Aforepromised Pictures

Urgh, still feeling sick. So, I guess it's a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse day for Angela so that I can sit around and rest some more! 

Not sure if I already shared these ones. A few weeks before Christmas I scored these roller skates with arm and knee pads from Goodwill for the girls.

True "extreme sports" 

The girls 'helped' me do a lot of my holiday baking.

Which mainly meant that Angela ate my ingredients and made a mess. 

Took our neighbors cookies- a great annual tradition!

 Just what I like to see; everybody getting along, no cannibalizing. The chickens are doing well and though they still act like 2 distinct flocks, they occasionally roam together in the yard while free-ranging. Expecting eggs from our younger ladies any time in the next 6-8 weeks.

 The view of our Christmas tree from the back yard though the breakfast nook into the living room.

 School's out and temperatures are endurable! Yay, park time!

 We spent Christmas Eve at the beach, with highs in the 80's

Natalie loves sweet potatoes so much that she scraped the peels clean after I steamed them for sweet potato casserole.

After our Christmas Eve nativity reading/playing with the new nativity set/opening Christmas eve jammies. Angela had wacked Natalie right on the forehead and given her a giant goose egg for the occasion.

Sampling the cookies, making sure they're good enough to leave for Santa

Waking up Christmas morning and immediately heading to the stockings to check em out.

 Candy makes the perfect breakfast

 Santa knows just what everybody likes best! Some gourmet dried meats came in Micah's...

 We let the kids open just a few gifts before church

When we returned from church, it was back to jammies and presents.

Santa got Natalie these awesome pokemon figurines, fortunately Angela got her an encyclopedia of pokemon to help us identify all the non-indigo-league ones that we don't know

 Sammy is now on his 3rd coon. Each time it gets so gross I throw it out, I find another one of the exact same type of toy at the store!

 Angela chose a jewel-studded cosmetic mirror for Daddy.

"Uhh, thanks, Angela..."

 New swimsuits from Grandma

"You're welcome!!!" Natalie got Angela these little Mickey Mouse figurines that she has loved.

Ear and Nose hair timmers. Thanks a lot.

Ruunzel, Flinn Ryder, Sleeping beauty and Ariel line up to pay their respects to baby Jesus.

Our second year of sleeping under the tree on Christmas night. This year, the experience was much-improved with this air mattress!

Natalie received, as a gift from her cousin, this little baking set to make cookies. She begged me all day on Christmas to make cookies and finally I let them do it the following day.

Here is what used to be my view from the breakfast nook. I sure will miss the beauty of this tree!

And here is the stump before being ground down. The lower part of the trunk had a big hollow center where the wood had rotted. Yikes! You can sort of see it in the middle of the stump here. Definitely much safer now.

These monsters picking clean the carcass from our Christmas turkey

 We enjoyed a lovely walk through the nature sanctuary a mile from our house while Micah was home between Christmas and New Years.

The place was crawling with pokemon!

 Angela got that scuff on her upper lip from Natalie dropping a giant rock on her face from the top of the playground while she was below. She is officially even after the Christmas Eve goose egg that Angela gave Natalie.

 We saved this piece of trunk from the tree we lost in the hurricane. Micah spent 2 days over the holidays chiseling of the bark and sanding and staining it. It looks great, but unfortunately the underside keeps developing mold, so we might need to let it dry out a bit more.

 Natalie's birthday cake!

Hey Ho, 2017!

Sorry for the great dearth of posts! I sat down and spend over 30 minutes one afternoon uploading and organizing dozens of photos and then, thanks to my computers' twitchy, hyper, super-annoying windows 10, the page navigated away and I lost it all. And didn't have time to start over.

Alas, now I have a moment, thanks to a heinous head cold that has me lying down for the evening while dear, sweet Micah feeds and plays with the girls. Unfortunately, my photos are not on this computer, so alas, it'll have to be just text for now! I'll aim to upload photos soon.

Christmas was wonderful and pretty laid-back. The girls enjoyed many wonderful gifts, Micah cooked a turkey for dinner and I was just happy to relax at home.

Micah spent several days home from work, during which we somehow remained so busy that we accomplished none of the jobs we had hoped to tackle around the house, like completing the stain job on our fence, painting the trim in our family room where we replaced a door jamb several months ago or reseeding the lawn (particularly in the big, empty spot where our tree was knocked down by Hurrican Matthew) and replace the lost shutter on one of our windows (damage also from Matthew). We did manage to hire a tree service to come and work on our yard. It seems that we're much more talented at hiring people to do things for us than actually getting stuff done ourselves! After losing the sycamore tree in the front yard in the storm, we knew the one by the back of the house would have to go. So, we had it removed and trimmed a couple of messy oak trees as well. Our paver-stone patio area now has a big empty hole where we should probably put a fire pit or an herb garden and my fear of a tree crashing down on our house has diminished dramatically.

I started my new job at Painting with a Twist the week following Christmas and it has been a wonderful whirlwind. With the opening of a new studio, I had to go in a lot more than just Saturdays, for staff meetings, working to get the space in order, training, etc. Now, I am struggling to get ahead with the example paintings that I make for our classes to follow- they have to be pretty close to the original and ideally be on display several weeks before the class for that painting is scheduled. Hopefully it will soon slow down now and I will settle into a routine of working Saturday afternoons and evenings only and doing just one or two prepaints at home during the week. So far, it has been very fun and the feedback I have received has been very positive. It's fun to entertain, exciting to help people make beautiful art, sometimes frustrating when people are pessimistic about their work or when paintings really don't turn out well; but the pay is great, all of my coworkers are great and it's nice to get out of the house and explore a different part of myself.

Natalie had a wonderful 5th birthday. Since it fell on a Sunday, we celebrated at home with cake and presents and then the following day went to the movies to see Moana with 3 of Natalie's friends. We loved the movie, especially the music, and no children were run over in the parking lot before or after the movie. Seriously, trying to keep a 2-year-old, 3 4-year-olds and a newly-turned-5-year-old together going into and leaving from the movie brought me to a level of anxiety that I have only ever experienced while driving at speeds exceeding 75 mph. But they enjoyed themselves and Natalie was happy with her 'birthday party' even though there was no pinata- which, by the way, she always calls a 'ponyta' by accident. So cute. We got her a labelmaker as a gift and she LOVES it and has been blowing through the tape refills like a madwoman. She enjoys writing notes to everyone and sends Daddy texts saying, "Daddyiloveyou" or "Imissyoudaddy" any time she sees my phone sitting around on the counter or in the car.

Natalie enjoyed the break but was happy to go back to preschool. Hanging with me while I clean, run errands and go to the gym is officially less exciting to her than learning and seeing her friends, so that's great. We're currently exploring/applying to some charter schools and wondering where Natalie will end up doing Kindergarten next year. I haven't been on board until now about applying to some schools that are a bit far away (like, 15 minutes), but if I'm gonna be spending 30 minutes in the car twice a day taking her to and from school anyway, I might as well spend 45 minutes and have her challenged and happy. Our assigned school wouldn't be that bad, but there are a lot of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and I worry that Natalie would just be bored and ignored among students who are mostly from low socioeconomic backgrounds with low academic preparation and behavioral issues.

I have been getting to know our new relief society president and she is fantastic. It may take me a while to feel comfortable working with her because she is so different from the last president I worked with, but she has many amazing qualities and I hope I can serve her well as a counselor. We're currently gathering information for a major organizational overhaul of the visiting teaching program and it's pretty overwhelming. Our church time has now changed to 12:00 and I hate it. Coming home late Saturday nights, I am super exhausted on Sunday and by the time I get home it's too late for a nap and I have too little time to make a decent Sunday dinner. Blah. We're awake by 7 and dressed and ready by 9 anyway, then the rest of the morning is spent trying to get the kids not to destroy their clothes.

I'm currently gathering quotes for a small remodel to the bathroom that me and the girls use. We're ripping out the nasty, old wall-to-wall double vanity and replacing it with a single sink and moving the toilet against the same wall so that it's not squeezed up next to the tub anymore. The tub could also use an upgrade, but it's clean and functional so we'll leave it for now. Hopefully bathtime will soon be a lot less claustrophobic an experience! And now that I'm making a little money, I feel no guilt splurging on a functional change that will dramatically improve such a heavily-used space. It will only take a few months of my paychecks to cover it all!

Micah is struggling to figure out what to do at work because everybody wants him on their project and he is interested in doing too many of them. Tough problem, but it's good to be wanted and interested! He's got one deacon now who turned 12 over the holidays and another coming in Februrary, so his scout troop is basically doubling ;) They will soon start to combine with the other ward for scouting events, which has over a dozen deacons, an arrangement that has taken many, many months to get approval.

I took the girls to seaworld on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. They have a cool program where preschoolers can get free annual passes, so now we have another fun place to visit in Orlando. Both girls were super impressed with the killer whale shows and I'm looking forward to returning to see the dolphins and penguins.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Okay, I realize none of the photos from my last post that came from Micah's phone worked. I shall now resume busting out my archaic single-use camera so I can dependably have content to post.

I took the girls to Disney twice by myself and once with Micah in the last month, since we've got black-out dates over the holidays. Micah's not sure about renewing our passes next year. To that, I say: Look at this happiness.

We took photos for the holidays. I'm mailing the final shot out for Christmas cards, but here are a few of my favorite rejects:

Natalie does not do natural-looking smiles on demand. Angela kept picking her nose and eating it.

Sammy was pretty sure he was invited out back to chase the chickens

Several poses into the photoshoot, Micah begins to look a bit irked. 

Angela wants a turn to hold the dog.

Why?! Why would you stick your tongue out when we say "smile"?!

Now Angela wants a turn holding the chicken. Just... no

I saw a cute pattern online to turn old button-up shirts into a tunic-dress for little girls. Then I was like- hey, I'm lazy. Why don't I just roll up the sleeves and my child can wear the shirt as is?

It is hard to capture this girl's cuteness these days. Mostly because she doesn't sit still.

The girls had a great time getting the Christmas supplies out. I'll have to photograph our tree and outdoor lights this year. The process went a lot smoother thanks to the ladder from the Agles- Micah didn't have to climb the roof and precariously dangle over the dormer windows to put up lights this year!

Natalie enjoyed making gingerbread houses so much, she keeps asking if we can do them again. 

Angela didn't really get it. But thoroughly enjoyed sitting and eating all the candy. 

 Our easter egger Blondie is finally done molting and has returned to laying, just in time for our Rhode Island Red to slow down. She still lays, but her eggs are smaller, lighter in color and less frequent. We had some hiccups getting companions for our small white chick. We were able to get one from the same seller that was around the same age but she only lasted a week before dying inexplicably- likely from a pre-existing illness or because she was just a sickly runt. But it worked out because the day she died we found a local family selling some interesting breeds and we ended up scoring some pretty awesome new birds- 3 or them- a dominique (white and black striped with a rose comb), an australorp, (black iridescent feathers, Australian breed that lays well in the heat) and a Welsummer (brown bird that lays dark, dark chocolate-brown eggs). They won't be laying for another 2 months or so, but we've already integrated them with our older birds and are letting them free range and they all seem to be doing great.

It's citrus season! Our grapefruit tree drops another fruit every few days and a friend from church gave me a giant bucket of key limes to juice. This time next year, I hope to have enough excess eggs to make some yummy citrus curd! 

Lots more that I could share, but no time- it's been a fun season of doing stuff together and enjoying festive activities and kids hanging on me, wanting continuous, undivided attention.