Virginia Adventure

November came with a bit of medical drama from the east coast. Dad was admitted to the hospital after Thanksgiving with a bladder infection, severe dehydration, ketoacidosis, COVID-19, brain shrinkage and dementia-like symptoms. He had also lost 30 pounds and was refusing to eat or drink much. After the hospital got most of his acute issues under control, they sent him home and he was receiving some in-home nursing care and physical therapy with follow-up appointments with a neurologist and his primary physician. He continued to have mobility and cognitive issues that were concerning.

With no definitive diagnoses and a great deal of uncertainty about his memory, I received a phone call from Diane offering to pay for all of us to fly out to visit and see him. While I had been planning on flying out in January when the kids had gone back to school, this plan had a lot of benefits. I did discover why we don't travel like this as a family ($$$$$). It was an amazing offer. Pulling up our family Google Calendar, we picked the dates 12/28-12/31 and got ready to fly.

All three older boys have flown this year (Josh got back from Germany two days before Christmas in fact), but this was Isaac's first plane ride. 

None of them had ridden a horse before, but our time in VA fixed that. Kenna helped the boys into saddles and led the horse around on mini-trips.

Oma did a fabulous job of planning adventures to keep the kids occupied and make memories with their Virginia cousins. The older cousins did an escape room. 

Isaac and Lyssa spent some time at the children's museum.

And to add another item to their list of new experiences: axe throwing. 

And I had to include this epic picture Jason took of the boys in the hotel pool.

Too soon our time in Virginia was up and we were boarding a plane for home. 

December on FB

The kids and I have this really fun winter tradition where they hope and dream and pray for snow days and I remind them that any days they get off now get added to the end of the school year. They tell me they don't care and then they get angry in June when they end up having to go to school to the end of the month.

Good times. Good times.

We put the Christmas decorations up yesterday as a family.

So tell me, how did you torture your teenagers this weekend?

It turns out that when Isaac blows his nose with a tissue that he ends up with copious amounts of green snot all over the OUTSIDE of the tissue.

So, yeah, we're all going to get this one.

Our house in one word: ca-cough-any

If these kids ever go back to school, I'm going to send them off in the morning with "I love you, have a good day, and for the love of all the good in the world don't touch anything or breathe near other people"

 

If you are still looking for a gift for someone in your life who could potentially get someone pregnant one day, I HIGHLY recommend this book. Also would work for a graduation gift. Or a "just because" gift.

Parenting pro tip: if you put a pile of used tissues by where the Christmas gifts are hidden, the kids will definitely stay away

Forgot to post about this guy's birthday last week

Good news: he can make his own lunch

Bad news: he doesn't fit quite as well on my lap anymore

I made it!

My top 5 this year:

-Ejaculate Responsibly (Gabrielle Blair)

-Secrets of the Sprakkar (Eliza Reid)

-How to Be Perfect (Michael Schur)

-Pandora's Jar (Natalie Haynes)

-Cloud Cuckoo Land (Anthony Doerr)

What should I add my "to read" list for next year?

Winter Break Family Fun

Jason took a week off of work between Christmas and New Years so we decided to fill it with some family fun activities. Later in the week we have a trip to VA planned, but started the week with bowling and rock climbing.

It's been a while since any of us have bowled. After a few rounds I am pretty sure that we should play this game MarioKart style and give the loseriest loser some pity bumpers to help me them out. Though Isaac did manage to actually miss all of the pins once even with bumpers so I guess it isn't a guarantee.

Round one was a little rough.

And round two Jason blew us all out of the water. 

For some reason the older boys don't think taking selfies with their mom is super cool. Weird, right?

Next up: rock climbing. Our choices were limited to the auto-belay lines and the bouldering walls (except Isaac). 

Although Isaac never made it to the top, he spent more time on the wall than any of us. He loved it. Up and down and up and down and up and down. Most of us were done after a little bit, but he would have been happy to stay longer. I am thinking next time we save ourselves some money and just take him and spend the day.

After two days of arm intensive activities we spent the evening packing for our trip to Virginia.

Christmas

Another year, another tree, another stash of gifts.

 

We let the boys open one gift on Christmas Eve. They are all really bad at pretending to be shocked that the gift is pajamas.

This year's pajamas have antlers so head-butting chaos ensued.

After some sleep it was time for the yearly photoshoot with the yearly threat that I can take hundreds of pictures if necessary so they might as well stop moving (Isaac) and look at me (the rest of the boys).

I don't have any pics from the gift opening session, but there were plenty of "awesome!" and "let's go!" with a few "thank you!!" thrown in. Since Nana is still in Germany, this is actually just first Christmas but it was a good one. Later in the morning we played JackBox over Zoom with Nana and Aunt Rachel.  Good times!

Our Christmas letter:

Jason continues his upward climb in state government as he was promoted to Executive Director for Elementary Education, Early Learning, and Federal Programs. Say that 5 times fast! They may need to start increasing the size of his business cards to fit all those words. He also turned FIFTY and took a big leap….out of an airplane.  He may never be the same again. Irene hasn’t failed out of her graduate program (yet) though she does have plans later this month to roast marshmallows over a bonfire of all of the articles she has printed out this semester. She bought a MetaQuest2 headset for one of her classes and the kids are now very supportive of her graduate program. She also squeezed in a couple of backpacking trips this summer and is already planning for next year. Josh graduated from high school and the ceremony was thankfully under 5 hours. We are crazy proud of him. He learned some excellent life lessons working at Taco Bell (mainly that it is not fun working at Taco Bell) and is now working at the movie theatre learning a similar lesson. This fall he began an A.S. in Cybersecurity degree which appears to necessitate even more computers in his room. Michael is thriving in high school. He has been on two new sports teams this year: cross-country and swim. The teams and coaches have been incredibly supportive and he has several PRs under his belt. Music continues to pervade his existence as he sings in the choir, takes voice lessons, and often decides to practice piano after his brother is already in bed. Ben added Jazz Band to his schedule because apparently more concerts = more fun? Also, with a cello AND a bass we might need to build an extension on to his room. He played two more seasons of soccer and continued to hone his defense skills and tolerance for playing in the rain. Isaac continues to work his way towards the position of “family social butterfly” and participates in what appears to be a thriving black market in the 2nd grade. After a break, he is back in swim lessons which he loves and it is difficult to extract him from the pool twice a week.

Isaac and Friends Party On

This is our only winter baby. One of the bonuses of spring/summer babies is that birthday parties can be held in the great outdoors with lots of room for lots of kids and lots of natural entertainment.

Winter in Washington does not lend itself to outdoor parties unless you really, really enjoy being wet and cold or happen to own head-to-toe rain gear. We decided to assume that indoors warm and dry would be the preference for Isaac and his friends. Based on the size of our house and the personalities of Isaac's friends (kidding...mostly) we had to limit his guestlist to 4 kids.

His party consisted of a bunch of games and decorating cupcakes. Unfortunately, I finally caught the cold Michael had brought home and so isolated myself in the bedroom during the festivities. So Jason ran the show and everyone had a great time.

 

Isaac is EIGHT

When you are 7 years old, it takes FOREVER for your birthday to come. This kid has been waiting FOREVER for this day. Our Christmas countdown calendar is also an Isaac birthday countdown calendar - he just subtracts 10 from the days left until Christmas. 

The day FINALLY came. Isaac had very specific ideas about today: chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and chocolate chip pancakes for dinner. For dessert: chocolate chip pumpkin cupcakes with chocolate Legos on top. Notice a theme?

And, of course, he got Legos for his birthday. Happy boy!

I think it was a good birthday.

Snow - It's a Four Letter Word

What is this?  What IS this? WHAT IS THIS?????

It turns out that no matter how many times I say the phrase "it isn't going to stick", it did in fact stick.

Insanity.

Or pure excitement - depends on who you are. The kids had two days of 3-hour delays (yes, THREE) because of this cold, white stuff. 

The timing could have been better. Today was the end of semester livestream event for one of my classes. It would have been ideal if I hadn't needed to spend a bit of time getting the kids out the door all morning in addition to trying to provide tech support to the rest of the team in SoCal, but it was what it was. I actually wasn't too disappointed to use the excuse of a wiggly 7yo to take a break and get in some outdoor exercise.

For context, Isaac's class had earned a wear-pajamas-to-school-day so no, he doesn't usually traipse around outside mid-morning in his pajamas. Just on special days. 

It was a short-lived blip in our rainy weather and hopefully western Washington will confine the snow to winter break for the rest of the year.