Around Here Fifty - 12/09-12/15

A glimpse into what it is like to live in our home just this minute

Intentional Hours Outdoors: 509+ hours (of 1000)
holding steady with no new hours to report as it's been freezing raining, snowing, and near zero temps all this week.  yeah, I'm a big baby about it.  hah.   Does getting stuck in the driveway on Tuesday night with Shelia count?  HAH.  Actually, I stayed in Sheila while Brandon pushed us up the driveway about 100 yards and then ended up having to pull her up over the turn with the truck.  We didn't get all into the house and in bed until almost 11p.  Sheesh.

Reading The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and really loving it.

Baking my grandma's sugar cookies with boiled icing Christmas cut out cookies with my Adams cousins (and sisters & mum & aunt!) as is one of our holiday traditions.  We packed up and headed out to Pittsburgh for the day on Sunday as my sis Kayla hosted this year.  As is also tradition, we always have a toast (or a few) with a bit of raw cookie dough and send many prayers and good wishes up to heaven.  We even got to see Kara (and Brett) in Kansas City, MO via facetime for one of the toasts!  After all the rolling, cookie cutting, baking, icing, and decorating (and eating) - we closed out the evening with a game of PIT (another childhood favorite from Gram & Pap's house) before making the trek home.  This tradition is in my top three favorite of the year, every single year.

Eternally grateful for all the people that live on the fringe of our daily lives who make my kids' lives so full of kindness and patience and magic, even.  Greyson's dental hygenist and dentist could not have been more patient with our two curious little girls peeking into watch closely at the cleaning of their big brother's teeth.  They asked them questions and listened to all of their answers and gave out stickers to all of them for being good at the appointment.  And our post office workers who hand out lollipops every single time we stop in to pick up packages (even when it's multiple times in one week) and then who write back for our Santa Claus letters that we sent last week with no expectation whatsoever of a response.  And our basketball "family" who let my girls "help" run the concession stand at the games and walk hand-in-hand with them back from the lobby, or who let them share their snacks or make funny faces and talk about nonsensical topics to keep them occupied during the 32+ minutes of game time.  My kids truly believe that the world is a beautiful, kind place and it's because at every turn that's what they see - kindness and patience from nearly everyone we come in contact with.

Starting to look forward to the new year with excitement.  It still feels far away as there are lots of items to still cross off of my Christmas to do list (yikes!) but I'm getting that butterfly-feeling about the fresh start that I pretend the new year brings.  I'm down to less than 20 days left of my part-time teaching which feels bittersweet (I will really miss the classroom and teaching, but I am very much feeling called back home to this family of ours).  I've been feeling like it's been a game of catch-up this whole latter part of the year (even still from having Rusty in June), but 2017 already feels like the year that we're not only going to catch up - but start moving in the right direction in a lot of ways and I'm so excited about it.  The thought of my fresh new planner has me giddy #geekingout

Competing with Brandon and Greyson on school delays and cancellations.  We have our toes in four different school districts in our area; Brandon works at NS, I teach at RHS, Greyson goes to CT, and Brandon coaches (and I do alumni volunteer projects) at CV.  So with the freezing rain at the start of the week, followed up by the arctic temperatures later - we have been teasing each other depending on who gets 'the call first'.  This week alone, we've had six 2-hour delays, and one afterschool cancellation (no bball game), and today (technically not part of this week's Around Here post - but I'll probably forget next week) Brandon and Grey had 2 hour delays, and I had two school cancellations!  One for teaching and the other for the CV alumni volunteer event I plan annually (in the works to reschedule for next week!)

Relieved to hear we're not the only ones that suffer so much destruction under the hands of our children.  Shelly wrote about broken things this week (although she has much greater patience than me - teach  me your ways, O wise one!) Brandon and I are astonished daily at the amount of mess and actual breaking of our things that happen.  Broken things this week include:  plaster in the girls' bedroom where Grey punched it as a joke (not funny now is it?), four ornaments, two bowls (although to be fair, that was the dogs), and the back wiper on Sheila (and that was from Brandon's trying to push in the snow, so maybe that one shouldn't count).  And that's not even counting how many things were lost this week - Greyson has FOURTEEN single socks awaiting to find their match in his drawer.  Fourteen, friends.  How is this even possible?!  #thisiswhywecanthavenicethings

praying and sending wishes of peace to Aleppo.  so very heartbroken to hear all the news coming out of there, not only this week, but for far too long.  If you are inspired to help in some way, see here or here.

Making lots of a yummy dinners this week, including round steak over egg noodles, make-more-please meatballs, slow-cooker General Tsao's Chicken, and haluski (because cabbage and I have a love affair going on).  We had buffalo chicken mac&cheese this past weekend and Brandon and I almost made ourselves sick eating so much of it in one sitting (so, so good).  I even squeezed in this comfort breakfast bake on one of the 2hr delay mornings.