Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Lately


+ Snuggling this little one. And you know that feeling when you've had a long day and you're just about to climb into bed and it just sounds so wonderful and you're so excited to feel that pillow under your head and drift off to sleep? Me too. And it's amazing! So different from the "I can't bare the thought of going to bed because it is just the beginning of the next 8 hours of torture, though I do so love this tiny little baby..." feeling I've had for many parts of the last 10 years!  Isaac and I are up twice a night and for a Brough 5 month old, that is pretty spectacular :) (For a long time it felt like all I could talk about was how tired I was, and now whenever I'm giving an update on 'how's life' all I can say is how wonderful it is to be sleeping so much better!)

+ Laughing at the Christmas-every-day feeling at our house as deliveries are made and packages are opened. Even with pretty small Christmas lists, with 5 little ones plus normal household purchases to keep things running, the Fedex/UPS/USPS/Lee's/All of the above deliverers are pretty constant visitors at our house. (And there's something so fun about getting the packages and opening them up to see what surprise we've picked out that has arrived  like  "oh! Porter's play dough tools - he's going to love those!"

+ Figuring out health insurance. We've been on five different health insurance plans this year --Bonobos' company plan, COBRA, LostMyName's company plan, a temporary plan for Jordan and Isaac when we missed adding Isaac to our real plan, an individual plan, a new individual plan for 2017, and now maybe back to a LostMyName plan for 2017 after all? Whoosh. This stuff makes me a little crazy.

+ Pizzelle making. This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions and this year was the first time all three older kids could help, and really help even. And all the kids are such sweet treat deliverers - I would be so happy at the cuteness of them at our door (even if I am their mom... :)

+ Not doing anything at all about our basement. We finally had a contractor come over and talk through our plans and such (early in November) but then life has just kind of moved along... when this all first happened (in September) Jordan talked to a friend about doing some work for us and he said he'd be busy for the next month -- which was much too long for us, we thought. Three months later and life just goes right along, even with a semi-torn up basement (and half painted kitchen too!). Soon though hopefully we'll really start making progress -- I think I realized that for anything to get better, it would first have to get worse and that has been overwhelming enough not to start!

+ Looking forward to Christmas break! Somehow our school mornings have been a little crazy lately and I think all the kids (and me too, for sure!) are looking forward to a break even just from the busyness of getting out the door on time. And it will just fun to play and read and wrap presents and whatever else we come up with. We're enjoying all the little Christmas activities though. This morning I took the little boys to see Owen's kindergarten 'gingerbread man' performance and it was very sweet. Tonight we're going to see the school's holiday movie the kids all helped make. And tomorrow I get to help with Landon's class party and I'm excited for that too.