Bella, Gabe and Josiah

I’m not quite sure how I’m supposedly at the phase of life where my friends are turning 40, but here we are. My college roommate Yen turned 40 and to celebrate, all of us that met back when we lived on the same floor freshman year wanted to get together to celebrate. It was kindof a dramatic thing, with plans changing all over the place. We were supposed to be at a cabin on the Olympic peninsula, but the cabin got snowed in, so we went to the Oregon Coast instead. Then the day before as left one friend canceled because she was pregnant and felt like there was too much Covid running around to fly, another one canceled because  she got covid. One friend almost didn’t make it because the snow was bad where she was driving from so she and the other friend didn’t make it to the beach until 9pm. And then there was me, that was at the airport at 4am and was wiped out the entire trip for not sleeping. Then there was a tsunami warning, which was super fun as were literally staring at the water

It’s a little hard to put into works how crazy the last couple of weeks have been. The week between Christmas and New Years all the kids were out of school, I was trying to work from home and certain people were having all sorts of struggles with that arrangement that and it blew up into all sorts of ways that we’re still figuring out. It was also cold enough that we burst a pipe. Luckily Pat is handy and was able to take care of it. The next week the boys were back at school, but Bella want, so she spent the days babysitting at the house where Gabe goes for the afternoon. But it got crazy cold outside. Those were temps that I’ve never seen in this town.  That would have been okay, except that our heat pump was having trouble keeping up. It does okay if we’re above 10, but below that, it just can’t do it, so our house was down to 51. We do have a pellet stove in one room, so we’d all huddle in that room for the evenings and the kids all got to have a sleepover in Gabe’s room, which was

The last couple of weeks have been completely crazy and I haven’t had the mental energy to do much of anything. So I’m a couple of weeks behind here… Back to Christmas… We went to the Christmas Eve service as a family. That might be the best Christmas Eve picture we’ve had in many years… Getting the whole family to take pictures can be a little bit interesting. Sometimes they’re good… …and sometimes they look like this. Gram and Gramps were asked to do the Advent candles and Gabe memorized one of the speaking parts. That kid definitely has no stage fright. He did amazing. Jeremiah decided he needed to join in. Every day for Advent this year, we’ve been drinking a cup of tea while reading a chapter of Luke. It’s been a lot of fun and I’m definitely going to miss our little evening ritual. Christmas morning found all of my kids sleeping in until after 8. I was the first one up and I didn’t hear Josy thumping until after Gram and Gramps told me they were already on their way over. Our cou