Ours was good, interesting and different. How's that for an answer?
1. Happy January!
Most of us rang in the New Year sick.(Dustin and I have avoided it thus far.)
Alex was healthy and took an invitation to stay with friends and ran for his life to get away from us. Can't say I blame him. No one wants this bug that is going around. Jokes on him though, he came down with is a few days later.
I don't have a lot of pictures from this week. Except for this...
Poor Addison. She got my hair. Addison, Anna and myself included are doomed to have their hair look like this from now until March.
2. Girls Night
I have one cousin by marriage and an ex co-worker that I am close with. LOL It sounds funny when I describe them that way.
They are a couple of my longest friends and we have been through a lot together. Kara, Julie and I have spent a lot of years, laughter and tears together. Prayed each other through trials, help with a couple of each others weddings, held and gushed over our babies together.
We try to get together a few times a year. It has gotten so hard to get together with life, family and literal miles. So we started doing sleep overs a few years ago. It gives us more time to truly share and chat after the kids all fall asleep.
It is extra special when we get together this year. We have a new member to our group. Remember that little baby I asked everyone to pray for a while back. Well here he is... Kara and I fought over him, because he is the last addition to our group. We have ten kiddos between us (4 boys and 6 girls) and baby Owen seems like the perfect one to round things out.
P.S. Kara, he obviously, still loves me more. ;)
It also snowed while we were there. It was beautiful..the drive home was not.
3. Forget the dog, the COUCH ate it!
As much as I have loved our furniture. It was our first matching set and we paid cash for it, brand new. Plus it was made in the U.S.A. It has been through a lot in the last few years, and is slowly starting to show the affects of 4 kids.
We have a Roku and got rid of our cable a while ago. The only issue with the Roku is the remote. It is small and sleek. Something I am sure the designers found appealing. Not so much to a large family with a toddler that likes to hide things. It gets lost ALL THE TIME!
It went missing Christmas night. I did a major organize and purge on the house the two days following Christmas. It was gone. I searched everywhere short of the trash, because it had already been picked up. We even looked into buying a replacement remote. They aren't cheap people!
Finally, I did something I had been threatening to do for a year. I flipped the couches over and slit the bottom! I have to say, they weren't as scary inside there as I had feared. Just some napkins and random trash and toys....and this stuff!
The cable remote that we had to order a replacement for, the TV remote that had been missing for I don't know how long, part of one of our spelling curriculums, a rather expensive flashlight that Dustin had replaced months ago, scissors, and the Roku remote.
I now wish I had cut the bottoms out of the couches sooner. The plan is to hopefully replace the furniture in there this year. We have one small couch from Home Reserve. We love it for all it is and also what the company stands for. Seriously, go over there and check it out.
4. Let's move!
Some friends of ours moved back to the area over the weekend. This was their third move in four years and they always seem to move over Christmas week, when it is freezing and usually right after a snow storm. It was cold people...freeze the balls off a brass monkey, kind of cold. (It's a historical term, look it up!) Also known as perfect major construction weather! It is nice to have our friends within a 20 minutes drive now. Compared to an hour before.
The cool part is the fact that they are renovating a really old house like we did here with our little old house. Her husband has been kind enough to post pictures of the progress. Dustin and I have loved watching the work progress, from the comfort of our almost finished house. I wouldn't take back all the work we put into this place, but I wouldn't want to do it again anytime soon. So we shall live vicariously through them.
I took a peek around while I was there. They have a lot of work to do on it, but it is one amazing old house! There are fireplaces, and original built ins in all of the downstairs. I can't wait to see what they do with this house! There is something about an old house that's about to be brought back to life that makes me so excited and happy.
*I have to say that my friend looked around while I was there the other day and I saw the same look on her face that I had a few times. It was the "What have we gotten ourselves into?!" look. Ah, yes. I know that look well!* It will all be ok though. These old houses are always worth it!
5. The broken cat.
Have you ever seen the videos of the cat that freak our over the cucumbers? They are quite entertaining! While as the girls night mentioned above we were discussing these videos. Kara has a cat now. It took thirty seconds of video and two seconds of us looking around between the three of us and we sprang into action to find the cat and a cucumber.
After about forty-five minutes(off and on) of us trying to surprise the cat with the cucumber we decided she must be a defective kitty cat, or the fact that she lives in a house with a lot of kids has desensitized her to basically everything.
Since our cat cucumber video didn't pan out, here is a generic one from youtube..from people with cats that are not broken.
6. Ice cream and tears
I think we all can collectively agree that toddlers are confusing. Especially when they are sick.
On the third day of Anna being sick, her fever spiked up(after being down for most of the day), she was lethargic, her breathing was super heavy, she hadn't been eating or drinking and I was afraid she was getting dehydrated. The doctor squeezed her in for a check.
She was not dehydrated, at least not enough to be too concerned. She tested negative for flu and strep. It was just a really nasty virus. They ended up giving her an oral dose of prednisone in the office. Then sent her home with breathing treatments and instructions to get any and all foods and fluid in here that she would take.  | |
| She went out to play in the snow | for five minutes. |
 |
| Where I spent most of my week. |
The younger two both ended up with ear infections before the week was out. Thankfully they are both on the mend. The older two caught it a little after the younger two. Emma is holding her own and heading out the other side of it now. Alex is 12 and part fully grown man now..so I am working on his funeral arrangements as we speak. The man flu is strong with that one.
7. The gift reveal!
Remember last week when I told you about the surprise gift that Dustin said was coming? Well, it got stuck in transit due to a snow storm. It finally arrived almost a week late.
He kept giving me hints and even told me the price and weight of it. I really had no clue what it was. He even told the kids.
Then the package arrived. He told me not to get the mail that day. Well, they delivered it to the house, instead of the box and I saw the box. it was from one of my favorite stores. Christian Book Distributors.
He made me wait all day to open it. He came home, took a shower, ate dinner and then opened it. He hid in our room with it forever.
When he finally came downstairs, he presented me with a Henry Morris study bible! He got us both matching bibles with our names printed on the fronts. He even wrote a message to me in the front.
I cried a tiny bit. It is amazing! He might just be a keeper. <3
We have been reading through our bibles together for the last year...we like to sip coffee, read and then share what we learned together. It is one of my favorite parts of the week.
Well, I need to go and make a menu, and grocery list. I found a way to order most of our household and grocery items online. (If it goes well, I will share it in a video or post for you.) I am picking up one of the orders and making a run into Aldi tonight. If I plan it right, I will be going all by myself! Yay!
Happy Friday!
~Lyndsay
