October Through March Digest

 Whew- life right now feels like one of those social media "games" where it reads "You can only pick three" above a list of several favorite things like coffee, wine, chocolate, naps, etc. Except this is the real deal and it's pick one: dishes, laundry, or meals. On repeat. All the non-urgent and hobby-ish things just keep getting relegated to the back burner of life ad infinitum, or so it seems!

I appreciate how the ol' blog helps me recall things we did from year to year, so here we go to recap from where I left off in the fall!

I didn't get any pictures of the girls in their All Saints' Day costumes except for Cora with her class (she's in the middle- St. Rose of Lima). Evie was St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Audrey was St. Lucy, and Heidi was St. Adelaide. Their school did a big procession of all the kids outside while the parents lined up and gave out candy- blessedly I had taken my pregnancy glucose test before the candy barrage that is mid-fall.😅

For Halloween Cora was St. Michael the Archangel, Heidi was a baker, Audrey was Athena, and Evie was Paisley Paver from Wild Kratts. We trick-or-treated in my parent's neighborhood again and ended up with quite a large crew of friends in the trailer. Fun times!

I was sick in the beginning of December just after Thanksgiving- the sliver of a silver lining about that was that I was left with plenty of time to decorate the house for Christmas. 

Heidi's room decorations:)

The day of Leo's birth we decked out the tree!

It so was nice to have very little left to do in preparation for Christmas once he was home, and friends and family graciously kept us fed with meals!

On Christmas Eve Evie and Audrey were singing in the Children's Choir, so we went to the 4:30pm mass. Afterwards we hosted some of my family for Christmas Eve hors d'oeuvres and Christmas cheer. Our neighborhood put out Farolitas on all the streets again- always so much fun to see.

Christmas morning we opened presents and enjoyed a low-key day before going to my brother's house for dinner. I was spent from the previous day but a nap and lots of water helped me revive!

A few days after Christmas we celebrated Audrey's 9th birthday! She and I went out to Five Guys for her birthday lunch, and later that evening we enjoyed the cake Tim and the girls whipped up.

She is getting so grown up and is such a good big sister and helper around the house!

..............

January got off to an onerous start with a snow and ice storm a few days in which resulted in 48 hours of no power due to a fallen tree limb down the street. It was a mess all over the area and a team that drove up from North Carolina ended up restoring our power. 

Postpartum survival mode is an awful companion to life with no electricity, water, or central heat (we at least have a wood stove in our family room). All I will say about the episode is that everyone handled the situation better than their non-pioneer-woman, roughing-it-disinclined wife/mother. 

.............

Heidi and Cora both reached milestones within a month of each other: first tooth lost! Cora might be our earliest to date at 5.5 years.

I took this picture of Cora just after she lost her tooth (the new one had mostly grown in already😁) and had her hair cut. Well, a couple of weeks later there was quite an incident with scissors which necessitated another trip to the hairdresser's...to be filed under childhood rites of passage, I suppose.

..............

Also in January Leo was baptized. Tim had family come into town for his special day, so my parents kindly let us hold the reception at their house for space purposes. I made this cake but left the cocoa out of the icing- a bit involved but tasted really good!

..............

 In February Tim turned the big 4-0! It happened to be super warm and sunny that day, so my sister invited us over for a cookout for dinner and for dessert we had carrot cake which I made per his request. I wish I could've come up with some sort of fanfare for such a landmark birthday but a cake was about all I could muster.:)

He is a good man and we sure love him!

.............

The girls were going to dance in our local St. Patrick's Day parade with their Irish Dance school but on the morning of the parade we got a good amount of snow and sleet, so the whole thing was canceled. It was so disappointing! The girls at least were able to dance with some other students in their school's Sts. Patrick & Joseph pageant, where they also sang with their classes, an event Leo and I enjoyed attending. 

Random tidbits:

One night I was getting Leo ready for bed and his face and fists gave me a laugh as the pose made him look like a little boxer:

Heidi was reading to him one afternoon while he was on his mat and I observed her continually making a point to show him the pictures on each page.❤ 

That's all for now!