Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!

Merry Christmas everyone! I can't believe it's December 24th! We had a pretty good week here getting ready for Christmas, but we did have some dodgy weather that made life a bit more difficult. Both volleyball practices were cancelled due to snow and icy conditions, but I decided to still have my team bonding activity on Wednesday and had a decent turnout considering the circumstances! Half the team was there, and they had a great time! The roads really weren't that bad until Friday morning, when everything was glare ice because of the freezing rain. We didn't drive anywhere yesterday, riding out the icy conditions. 

We had our annual rib roast dinner on our Christmas Eve yesterday, and did the stockings and kids gift exchange. I do my best to try and keep some traditions the same regardless of what day we actually celebrate Christmas, it seems to matter a lot to the kids. This morning was the present opening extravaganza! I think all the kids got at least a few things they really liked, not every gift was a hit but that's how it goes. It's so hard to get gifts for the kids, they never really know what they want so it pretty much has to be an intuition on mine and Brian's part and we just don't always know! Adam was pretty happy with his gifts, which is a pretty big accomplishment since we rarely hit with him. Everyone had fun and we are all very blessed!

Tomorrow we are supposed to fly out to Calgary. We have been watching our flight # for the last few days to see how it's doing, and it's not giving me much hope:-l. Yesterday, the flight did take off but after a 7 hour delay (and not a delay they told you about until after you got to the airport, so you had to be there all day as it kept getting delayed by an hour at a time). Today, it was delayed by an hour at a time until at 5pm, it got cancelled. This is the stuff of my nightmares. Adam is so excited to go to Calgary, I can't even fathom what something like that would look like if it happened to us. We are just hoping and praying that it won't get cancelled two days in a row, I mean what are the chances! The weather is totally okay in both cities right now so it's just a matter of the airports sorting out a backlog of flights and travelers. Oh I am so hopeful that things go well tomorrow! At this point, I am hoping for just a 3 hour delay, that would be a win! We will of course show up when we are supposed to, hopefully Adam's patience doesn't run out!

Wish us luck! See you in the New Year!

One week until Christmas!

I really haven't taken any good pictures the last few weeks! I guess my words will have to tell the story of what we've been up to. December has been full as it always is, but it's been pretty manageable. Notable things: Nathan got his limo ride to Mod Pizza, his reward for his pie sales! He was pretty excited and he loved it! Very cool experience for him. We had a couple of meetings with the school about Adam, it was nice to get caught up with his teachers and get a feeling for what's happening there. He was so looking forward to this Christmas break, his ranting was at very high levels these past few weeks. His last day was Friday and even the last few days I have already noticed he is much more relaxed and not fixating on "opening presents" and "going to Calgary" quite as much. Christmas break from school was a pretty big milestone for him! Hopefully this week doesn't go by too slowly for him, we are opening presents on Christmas Eve morning so less than a week away!

I am all done with Christmas shopping and almost done with wrapping presents. Will hopefully finish up tonight. I organized a team bonding event for the volleyball team, we are decorating gingerbread houses here at our house on Wednesday. I'm a bit nervous about it but I'm sure it will all go okay. I just want them to have fun and walk away feeling a bit more comfortable with each other and with me. 

Our flight to Calgary is scheduled to take off at 12:25pm on Sunday, hopefully everything goes smoothly there. I am as always looking forward to the trip but also a bit anxious. The fact that we are also driving to La Crete is adding to the anxiety, we are just hoping for good weather. I want to be there without doing the travel to get there lol.

I will hopefully do a post on Saturday so I don't have too much catching up to do when we get back! Merry Christmas!

 

Christmas season, let's go!

We are in December and the thick of the Christmas busyness! I have done most of my Christmas shopping at this point, although I'm sure I'm going to have to do some last minute stuff. The kids want to buy presents for each other, which of course means I have to get involved in some way (Lynsey just orders stuff from Amazon but Nathan will need help as well as Adam of course). The big stuff is done which is a load off, even got the grandparents taken care of which is no small feat! 

We celebrated American Thanksgiving with Andy and Elli, and it was a great evening! The food was delicious, Andy made stuffed mushrooms (which Kristy usually makes) and there was a lot of skepticism about whether or not he could live up to the standard she set. I must say they turned out great! We put up our tree the day after on Black Friday, now Christmas is officially in the house! Brian's birthday was Sunday and we went out for dinner with Andy (he was leaving that week so we told him we wanted him to be our third wheel!).

Monday, Lynsey and I had to head to Bellevue College for uniform fitting for club volleyball. I'm slowly figuring out how this is going to go. I did get a bit fired up when the size small pants that Lynsey will be required to wear were way too short, and they don't offer a long length until you get to size large. Apparently it's a big newsflash to Under Armour that some volleyball players are both tall and slim (pardon the sarcasm, I don't know why but this issue really got me going!). I was able to offer this feedback to people that work for Under Armour, so hopefully they can make some changes going forward. She's only 5'9" (albeit with long legs for her height) but I can't imagine how silly these pants would look on someone 5'10" or more. Practices start tomorrow, of course on the day that Brian is leaving for a 3 day work trip to San Fran! Thankfully Elli is able to come babysit, it's a late practice so it's hard to get a teenager to come do it.

As I mentioned earlier, Andy left back to Australia this past Thursday:-(. We all went out for dinner on Tuesday as a friends group to say good bye, it was also the first day of snow which has been a problem here for the past several days. They cancelled school on Wednesday, but were able to operate only on a two hour delay on Thursday. Regular hours on Friday. Oh except for the gym - those jokers had to cancel classes on Thursday and Friday (not even on Wednesday when the schools were closed lol!). I was pretty irritated by it on Friday, if an individual instructor can't make it, cancel that class. Don't just cancel them all, seriously. I decided to do a treadmill workout which I hadn't done in a while, did some jogging and intervals for an hour - gotta get ready for that 10K in February! 

We had a meeting at the school for Adam on Monday, and have another one for his IEP on Monday. It was nice to check in and hear how it's going. He seems to be doing pretty well, although they have the same issues as always trying to motivate him to learn. It does seem like his teacher is very interested in learning different strategies to better engage him and teach him. I appreciate that they are trying so hard!

December, here we go! I hope we can manage everything this month throws at us lol!