Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Nathan is prepping for his exam next week, the kids are all sleeping, and I finally have a chance to purge my brain of all the witty things I've been dying to share.  : )  In note form...

It's a good thing I'm not thin skinned. Here is a small sampling of what my darling children have subjected me to during the past few weeks:

"I don't want to hurt your feelings, but you're kind of a little fatter than Daddy."--this from Joseph, after much thought and consideration.

"This isn't the worst meal you've ever made, but it's close."  --from Mary, who later decided that, yes, it was in fact the worst meal I've ever made, though not the worst she's ever had.

"YOU fixed it?"--from Lil'Nathan, shocked that his mother isn't a total moron when it comes to gadgets.

Charlie may be trying to insult me, but I can't translate everything he says  yet, so I just don't know it.

Elisabeth still thinks I'm great.  Though Daddy is definitely her favorite dancing partner... and fellow yodeler.

Yodeling?  Ah, yes.  We now have a 36 song set of Franzl Lang CD's.  Coolest Christmas gift of the year!  Elisabeth coos and chirps and squeaks and grunts every time we put one of them on.  When she was still in utero, she would bounce all over the place when we listened on YouTube.  Must be the Swiss in her.

We had a great visit with Brian and Audrey and their family at the end of September.  Our camping trip got rained out, but we, (okay, they) took some fabulous pictures!  A trip to the Upper Valley is never a bad thing.  : )  Breakfast at King Arthur Flour... the kids are still talking about how wonderful that was.








A week later, Nathan's parents came for a few days.  (Too short, both visits.)  Joseph is highly protective of all his "grampa pictures--don't delete any of them!"  Grampa was his gaming buddy and the poor man played so much Monopoly and so many rounds of Peanut Roundup, (and even a few games of Jungle Journey, a Book of Mormon board game on Sunday) that he's probably good for a few months of no gaming.  I know my mom has to take a game hiatus after her visits.



House shopping again.  This one might actually go through.  We should know soon.  The closing is set for 1/10, and despite it being only 12 days away and the fact that we have no info from the bank, the bank is still presenting to us like they seem to think it will still happen on that date.  We'll see. Actually, Nathan and I were discussing this today.  We don't care either way.  That sounds bad, let me try again.  We are happy with the outcome either way.  (There, that sounds better.)  If it goes through, great.  We'll spiffy-fy the house and make it lovely.  (Yes, it's a foreclosure, but the nicest we've seen.  Okay, so that isn't saying much, considering some of the heaps we've been in.  But this one we could move into and live right away, no gaping holes in the floor, flooded basements, or nasty, nasty bathrooms to fix first.)  A work in progress.  A new 5 yr plan to get us back to NH. If the deal is rebuffed by the bank (something about lack of funds?) then we'll consider that our a-okay to transition to... (yes,) NH.  When we can.  We are putting our very best effort into this deal (no attempts to squash the transaction) and see it as our last attempt to stay in the area if that is where Heavenly Father wants us.  If it doesn't go through, it won't be for any lack of effort on our part.

For some reason, this attitude tends to shock people.

Nathan's boards are next week.  He'll be flying to FL and spending all of 48 hrs there.  We were all going to drive down with him and then stay, but the house closing will be during that time, and that's probably not a good time to be away.  (You know, it does reflect a lack of commitment on our part if we are out of state for the closing.)  He'll go down, take the test, visit with his sister and her family for a little while, and then come home.  We'll go down later, maybe in Feb or March.

I made 20 dolls and 6 flowers.  I was planning to send them to CT.  I wasn't sure what they were going to do with them, but I wanted to send something.  I find myself affected by this tragedy so much more deeply than any of the horrible shootings of years or even months past.  I'm not entirely sure why, but it probably has to do with those kids, the teachers trying to save them, the kids who witnessed and survived... I've not been sleeping very well some nights these past 2 weeks.  And I know I'm not alone.  I wanted to send something, some way of saying we are praying for you, we hurt with you, please be okay.  I boxed them up and got online to find an address.  Instead I found a request from the town asking people to stop sending things.  They are flooded with toys and gifts and have no place to put everything and too few people to sort through it all.  Hundreds of thousands of donations have come in from people all over the world with the same idea, the same hurt, the same wish to share and heal.  So, I'll keep it.  The town asked we donate to a charity or organization in our area in memory of the victims.  I guess that's what I'll do.  I don't want to make their jobs any harder.

I just finished paying bills.  Why do we have our internet service from a company that cannot even support a page for their own bill-pay?

I'll post on Christmas later.  Well, pictures anyway.  I don't have any pearls of wisdom nor any gems from my little cherubs.  (Though there is a great video of Charlie putting his new tool set to good use on a pesky box of PlayDohs.)

We'll just end with a beautiful little baby, shall we?  She yodels.


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