Saturday, November 30, 2013

I've got plenty to be Thankful for

I Thank God every day for all my blessings, but maybe I just don't say them outloud enough, or only in November.  On facebook, I've been writing down things every day this month that I am Thankful for, so I thought I'd list them out here too.

I am Thankful for:

1. The Cuteness.  For Cocoa, Candy, Chocolate, and Charlie Brown on a belated Halloween.
2.  Our good health.  My husband is a Maniac who ran (and sometimes walked) the Monumental Marathon.
3. For time with other moms who "get me" and that don't mind at all that Children's Books make me cry.  It was a good good day at baby Meghan G.'s baby shower.
4. Beastly Big Babies who want to drink all the time.  I'm so Thankful Jacob is Healthy, I probably don't say it enough.  Though, I wonder, is it time for a growth spurt?
5. Naptime.  My children are not doing well with the time change.
6. 5 consecutive hours of sleep.  I can't remember how long its been.
7. Sam, being my sweet pumpkin, and listening him be able to count up to 110 and  back down.
8. Time with Friends.  First I spent the morning with my old MOPS buddies, then my girlfriend Caryn came by for lunch/drinks, and it was just a good day for Quality Time.
9. Time with Family, watching Chris get his orange belt and turkey pie dinner with my Dad and Stepmom.
10. Brother in law serving abroad, and my Dad who served in the Air Force and who took Eric and Chris to their first Colts game.
11. Cathy C. who came over and helped me pfeffernuss and springerle cookies.
12 Children's Tylenol as Jacob's second tooth breaks through/
13. Gingerbread syrup that Eric bought online because Starbucks was dumb and decided to not serve gingerbread lattes in central Indiana this year.  Your loss Starbucks - we're making them at home!
14. That Eric surprised me  by purchasing rum.  When I said, Oh I wish we had a bit of rum to help finish off that last bit of spiced apple
15. All Teachers.  God Bless Them!  It's not just a Gift, it's a Calling, and I'm so glad they answered their Calls.
16. My husband's Wonderful family - got to spend the day with Mom W. and we got to host a Baby Shower for Karl and Erica's firstborn sweetboy!
17. We didn't get hit by a tornado...they did about 15 miles away.
18. My friend Kelly, who passed away in 2009, it would have been her birthday, she was integral in getting Eric and I together.
19. That my full time job involves being at home with my sweetboys, and even though I have to 'work' the holidays, it's is still a lot of fun, and that I don't have to work retail.
20. My elder sweetboys who were getting along while we waited together for the bus.  Eric had an early meeting and they were getting along And helpful; it was historic.
21. I can be pretty productive in 20 minute increments, since that's all the baby is sleeping.
22. Answered Prayers  - specifically when he answers the health of me and my sweetboys, as a friend's 1 month old baby was getting discharged after being admitted with RSV, and visiting another friend who'd had a hysterectomy for uterine cancer.  Both are recovering well!
23. A Pool Party with Sam's friends, and a cool snowy evening drive home.
24. Overdose of Cuteness at Church when the kids all got up and sang, "Wanna Be Thankful"
25. Christmas music and Christmas cookie baking with my friend Cathy C.
26. Eucerin cream and Aquaphor - the pastes of choice for Jacob's eczema
27. The healthy birth of James Dean Willman
28. All my friends and family
29. Kopetsky's car wash.  Chris puked in the car and Eric took it to get it cleaned, now it shines like the top of the Chrysler building.
30. My sweet husband who goes on a gatorade run for me at 10 o'clock at night because I'm sick.

What a waste of Turkey Pie.

Also known as, What I did on my Thanksgiving Vacation, blessedly, the last blog of November.



Happy Thanksgiving from my beastly boys.  

We did what we always do, we drove up to Marion for the holiday to have Thanksgiving meal with Aunt Betty, Grandpa Willman, and as many of the cousins as can make it.  It's kind of an unwritten rule, that as long as Grandpa Willman is still going strong, and at 97, he is, we will keep going up to Marion for holidays.  Plus, Eric's extended Fam is just so much fun.  
This was so much nicer drive than last year.  I was sick, having been in the hospital for a placental tear, and they told me to do Nothing over the holiday weekend, it was the first days of my bedrest.  Though I thought it was just for the weekend at the time.  Ha.   Anyway, this trip north started off so well.  Within moments of leaving the house, Chris was reading some library books and Sam was reading too, and Jake fell asleep.  


Eric and I got to talk.  I thought this was going to be Great.  A great day! 
Only....then just outside of Elwood, Christopher's mild complaints of a tummy ache got quite emphatic.  And just as we pulled over, he started to puke.  He threw up the entire contents of his stomach and then some. 
We couldn't really do much, so we cleaned his face, and drove on to the nearest gas station.  
He said he felt Much Better.  I think maybe he'd eaten something.  My husband, who is awesome, cleaned as much of the yak as he could, and put the dirties in the spare backpack we keep in the car.  Somehow Chris managed to avoid his own clothes, or the library books, the stroller, and anything valuable.  Good Job. Just got the space next to his seat, the buckle, his coat.  But he felt great afterwards.  
So we continued on up to Marion. 

They'd held the start of the meal for us, so as soon as we got there, we disinfected ourselves, and dug in. 
Not surprisingly, Chris didn't want anything.  Eventually, he ate a couple rolls and a bite of turkey, and that was fine, I didn't want him eating much more than that anyway.  He didn't care about eating, but he just wanted to Play with his cousins.   


Meanwhile, we introduced Jacob to Thanksgiving.  We had made some squash, and we let Jacob have some bites of it.  He liked it.  Didn't eat much more than 3 or 4 bites, but he isn't really one to eat a lot anyway, so he did great.  


The kids ran rampant around the house, wanting to play inside and outside.   When Chris went out, he borrowed Jake's cape.  I tried to get a picture of him, but the kid never held still enough. Guess that was a good sign he felt better.  We ate ourselves stuffed though.  So after some digestion time, we decided to take a walk.  All of us.  


I even bundled Jacob up to take him out for a walk.  
He didn't like it.  We made it about 2 houses down, and Jake demanded to go back home.  
I think it's the hat. 


The weather on Friday (Black Friday) was cool, but warm enough for Eric to get on the roof and do the lights.  We appointed the boys as "Helpers".  
Christopher had two jobs - the first was as ladder holder, as Eric went up and down, and the second was phone holder, so that he could call 911 if Eric fell off the ladder.  It always makes me nervous when Eric gets up on ladders, especially since this one is exactly the same size as our 2 story house, there isn't much give if you know what I mean. So since Jacob has kept me indoors the last two Thanksgivings, I put Chris to work.  And actually, he did a great job, until Sam came outside and distracted him, but by then Eric was mostly done.   It was so great to be productive for the holidays. We used to travel on Thanksgiving weekend, now we just zip up to Marion for Thanksgiving day, and get our decorating done the rest of the weekend.  Works well for me! 


Saturday was a better day for working Indoors.  Eric started the trees, and I entertained the boys. 


Or shall I say, the boys entertained me.  
We had fun being silly and taking 'selfies', pictures of ourselves.  


I think Jake is beginning to pose for the camera.  
Little blurry but still adorable.



The elder boys were thrilled about the Christmas tree going up.  
Jake didn't know what that was all about.   


Jake was happy just to play with me and my camera. 

Saturday evening, we went to my Dad's for "leftovers".  


My stepmom is a phenomenal cook.  If she were so inclined, she could knock all those people off  Top Chef and all of those other shows.  She puts out a beautiful spread, even for just 'leftovers'.  Since we don't make it for Thanksgiving, we usually end up getting to visit them over the weekend.  She takes her leftovers from Thanksgiving - turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, peas and gravy, and puts them in a pie crust.  She makes leftovers marvelous.  


And I normally can't help myself, I stuff myself. For some reason, after listening to Jake scream all the way down, my stomach hurt, and so did my head.  I was feeling rather queasy.  That didn't stop me from eating some pie.  OK, I had a few bites, and some squash.  Oh, I love the squash.  But it wasn't sitting well,  not at all.  Didn't stop me from half a dozen bites.


I think Jake ate more squash than I did.


Then my stomach started making really loud, obnoxious noises.  I ended up in the bathroom.  Repeatedly.  Luckily, the kids and Oma and Opa had fun playing games, looking at the tree, saying hello to their german shepherd Schnitzel.  My colon empty, or so I thought, we made a break for it, so I could get home.  I thought I was in the clear.  I didn't think I had anything left to give.   Until we loaded up into the car.  Eric got all the kids, and their gear into the car.  My stepmom gave me a sprite for the road.  I sat down and opened the Sprite.  Eric shifted the car into reverse, and I had to tell him to stop.  I got the door opened Just in time to barf all over my father's driveway.  So embarassing.  At least it was warm enough outside that they could break out the hose to hose down the driveway.   Did I mention how mortified I was.  I'm 38 years old, I should be able to hold it together than to puke in Daddy's driveway.  Ugh.  Oh well, at least Eric pointed out, that I hadn't puked in the car, like Chris a few days before, since he had taken the car to Kopetsky's.  But sheesh, what  a waste of turkey pie.  I made it home and  have just ended up just purging all night long.  After the kids went down, Eric ran for gatorade for me.  You know you're sick when you can barely keep gatorade down.  But once it's down, it's the Best stuff in the world.  God Bless Gatorade.  





I Wanna Be Thankful

It's another good day for catching up on blogs.  And as November comes to a close, I'm happy to show off how wonderful my boys are.   This last weekend, when we went to church, we were totally surprised to find out that the Sunday School Kids were all singing for the 2nd service.  How Wonderful!  I just happen to always carry my point and shoot camera in my purse, so I was able to sneak some pictures and stuff.


Sam slays me with the lifting of his shirt Every Time he gets up in front of the church.  


I should have known the boys were up to something when Chris wanted to wear his Dress Up shirt to church.  He usually argues with me.  I think he knew they were singing.  He did look good up there though. 


First they sang a jazzy Amazing Grace, then they sang "Wanna Be" about how they wanna be Thankful.
Me too.  Me too!
I felt jump started into the holidays by witnessing these kids sing with such Joy. 
I'd been in such a funk, but God was sending me a sign.  


Recently, our church has started a Contemporary service, the Grace service, at the same time as the Traditional service.  It's mostly lead by laypersons, but we swap out the pastor and the associate every other week switching services.  It's wild to me that we can drink coffee and the kids can color right there during the service.  The kids do better in that service.  But on this Sunday, the kids went from singing at the Traditional Service to Singing at the Grace service.  The attendees at both were so excited.  


For some reason, they put Chris in the back row, since he's old enough to be considered one of the 'big kids' but he's hard to see back there.   But he did a great job. 


I was so proud, not just of Chris and Sam, but of all the kids.  
And I am so Thankful for their teachers, finding The Spirit, when I'm having trouble, and sharing it.  
God Bless Them.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving


We are so Thankful for you, our friends and loved ones.  
Happy Thanksgiving.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Celebrating the newest Willman


Last Saturday, the 16th, I helped host a Baby Shower for my sister-in-law, Erica. 
Karl and Erica are expecting their first sweetboy at the beginning of January. 


32 weeks and looking Fabulous!!


These two bitty boys are not going to be the youngest or smallest Willmans for much longer.  
Surprisingly, Jacob seems to be catching up to Jeremiah.  I'm not used to having a normal size baby.  JJ has a bigger head, and sweet blond hair compared to Jake's brown fuzz, but now that he's moving, Jacob as a rollier pollier middle.  Yup, he'll be catching up soon enough!   Nice photobomb Kaylee. :) 


The next two Willman babies.  
Dueling Bellies!


Kaylee and Alexis being sweet.  
I just loved this picture.  They were having a lot of fun being silly and drinking punch.  The punch was a big hit for the girls, just sprite and rainbow sherbert.  


Awww.. Erica, the Grandmas, and the haul.  


Sometimes I just want to smack people that are all beautiful, and glowy, and gorgeous when they are pregnant.  I never got that.  Erica, on the other hand, she's all beautiful, and gorgeous and glowy, she didn't take a bad picture the whole day.  Even opening diapers, she looks fabulous. 


Aww...opening outfits.  I love it when they have little monkey feet or bear bottoms.  


We started Baby Boy's new library.  Just the essentials, you know. 


Aww.. Baby's 1st Batman book.  
Yeah, that was our doing.  


Erica (and Karl too I suppose) is a big Batman fan.  
So we needed to start baby boy up right. 


I crocheted the baby a bitty blankee.  Just big enough for a bucket size.  I bought 18 tons of yarn, thinking it was so thin, I'd need more than usual, but it stitched up fine, was silky soft, so what I thought was going to be alternating stripes ended up just being 3 swaths.  His nursery is going to be jungle themed, so, orange, green, and brown seemed perfect.  


Baby Boy's new room.  
They haven't narrowed down a name yet.  


Dueling baby bellies again.  Travis and Kelli are due at the beginning of December, and Karl and Erica at the beginning of January.  Both are expecting boys.  It's going to be a Good Time when we all get together for Willman Family Fests as all these sweetboys get older.  Talk about an overdose of Cuteness.  

After the shower, Mom and I did a bit of shopping/hunting.  That's when we decided to meet for supper at the fam's favorite sushi place in Avon.  Hiroshima.  It is now owned by the people that used to own the sushi place Ginza, where we would go when we were dating.  Of course, back then we ate off the grill, now we don't even bother with the grill, just the sushi.  We went with all the kids.  That was the Craziest part of all.  The kid even had a good time.  It had been at least a year since we'd been....actually, I want to say it was after Mom's retirement party in June 2012.    Anyway, it had been a long while.  And we did it justice.  And there were a few new treats too.  Christopher seemed open to trying new things besides chicken fingers. 


He tried some seaweed salad.  And liked it!  Well, he liked it enough to have a couple more bites.  He may need a bit more practice with chopsticks.  Sam liked my soup...mostly just the broth.  


We tried to give Jacob a piece of rice, but he gagged.  He was more interested in Daddy's sake.  Um No Sir, you can wait a few more years for that!  

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Belated Birthday Celebration


We were sick at Kaylee's birthday this year.  It's at the end of October, and just as fall break ended, we got cooties.  So we had to postpone her fam birthday party to the next weekend, which was the 2nd of November. The boys were so excited to come over and play with her, they were bouncing off the walls, which worked well since there were so many cousins to play with.  I guess I could have also called this Cousins Gone Wild.


Kaylee's other cousins M and A were also there, so there was tons of fun to be had.  My boys love to play with Kaylee, and her toys.  


Meanwhile, Jacob and Jeremiah were having some fun on the floor.  Jeremiah is on the move, practically crawling.  Jake on the other hand, barely tolerates tummy time.  But with Jeremiah to play with, he held it there for a little bit before flopping over.  He really liked all of his toys.  Somehow we managed to get rid of all our little boy toys, you know, the ones that are great for not quite 1 year old crowd.  We've picked up a couple gently used saucers though, and been given a play mat, so he keeps busy.  But it was Like Christmas for Jake when he got to play with all these new (to him) toys.  He's really becoming a lot of interactive fun, enjoying toys and people.  


Jake and Sam had fun playing with one of Jeremiah's toys...together.  It may be historic. 


Dad asked us a favor, that we sit all the kids on the couch, to get a picture of all 6 grandkids.  Of course, getting 6 grandkids together is like herding cats.  


Then we got to open presents.  Kaylee enjoyed the Adventure Time shirt we found for her.  It's one of her favorite shows....she's even sucked the boys into it, a bit. 


Birthday Brownies!



Then the kids showed us their costumes from Halloween, Lexi was a cat, and Kaylee was a werewolf.  Apparently, she was putting the makeup on herself, so after Jake and I left to go home and go to bed, so put some on Chris too.  


He does make a pretty kitty.  They have so much fun with their cousins, we just don't get to spend as much time with them as we want.  We all love them so.  

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Making up for lost time

It's a good morning for Blogging, and I'm going to finally catch up today.  Who am I kidding? Well, at least get a start. My children keep growing, stuff keeps happening, and I haven't felt much like documenting it.  There's just something about this month.  It's been rough. November reminds me of my Aunt Debbie.  Her birthday was at the end of November.  We would go up and visit over the holidays.  For a few years, we'd go up to Michigan for Christmas.  But once we started having a more busy life here in Indy at Christmas (about the time I got married) we had to stay closer to home, so we'd go up at Thanksgiving.
I'm depressed.  I'm finding it hard to blog. I miss my aunt. I miss being with my family at the holidays.  I miss the fun we had.  I know it's mostly my decision to go north anymore, but how I miss it.  I've been in a funk.  I miss my family.  I said that already.  Well, I do.  How much I would love them to sit down and enjoy my boys.  They are a lot of fun.  They keep growing so fast.  One of the things that got me this week was when I started moving out the 3-6 month clothes from Jake's drawers.  I pulled out this outfit, and got very sad.


Aunt Debbie gave this to me when Chris was born.  They had come down for New Year's with my Mom, and they came down to our place on New Year's eve.  They got to meet Chris, love on him.  These were the early days when we couldn't keep a bag on him, so we wrapped him in blankets, he was so tiny, he fit in them just fine.  I was so glad they came to visit us because who knew when we were going to get out again, to go somewhere besides the doctor's office.  We didn't get out much at all that first 6 months.  And as it turned out, this visit was extra special, it was the last time they came to town.  She passed away at the beginning of September from cancer.  Ovarian.  She'd beat it once, but when it came back, it returned with a vengence.  But she got to meet Chris, and vice versa, and I'm so Thankful for that.  


I remember picking up the outfit she gave us, out of the box and thinking, this is Huge!  There's no way he'll ever fit into it.  He did.  But it was big on him, it is so warm, that he didn't wear it for long, it was summertime when Chris was in 3-6 month clothes.  Sam didn't wear it at all.  But Jake wore it a couple times, it was very warm on him, perfect for those freak cold fall days.  But now it was time for me to box it up.  And it makes me sad.  Sad that this is my last baby.  Sad he never got to meet Aunt Debbie.  Sad that he just keeps growing.  He won't be my baby boy for much longer.  


I suppose if I was really bad off depressed, I wouldn't feel like boxing up things.  But at least I'm doing that.  It just makes me sad to do so.  

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Fwinter

It snowed this week.  And it's Cold outside.  Christopher says it's not fair that it's winter, and yet still fall.  He takes great pride in the fact that his birthday is on the winter solstice, the first day of winter.  And it's not officially winter until his birthday.  So this snow snuck up on us.

Either way, it was gorgeous outside, and I went outside and took some pictures while Chris waited for the bus.


It has been such nice weather lately, that my flowers were still blooming, my geraniums and snapdragons were still in bloom when it snowed.  They looked really awesome. 


Snow on Snapdragons. 


But the most beautiful on this lovely snowy morning was our Dawn Redwood.  


Christopher calls it "fwinter" since it's a fallish sort of winter.



Chris and I were checking out the tree as the sun came up, it hit, and Bam! the tree literally glowed.


Only nature could be this Awesome! 


I love the way the sun hits the needles. 


He really makes death of plants (or anything really) so beautiful.  


A branch against the blue sky.  Sigh.


Christopher insisted on taking my picture.  Even first thing in the morning, he still can get a good picture out of me.  He's really got a good eye.   After he left for school, I went back out for another round, this time, taking the time to shoot in manual, something I don't get to do very often at all.  


Pretty happy with the results.  


The glowy orange needles and the white snow, with just a hint of green.  Gorgeous. 


Another Great Job God!