farewell, 2015.

i think this is the first time in the history of this blog that i've written an end-of-year post on the last day of the year. typically i don't even bother with a post but even the few times that i have, i've back-dated them from some time in january. i hope this is a sign of how on top of things i'll be in 2016...

this year was a blur for me - i cannot even fathom that the whole year is gone already. i remember being a kid and hearing adults talk about how fast time moves as you get older and not believing or understanding that at all, but it's clearly a thing. 

it was a good year, i think. no major changes in terms of living arrangements or jobs. emme started preK and hollis transitioned to a new school. we started reading chapter books together as a family. we took an awesome vacation to the mountains to see lots of family. we had trips to lafayette and wichita and i got to go to japan. we did a whole30 and got on and fell off the healthy eating train a few times. we went on lots of family walks and spent time cuddling and playing and fighting and singing and sliding and cooking and watching too much tv and just living. i took a course this year on the science of happiness and it talked a lot about happiness vs. meaningfulness. i don't know that we lived meaningfully in the grand scheme, but i'd like to think there was meaning in the everyday - enough that we can hold on to and try to make it even more so in the next year.

so that's it! out with the old, in with the new. cheers to deliberate living, less screen time, more patience with ourselves and others, and getting outside as much as possible. 

the christmas sprint.

the lead up to christmas (really, this whole season since halloween) has felt like a whirlwind. i think a lot about all the pressure to make every moment fantastic and magical and perfect...how contrived and artificial that is (and probably something i just do to myself). but i still try. because i want my kids' memories of these times to be amazing. and truthfully, i think they will be. even though the daily reality is a lot of squabble resolution, nap bartering, too little sleep and too many sweet treats (and tv, too, obviously). that is my reality - a penchant for extrapolating the worst pieces into being emblematic of the whole experience. but their reality is still silver-tinted and, yep, magical. and there are plenty of doses of that - emme whispering thanks to me before bedtime, quiet snuggles, beaming faces when it's time to look for the elf, or open the advent calendar drawer, or skype with family, or read yet another christmas book. it's worth it, and i am working on focusing more on what they see...

here's a barrage of pics of the last several weeks. picking out a christmas tree, me and ek on a special date to see her teacher as mother ginger in the nutcracker, meeting santa (jillian's dad!) at a small super fun gathering, and goofing off on our neighbors' porch before going to church on christmas eve.

jb's birthday and randomness.

a few years ago my mom got emme an advent calendar with all the little drawers you can open on each of the 25 days of christmas. i've done sort of different things with it every year, but this year i just put in two m&m's and a little note with an activity. the activities were mostly provided by my friend emma who did all the hard work of coming up with them, typing them into a doc in a cute font, etc. jb and i just cut them up and rolled them into little scrolls and assigned them to the days we thought would be most appropriate for each activity. some days had gifts (christmas jammies, a christmas book, slippers), some days were for more charitable activities (get canned goods to donate, toy/coat donations, etc), and some days were for crafts or an outing. two highlights were: going to a christmas movie (we saw the peanuts movie - so cute!) and going to see christmas lights. we went to mozart's coffee shop for their 15-minute outdoor light show and hot cocoa. so cute.

also stuck in the middle of all the christmas hoopla was jb's 35th birthday! i managed to snag a babysitter and we went to uchiko, our most favorite restaurant in the world. it's totally a super special occasion place for a dinner like that - we do it at most once a year - but it is worth every bite. the food is gorgeous and beautiful and the experience is really unparalleled, topped off by fried milk for dessert. i feel like his birthday gets the shaft every year, especially since we had kids, but it was super nice to take a night off from everything and just enjoy each other's company.

holiday parties.

we had our annual christmas party this year in spite of the weird warm weather and threat of rain. it was super fun, if a lot of work, but i think throwing big parties gets easier every time you do it. i made a boat load of gumbo, we got a keg of fireman's four, and we had various other beverages and snacks, including stuff for kidlets. we still haven't done the final count of how many people showed up, but i think it was around 150. whew! the face coasters were the biggest hit, i'd say, and it was lovely to see so many people we don't get to see a ton throughout the year.

we also had emme's class holiday party, where i led a snowman-making craft, and hollis's holiday party. little kids and holidays are pretty rad.

invisible.

emme has been talking a lot about invisibility lately (who knows where these things come from). this conversation happened this morning in the car.
ek: invisible means like when you can't see something.
hb: no it's like when you can see everything.
me: if mommy was invisible, it would look like the car was driving itself!
ek: and if poop was invisible, all you would see is stinky lines and then the car would smell bad.

thanksgiving in kansas.

november was an insane month with travel pretty much every weekend. shenanigans. it was super fun, but i feel like it will be mid-late january before we settle down from all the festivities.

anyway. we went to wichita to hang with jb's mom and the denver crew for thanksgiving. it was a super fun trip, capped on either end by trips to in-n-out burger in ft. worth, which the kids have termed forevermore as up-n-down burger. the weather was nice(ish) the first day we were there, so we hit up the park and went for a couple of walks in the wind. the next day and the rest of the trip, we got a TON of ice, so that made for lots of indoor time, but the kids had a blast chilling with their cousins, hide-n-seeking, drinking lots of hot cocoa, opening christmas gifts early, and watching movies in the basement. we ate all the things and i even did some knitting! no snow this trip, which was a bummer, but good family togetherness all around.