Bella, Gabe and Josiah

This was definitely the year of Christmas surprises.  Gram decided a few weeks ago that the best gift she could give Gabe was Bryson.  So she started plotting with Katilyn and I and the end result was that Katilyn, Seth and Bryson flew up on Christmas Day to surprise Gabe.  We had big plans to have Bryson jump out of a box yelling "Surprise!" but apparently getting up at 2am on Christmas morning in order to fly all the way up here is a little exhausting and Bryson was not really interested in getting in a box at that moment.  So instead Gabe opened an empty box and was very confused until he saw Bryson standing in the kitchen with Auntie Katilyn and Uncle Seth. The other big surprise was Great Gram.  Katilyn didn't know that she was flying up too.  She just got on the plane to sit in the same row as Katilyn and Seth after they'd already boarded. Nathan didn't know any of this.  He just came over to our house for Christmas dinner and found Great Gram sitting in

We had a really great Christmas. For one, the kids all slept until after 8:15. Um, how crazy is that??? Gram and Gramps made it over before they were up. It was strange... After the kids were up, we started on all of the fun of Christmas morning. It was a lot of fun, but the best Christmas surprises were yet to come...

I know I need to write out my big Christmas post as all sorts of exciting things have happened in the last couple of days, but something big happened today and I have to document it. Josy is officially crawling. He’s been threatening for awhile, getting up on all fours and rocking back and forth. He’d even do the occasional “fall forward on your face” and get in some forward motion. But tonight he actually did it, consciously, several times in a row. So it’s official. Now we need to take down the tree, take all of Gabe’s little toys upstairs and babyproof the house. So that’s fun. But at least he waited until after Christmas! Yes, those are terrible pictures, but it was the best I could do. Oh, and tonight he refused to fall asleep in my arms and just kept wiggling. So I laid him down awake and now he’s going to sleep all by himself at bedtime. Seriously, what happened to my baby??? He’s decided to be a big boy all in one day!

Merry Christmas Eve! Bella came home today, which means that for the first time, I got a picture with all five of us together. That said, my goal was 5 heads and hopefully not blurry. So I got this: I’ll take it. I also got this: This looks really cute until you zoom in on Gabe’s face. So, um, yeah. Merry Christmas!

So far Christmas Break is going well. Josy is not crawling, which means that my Christmas tree is safe! And Gabe managed to get stuck in Josy’s jumper.

We were listening to Angels We have Heard on High the other day.  After a moment, Gabe asked me why the angels were singing in a plane. At church he asked me "why did Jesus die to pay our taxes?" Gabe was having trouble putting on his socks because "the helium is not in the back of my foot." We were discussing Gabe's birthday party and his pinata and trying to figure out how authentic that was. Gram:  Do they have pinata in Mexico? Gabe:  No, they don't. Gr:  How do you know that? Ga:  Because they don't have pinatas or balloons or party stores or cake or ice cream in Mexico. Gr:  Do you know what Mexico is? Ga:  No.  Not at all. G:  Mommy, I have a story about the Three Little PJ Masks.  Do you want to hear it? M:  Yes G:  Actually, I don't know how it ends and I have to figure that out. A few minutes later... M:  Did you figure out how the Little PJ Masks ends? G:  No, I'm going to think about it at the fieldhouse.  But

Somehow my dear, sweet little baby turned 4 this week. I have no idea how that happened. I’m pretty sure that I just blinked and now here we are. There are so many things I could say about what a wonderful little boy he is, but how do I even put it into words?  I’ve actually been struggling with his birthday this year, thinking about how close we came to losing him. Pat and I had a long chat the other night about how we’re both feel like we’re living on borrowed time with him. Sure, technically you’re living on borrowed time with all of your kids, but there’s something different about it when you know that your kid isn’t “supposed” to be here. We almost lost him twice. Medically speaking, we should have list him. But we didn’t. And now, 4 years later, we have this incredible little boy and I couldn’t imagine not having him in our lives. I was driving to work on Tuesday thinking about the NICU when the song Blessings came on the radio: ‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrop

A few things that got missed from yesterday’s post... First, I made such a big deal about our Christmas Tree Hunting tradition...and then I realized that in our 6 Christmases since we got married, this is only the third year we’ve gone hunting. Between Christmas in the NICU, Christmas in Phoenix, Christmas in Hawaii, and now Christmas Tree Hunting without Pat, we’ve only gone hunting together twice in 6 years. So much for Christmas traditions... Second, there were some funny moments are the party last night. At one point the kids were eating cake and ice cream and Gabe decided he was done (who doesn’t finish cake and ice cream at their own birthday party???). One of the girls, O, was eating her cake and her dad was asking for a bite. So she asked Gabe if her dad could have a bite of cake and ice cream. He said sure and grabbed his cake to hand to her dad. The dad said no, I want a bite of your cake. So O looked at Gabe and asked if her dad could have a bite of her cake. Gabe said “sure

One of my favorite Christmas traditions every year is Christmas Tree Hunting. Is there anything better than traipsing up a mountain and through the woods in potentially terrible weather in search of the perfect tree? We have so many good memories from years past: Grandpa falling in the creek up to his chest, sliding down the icy road and almost sliding in the ditch, Nathan flipping over the gate every single yeat, pulling Bella up the hill in a sled, Nathan singing God Bless America at the top of his lungs in a birthday video for Great Gramps... It’s the best. My dear husband does not appreciate this family tradition. He comes, but there is always excessive complaining. He’s been sick all week and I secretly think he’s been faking it just to get out of going... That said, he did not feel well this morning and he needed to conserve his energy to make it through the rest of the day, so I let him sit this one out. Plus, Gramps was here. There’s no way I could have gone without Pat and wit

Josy slept through the night last night!!! He’s been waking up consistently at 2 for the last couple of weeks, which I figured was our new normal for awhile, but I woke up at 6 and he was still asleep! Naturally I had to check and make sure that he was still breathing... It was so nice! I have to brag about my other boy too. He made me this picture and it’s a baseball field and it has baseball people and the people watching the baseball game. But the truly exciting part is that he wrote his own G in his name!!! In other news, Gabe helped me clean the bathrooms yesterday. I realize that he won’t always be excited to help me clean, but for now I’m going to milk it as long as possible. Now he’s the “spraying boy,” in charge of spraying everything. This morning the boys wore their matching shirts from Grammie, so I told them to smile so I could take a pic. I got this: Silly boys...

This weekend was full of all sorts of Christmas fun. On Friday night we went to Gallery Walk. We wandered downtown, got dinner, mingled with the hundreds of people that were also wandered downtown and met Sven. Saturday morning we met Santa. Josy handled meeting Santa for the first time much better than Gabe did... Then on Sunday we rolled bonbons. Gabe was super into it this year. However, he got tired of making balls, so he started making snakes and letters. After I went to bed I re-rolled some of those. I’m pretty sure that after those snakes are dipped in chocolate they’re going to look like cat turds and no one wants to eat that... It was a fun weekend full of Christmas traditions. Now I just have to figure our how to have time to dip those bonbons in chocolate...