Man--I did so well in November with my posting, but since then? Let's just say that blogging has fallen completely out of my routine. But I'm not giving up! I love looking back too much to give it up yet.
So, where have we been? December was a crazy, whirlwind month (as always), but fun and magical and enjoyable all the same. I think I'll go back and do a retrospective post on Christmas, but in the meantime, suffice it to say that the boys had a great holiday, spent time with family and friends, got some really cool toys (although Seth was underwhelmed by his haul this year--that's what Santa gets for trying to go low key!), and generally enjoyed the break from school and routine. They had the full two weeks off, and I got quite a few days off from work in that time, too. And Ed took off the rest of the time, so we were fully covered.
We mixed things up a little bit this year, though, by spending the night on Christmas Eve with Ed's parents. They live in Maryland, about 50 minutes from us, and our usual routine is that we sleep at our house on Christmas Eve, open our presents in the morning on Christmas Day, and then head over to Ed's parents' around noon. What complicates this a little bit is that on Christmas Eve, Ed's aunt and uncle, who live in Damascus, MD (also about 50 minutes from us), have a big party. Ed's cousin dresses up as Santa Claus and hands out presents, sometimes they have Karaoke--the kids love it. So in the past, we drive all the way to MD Christmas Eve, drive all the way back to VA and usually don't get home 'till 11:00 p.m. Then on Christmas Day (after very little sleep for everyone), we head back to MD to Ed's parents.' That's a lot of back and forth. So this year, instead of driving all the way back to VA on Christmas Eve, we drove 15 minutes to Eds' Parents' and slept there. It was a little weird for me not to have Christmas morning at our house. Ed's parents don't have a Christmas Tree or decorations (they're Jewish), but the kids didn't mind at all. And it turned out to be a relaxing morning. (Although we still didn't get a lot of sleep since the boys woke up at 4:00 a.m.--4:00 A.M.!!!!--and decided it would be okay to go downstairs and open their stockings. But I digress.) I'm glad I stepped out of my comfort zone. It's not something we'll do every year, since Ed's sister and BIL and their 3 boys stay at Ed's parents' every other year for Christmas. But it worked this year.
Sooooo, since the holidays, we've been back at school and work for a week. It's been crazy cold but we're coping. We're actually having an energy efficiency expert do a home evaluation tomorrow to see if we can do anything more to better insulate our house. It's pretty drafty! Plus our hot water heater is in the attic (I KNOW, right?), and there's never enough hot water in the winter. So short of moving it out of the attic, we'll find out if we can do anything extra to insulate it. (It already has an insulation blanket around it, but clearly, it needs more.) Hopefully there will be at least a few more things we can do (cheaply) to make our house a little cozier.
Unfortunately, William came down with some kind of bug this weekend, so we're home today (just a low-grade fever, sore throat, stuffy nose). He's better today--no fever--so hopefully he'll be back at school tomorrow. But in the meantime I'm going to try to get a few things done that got neglected over the weekend. Sick days are good for stuff like that. William was actually disappointed that he didn't get to go to school today. They're learning about Egypt in Inquiry and he looks forward to it, so that's always a good sign that things are going well. Seth is fully into learning sight words, but he is reluctant to read when he doesn't know exactly what the words are. He's the perfectionist who gets frustrated when he doesn't get something right away. I know it will "click" for him soon, though.
So that's my update for now. January is humming right along, and I'm working hard to enjoy all the moments, not let life pass me by, to balance the schedule with free time and room for spontaneity, and to be mindful and appreciative of all that I have. 2013 was not a bad year for us (lots of my friends had a really sucky 2013, so I'm lucky in that respect), but I want to look back at 2014 with more than just, "It was okay." And hopefully, I'll keep recording it all here so I can have some proof that it was a kick-ass year!
