Santa

Still here. :) More to say but in the meantime...

Took advantage of the fact that Noah's already out for break and the rest of the schools aren't yet (and don't have a snow day today like yesterday) and went to see the Old Town Santa. As per tradition (albeit not a very longstanding tradition, lol), we stopped and fed boys first then took happy boys and didn't have any lines to wait in. Yay!

Sorry

Yup. I went missing again. Sorry about that. Here's some of what's been going on:

- After getting back from Spokane, I had another bout of stupid vertigo, complete with lots of vomiting. Awesome. Fortunately, I remembered the advice my friend Molly shared with me last time and was able to take it easy for a day and get back on track. Whew.

- Thanksgiving here was a quiet and lovely affair. Just a traditional Thanksgiving spread with just us. :)

- Black Friday didn't find us venturing out into any stores. Instead, we stuck close to home, took some pictures in the snow, went for a walk, played some games, and read a book together.

- The Monday after Thanksgiving, Noah had his advising appointment for next semester. Whew. Nice to have that out of the way.

- Course, he has to survive until next semester first. ;) Between Thanksgiving and now, we've been battling over getting his final projects and papers done. Well, we've been helping make sure they got done and lecturing about time management, lol. (Fortunately, he's now down to just two final exams...which should be fine. In the past week-ish, though, he's completed a final project for mythology (writing and illustrating a short children's book), done a presentation on that project, written a 7 page paper for history, written a 15 page paper for English, and done a presentation on that paper. Fun times.)

- Last Sunday (12/6), Noah had his first on-street driving instruction with MasterDrive, we picked out a tree (sadly, without Noah, since time was tight for him (see above, lol)), and bookends had a JOAD dress rehearsal. Here we are at our annual tree lot visit:

- This week has been more low-key...just working on wrapping up some more Christmas shopping and finishing up our scheduled homeschooling before the holidays.

- Yesterday, Asher, Micah and I put up our outside lights. We were pretty proud of ourselves and only needed Nathan's help at the very end. We lack height, lol.  

Now I need to get boys to karate, and later tonight we'll hopefully get around to actually decorating the tree. More later...promise. :)

I'm blaming Case

Sorry. I went missing. I know. ;) 

If you follow me over on Facebook, you've already seen these pictures. For those who don't, here's the story:

My baby sister, Cassy, was scheduled for a repeat c-section to have baby boy #2 on Tuesday, November 17. Micah and I were going to fly out to help take care of big brother Blaze while they were at the hospital. We were set to fly out on Sunday, 11/15.

Baby boy #2 decided he didn't want to wait for the 17th and made his appearance on Thursday, November 12 instead. Silly, Case. Scrambling, I managed to rearrange my flight and fly out early Friday morning to help out. Here are pictures from the hospital. Doesn't Blaze look thrilled about his baby brother? :)

My mom, grandma and I took turns holding the sweet little Case and watching Blaze.

Saturday, Cassy managed to get discharged from the hospital and my baby brother, Joe, and his family flew in to town. They were originally flying in for Cassy's baby shower (which had been set for Sunday, 11/15, but which we postponed/canceled). Sunday, Micah flew in on our originally scheduled flight. (We let him fly as an unaccompanied minor...which went mostly good except that his connection from Seattle to Spokane got canceled and then delayed, which wasn't great.) With Micah there, we had five cousins together and I neglected to take a single photo of them all. Drat!

Regardless, it was a full house (did I mention that Cassy and Charlie just moved into this new house a few months ago?) with Micah (10), Blaze (almost 2), Alice (18 months), Evan (6 weeks) and Case (new).

Joe's family flew home early Monday and we had a brief break before Tuesday's festivities and excitement. Tuesday was Blaze's 2 year birthday, so we had a special breakfast (he kissed his Mickey pancakes, which was adorable) and cake and presents later in the day. My sister, Bekah, and her three kiddos then joined us for the day (drove up from Prosser). And, again, I neglected to get a single photo with all the cousins. Double drat. 

In case you're keeping track, at this point, the house had Cas, Charlie, Blaze and Case...me and Micah...mom and gram...and Bekah, Alexis (13), Cade & Aidan (10).

And then a huge windstorm hit Spokane and we lost power for awhile and everyone scrambled to bring in a bench that was threatening to blow away and watched the neighbor's trampoline fly across the field and were sad for a different neighbor whose entire two story shop that was under construction toppled and waited to see if the neighbor's horse would fly. Charlie ventured out for a generator, and everyone ended up staying the night as it was just too windy and trees were down and apparently a number of roads were closed. So much excitement. ;)

(Remember, too, that this was the day originally scheduled for Case to be born. Perhaps he knew something we all didn't, as he chose to come early. If he'd been born on the 17th, Cassy would have been in the hospital when it lost power...and would have, um, freaked out even more than she did having us all in her house for the day, lol.)

Wednesday morning, things had calmed back down and all the Prosser folks headed home, leaving just Micah and me with the little Isaacs family for the rest of the week.

Here are some random pictures of Micah playing with Blaze all week (as was his purpose in coming):

And then on Saturday, 11/21, Micah and I headed home...sad to say goodbye to our sweet little nephews/cousins but happy to be reunited with our own house of boys. (I told Micah we can count this as a crash home ec course for him, lol.)

Here's a last group of family shots:

And since then I've been working on catching up on the things I'd thought I'd do before we flew to Spokane, lol (hence the title of this post). So that's why it's been so quiet here on my blog.

Five on Friday

Just some random notes:

1. Back at Halloween, I took Micah for a walk to talk about where he (and Asher and James) were allowed to go trick or treating. In reminding him to stick to the rules and not follow friends blindly (as he's apt to do, lol), he promptly pointed out that he knew all about that. Mr Yee (at karate) had already told him all about "indomitable spirit." And there's yet another reason to be thankful for Karate West. ;)

2. During that same walk, I made some comment about how sad it was that most of the trees were naked. Again with the quick retort, Micah explained that the trees didn't mind. They're not modest, after all...just like Asher, he laughed. Noah, on the other hand, he said, was more like a pine tree. LOL

3. For what it's worth, Asher's still swimming to improve his conditioning:

It was nice enough last week or so that we used the outdoor pool instead. His endurance is definitely improving.

4. Molly and I walked partially around Barr Lake last weekend. It was perfect weather for getting some steps and catching up...so lovely to have a friend where that's the extent of your plan and it's awesome.

5. Asher's been growing his hair out since summer. I've been trimming it a bit around the edges, but finally got to the point where I wasn't sure what else to do. :) So. I took him to see the fabulous Heather at Bask Salon (she's been doing my hair for years). The left is before and the right is after:

It's not a drastic change, but he looks great! (And there was actually a lot of hair that was removed...he has thicker hair than I realized.) Don't let his scowl throw you in the after picture. He's actually really happy about his hair cut...as evidenced by how often he's been looking in the mirror and preening, lol. 

Happy Friday to you!

Fifteen

As promised, here are our annual picture comparisons from Noah's birthday:

Yup. Boys all keep growing. Darn it. ;)

Meanwhile, I don't appear to be getting any taller, do I? But. At least I'm not alone:

Noah's definitely catching up to Nathan, though I think it's safe to say that he's slowing down at least a wee bit. :) 

As a mark of how he's maturing, though, Noah *did* put up less of a fight about me taking a picture this year:

Look, that's even a smile(ish)! 

Happy birthday, my Noah!