Oh, Turkeyland and Christmas Tree

I for sure thought this blog was not going to happen today. And then my lower back, which will forever hate me for making it bear the weight of three children, decided to flare up again. It does this from time to time. It got progressively worse with each pregnancy until with the last one the problem never completely went away. I am not sure what the problem is exactly, but it makes me hobble around the house and I can barely pick up Kye. Or bend over to pick up anything for that matter.

So, instead of cleaning my house for my ladies group tonight I am doing things like soaking my back in hot water and sitting on the couch...and blogging. It so happens that this morning Kye discovered for me that a mouse had chewed a hole into my rice bag hot pad. Not only do I not get to use the hot pad on my back today, Kye also decided to evenly distribute a layer of rice all over the living room floor for me first thing this morning. I did get some vacuuming done today too, I guess.

I have digressed.

Turkeyland. I love Thanksgiving. I say that every year and I will say it again. I LOVE THANKSGIVING. For so many reasons that you can probably find on my previous posts about Turkey Day. I just wanted to highlight on the fact that for the third year in a row someone has had the flu around here on Thanksgiving.

Isn't that terrible? On one of my most favorite holidays.

Actually, two of the years it has been me. This year and two years ago I had the flu - and I got it on Thanksgiving Day after completing meal preparations. Two years ago I actually ate the whole meal and felt fine until a few hours later. This time I didn't feel awesome from the start, realized something was up when I sat down for dinner and didn't want to eat it any of that yummy food, and then fully realized what was going on a few hours later when Berlin threw up on me and in front of our guests. Oh my.

Last year it was our friend Dave who was over for Thanksgiving who ended up getting the flu by the end of that day. And this year we so nicely gave him our flu so that he had it a few days after Thanksgiving this time.

All that to say, we didn't get our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving this year like we always do. Even when I had the flu two years ago we went out and got the tree because I was the only one who was sick and I didn't want to give up our tradition. This year, however, both of the girls were the most sick and so we stayed home and went that Monday instead.

Berlin will forever love to be outside, no matter what the weather is like. 

Kyeson, on the other hand, pretty much hates winter right now. I've said before that he really loves to be comfortable. Well, picture him as the living example of the little brother from "A Christmas Story" who gets bundled up and can't put his arms down. That's Kye in his snow gear. And it makes him so mad.

 I totally get why he is uncomfortable. Take this for example. He sees a stick on the ground that he gets excited about and, naturally, he wants to pick it up.

 Well, imagine bending over to pick up that stick and then just slowly falling forward until your forehead is resting on the ground and you literally can't move. You are stuck because your mom and dad put so much clothes on you, and you can't get up. That would make me mad too. Shhh. Don't tell, but we laughed really hard about this one. :)

 If that were me, I would probably sit down and have a fit in the middle of the tree field too. Especially if I sat down and couldn't get up again.

 The perfect tree!!

 Cutest little girlies ever!!!!

 Oh, we just love Christmastime around here. :)

Life on This Tuesday Morning

Apparently having three mobile children, homeschooling, starting a photography business, trying to work on a substantial writing project, and starting a women's small group have been the death of my blog this fall.

I am pleased to say that the photography business is going swimmingly and I am about as busy as I can handle being right now. In fact, a few weeks ago I had a few photo sessions every week and, while the sessions themselves only take two hours at most, I was feeling totally swamped with all the editing and website updating that needed to get done. I had to slow things down a bit so that I could feel like I was actually going to enjoy the holidays.

Lately most days are spent trying to keep the house from looking like three little tornadoes live here instead of three sweet little kiddos. There are lots of crafts, painting, coloring, book writing, and toy time going on and those things all involve lots of mess and clean up. The kids are having a great time and I feel really excited about the fun childhood that they are having...I just need a vacation from feeling like I am constantly cleaning the same things over and over. And over and over and over again. Haha!! I am totally blessed beyond measure. I just need to train the dog to pick up toys maybe. :) 

Also, having a one and a half year old little boy is so much different than when I had one and a half year old little girls. I have to keep an ever watchful eye on that little guy because he is constantly doing things he is not supposed to be doing. Such as finding the one marker that the girls missed picking up and carrying it around the house with the lid off. Daily true story. I also can barely type a sentence on the computer without little fingers getting in my way and trying to push as many buttons as possible in a 5 second time span. Maybe a solid reason I don't have much time to actually write a blog anymore.

Anyway, this morning Berlin inspired me to pull out my camera and I ended up taking a bunch of pictures of Life on This Tuesday Morning. 

 Yes, the little man child still uses a pacifier. No judgements. AND, the little bugger had a fit every time I pointed my camera at him so I have all blurry pictures of him. Bummer.

 A new development in our house is that I let the girls watch "First Position" over the weekend. It's a documentary on Netflix about kid ballet dancers. It's really interesting, especially for anyone (such as myself) who wishes that they could be a dancer in another life. :) Well, the girls just thought it was about the coolest thing and since they have worn their dance outfits constantly. I'm not kidding. I even discovered this morning that Berlin had her dance outfit from yesterday on underneath her footie pj's and she slept in it all night. They have them on underneath their clothes right now that they put on to go play in the snow. I have seen so many "dance shows" since this weekend.

That's all. If I find a few more minutes to blog tomorrow I might post the "getting the tree" pictures that I just discovered are still on my camera...but...we'll see. :)