The Holidays

Our holiday festivities this year went as follows:

December 23rd- Mom's Birthday
We headed up to my home town for a birthday/Christmas celebration with all of my Mom's side of the family. Grandma, aunts and uncles, cousins (and their kids!)-- there were nearly a kazillion people in Grandma's house. It reminded me of Christmas growing up and it was so nice! Before we opened our stockings, everyone sat in the room together and shared memories of Christmas with Grandma. That was really just a special time.

Me and Grandma!

Top: Jackson showing off his first (of many) toothbrush from his stocking, Mom singing "I'm a little teapot"

Bottom: The big kids had a toilet paper snowman contest (Julie, Julian, and Erin won!), and then the little kids had lots of fun playing in the left over toilet paper!

Christmas Eve

We started out the day with a Hardee's Breakfast- biscuits and gravy. Amazingness! We then drove through a snow/slush storm to Derek's Grandma's house. We met up with Derek's parents along with his brother and family while we were there. It was great to get to spend some one-on-one time with Grandma! ( I'm just now realizing that I didn't take pictures with my camera. Making a mental note to get them from Mary soon!)

Julie was able to "spend" Christmas with her family in Denmark via Skype that afternoon. Christmas Eve is the day they open presents and do the majority of the celebrating, so she was able to be a part of that for awhile. She took turns opening presents with her family, which she had been very eager to open ever since the packages (three!) arrived a week earlier.

Per our holiday tradition, our family headed to the Christmas Eve service at church that evening. The Christmas Eve service may be my very favorite part of the whole Christmas celebration! Derek's family came over for awhile afterwards. Derek and I ended up staying up until after 1am wrapping presents.

Christmas Day
Derek was the first one up (before dawn) on Christmas morning. I keep waiting for him to outgrow this tradition, but I am losing faith that will ever happen. He promises that he didn't wake Jackson up, but I have my doubts.

Even though the concept of presents was brand new to Jackson (one from Grandma on the 23rd and one more from Great-Grandma on the 24th) it didn't take long for him to grasp the concept. Halfway through reading the Bible story, Jackson attempted to cease the talking and begin the opening. He's two for goodness sake. Not only did he open (very, very slowly-- about one inch of wrapping paper at a time) all of his presents, but helped the rest of us as well.

We headed over to Derek's parents for lunch (and more presents). Several of Derek's extended family stopped by and it was good visiting with everyone. Derek was more than bummed to miss out on the annual Risk game, but on a positive note, it meant that we weren't around for the yelling and bad-mouthing that happens during those games.

Jackson and cousin Gabe!

Could our child be any more spoiled?! 

And as much as I have told EVERYONE that Jackson does not need anymore balls, people insist on buying him balls. All of the balls in this house are actually packed away... but somehow they keep multiplying. Jackson enjoyed playing with his basketball at Grandma's house at least. 

And later Christmas afternoon, my parents drove down for dinner... and more presents. We had a super fun time playing The Game of Things and we got to experience Derek's major (hilarious) parenting fail as well! It involved a farting app on Derek's phone, Jackson, and a swear word. I won't go into any more detail because I know that some of my family who read this won't really find it all that humorous.

Seriously... more balls!!! UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Jackson's Grandpas just LOVE to play ball inside but I will bet you a MILLION dollars that neither of them would have allowed for ball throwing inside with their children. I am seriously considering placing those two grown men in time out soon!)

 

My siblings plus me and my gang 

Julie, Laura, Jackson, Derek, Me, Phil, and Ashley

Overall, this was simply one of the best Christmas's I've ever had. And I am convinced it was because the focus was all on spending time on family and not on gifts and gadgets. (We did end up with some awesome gifts, though) I hope that I will remember in years to come to keep the focus of this holiday on the things that matter!!

Life is still good

I can't wait to share pictures and stories of having Derek back in our lives over the past two weeks! Time went by so quickly, but at the same time, we really made the most of it and so it feels like it was a lot longer than just a couple weeks. I am quite surprised with myself. I don't even feel too sad at the moment. Instead, I feel so refreshed (despite being exhausted) from having him home and confident that the next ten weeks will be a breeze. Okay, maybe not a breeze, but I know that we'll make it. This separation is only temporary and this break showed me that our family will bounce back in no time once he's home in March.

While these past two weeks were quite possibly the best two weeks ever, I cannot deny that I have missed my online social media. Gmail. Facebook. Twitter. Blogger... do you even recognize me!? Don't get me wrong, I would give them all up if it meant that Derek was here right now instead of on a plane headed back to Georgia...

But he is not. And instead of being a complete mess, I am enjoying a nice relaxing evening catching up on my google reader, emails, tweets, etc. I had full expectations of uploading all of my recent pictures and begin posting about them tonight, but that's just not going to happen. It didn't hit me until I was driving out of the parking garage at the airport how exhausted I am from going, going, and going so much while Derek was home! I will definitely be going to bed early tonight and will enjoy a nice lazy day tomorrow (thanks to my mother who has Jackson-duty) to recoup... and sometime over the next 24 hours I know that I will eventually end up a crying mess. That's just easier dealt when I'm not responsible for a little person who can't understand why Mommy is sad at the moment.

Overall though, I refuse to feel too sorry for myself. What a blessing it was to have him home! We're all healthy and happy. We're surrounded by amazing friends and family. And even though we're hundreds of miles apart, we still have each other. Life is still good.

Life is good

Derek's home. Life is good.

We picked him up at the airport on Saturday morning. His flight was only 15 minutes late, but it felt like an eternity.

Jackson and Derek are having so much fun playing together. Several times throughout the day I hear, "Daddy... come on!!" Jackson is adamant about having Derek around and watching everything he does. It's so sweet.

"Oh cool! A tunnel!" Derek said. 

Jackson simply can't be bothered by the Daddy in his way... he kept crawling through on top of Derek.

Until Derek ended up just plain stuck. Haha. 

Thanks to some awesome friends (including our awesome exchange student) who were gracious enough to bless us with gift cards and babysitting, Derek and I enjoyed a date night yesterday evening. First we had a fabulous dinner at the Hereford House and then headed off for our first 3D movie experience watching Tron on the IMAX. We even managed to get a little Christmas shopping done. It was SO NICE to spend some time together! (and Brooke managed to get Jackson to sleep without a fight and he got his first full nights sleep since Derek's been home- a spectacular gift on it's own!)

The best part is... is that it's only been just a couple of days! We still have several left to spend together!!!

We're Ready!

Just plain ready! We've talked about Daddy coming to play all week. At the moment, Jackson's a little more excited to be going to the airport and seeing airplanes, but I know he is going to be so super excited to see Derek walk through the terminal!

And I have to mention the beautiful bouquet of roses delivered to my door this morning that Derek sent me with a message that says, "Can't wait to see you tomorrow." It totally made my day. In many ways, this last week has been one of the hardest yet. I feel like my will-power to keep going just gave up simply because I knew he was so close to coming home. Cleaning and being busy was my best attempt to avoid staying in bed all day, which is simply all I wanted to do! Being a wonderful husband, he totally picked up on my crazy mood (I blame the pregnancy hormones) and sent me flowers. I love flowers. He knows that. :)

He's heading out on a bus in about an hour (2:30am-ish) to head to the Atlanta airport and will arrive here in KC at 10:14am! Yay! He is sure to be super tired having only slept in short couple hour increments, but he is as excited to see us as we are to see him! And a family-nap sounds great tomorrow afternoon.

Who moved my cheese?

It all started here with realizing I had my work cut out for me to get ready for Derek to come home. I am happy to report that I tackled those tasks and got his side of the room in working order the very next day. Little did I know that it was only the beginning... Since last Tuesday, I (and by "I", I mean- "I, along with some very wonderful friends") have:

• folded, sorted, put away the mountain of clean laundry (I may or may not be working on my second mountain. where does that laundry all come from?!)
• organized Derek's dresser drawers (I was part responsible for the disorganization as I dug through to find a non-Nintendo t-shirt to wear).
• filled one lawn and leaf size bag plus an additional two regular trash sized bags of stuff to go to Salvation Army
• sorted through (finally) the boxes from when I cleaned out my car.
• cleaned out the hall closest of the construction debris (yes, we've been moved in for over a year now and this is just now getting done)
• cleaned off the kitchen counter, organized the pantry and some of the cabinets. 

It's possible that I disassembled my vacuum cleaner, ran the parts through the dishwasher, so that it wasn't quite so dirty either. Seriously, what is wrong with me?! In fact, I am fairly certain when my mom or dad reads this, that they will be very worried that an alien life form has taken over my body because this is totally not like me. At all.

I also did a major overhaul to Jackson's room. It started last Saturday when I was cleaning up toys in the family room, I decided to tackle relocate them all to Jackson's room. Which led to getting out every single toy he owns and sorting through a keep, save for baby, or a give away pile. Which led to cleaning out his closet. Which led to re-arranging and re-organizing his entire room. This was all in one evening. Jackson was hanging out with Derek's parents at the time and he went straight to bed when we got home.

It was Sunday afternoon that Jackson really started to be so incredibly cranky at times and lasted until about Tuesday-ish. And it was just so unlike him! He was getting up extra early, not napping well. Throwing unbelievable fits at the silliest little things and wanting to be held at every single moment throughout the day. I even told some friends and family that I suspected that he must have a little stomach bug and just wasn't feeling well. He just doesn't act that way!

A friend asked last night if I thought that maybe Jackson was sensing that things were about to change when Derek gets home on Saturday and I just don't think Jackson is even vaguely aware of Daddy coming home. But it got me thinking about the change in his room. His crankiness started the very next day.

And now I feel awful!! To me, I love to rearrange and make a room look fresh and new. It didn't even occur to me that changing his room around would be a big thing. But for a two-year-old, I can really understand how it could be stressful!
I moved his cheese! He is progressively getting less cranky. Not coincidentally, he isn't fighting sleep and is sleeping longer.

Maybe I shouldn't have changed is room the same week that Daddy is coming home. And just a few weeks before I thought we would introduce the toddler bed. The next few weeks will be full of cheese-moving experiences. Or the next couple of months actually. But at least I know that he really needs help adjusting when things do change. He does really well if we can just talk about it in normal conversation here and there. I will just need to do my part to be more diligent about preparing him for when things are going to be different. To offer more patience and one-on-one time when they are.

It really is so cool to learn more and more about Jackson's distinct little personality! Like how he is as stubborn as they come, but also loves to be the funny kid around! And it makes me eager to see what our little girl is going to be like! Parenting, though exhausting at times, is truly the coolest thing ever.