A lot, and yet nothing at all

I feel like I haven't updated in so long... a week, I guess. We've still been under the weather here. Last week Dave went to the doctor, and it turns out he has pneumonia. Yuck. And then he went back today, and it's not getting any better. If he can't figure out how to relax and get better, he's going to be in the hospital with antibiotics through an IV. But, relaxing at home isn't as easy as it sounds. With the kids home all the time now, it's difficult to be here and not be engaged in some way with them, even when I'm home too. And even though I don't have pneumonia, I now have a cold for over two weeks, too. Yesterday it turned into a horrible sinus headache, and every time I coughed (which was often!) I felt like my brain was going to pop up out of my head. It's lovely in our house, really! But, hopefully, we'll get all the junk out by Christmas.

Anyway, back to life on the ranch. I still amaze myself that I'm so willing to let the kids do some messy things. Here's Max with his painting smock. We did handprint rudolphs, but we didn't have any brown paint, so we used black. Close enough!

The boys hard at work.

Mmmmm!

Nice lipstick.

Does anyone know this boy? This is his favorite look lately, and I'm not at all sure where he got it from. It looks a little evil!

On Saturday, my company had its Christmas party. It's a very large event, with about 1600 people total, and 800 kids. It goes from 11:00-3:00, is somewhat formal (some people wear very fancy outfits!), open bar, sit down dinner, santa, presents, band, crafts. It's all very odd, but very nice of them to host it. I'd been talking about the toys and Santa all week, and so when Dave was too sick to go, I took the kiddos by myself. The picture below is before we went... when I still had a little of my sanity left!

Nolan told Santa he wants a shovel.

And Abby wants a Patrick stuffed animal (from SpongeBob). Of course, after that she wrote a letter to Santa telling him she wanted two other things. When I said I thought she wanted the Patrick stuffed animal, she said she already told him that, so she asked for other things. Smart! I wonder how much longer she'll believe. It's hard when they're in school. Maybe, for my sake, once she finds out she'll keep it a secret and we can just keep pretending.

Here's my Rudolph after his face was painted. There was a whole craft table with about 10 different things to do, including decorating giant cookies shaped like Christmas trees.

I didn't get to eat at the party, and it's stressful with all those people, but it is fun to see the kids running around.

That morning before the party, the kids came down to see the St. Nick's stuff that was left for them. They put out bowls, but St. Nick put them away and left these Bilibos. I'm really not sure what they are, other than things they can sit on, play with, put in water, and make a myriad of various games with them. They're pretty fun imaginative toys. Here they all sitting in theirs.

And when we got home from the party, my mom was here. She had some vacation time so was spending the first half of the week with me and the second half with my sister. The kids had fun, especially wrestling her!

Abby likes to show off her reading skills.

And then on Tuesday, when mom was supposed to go to Jen's, we got a snow day! The second one this year already. This doesn't bode well for the rest of the year! Abby forgot her snowpants at school so we had to be imaginative when they went outside. here she is with three pairs of pants on, the outer ones are Dave's wind pants! At least they kept her dry!

And then I thought I'd share this. It's a picture Nolan drew for preschool when asked to bring in a picture of what he's thankful for. He's thankful for grandma and grandpa's pool, Megan and Jake (cousins), Santa and toaster strudels. Who can blame him?

And I'll sign off with one more Nolan story. We were in the car the other day and Nolan told me I was driving faster than a frog's tongue. I don't know where he comes up with this stuff!

We're heading this weekend to Marshfield for Christmas with Dave's sister and family. It should be fun... except Dave hasn't decided if he's going to go yet. I'm torn. It would really be nice to have him there, but I also don't want him to get worse. I guess we'll see!