I've been attending an Emotional Resilience Class as a sort of trial run in our Stake as part of the Self Reliance courses offered through the church. It has been life changing. I've started to develop the skills necessary to be more prepared to handle all the crazy emotions that assail me all day long. I want to turn the course into a bunch of FHE lessons for my kids. Being able to bounce back quickly from life's challenges is a skill they'll need.
Crazy picture of the Rice Christmas-Treats that were so HARD (note to self: old marshmallows will not soften with heat... or at least they will go right back to being rock hard directly after they cool) that the pressure from the knife as we tried to cut them made the glass pan EXPLODE. Like across the room. In millions of pieces. Amazingly, neither Max, Alec or I were cut at all despite being directly beside/above it.
Max went to the dentist for the first time! He's cried the past two times kids have gone and he didn't get to go too. He was nervous and didn't answer any words to any of the hygienists questions, he'd only nod or shake his head... but he never complained or cried, he just went along with everything. He didn't like the sucky straw and wouldn't give permission for her to use it more than the first time.... until the very end when she didn't ask for permission, she just told him she'd use it just real quick and he did great with it. He's such a brave boy.
Every night this December we did a pretty good job of doing a couple advent things. We'd open a little treat and read a scripture from the wall hanging advent that Grandma Dixie made us years ago. We'd also read what the Light the World invitation would be for the next day and talk about anything we did for it that day. Sometimes this evening time together was really sweet. One of our favorite LightTheWorld activities was to make 2 plates of cookies and let the people we deliver the first plate to, choose who we give the second plate to.
Max turns 3!!! What? He's getting so old. This is the first year that he understands what it means to be his birthday. Its been so fun to see him be more obedient and able to communicate better a little. He's not QUITE as curiously destructive as he has been since he was about 18 months. He LOVED getting breakfast in bed for his first time. Chris and I did some shopping online on Black Friday for most of the Christmas/brithday gifts and I just decided this was the year to get a big pedal tractor ride on toy. I've wanted to get one for each of my kids when they were this age but the price tag has always been a factor. I don't know if its because without any travel plans or family get-togethers because of the pandemic, but we felt like if there was ever a year to splurge a little on gifts, it should be this year.
He LOVES the tractor. He sat on it and drove it around the house almost all day long. It wasn't for another few weeks that we would notice all the scratches on the wall from the bucket scraping off paint!! Its now an outside toy like we meant it to be.
Max can recognize his name and button buttons. He can throw and jump and somersault and jump on the trampoline with the big kids. He can sit quietly and look through books and loves to watercolor and play with cars. He likes to build garages for his cars with dominos and do puzzles. He loves to sing the "I love you, and you love me" song. He tricks me into singing it all the time by coming up to me nuzzeling his head into me and says, "I love you, mom" and I inevitably say back, "I love you too, Max" and then he says, "Want to sing it to me?" He likes to boss around Theodore and watch Paw Patrol. His favorite color is red and likes to talk about his friends and cousins even if he's only played with them once or twice. He thinks the world of our next door neighbor, Keith Teuscher and would escape out of the house to go visit Keith if he was out on his riding lawn mower, or tractor. Max is independent, assertive, a good communicator, loving, observant, coordinated, sensitive, and just as cute as can be. We love Max!
The last week of school in the elementary school went to an online version because of a rise in COVID cases. Gwen and Freddy missed out on saying goodbye to friends and teachers before the winter break but were troopers in figuring out all their assignments. It wasn't NEARLY as hard as it was last spring, but there was still some yelling and frustrating confusion occasionally.
Freddy turns 7! I've said it before that 7 is one of my least favorite ages. My kids have proven to be a little more less inclined to obey and more inclined to whine and tease and do whatever they want. Freddy isn't a huge exception to that observation. He is still a sweet cuddle-er and wants to snuggle most evenings, or during home church, or any scripture study or family dinner or movie night. He is still incredibly exuberant - bouncing off the walls. He's really come to love reading, and loves to color pictures, craft, and play Mine Craft. He's barely starting to independently play with neighborhood friends and is always a good play mate. He is the SWEETEST big brother and almost always shares his food or toys or book or whatever with the little ones. He almost never gets physically with them in a negative way....unless you count forcing cuddles and hugs on them!
He had one friend come over after lunch (one benefit to online school!) and they painted boxes to make drive in movie cars then got tickets and bought concessions with fake money. They watched Spiderman into the Spider-verse.
His cake was SUPER specific this year. He wanted two dinosaurs fighting with blood and trees and grass in the background. I tried my best. Also, after having Max get such an awesome big present with the tractor, I worried that Freddy wouldn't think the Heeley's wheely shoes weren't awesome enough to be the main gift, so I sent Chris to the store the morning of to find a giant teddy bear. He totally came through and when Freddy came upstairs from his "drive-in" movie to see the bear on the table with his other presents was such a surprise. He LOVES that bear and sleeps with it on top of him every night. His permanent cuddle buddy that is ALWAYS game for cuddles. Freddy kept asking us, "Where did you hide this?" haha. We never told him it was a last minute purchase.
Sort of last minute we decided to make Grandma Dixie a quilt for Christmas. Jess sewed all the squares together and then everyone helped hand embroider everyone's name on a square in their own handwritings. Some of my kids even did the embroidery themselves: Alec, Charlie and Gwen. Then Jess came over and we tried to randomize the squares to look good and sewed the top together, then Jess had a friend quilt it for us over the weekend and she sewed the binding on herself. It was so hard to not say anything to Dixie about it before Christmas!
Grandma teaching Gwen how to braid Challah Bread and Freddy how to roll it into 3 snakes.
We decided to start on the exercise room and open up the wall from the sewing nook to the play room. If we're not going anywhere for Christmas, we're just going to have tons of time on our hands right?
Ah! This was cool. So Chris got this random email from one of Mark Rober's interns at Stanford asking Chris if he'd be willing to help with an upcoming YouTube video dealing with billiards. I guess the student had found Chris' work on billiards and the simulator and agent he made when he was in grad school at Stanford and won first place in the worldwide CS Billiards competition in China just before Charlie was born. So after a few exchanges back and forth and mentioning how much the kids love Mark's videos he had a virtual meeting scheduled with Mark where he offered to talk with the kids for a bit at the end. We didn't tell the kids about this at all and left it up as a surprise. I was trying to keep the kids quiet downstairs so we were playing ping pong together when Chris walked in and said theres someone he wants them to meet and showed Mark Rober on his GoogleMeet screen! Haha. The kids were like silent and finally said, "Is that Mark Rober??!" it was so funny. Mark was super nice and tried to get the kids to talk about their interests and whatnot for a few minutes. It was really fun. They were all beaming ear to ear for a good few hours after that.
We watched Ollie and Miss P for half a day so Kayla and Eddie could attend a funeral/graveside service for Kayla's Aunt who passed away. It was a really sad situation and had been a huge burden, emotionally, for Kayla and her family. We were glad to actually see some cousins IN PERSON and be able to help them out and hopefully show support and love to our sweet, dearly loved Aunt Kayla and Uncle Eddie. The twins weren't really fans of us at first but we eventually broke through and Chris had them laughing out loud at his juggling skills at the end.
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