Day 331: When things don't go as planned

I'll keep the whining to a minimum, but I had rough day trying to make it through church, chores, decorating, toddlers and the like with one of those nasty head colds where your eyes water and nose runs and you can't stop coughing.  I did take a nap, but I'm not going to make it to co op tomorrow.  Jared said he can drop off the kids and take over a movie I had for one of my classes.  Sigh.  That's how life goes sometimes.

Meanwhile, the kids had a normal day of church, Grandparents' house for lunch, weird nap schedule for Abishai, bowling for the middles, homework for Benaiah, running around the house in Santa hats, and bedtime.  Abishai said "Abishai Go" when he watched a video of himself on his tricycle! He also heard the sound of the cookie jar opening at Grandma's house and turned around in his chair to see me do it, just like dogs can hear the rustling of humans in their pantry and they come running.  He's a cookie hog, just like Benaiah, Jared, and Gary, lol.  Grandma has to make chocolate chip cookies constantly to keep up with those 4!

Let's see, pictures.  I posted the rest of the Michael W. Smith pictures on my Facebook page, and the videos are on my YouTube channel.  Otherwise, here are the random pictures of the day.

That face!  This is the kind of crazy "purple minion" (Despicable Me 2) face when the kid is fed a pumpkin cream cheese roll, fruit loops, and red cranberry jello salad leftover from Thanksgiving.  Hyperactive hyper drive! (Toy Story)

Because we've been burning real firewood during the last two fires, we've had more ash.  And even after many hours afterwards, we have had glowing embers in the ash!  Cool!

Movie time with Daddy!

Big trains are great for minifigure transportation.

More glowing embers.  And while I was at the concert last night, Daddy and the kids roasted marshmellows!

"And the stockings were hung with care..."

Little People's nativity set given to Benaiah for his first Christmas 14 years ago.  The music doesn't work anymore, but it's still a great toy!

After some prompting, Abishai recognized the Dada, Mama, Baba, and Sissy, in the playset.

Two stockings.  I'll show you the mantle once it's finished.  I'm so excited about it!

What's funnier than wearing a Santa hat when you are brushing your teeth?  Nothing apparently because these two were having a giggle fest!

Two more stockings.

And the final two stockings.  Why did Mommy get the smallest stocking?  These stockings came from the Great Grandparent Johnsons house I believe, as well as some other decorations I'll show you another time.

Little ears hear lots of things and came running when Daddy got out the ladder to get his tea.

Helping Daddy make tea.

PERFECT face for this situation.  I have no idea if he did this on purpose or it fell over by itself.  There were no ornaments on it, thank goodness.  But since I didn't know what happened, I said, "Naughty tree," since maybe he got scared that it fell down near him and said, "Naughty Abishai" just in case he did knock it down.

Obsessed with macaroni and cheese for dinner, more, more, more!!  He even ate Keturah's portion!

Jared killed a moth and was able to feed the venus fly trap with it!  There's also another closed leaf that Jared fed a fruit fly to.  Cool!

Day 330: Time to Rest

I've been trying to rest all day, because I'm going to a concert tonight, that I've waited over 4 1/2 months for (that's what I get for buying tickets at the early bird sale to get the best seats in the house).  Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant, Christmas, in concert at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, downtown Indianapolis.  I'm still very tired from the previous week so I took a short nap, and apparently Abishai is, too, since he has slept for another 4 hr nap today as he did yesterday.  Justin and Benaiah had slept over at Gary and Leah's because they had helped decorate the rest of their house, so we picked them up today.

Then we went to the storage barn again to get the rest of the Christmas stuff.  I really should spend some time reorganizing the bins or just taking a better inventory of what is at the barn because everything feels mixed up.  I'm pretty sure we got it all today, but I won't know until I start opening boxes tomorrow.  Thankfully, the barn's owner had his big heater going so it wasn't too chilly in there.  Yeah!  The storage barn is a massive pole barn that can house like 3 huge tractors, plus all the gear to take care of them.  We just have a small corner of it.  Our stuff is a little dusty, but that's to be expected.  Jared and the kids get to hang out this evening together while I do my thing.  I'll add pictures tomorrow.
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I'm back and here's what I posted on Facebook about the concert:

Great concert, as always, but all I could of Mr. Jim Daneker was his feet, lol. Yes, Jordan Smith has an incredible singing voice, and he did All is Well and Gloria very well. He was also given standing ovations twice! I guess he has some diehard fans. I just don't like guys that speak with a high pitched voice. Smitty and Amy were, well, Smitty and Amy. Best funny moment was when Smitty didn't remember what the next song was! His age is starting to show (finally). And when Amy and Jordan sang a song together that she sang more than two decades on her Christmas album, and he just sang it a few weeks ago on his first Christmas song. I'm a feeling just a bit older being the Smitty fan in the place, lol. Now I want to pull out the Smitty piano music again, especially his Christmas music to play on the piano. But where did I put that stuff? Lol. Christmas CD's will be coming out tomorrow I think.

I'll post a couple of pics, and then move on, you're welcome.  I couldn't bring the big camera in, but thankfully, I had extra chargers with me to keep my phone going the whole evening.  I took like 63 photos and videos!  Phew!  I tried not to be obnoxious, but, yes, I'm that kind of fan.

Caryn and I before the concert.

Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith.  Fun fact, they started singing together in 1982 or so.  Yes, decades long friendship.

Decent picture of the three main artists.  Five singers to your left, orchestra and Jim Daneker (Michael's back up keys guy) in the back, and the drummer on the right.  There was also some regular band type people, too.  The orchestra was our very own Indianapolis Philharmonic orchestra.  They try to use local orchestras when they can.  I think the conductor came with the artists though, because he's worked with Michael on a few projects.

Day 329: Leftovers

The beauty of a meal where everyone pitches in, is that no one is stuck with all the leftovers.  Lol.  But today, I'm going to talk about a couple of different kinds of leftovers.  First, I want to apologize for every blog post that doesn't quite make sense.  I often give the blog my "leftovers" of my day and can't think straight.  I'll have great ideas during the day, but then I sit down, as I did last night, and I can't put many words together correctly.  Or pictures I want to post don't load correctly.  Therefore, I'm starting this blog post at 10:36 AM instead of PM, lol.  It reminds me of some of the journals my mom wrote when she had newborns and would write how much we ate or what we did.  She often wrote them in the middle of the night, and even she couldn't tell what she wrote when she read them, lol.  I say, it's better to get something down, even when it's not perfect.

Meanwhile, another "leftover" I'm thinking about is all the "leftover" stuff we have just sitting around the house.  We went through a major purge this year, but when we started unpacking, I did find I could give away just a tad more.  That being said, that stuff I put aside hasn't left the house yet, but is still in a box by the front door.  I'll be adding to it, though, up until the New year.  We are going to do what I've heard called "Reverse Advent" where you get rid of 1 item per person per day leading up to Christmas/New Year's.  Not trash or papers, but actual items someone else can use.  If even 4 out of 6 of us does that this year, we'll be 100 items lighter before Christmas.  Yeah!  We've also done a big purge before the "birthday season" in May.  Except for Abishai, the rest of us have birthdays between May and September, which bookends our summer months.  So, I'll try to keep up that tradition.  After Christmas, I might even keep up my 1 item per day routine because I do want to continue reducing our stuff.  Every time I go to the garage or to the storage barn, I am appalled at how much stuff we still have.  I do have several groupings of items I did not go through, like old taxes/bills, books, and my clothes, so I'll start there.  I do not want my kids to have the burden of cleaning out my stuff like my siblings and I had to do for my parents.  I won't sacrifice teaching time or taking care of my kids' daily needs, but I don't want that to be the excuse either.

Therefore, as I thought about Christmas wishlists, I also think about giving experiences or consumable gifts and encourage the kids to be happy with getting zoo passes or gymnastics lessons, etc.  Food is great, too.  Or buy a cow for a family in Africa!  Those are awesome, too!  I'm off to get started on Christmas decorating and decluttering.  Hopefully I'll get the rest of the pics off of my phone today from the last few days to share.

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Success!  Hats and mittens are put away, lights are on the tree, jackets are hung up, kids gave away a few things, and I'm a bit more organized overall.  Yeah!

Pictures from Wednesday on our way to Michigan:

Fries or Hashbrowns? He choose fries! We put them in the same bag as the hashbrown though.

Brother, where did you go? Come out and play!  Poor Justin, he can never get a moment's peace!

After just seeing Hacksaw Ridge on Tuesday, seeing Grandpa Cook's hat just reminded me that he did serve in WWII.  He served as a communications person in Africa and was not on the front lines, praise the Lord.  But it was neat to see how the kids made the connection with what we've studied with someone we know.  Thanks Grandpa Cook for your service!

Grandma Johnson talking tenderly to Grandpa Cook.  Gary knows how to talk with anyone, including those that some of us aren't sure how to approach.  He grew up with his parents taking care of his grandmother and was the one at his mom's side when she passed.  Tenderness.

Some of us were hovering around Grandma and Grandpa Cook when they left.  We just want to care for them and know that we never know when the last time will be that we see them.  They grew tired much more easily this year.  Grandpa can still eat and drink and communicate with nods of the head and smiles.  He's doing well considering that he had another major stroke this year.  Grandma's dementia is a bit worse, and Jared was not sure if she recognized him.  She did look a little lost at times, and pretty quiet.

Abishai is becoming very interested in mirrors and himself lately.  Handsome little guy and he listened when I told him to let go of the mirror.

Jared wasn't sure if he could get us home without major amounts of caffeine.  Um, no, he didn't drink all of this, but I find it interesting that he found this in Meijer.  So, you can't brew your own coffee, people? He did say it tasted burnt, and I agreed after taking a sip.  Gary calls Starbucks coffee, "Charbucks."  Lol.  I'm sure they are talking about the normal coffee, not the fancy coffees I get that are brewed when I order it.  I'll get my annual peppermint mocha in a couple of weeks.

Speaking of coffee, look what we found!  Tim Horton's!  Boy do we miss it!  It was closed of course for Thanksgiving.  They are going to build one in Indianapolis at some point and we can't wait!

A little out of order, but we went to Bob Evans for dinner Wednesday night.  Stack of pancakes of course for Justin.

Abishai was so hungry he was eating all the lemons!!  And yes, they now use ball jars for serving drinks!

We had to hurry home after Thanksgiving dinner because this happened!  Jared and Justin were majorly blessed with really expensive seats from someone at church.  They were only a few rows up from the players!  Incredible!!  It was the first time the Colts have played on Thanksgiving (I think) and the game didn't start until 8:30 pm.  They had a blast!

Oh my goodness!  No need for binoculars or watching the jumbotron!  Remember, the Colts stadium holds more people than the whole city of Charlottetown has for population, 50,000 people!!  Incredible! 

Fancy tickets for up close seats.  And the Colts lost to the Steelers.  Let's just say that EACH seat cost more than 1 round trip airline ticket from NH to Indianapolis.  This was a once in a lifetime event!  And only the 2nd time Jared's been to a Colts game in his almost 27 years (minus 4 in Charlottetown) of living here.  He doesn't like sports much, but can appreciate such a generous gift.

Look, Mom, it looks like a candle!

These two are always good for a snuggle.  In fact, Keturah ended up staying in Abishai's bed all night last night.  She said she didn't sleep well, and I told her, that's her own fault for not getting out of Abishai's bed.  She claims that if she did, he would scream.  He might for a moment, but I'm sure it would have been fine.  I told her no snuggling tonight and to stay in her own bed.

Abishai refuses to try to say "Keturah" and when we tell him "say Keturah" he says, "Sissy" instead without hesitating.  Dance time on Sissy's bed.

Dance time on the coffee table to Christmas music.

Dancing to the Piano Guys on YouTube.  They play the piano and cello and do covers of lots of songs.  They are super talented.

A good night for a fire.

I might add another small set of lights on the bottom, but the first set is on and the tree was finally fluffed out properly.

Nice big logs for the fire from a friend.

I guess Abishai thought Daddy needed lots of company while he worked.

So today, I was changing Abishai's diaper and he started saying his name and looking up.  He wanted me to show himself in the mirror.  And when I did, he smiled big and said his name, "Abishai," "baby," and "me."  He loves kids and I think he loves seeing another "kid" smiling back at him.

Aww, another baby!

Giving kisses!

This is a new trend it seems, little baby fingers or toes sticking out from under the door when one is using the bathroom.  Too cute!

One more day until the concert!

And 3 more days to shop Lilla Rose's annual Black Friday sale!  Lots of items 20-60% off!  Lots of new items and lots of favorites!  Some items are already sold out, which tells you how much everyone love their Lilla Rose flexiclips and hairsticks and headbands.  Take a look over at www.lillarose.biz/melindaj  Sale goes through Monday at midnight (Pacific Time).  Don't forget, you can buy gift certificates through me (not the website) as well.