take Little Bit too, since the first year they took the big girls was when they were the age that Little Bit is now (nevermind that she still nurses to sleep (they didn't), she still sleeps with us (they didn't), and she often wakes up during the night (they didn't). AND mom & dad just kept them for one night that year, whereas now they keep the big girls for a weekend or beyond, so it wouldn't work well to keep Little Bit one night. It was still fun to give them a hard time about it LOL). So we've had Little Bit with us, but our neighbors/adopted grandparents did babysit her one evening so we could go out to dinner on our own. It's been a nice weekend. My "anniversary present" was that dh finally replaced the LCD screen on the coffee maker, so now I can actually read what the machine is telling me instead of guessing what the random lines mean LOL.

Meanwhile, the big girls have been riding bikes and doing junior ranger programs and I don't know what all else at Mama and Papa's. Little Bit & I will go down later this week to join in the fun and then bring the big girls home.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the fun stuff we've been doing, but in the interest of actually getting this posted, I'm going to leave it at that for now.