Moving and Christmasing.

Everyone should try to move and buy a home during the busiest time of year! It's exhilarating!

To be honest, it's really stressful, but it's also all good stuff. So I feel blessed to do it.

While I'm being honest, a few years ago, I fell out of love with Christmas. I mean, I still loved all of the spiritual aspects of Christmas. I loved reading about the nativity and the service and all that. But I was pregnant with Gwen and SO SICK, and all of the merry and cheer and sales and annoying pop versions of my favorite Christmas songs just got on my nerves! And it took me awhile to recover from it.

This year, I'm enjoying Christmas. Our stake hosts a community nativity display event every year, and even though I was stressed about playing four piano solos and accompanying several others, I really enjoyed it. I felt the Christmas cheer I used to feel and have not felt in prior years. It really is a great time of year.

My mom sent the family a nativity set, and it's quickly become the girls' nativity set. It's durable and they love it.

And June made me this note:

I hope you have a great day, lucky! HAHA.

The Light the World campaign is awesome, and even though I haven't been keeping up with the prompts every single day, I'm still benefiting from the ones I get to. And my friend Kim wrote about June for one of the days, and that touched my ice cold heart and melted it a little.

And I've started wrapping presents. Yay me!

One year, I want to go all out and make them pretty, but this year I'm settling for them getting done. Done is better than perfect.

And my beautiful, wonderful Aunt Marie offered to watch the kids in her Manhattan apartment while Dan and I went to the temple to do sealings and initiatories. 

My kids loved looking around the lobby of Marie's apartment. Dan asked me if the lobby reminded me of our first apartment. Haha, nope!

Gwen in her city, NYC. I totally think Gwen will live there as an adult. She loves it.

Dan distracting the kids with this luggage cart. It was more entertaining than it should have been.

This was a great part of the day. Using the Giving Machine. Choosing between buying a baby crib, a menstrual hygiene kit, a sheep, a well, a baby resuscitation kit--everything gripped at us. At the end, we paid for 100 polio vaccinations. With tears in our eyes. I love the giving machines!

AND we went out to lunch. Just Dan and me. It was awesome. So what if we spent the whole lunch talking about our calendar and other boring chores. We were together, and we could hear each other the whole conversation. Lovely.

And the kids also playing in the parking garage. Kids will play anywhere they can.

Church yesterday.

Cutting up candy bars to put into fudge. And then realizing I didn't have a crucial ingredient for fudge. Yay me.

I recognize that this post is pretty lame, but it's done. Sometimes done is better than perfect.

The end.

Happy Thanksgiving Back.

We're coming off our 4.5 day weekend, and it's been so great. But I was determined to hit tomorrow hard and with no glitches in the morning routine, so we have spent the past little bit packing lunches, setting out outfits, packing up backpacks and my gym bag, etc. 

And then we got the call that school is canceled tomorrow due to bad weather.

I can't say that I mind too much. We've done a lot of stuff the past four days but despite the productivity, there was a chill vibe throughout that was so relaxing.

Chill vibe? I don't feel like that's a natural phrase to come out of my mouth. Am I trying to get in with the cool kids here or what?

I picked up the girls from their half day Wednesday, and Gwen was donning yet another holiday-themed hat.

A turkey wearing a turkey.

I don't have any pictures from our two feasts. Because I'm so chill vibey now. (Did I use that phrase correctly?)

But I can tell you that we ordered the Cracker Barrel Thanksgiving pack because Dan LOVED it last year. We ate that Wednesday night. And Thursday. And Friday. And Saturday. We ate shrimp today because even Dan, the Cracker Barrel lover, could not stand to eat that meal one more day. But there's still some in the fridge, taunting us every time we open the door. 

We were also invited to eat at a friend's house Thursday, and we did so. And it kinda ruined the Cracker Barrel experience for Dan. Last year, I was pregnant and sick and couldn't cook and also couldn't handle anyone else cooking, so we ordered Cracker Barrel and Dan was pleasantly surprised with how good it was. Hence why we ordered it again this year. But compared to the all homemade-from-scratch meal we had Thursday night, it just didn't measure up. Probably our last Cracker Barrel year.

And Friday, we started setting up for Christmas.

We also let the kids set up a smaller tree in their room, and here is that beauty in all of its kid-designed glory.

Kinda makes Charlie Brown's tree look good.

The nighttime look:

I also completed all of our Christmas shopping Friday. This is how I roll-I make the list late in October, add and delete as needed through November, wake up early Black Friday, make my purchases online and have it all shipped to my house. And then don't think about it again until it's the night before and I realize I have not wrapped anything. Which I'm not going to do this year! But getting it all done in one sitting is the way to go.

We're not really puzzlers, but after the kids enjoyed an old dinosaur puzzle we forgot we owned until recently, we decided to order one for us to all to do together over the holidays.

Dan has put every single one of those pieces together. The rest of us took one look and remembered we aren't puzzlers. But he persevered and loved/hated it. He couldn't leave it alone until it was done. It's done now except one piece we can't find anywhere. Will Dan ever sleep again? No one knows.

Don't kill my chill vibe, Dan.

On Saturday morning, we headed up to the church to help with set-up for the big nativity display our church hosts. Dan did set-up in the gym, and I was in the nursery taking care of kiddos so that other parents could work. And by "taking care of kiddos", I mean "put on a movie".

I kid, I kid. I mean, there was definitely a movie playing, but we all had fun outside of the movie too. And Beck kept planking while we were there. Babies imitate what they see, and I am the person he sees most often, so it just makes sense.

We took our Sunday photo in front of the tree this morning:

And after church, the girls wrote their letters to Santa.

And our Come Follow Me lesson today, taught by Dan, while I drew flower after flower on a notepad to entertain Harris.

Then Gwen asked to teach a lesson. And it made me really grateful for her awesome primary teacher. We are really trying to adopt the home-centered, Church-supported Gospel teaching lifestyle, but there is no denying that Gwen has the best primary teacher in the whole world, and she learns a ton every single Sunday at church.

And then it sleeted outside and Dan shoveled our walk. Harris misinterpreted Dan's going outside as Dan going on some sort of outing, and Harris screamed and cried until I got him all dressed up and let him go on said "outing" as well. So he sat in the van with the door open as Dan shoveled.

Looks like an awesome outing, Harris.

The End.

Nope. Still no Princeton.

So we have big news!

We are moving. To Pennsylvania.

Dan has accepted an offer to work for The Hershey Company. We tried to be hush hush when discussing the option since we didn't want the kids to know anything was happening until it was for sure happening. But they didn't seem to notice that we were constantly talking about moving, changing schools, etc.

They had a half day last Thursday. We picked them up and told them we were going on a special trip. We took them home to use the bathroom, pack up the van and go.

This is when we told them that we are moving in January, and our little trip was to go house hunting.

I was NERVOUS to tell them that we were moving. Especially June. Every single day, June waxes poetic about her deep and abiding love for New Jersey and especially for the house we have been renting (???). She LOVES her school.

But I knew it would "sweeten" the deal when we told them that Dan was working for a chocolate company. June has had moments of "but I will MISS my teachers!!" but she loves telling people that her dad sells chocolate.

Hershey is only two a half hours away, and I've promised her we can come back and have lunch with her favorite aide every summer.

Here are the worst bellhops I ever saw, driving our luggage at crazy speeds blindly down the hallway, darting back and forth at different angles.

The trip was productive. I went house hunting while Dan was stuck in a hotel with four children. Our children so, it was rough. Luckily, Home Alone 2 was on, and they have never seen it and thought it was the FUNNIEST THING EVER. We also stayed in a hotel with an indoor pool the size of my palm, but it worked!

We have an offer in for a house. Fingers crossed.

At the end of it all, we took the kids to Hershey Park!

Dan was so excited because we used to go to Busch Gardens in Florida all of the time, and it was especially fun at Christmas.

Of course, there is the small difference of about 40 degrees that made it a still good, but different, experience.

In other news, I went to parent teacher conferences and while there, spotted this hilarious picture of Gwen as a pilgrim.

I realized on the way to the actual conference that I hadn't given a second's thought to what might be said at the conference. Honestly, I hadn't heard a single thing from Gwen's teacher all year, and I kinda like living in Ignoranceville. But her teacher reassured me that Gwen was doing great, and I flew outta there before she could change her mind. Seriously, I got back into the car to drive home and realized that I wasn't even sure if the teacher was done talking when I was done listening and left.

Speaking of, Gwen was also asked to be the Student of the Week and to fill out this poster about herself. She has been working on it for the past two nights and has only screamed and cried three times! What a special bonding experience for us.

And lastly, this 5 and a half month baby is trying to crawl. He's very very close, and I just want to knock him over with every attempt. Though at least when he can crawl, he will be happier. He's so frustrated with his immobility. I LOVE his immobility. But nobody cares what Mom thinks. Womp womp.

The End.

Still Haven't Gone to Princeton.

Did you know I lived on Princeton Place growing up?

'Tis true. And yet I still haven't seen Princeton University. You know, the one that is one hour away and we were supposed to go to 2 weeks ago?

We didn't go this past weekend either. But for good reason. We went to the Philadelphia Temple instead.

Or, actually, I went to the temple. Everyone came with me and waited in the waiting area. But when I came out to relieve Dan and give him his turn, he said, "We need to go home now."

Turns out I missed quite the show while I was in the temple. At one point, Dan was trying to get everyone onto the elevator, but while he was helping Beck, Gwen and Harris ran onto the elevator and pressed buttons, and the door closed before Dan could get to them. They got out at the parking garage where a nice man helped them go back to the waiting area. They eventually reconnected with Dan. At least, we're pretty sure we brought home the right kids.

Also, a certain oldest child threw a huge loud tantrum. Like bonkers loud. And a nice visitors center man had to come over to Dan and see what was going on and ask her to quiet down because people couldn't hear what they needed to. 

In other words, the 5 month old baby was our best-behaved kid.

But I had a great experience at the temple! I was grateful that I was able to go. The peace I feel there is not of this world. The second I leave the big front doors and am back on the loud streets of Philadelphia, I'm a little sad. I receive a lot of revelation while I'm in there. How to parent, how to wife, how to human. It's the best.

We took a different way to the temple this time and saw an ice cream shop and a fudge shoppe, and we determined that's where we would stop on our way home. And we did.

The hoodlums:

And the nice baby:

 And we went to church yesterday. And Harris really likes brushing his teeth.

And we took the nice baby with us. Here's a picture of him doing what he does best while I was taking pictures of the other kids.

This week, the girls kept talking about Western Day coming up at school. I thought they made it up, and I was happy to let them dress up like cowgirls if they wanted to. Come to find out it really was Western Day, and my kids just pay better attention than I do. I actually like that a lot. If they can take care of the things like Western Day and all that jazz, I can take care of everything else. 

I know--they don't look very Western. But this is what they came up in 5 minutes.

And last but certainly not least--Gwen's teacher challenged all of the kindergartners to read 100 books with a parent before the 100th day of school. Which is in February. But we love to read, and so we got it done early. I'm glad because I just want to read whatever book I want, long or short, and not have to worry about getting our number of books in.

We're reading Thanksgiving books now, and I have bought some new Christmas books we shall start soon.

Life is good, even if I never see Princeton.

The End.

Princeton or Bust! How about Bust?

We've lived here almost three years, Princeton University is one hour away, and we have yet to check it out. It's driving me a bit nuts. I have a list of things I want to see in New Jersey/NYC, and Princeton is at the tippy top of the list. And yet, here we are.

So I marked this past Saturday on the calendar several weeks ago as "Princeton Day". I figured out where to park, what to see, and even had a recommendation for "the best ice cream ever" near the campus. I don't know if this person has ever been to Last Licks, so I'm skeptical. And yet willing to try.

True to Doug Beck form, I had an exact time I wanted to pull out of the driveway. Twelve noon. We all went to the YMCA that morning so Dan and I could work out, we came home and fed everyone a huge lunch, cleaned up and were pulling out of the driveway at 11:56. I felt AMAZING. Promptness fuels my soul.

I rarely fuel my soul.

The "low pressure" light came up on the dash, and we made a quick stop to fill up the tires. You know me--I'm a nervous gal, and I asked Dan if he would do it. He said he would but wanted me to get out and watch because it's REALLY not a big deal and something I should be able to do.

So I got out and watched.

Poor Dan. The nozzle on our tire BROKE, and the tire was flat in about 30 seconds.

Of course, the first thing he said to me was, "Okay, Heather, this NEVER happens and you can do this!" And I looked at him like he was crazy town.

The kids took the news worse than I. I was bummed about Princeton being bumped yet another week on the schedule, but they were very upset that ice cream had been bumped. Gwen bawled and bawled.

We were about a half mile from home, so I got out the double stroller, strapped the boys in, and the girls and I walked and pushed the boys home while Dan changed the tire and took the bad one to get fixed.

Gwen had brought this awful blow-up guitar from Chuck E. Cheese in the van for our trip to Princeton and insisted on carrying it all the way home. Puts a new meaning to the phrase "air guitar", right?

Pretty leaves covered the sidewalk.

We had to cross a tiny bridge, and the kids wanted to throw leaves into the creek below.

It was about 40 degrees out so everyone was cold when we got home. So I whipped up hot chocolate with cream AND marshmallows and asked if this made up for the ice cream.

Gwen insisted that it didn't.

Dan came home two hours later. A couple of guys at the gas station offered to help him change the tire, and none of them could get the old tire off. They had to kick at it quite awhile before it would budge. And then he had to wait awhile to get the nozzle fixed.

I took the girls to the library for a drop-in craft and then YES, I took those poor deprived girls out for ice cream.

Gwen kept closing her eyes and waving her arms in happiness while she ate the ice cream. She is a sad case, my friends.

And yesterday the girls were able to wear new-to-them fancy coats that someone in the ward passed along to us. June says she's a London girl now.

Gwen and Beck before church.

After church, we ate a ton of lasagna and decided to take a walk before eating the caramel brownies I had made. On our walk, we spotted wild turkeys, and they flew away. This started a huge discussion on whether we really saw turkeys because can turkeys fly?

Yes, they can. Google says so.

You just have to believe.

I believe I can fly.

The End.