Year 3, December 29th-31st: Heading Into the New Year

Apparently, when the Johnson family is separated but on staycations, they still feel obligated to do stuff, be active, be productive and not just veg in front of a screen.  Why do I say this?  Well, we cleaned up Keturah's room and Jared made some shelves.  Gary and Leah moved around their bedroom furniture and cleaned it up (I don't think that's been done for 15 years or so).  Everly and Nora wanted to share a bedroom again, so Aaron and Shauna spent the weekend putting their beds in the same room and their toys in the other bedroom.  We just can't sit still, can we?  Cracks me up!  We had a wonderfully productive, but peaceful and fun week, and yes, Keturah's room was mostly organized with a couple of leftover, self contained sorting projects to finish on other weekends.  Keturah and Justin have read a ton of the library books we had on hand, so I was able to take two big bagfuls back to the library and now I can order more!  Benaiah has worked and worked and worked and spent all day at the church again on Sunday being the video switcher.  We had Emerson Kennedy as our preacher today and he was very good!  It's amazing how many great speakers we have on staff at Indian Creek!  The song list was awesome, too!  And best of all, Kidustrial Park had their annual Pajama Jam day!!!  Everyone is invited to come dressed in their favorite pj's! And guess what?!  Leah participated for the first time ever!  She only wore her new plaid pj's in her classroom (not when she went to church at 9:15), but she did wear them!  So, I wore my Cow's Creamery jammies when I was in the nursery at 4:30.  I felt extremely weird walking into church, during church services, in my pj's with my extra warm sheepskin slippers on.  I tried to slip in and slip out out of embarrassment.

Playlist for December 29th-31st, 2018

Jared worked on some wood working projects during his stay cation days.  I wonder what it will be!

Someone posted this on IG so I don't have the credit for it, but, how cool is this?  Someone took a picture every day from the same location at the same time of the sun for a year!  It changes position because of the earth being tilted to or away from the sun depending on the time of the year.  So neat!

Operation Keturah's Room is complete!  I can finally walk in there without my mind going nuts!  She got rid of a few things, but mostly, it was about using storage space wisely, like putting her Barbies back up onto the shelves in her closet.  Woot! Woot!

A clean desk, shelves being used in the closet, but floor space in the closet!

The box on the floor is the give away box.  Shoes and bags are now corralled into the basket.  The hanging basket thing is not ideal but the dresser she uses is full and really too small for her.

She loves her sign!

It was totally Jared's idea to build a spice rack, maybe because he cooks more?  I know you aren't supposed to keep too many above the heat of the stove, but these are ones we use several times a week, basically the savory and spicy ones.  I left the sweet and baking spices in the pantry.  I do have oregano and basil and clove oils, so I put them in my spice rack because you can ingest them!

Check out the custom shelf for the Justin's new Lego Saturn V rocket!  Cool!  Safe from Abishai's hands, too!

Utter chaos.  Nothing in categories, couldn't see the floor.

Blech.

Abishai decided he needed to sit between his two favorites, Keturah and Justin.  Well, being next to Justin is more important than being next to Keturah.  Maybe he's saying he wants to sit in a big chair, too.

He's the cleanest Popsicle eater I have ever seen.  He's also "cooling off" his Popsicle when in reality, it was already too cold for him and he needed to warm it up a bit.

Keturah tried out her new spin art toy.  And it worked!  It's not too messy if you are careful. 

Her first one came out awesome!

Very interesting.  I wonder if more or less paint on certain places makes it glob like that or not or streak more heavily.

"A" for Abishai.

Cool!  Keturah gave this one to Abishai.

When we got home, Abishai had fallen asleep, but Justin had eaten dinner.  Keturah was on worship team so she had been with me.  We ate dinner, and then Justin, Jared, and Abishai made the gingerbread house that Justin got at his Bible Bowl gift exchange.  They had a lot of fun and Jared has a ton of patience and skill in putting these things together.  I knew he did, but I wanted to step up to the plate and just do it while the girls were here, and I utterly failed.  Next year, we will wait for Daddy.  Benaiah headed out to see Venom with some kids at youth group at the cheap theater.  Abishai wouldn't fall asleep for me, so he waited until Jared got back from picking up Benaiah after the movie.  Justin had 3 hrs of screen time this afternoon while we were gone and Keturah got some when we got back.  Tomorrow we are going to try and tackle school.  I'm sure it's going to be a flop, but we'll give it a try anyways.  That way when this week is rough, next week we really will be back on track and learning from books again.  I teased Justin though and said that building a gingerbread house is like doing STEM experiments on engineering and Abishai is learning fine motor skills.  Jared did mention right angles, too, on the house walls.

Ready for Pajama Jam day at church, the one day of the year where they get to wear their pj's to church!  Pretty silly but the kids love it!  It was kind of awkward seeing the adult volunteers attending adult worship after they served in KP in their pajama pants.  It just didn't feel right.  Oh well.  But Grandma wore her new pj's!  That's a miracle!  And best yet, Mrs. Alison caught it on camera and posted it to social media!  Sweet!

More animals joined the Paw Patrol team!

I helped him, but now he's really spying on Daddy.

Went to Gary and Leah's house for Sunday dinner and well, some things had changed literally overnight.  New plates, new glasses, and wait a minute, new utensils that look like sticks?!

Yesiree, they look like sticks!  Say what?!  I understand the cabin theme and all, however, sticks for handles?  Both Benaiah and I laughed when we tried to eat with them because we just couldn't balance them right.  Oh, and Gary got them 50% off.  I wonder why?!  So that's the new inside joke. Too funny!  I'm just glad I don't have to use them every day!

Back to normal Sunday with dinner, cars, a little TV, lots of running around, etc.  And yes, these two peas in a pod.

Like seriously, two peas in a pod!  They may be 9 1/2 years apart in age, but they are so close to each other in spirit.  How adorable is this?!

This one needs his own couch! And he overslept during his nap and was a few minutes late getting back to church.

Playing double solitaire with Grandpa.

Back at home we are trying to NOT go to the grocery store until after the next paycheck and to be good stewards of what we have in the pantry.  So, meals have been off and weird mixtures at times and sometimes the different kinds of leftovers don't match up to make a full meal for everybody.  Well, Abishai just wanted the leftover plain cold spaghetti as is.  And then he took it to his chair so he could keep watching his show.  Silly boy!

Yummy!

Hello there, gorgeous beast!

On Sunday evening, Daddy helped Justin build his gingerbread house that he got from his Bible Bowl Christmas gift exchange.  There's a lot more pictures of the house in progress below.  Here we are trying to make icicles like I saw a vlogger do on their house.

Lots of candies to choose from!

Abishai scratched Justin on the nose two days ago.  Ouch!

Expert gingerbread house maker to the rescue!  We put the packet in warm water to maker sure the frosting was nice and gooey like glue and it made all the difference!  I did throw away the leftover gingerbread house pieces of Abishai's finally.

Abishai was the candy organizer.

Daddy blew on the icing to cool it off and help it stick.

The house is together, woot, woot!

Again, Jared tried to cool off the icing using a pan lid.

Practicing my micro photography skills on the different candies.  It really was a nice gingerbread house kit.

These things are some of my favorites!  They get pretty stale though in the 25 cent candy machines though.

Making a window using bananas and bottlecaps.

Tada!

Justin was kind enough to share the project with Abishai.  They each got to decorate one side of the roof.

Does this count as schoolwork since we had to use science to warm up the icing to the right consistency and fine motor skills to put on all the candies?

Justin's fingers hard at work.

It's a smiley face!  Let's add a beard!

Concentrating.

I think he wanted to separate out the different kind of candies.

Daddy's face here is precious.

Cute boys.

A close up of the spin art Keturah made for Abishai (because it was sitting on the table next to us.

Coming down to the last little bits of decorating.

Landscape!  This is Abishai's side of the roof.  He was obsessed with the bananas!

All done!

Abishai's forced smile is hilarious!  We did this right before bed, so he was tired, too.

Justin's side of the gingerbread house.  The extra bottle cap candy on the left eye is called a goose egg from getting punched int he head Justin said.  Abishai put it there, so some explanation had to be made.

On Monday, Benaiah worked from 2-9pm, and helped to close the store, which closed early because he's New Year's Eve.  After school, we decided on a 500 piece puzzle and got to work.  I had gotten a popcorn tin like my parents used to and enjoyed a fire in the fireplace.  It was my parents' tradition to put a new puzzle together on New Year's Eve while we were all sleeping.  So now that the kids are older, I wanted to try it.  Abishai enjoyed putting together some puzzles of his own with Jared or I, but no one wanted to help me on my puzzle.  He did keep me company for while.  But puzzles are so addicting!  You don't want to stop!    But, the boys did have fun playing video games until about 11pm.  Then we all rolled around a bit until midnight.  And yes, all 6 of us were up and together at midnight!  Crazy!  Little man was besides himself crazy town and will need a nap tomorrow.  I'm sure we will all sleep in, too.  But it was fun and worth it.

Wake up sleepy head!  9am, time to wake up to the brand new last day of the year!

Baby feet getting bigger.

He can eat all these grapefruit without sugar.  Just because Jared eats it without sugar and Abishai likes copying Daddy and now he asks for grapefruit to eat.

Very, very busy New Year's Eve holiday rush at the 2pm drop off time at CFA for Benaiah.  Crazy!

Enjoying some crackers while we start back to school.  Going back to school as worked out ok so far because Jared can take care of Abishai.  Yeah for school!

Then suddenly, I felt very ill.  I went to move my head and felt like it was vertigo again.  I tried to power through it, but finally gave in to meds.  I couldn't quite get through all of Justin's math, so he corrected part of his own test.  I then took a little nap to sleep off the meds and felt much better.  I kind of knew that my ears were a bit clogged because I thought I felt the vertigo coming on before I got out of bed.  My sinuses seem to be ok and not unusually full, and my ears only slightly hurt.  But I did really feel sick to my stomach, too.  We've had too many sweets and not enough veggies lately.  But, I love how Jared built a fire for us to do school next to.  I wish we could it every day, but my space heater will have to do.  He thinks those grates at the bottom and top of the fireplace leak air and that's why it's colder over there.  Justin likes it, I do not.

Puzzle time!  Jared HATES putting together puzzles and playing board games, so it's a sacrifice to do it with Abishai.

Working on their second puzzle together.

A friend from NH said this is a lighthouse in Maine and sits on it's own island.  Cool!  This took me about 2 hrs of work.  Now, to find the time to get it finished.  Grandma might take the kids to a movie so maybe I can finish then.

Definitely not your average popcorn tin.  But, it's all that Aldi's had and I wasn't going to go through the downpouring of rain to other stores.  Since the caramal flavor is close to the regular caramel flavored popcorn, and we had leftover regular popcorn from Benaiah's trip to the movie theater on Sunday to see Venom with his friends from D group, I bought a bag of white cheddar to make up the trio of flavors in the regular popcorn tins.  However, I'm addicted tt he snicker doodle kind.  So Yummy  The peppermint ones are ok.

Abishai is posed and ready with his NYE special drink of fizzy water!

Jared is so patient with little man.

Tada we did it!

You're my entertainment, Mommy, so I'll just watch from here under my blanket and with my animal crackers closest to the fire as possible.

Doing the smaller puzzle with Mommy's help.  This puzzle is as old as mommy.

We're ready for the countdown to 2019!

Because of the low light in our house, it's sometimes hard to catch moving people.  And this guy is constantly moving, so this picture sums up his personality pretty well.  He danced for 15 minutes straight after the NYE ball dropped.

Aww, clinking glasses!  We did it at Grandpa's house on Christmas, too.  Jared gave him a real wine glass with his fizzy water in it.  He wanted to keep drinking out of it because he knew it was special.

This kid would NOT settle down after midnight.  He's a wild party animal!  Check out the videos on the playlist at the beginning of this post, and although it's dark, listen to the sounds of crazyiness!

Dancing, dancing, dancing the night away!  Party animal! Go to sleep!

We all stayed up, we all said Happy New Year, and then Beneiah was the first one to settle down for bed.  He didn't have to get up to early for work (he's working 11a-7p), but he was tired.  He almost came back out of his bed to tell Abishai to calm down.  Then Keturah settled, then Justin, and finally Abishai.  It took a long while though.  And I finally went to bed, too, before 1 am.  I've been horrible with my bedtimes lately, so it's on my "things to improve in 2019" list.  I loved having all the kids awake with us and just being the six of us making memories together.  Gary and Leah had their own party going over at their house.  Charades, Nerts, food, laughter, etc. at their house with their friends.  Aaron and Shauna were hanging out with some friends, too.  They are an hour behind us, so they didn't countdown with us.  But we were all remembering how crazy cold it was outside when we were trying to watch the neighbors' fireworks.  And the very, very cold ride home back to Indiana the next day.  The windows frosted up INSIDE, it was so cold!  Negative degrees cold.  But not today.  Today was above 40 degrees for us and near 70 for New Orleans.  Yeah!  We did have a neighbor shoot off a couple of fireworks, though.  I don't think it's legal to do so unless it's the 4th of July.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2019!  I can't wait to see what next year brings!  Woot! Woot!