1.  Finally attempting to crawl out from under a rock and rejoin the land of blogging and working again.  I realized today I hadn’t posted a single thing in weeks about what has been going on with me and mine.  Our Christmas was a good one.  We succeeded in keeping things simple this year.  We enjoyed hosting Jason’s parents, grandparents and brother for Christmas.  I gave myself the gift of getting out of cooking by ordering dinner for 10 from Whole Foods.  We may have played a funny, but dirty, little trick on our family relating to the food.  We got them good!  HA!  I think it ended up being cheaper than it would have been to buy all ingredients and cook it all.  Plus that meant I got to just sit and BE with the kids and play and relax and I even took a nap on Christmas day.  It was awesome.

2.  We cut our normal Christmas budget by almost 2/3 this year and you know what, the kids surely didn’t notice.  They were happy and busy and I’m so glad we made the decision to go the simple route this year instead of overdoing it.  Well, Ty would have noticed if it hadn’t been for my mom coming through with a last minute gift she’d been waiting over a year to give him.  But it was still simple.  And simple was good.

3.  In a very, very, very last minute decision we traveled over to see my mom and stepdad the day after Christmas.  We’ve wanted to go for over a year and had to cancel the last trip due to Teagan’s health.  He was doing well leading up to the holidays but we didn’t want to commit and disappoint everyone at the last minute if things changed for Duder.  We literally decided Christmas day to go.  It was j.o.b. getting everyone ready the next day, the whole feeding our family on a special diet on the road thing, taking meds, etc. But we made it work and the kids were beyond excited.  It is 14 hours without stops and we cut the trip over to two days stopping for the night in Jennings.  Teagan had a hard time with all the industrial plants on the way over but we managed to find an area to stop for the night that he was ok in thankfully.  And we were so, so happy to see my mom and we loved their new house at the beach.  It was weird to be at the beach in the winter though!  I love that I can picture in my mind where she is now and it filled my heart to see my kids playing and running and loving and making memories in their new home.  Unfortunately, I got sick about 30 minutes before we got there.  I let it go 2 days before I couldn’t take it anymore and went to urgent care (promptly after a round of putt-putt of course).  Strep, which sent me in to a panic.  Strep is really, really bad for those with neurological issues and we’ve had several strep scares in the past fearing Teagan had been exposed.  Our hearts sank and we prayed.  Later that day he started to get sick, we immediately put him in the van and drove to urgent care, 2nd visit of the day.  They took one look at him and confirmed our fear, he too had strep.  We took the antibiotics and called his doctor immediately the next morning.  I think it took all of 2.2 minutes for them to call me back, they don’t mess around with strep.  Another round of meds for him and we were put on watch for a laundry list of symptoms “just in case”.  We caught it very early in him and that really helped, especially since the night before I caved and went in I had a hard time breathing my throat and glads were so swollen.  The only way I could breath while sleeping was to jut my chin up in the air and to the side.  My face and neck were really swollen, thankfully Teagan’s didn’t get that far.  We are hopeful it is a good thing he had strep without a myriad of problems to follow along with it.  Could it be?!  A properly functioning immune system?!  Nervously optimistic!  We stayed for a week and truly did have a great visit with my mom.  Even though it rained almost every day and even though several of us were sick, it was good to just be together.  She made the effort to have a special date with each of the kids, they played ball and had picnics on the porch, painted nails and took trips to Target.  The trip home was long long long but we made it.  I swear we all ran for different corners of the house when we got home after so much togetherness in the van.  7 hours in one day turns in to double that with all the potty breaks and I’m hungries and gas stops and and and 😉  I am so glad we went, it feels like a success.  Even though the overload hit him by the end of the week, two night of less than stellar food choices, the stupid air quality, toxins from toys and off gassing of a new house, different water and soaps and every other little thing he is sensitive to now, it caught up with him.  But, he bounced back with both speech and physically within 2 days of being home.  And for that we are thankful.  It also helps us feel confident that what we are doing, all the changes we’ve made, all the effort we’ve put in, all the expense, is worth it.  It is working.

4.  I haven’t even opened our Christmas photos, except to post over on my one.frame.a.day.  Which, by the way, I’m kind of proud that I’ve been keeping up with it.  Go me!  I am so happy I started a month early, I feel giddy and like I cheated the system to get an extra full month of real, meaningful, everyday photos of my family.

5.  Pinterest.  OMG.  Pinterest.  Visual bookmarks.  Changing my life and instilling creativity in me multiple times per day.  You can follow me here.  And I promise to follow you right back!

6.  Oh wait!  #4 isn’t totally true, I did pull this shot just because it makes me laugh.  This is my mom’s new laundry room and it made me giggle every time I walked in to it!

7.  Santa brought Ty a mustache for Christmas.  For real.  Ok, so it probably isn’t a true mustache, more like peach fuzz of the upper lip, but it is there and he’s awfully proud of it.  I don’t want to talk about it.

8.  The little kids seem to be noticing the mood swings of aforementioned mustache toting teenager.  In the last two days I’ve heard Teagan tell Ty to “drop your att-i-tude Tyyyyyyy” and “Ty, why you so ornery TY?!”  HA!  Do you think he’s heard us say those things a time or two recently?!  It’s so funny to hear it come from the fit throwing 2 year old though!  Thankfully Ty thinks it is funny too.

9.  The little kids got Plasma cars for Christmas and I can’t even tell you how much fun they have been.  I got them at a super low price via an online black friday sale and I’m so glad that I did, they LOVE them.  Taryn named hers “Sting”.

10.  There is a lot of fun stuff coming up, I just need to find the time to blog about it all!  Much more soon….