Merry Christmas!

 The past couple weeks leading up to Christmas have been crazy. Having to drive Evie to and from work regularly takes up more time than one would think. Also, Christmas shopping when trying to get a number of items without breaking the budget takes a whole lot more time. But we had some big scores from thrift stores (they are SO much better here than Indiana or Michigan!) and saved hundreds of dollars. The kids loved what they got and were actually quite content today in general. I think expectations were met, so that is good. 

Besides Christmas shopping, school and work I thought it'd be a good idea to throw in a doctor appointment for Hannah (just a physical) and her having her wisdom teeth removed last week as well. I picked a random doctor for the physical and it wasn't so cool.....the nurse asked if I was Hannah's mom and then was almost surprised sounding that she was adopted. I miss Fort Wayne, there were so many adopted kids there. The wisdom teeth removal was an adventure as well.....Hannah did not come out of the anesthesia well, but in her mostly unconscious state insisted on coming home. Nathan took her and stayed with her through the appointment, they said it all went fine and they successfully removed the teeth, but said she was very slow to wake up. Once she was awake Nathan said she kept repeating "home, home" until he finally asked if he could take her home. She needed help into the car and help into the house and we had to carry her down the stairs....a couple hours later she finally was able to communicate more and I let her go to sleep (they had said to keep her awake), before going to rest she said "I want to go to youth group tonight" I said "I know, you've told me about ten times already" she laughed, as she had no recollection of it. She did go to youth group and had fun, she even wrote an award winning story to go with cookies that Evie and their friend Lindsey had decorated. Since than she has not been super excited about doing anything, but finally today she was feeling slightly better and said things are hurting less, which is great. 

Last week we also were working on getting Evie signed up for classes at a community college for spring semester. The one closest to our house had her do an assessment test. Unlike the "assessment" test Hannah took which was like 10 yes or no questions for math, Evie did a two hour one and ended up four points out of three hundred away from testing into pre-calc. She did successfully test into college English, which is great! 

With all the driving around I did last week I saw nine cyber trucks. One day I saw four....various colors too, such as pumpkin orange and forest green, along with black and the standard steel. It's crazy how many there are around here, it's a running joke that I need to see my daily cyber truck now. I did see one yesterday and two on Monday......but none today. 

Let's see, what else has happened in the past two weeks.....Hannah finally got her Colorado drivers license! And I got both our cars registered that we bought in November. It seems like a never ending list of things to do. Oh, we're also getting solar panels and they are getting installed Friday... We went to our church's Christmas Eve service yesterday, I think I sang more Christmas songs last night than I do over an entire season normally.....it was very different than what we were used to for a Christmas Eve service, but we got to meet some new people, so that was cool. 

Well, I think that's all for now. Merry Christmas! 

Deep breath.......Thanksgiving was not very thankful in our house.....a lot of complaining and frustration and expectations not met (ie mom should make all the food for a full Thanksgiving meal without any help from the kids). But we made it through and went on with life. The next day was better, as we did a hot chocolate bar and watched It's a Wonderful Life, at least most of us watched it. The kids had never seen it before and one got bored and left. It's really hard to find anything that everyone is willing to do at this point, but we try. 

Nathan's parents gave us this slushie maker for Christmas.....we've used it a couple times already, that is something everyone has enjoyed. 

We have finished wrapping all our fudge. I didn't take a picture of all the ingredients this year, as I have done in years past. I also fix fudge making in in between things like school, small group at our house, a women's lunch at church on Saturday and of course church on Sunday. It's been kind of crazy around here. 

We also went out last night to celebrate Hannah passing her classes and finishing the semester. It snowed last night as well and was snowing as we drove to the restaurant. We've been told they don't plow here and we experienced that first hand yesterday and into this morning when I took the kids to theater and the roads still had snow on them. The sun did come out this morning and by the drive back the roads were clear. But you definitely need to know how to drive in snow. 

That's the short version of the past couple weeks. The chaos continues in the next few weeks, and most of it has nothing to do with Christmas....it's just normal life things....or not so normal like getting wisdom teeth removed, but it needs to be done at some point right?