Pixiemom

We have arrived down at Jeremy’s parents’ house.

Yesterday, it was still a bit too icy up there in Chicago-land, so we skipped our church’s Christmas Eve service and had what is quickly becoming our family’s traditional service at the house with the reading of the Christmas story and singing some traditional carols by candlelight.

This morning, Jeremy made a batch of waffles and bacon for breakfast. Then afterwards, we opened presents then packed up the van and headed on down. Joe (our GPS) led us through more of the country-side than we usually drive. He even took us on a dirt road for a little while.

Anyway, we are here in never, never land Illinois! Don’t get me wrong, I love the country and I love being down there. I can’t wait to see Sarah while we’re here and have a girls’ night out.

They had a lot of fun making this: Emoticarolers

Tomorrow is our church’s Christmas Cantata and I am directing it, so I am nervous about that.

For Noelle’s birthday down in NC, I bought some craft foam projects which all of the kids enjoy doing and they had a really great time with an art time. In fact, they liked it so much that we had to stop the kids from doing 3 or 4 each so we could open presents and have the chocolate cheesecake mousse. Noelle got a few books and some money to put towards her dollhouse fund. (She and AnnaBeth decided together that they would save up their money for a wooden dollhouse they found one day. They are close to having the amount they need.)

We got home on Wednesday and I got a few hours of rest before heading to church for full cantata practice. That was a long two hours and I felt like we really didn’t accomplish all we needed to, but we’ll see. Pray for me as I’m thinking I have some decisions to make regarding the adult choir.

I wanted to get some things done outside the home (shopping and stuff) this week after we got home, but that didn’t happen because we had the ice storm on Thursday night and Friday morning and then more snow today. I ventured out to the post office today, but it was still really slick out there even on the main roads, so afterwards, I came home and stayed there. I’m thinking the main roads should be better by tomorrow morning. Up here, they usually have them cleared fairly quickly, but this was a doozy of a storm, so it must have caused some problems. The kids had some fun playing around on the icy snow in the yard. They weren’t out long, but they said they had been ice skating out there. I watched Christine jumping and trying to break it. It didn’t look like she was getting through much.

While down in NC, one of the women at the Bazaar at my mom’s church was making these itty bitty bears. I asked her about them, but didn’t think I could make them. She enjoyed talking to me and gave me the pattern for the bear (and enlarged it 200% so it’s easier to do) as well as one of the patterns she uses for their 4-H club down there. I worked on the bigger bear pattern today. It’s was tough, but I did it. The lady thought Amie might enjoy making the horseshoe pillow since it’s easy and I can also use it as a nice rice pack that goes around the neck easily. At the moment though, I’m using the pattern with Christine. She’s enjoying learning how to do it.

Oh, one more thing… I put some pictures up on Flickr, so go take a look if you wish. If you are on Facebook, I put most of them on there as well, though I always put a slight bit more on Flickr.

Oh wow!! I guess I’m directing that cantata TODAY! It’s just past midnight… nervousness always makes it hard for me to sleep.

Noelle is five today!

I’ll write more later. We’re getting ready to start our way home.

We are down at my parents’ house in the mountains of NC. I love, love, love it here. It isn’t as cold as Chicago and there are mountains and all kinds of stuff. Mom took me to a neat little fabric store down here. I didn’t spend much, but I spent enough. The kids all got fleece blankets from there for Christmas presents and I got some material to make some rice packs.

My sister is also down here with her three. Tabitha and AnnaBeth are really enjoying each other. Actually, all the kids are playing together a lot. They’ve always got along so well. Benji (as I call him) is getting a lot of attention. He is an easy baby. He doesn’t cry much and when he is a bit fussy because of being hungry or tired or wet, he just does a little grumbling. It’s cute. He’s very smiley. He loves being held by Uncle Jeremy and vice versa. Jeremy was always so busy when Tabitha and Naomi were little, so he didn’t get much time with them. He has really enjoyed holding and talking to Benji though. He doesn’t have a lot of time with the baby because Grandma and Auntie Julie take over quite often, as well as having big cousins Amie and James wanting their turns.

On Thursday, we were all here together. My brother, Jon, and his girlfriend came over with two of her girls and we had our Christmas meal, did some caroling, and then took a family picture. It was nice having the whole family all together. Jill, Rob, Jeremy, and I went over to Jon’s house yesterday and we enjoyed some visiting over there too. He and Belinda have really worked hard on getting that house looking nice and they did a good job.

Today, we went over to my parents’ church. They were having a craft bazaar and there were a lot of neat things there. My scarf had been ruined in the last flood in our basement, so I bought a new one there. After that, we went to a park and let the kids play and then walked along the river. It was kind of cold, but not nearly as cold as I was up in Chicago, so I’m okay with it.

I haven’t taken as many pictures as I usually do because my camera has been acting up. I need a better camera, but that will probably not be possible for a long time. I would love to have a digi SLR, but we just can’t afford it. It would make it so much easier to take some pictures that I want to take that my little instant digi just can’t do. I DO have pictures of my nieces and nephew, so you all will have those to look forward to after I return.

In the meantime, adios, my friends. I’ll update you all later.

This last Wednesday, our homeschool group had a talent show. We didn’t have very many members show up, including some that had signed up to do stuff in the talent show. Our leader was gone since she’d had surgery not long ago, so we got started a little later than normal, but things went well. We have a budding orator in our group. He wrote a speech titled “This is the Time” and did it for us. It was very good. His little brother played the cello. My kids did a puppet show to a song off of my Selah CD and two other kids did something with puppets as well. We also had a few people singing and two sisters danced to “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”. It was lots of fun. Afterwards, they opened up Santa’s Shop where the kids could get some nice gifts for parents for cheap prices to benefit the group. One of the members of our group gets stuff from Micheals for free when they are no longer “in style” or whatever and she donated all this stuff to the group for this event for the kids.

We’re going to miss the next 4-H meeting this next Wednesday because we’ll be down at my parents’ house in NC and then we’ll be missing the next homeschool group meeting the Wednesday after that because we’ll be traveling home that day.

Just thought I’d let you know… after a few days of leftover chicken (we had cornish hens for Thanksgiving) and other leftovers, Little Caesar’s Pizza tasted really good for dinner tonight.

Oh, and I was very happy to fill up the van for under $30. It was all the way down to the red line too. Being up here in expensive Chicago, the gas prices are higher than some others, but it was good to find it for $1.59 today at one gas station. Everywhere else I looked, it was around $1.75.

As promised, I am putting up another five of my small thankfuls.

6. I am thankful for my friend, Sarah, who is in Florida right now. I call her up once or twice a week and we always talk for a long time. We just talk out all our frustrations to each other and then we talk silly and get each other laughing. Phone Therapy.

7. I am thankful for Facebook, Vox, Twitter, and Plurk. I have a network of friends in each. Some of which cross over to others, but from each of them, I’ve found friends… some old friends from high school and college and some new friends.

8. I am thankful for a bed. Jeremy and I lived for a long time either sleeping on a couch bed or on a mattress on the floor. I like having my bed now where I have some storage room underneath and I don’t hurt my knee trying to get up out of it.

9. I am thankful for sweaters and sweatshirts. Living up here in Chicago-land requires some nice warm clothes throughout the winter. I love the soft sweaters and thick hoodie sweatshirts that I have been given from different people.

10. Lastly, I am thankful for my blog. I enjoy writing about the things we do with the kids or whatever else I wish to write about.

I’m going to list 5 little things I’m thankful for today and then another 5 tomorrow. Not the big ones, like a house, vehicle, my children and so on, but those little blessings that just make life so fun.

1. I am thankful for nighttime chat buddies. When I’m going crazy thinking over all kinds of things and can’t sleep, I need something to get my mind to stop going everywhere and Colwyn and Angie do a good job of that. We get silly and I have to make sure I don’t wake up Jeremy with my laughing sometimes, but this helps my mind to relax and I go to sleep easily afterwards.

2. I am thankful for a nice landlord who checks on us every once in a while to make sure that everything is still going well here at the house. If there is anything wrong, he usually has someone out that day or the next day to get it fixed.

3. I am thankful for good books. I am still unpacking books and keep finding books that I want to re-read.

4. I am thankful for nice smelling candles. I have a few in the kitchen, one in the living/dining room, a few in our bedroom, and one in the upstairs bathroom. Jeremy is allergic to many air fresheners, but he can handle the candles, so if I want our rooms to smell fruity or sugary or whatever, I light one of my candles. My favorites are the fruit ones… strawberry, peach, and black raspberry vanilla. I’d like to get an apple pie one.

5. I am thankful for my little CD player. I have it in the living room and put in background music which I find myself singing to throughout the day. I like praise music, though lately I’ve been putting some old Christmas ones in… Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole. The music helps me to keep my sanity throughout the crazy-ness that my days are.

NOW, I’d like to challenge a few of you all to list some of your small thankfuls and don’t forget to check tomorrow for #6-10.

It’s been rough up here in Chicago-land. There’s been a lot of fraud, so our bank completely stopped all debit activity in the area. The really bad part was the fact that we found out when we had NO cash and I was out with some other homeschoolers for lunch. I tried to pay for our lunch and the debit card was denied. OUCH! One of the other moms helped us out and even bought the kids some cookies later. We’ve made it through, but it has really made it hard.

As for the sales of my rice-heating pads. I’ve sold 3 of them so far. I made some for 2 of Jeremy’s co-workers’ wives during their pregnancies, so a few others there have seen or heard of them. Another of Jeremy’s co-workers was my first customer. She bought 2 for herself (one for home and one to stay at work) and one for a gift. I think word of mouth will be the easiest way of getting the news out there about these. At the moment, I have 12 regular ones sewn up and ready. (4 yellow, 3 purple, 3 flower, 1 basketball, 1 cream) I have some more purple and cream material to sew up to make more regular size ones. Then I want to see which ones I have enough of to make small sizes with and will probably sew some of those. I saw some HSM3 flannel when I went in last time and some other kid prints that I was thinking would be good for the small packs because the small ones are really great as cold packs. I had heard you could use a rice pack as a cold compress, but decided to find out myself, so I made a small pack for us and stuck it in the freezer. The kids used to balk at putting ice or other cold packs with liquid in them on their boo-boos because they were too cold. The rice pack doesn’t get too cold. My kids have used it often. I’m pretty sure it is needed at least once a week. Last time used… yesterday when Amie’s fingers got smashed.

I love going to my chiropractor. I just thought I’d tell you all that. I had lower back pain for the longest time. My freshman year in college, I got pulled out by another girl and slipped on ice and my lower back just never felt right after that. I haven’t had much lower back pain in the last few weeks and I’m loving it! I’m also having less shoulder pain. Also, since I do exercises there at the office, I’ve been getting more exercise than I normally would at this time of year. I’ve been sleeping more at night and taking less naps. I feel more energetic than I used to. I wish I’d had insurance that would have covered this long ago.

AND… um… I think that’s all I can think of for now.

Oh wait. I need to do a shout out: HI SARAH!! I can’t wait to see you at Christmas time! JILL, it’s only a few more weeks and I can see you and my nieces and nephew. I can’t wait to sing with/to them. MOM, I’m looking forward to some Christmas Caroling. COLWYN and ANGIE, thanks for just being silly friends. Some days that’s all I need.