As you’ve already guessed from the title, we’ve had a very busy month or so since our last update to the blog. We had family portraits taken at Sears:
We were very pleased with the fact that Sears lets you buy a CD with full reproduction rights included! Yay!
Katie was uncooperative during the her-only session. I made up some collages of all the pics, including one poking fun at the silly faces she made. Jacob, of course, cooperated beautifully and his pictures came out wonderful.
We travelled to Ft. Meyers for Thanksgiving with the Fullers and Carters, and had a very nice visit, though we all missed Jacob terribly. He was in New York and Boston visiting with his Mom’s family.
When we returned, we hung some lights out in front of the house and put up our Christmas tree.
The kids had a great time decorating it – they kept putting ornaments on the same ten branches, almost as if they were trying to out-do the previous ornaments, so Mike and I distributed the ornaments upwards from there :)
I went to Arkansas on a short business trip, we had some friends come to visit, and one friend was put in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Nana and Poppa picked up the kids one night and took them out for some mini-golf and Chuck-e-Cheese fun, the kids really enjoyed themselves.
We had dinner at Nana and Poppa’s house, where Nana baked a cake for Katie’s Birthday,
since they wouldn’t be able to attend Katie’s birthday party. As you can see, the kids frosted and decorated the cake, with about equal parts of the frosting going on the cake and into their tummies! We also celebrated the first night of Chanukah with them, which was a new experience for me. We lit the candles, and Jacob helped recite the blessing.
I’ve tried to find some Chanukah decorations for the house so both our faiths are represented, but there doesn’t seem to be much out there to be found, at least not at the three stores I checked. I’m glad at least that most of the decorations I already had were more winter-oriented than Christian-oriented, so they’re at least more universal for a blended family like ours.
Then Jim and his son Nicky came to visit, and the kids had a good time playing with Nicky. I thought with the age difference (Nicky is 8), they wouldn’t have much in common, but they did very well together, especially Nicky and Jacob. Jim made a yummy dinner Saturday night for all of us, so that was a nice break ;)
Next was Katie’s Birthday party. After picking up the birthday cake and driving home, I started having stabbing pains in my back, still don’t know what caused it. We went ahead to Katie’s party at Birthday World, and all of the kids really enjoyed it. Jacob especially enjoyed the train roller-coaster.
I think the major issue for the parents was that the table we were at was right next to the train roller-coaster, and it was very noisy. But the kids had fun, and that was the point.
We were supposed to go that evening to Mike’s company’s Christmas Dinner Party at Interlachen Country Club, but instead we spent the evening in the ER because my back pain kept getting worse instead of easing off. Followed up with my orthopaedic doctor’s office the next day, and that Dr. thinks I tore a ligament. They scheduled me for an MRI, which I had done today. I also had the joy of getting squeezed half to death – I had a mammogram that my gyn Dr. ordered as a baseline study. I was at the hospital for the MRI anyway, so decided to get that out of the way too. Should have the results of both by sometime next week, or the week after due to the holidays.
Tonight my little performer decided she was going to put on a show with the microphone Nana and Poppa got her and Jacob. I had a hard time not laughing, she was so adorably cute! See the best concert this year here! LOL!
We uploaded several videos to YouTube, in addition to the two embedded in this blog.
I finally uploaded the video of Mike proposing to me. Awwww!
There’s also another video of Katie playing the drums.
Here’s a video of Katie and Jacob playing football after their afternoon with Nana and Poppa.
This is Katie and Jacob reacting to seeing the Christmas tree all lit up before we decorated it.
And all of us decorating the tree.
We are heading to Ft. Meyers next week to celebrate Christmas with the Fullers and Carters, should be loads of fun.
Have a Wonderful Holiday Season Everyone!