Christmas Eve Tradition

I'd say that one tradition that we are consistent with is that of sleeping under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. (You can see Natalie there telling Ethan to go to sleep so Santa can come...)

Sleeping around the tannenbaum isn't something that Corey or I did growing up. But the kids did it in 2007 and they're the ones that deserve the credit for keeping it up through these past 10 years. Here are those little kids in 2007 - 

Sophi ready to have visions of sugar plums dance in her head.

This year they wanted Owen to join them. And it was a lesson learned. Sure, he seemed to snuggle up fine, but it did not work out well for Santa's helpers.

Note to self for when they want Daniel to sleep over with them next year: Just say no.

 

It is now 3:00 a.m. Christmas morning and we're not done yet going through gifts or wrapping them. Owen was still awake at 1:30 (cute little face) and so was Wes. 

Wes was reading but said Owen was the one to blame for keeping them both up. 

Owen liked Lily's dog Bunky Bunky.

Lily! Go to bed! Taking one last picture at midnight and saying goodnight for the last time (I wish) 

So at 1:30 I took Owen upstairs and we lay down on the floor with him in our room. (He doesn't want to sleep in the crib anymore, so he's kept with the toddler tradition of sleeping at the foot of our bed on the floor - like Sophi and Natalie.) I set an alarm for 20 minutes, enough time for Owen to fall asleep and for me to not be too deep in sleep and unable to get up and finish our Santa work. Corey is still wrapping things and taking photos and putting them on the computer. We both bought stuff, he took it all and wrapped it at his parent's house, and took photos along the way then put post-its on the presents. He's almost done wrapping I hope, and then we'll go through it all and make sure things are equally distributed.

Update - Picture taken at 4:45 a.m. At 5:30 we were finally done and headed to bed. 

Corey asked if I thought we should go through and take off the post it notes with numbers and replace them with the kids' initials or name. I said no. That would seriously have taken us another hour. Let's just go to bed.

I hope we work out a better system for next year, cause I'm too old to pull all-nighters. Unfortunately Santa had to resort to the sugary carbs via the plate of cookies left out for him to keep his energy up until the job was finished.

I hope we get a nap tomorrow. To all a good night.

Melodie is 17!

We had a really fancy party for Melodie's birthday tonight. We sent out invitations and everything. The dress was formal.

Just kidding. That wasn't for a birthday party. The kids had a concert at the school tonight. They are a good looking bunch, don't ya think? For the real party, most of the kids were gone, but Mel was home. My mom came over with gifts, so we sang and she enjoyed her cake with the little kids before Mel had to leave for rehearsal. Her younger siblings were glad it was finally cake time, cause they had already been waiting ALL day. 

Natalie his very - pink cake! 17 candles Mel... you're getting up there! Happy birthday to you! Natalie wanted a better view and even helped blow out the candles.

I love Owen's little head. I had given Mel her birthday present from me 10 days early - an academic planner.

Yes, those are technically for mothers, but Mel is a mother at heart. And she is smarter than me, cause she just puts white out over the pages of things she doesn't need and makes them into something that is helpful to her. She received money and crafty things and I think was a good birthday. Lucky Mel is finally going to get her drivers license! Her driving test is scheduled for next week. She's almost ready to launch. Hope you had a good day Mel.

My day was good cause I took care of some tasks that had been bugging me. I took Natalie with me to Home Depot and got a tree stand and a toilet handle for the two current things that made me feel like our life is falling apart. Bugging me item #1 - our tree that won't stand up. One of the legs of the stand broke last week. I tried to fix it with hot glue. It worked for about 24 hours. When we came home from church on Sunday (after I was already feeling a little miffed at our not together life) we walked into the house to see the tree crashed over again. Joseph was behind me and saw it - "Mom, the tree is broken..." and I replied "Just like our life..." I had noticed it myself, but as each kid entered the house from the garage door, they each saw it and then made it a point to seek me out and make me aware. "Yes, thank you, I know." "Yes, thank you." So, I left it leaning again the wall on Sunday, then that night took it apart in half and attempted to gather the scattered ornaments.

There already were/are ornaments scattered everywhere in our house. May I introduce culprit #1 -

And the rest of his posse -

I'm sure one of these little kiddos is the reason the tree fell apart anyway. So today I got a stand for a real tree at Home Depot. Sophi helped me get it ready, while Owen pretended to help do something on the tree.

I broke off the rest of the legs of the tree to before my first try at fitting it in the new base. Unfortunately, the thin trunk of the artificial tree did not fit in this base made for a real tree. So I had to get creative. A few sports balls from the dollar store and I sawed some small blocks of wood, and voilà, we have an upright tree, yay.

The second thing that had been bugging me for a few months was our broken toilet handle. It didn't to back down to plug the tank, so for a few months we've had to remind the kids to fix the handle. This past week, it totally broke and we couldn't move it, so I had to take off the tank lid and any user of the bathroom had to pull the chain. The little kids found the inside of the tank very interesting. But they didn't want to touch it. So I've been walking in to find a bunch of unflushed stuff. I'm glad I got that checked off now, I finally fixed that today, thank you YouTube. Good bye old handle.

I also looked around Home Depot at the dishwashers. We've needed a new one since we moved here and it's really gotten pathetic the past few months. I think it's gonna happen soon. 

I'm excited to have buttons on top where our button and dial happy baby Daniel can't reach it. He likes to turn on the dishwasher. Also, if we cook something at the stove top, we have to put on the handle and take it off after turning on the gas, cause Daniel has a radar antennae or something and always goes straight for it. He's turned the gas on a few times, isn't that right Daniel?

Yeah, you messy sticky freeze dried strawberry boy. One last thing, it's been fun to get cards and surprise treats from neighbors, like this one tonight. We have many blessings.

We haven't done it for a few years but I hope to make Christmas popcorn or to get something to give out this year to share our love.

Decoration Distractions

The kids have continued to get out Christmas decorations. Abi recently put a big sconce thing on the dining table that has a lot of plastic ornaments in it. Daniel and Owen love to get the ornaments off the tree and throw them around like bouncy balls, so the big sconce is just a big temptation. Owen was getting on the table this morning to get ornaments and throw them. "No, Owen..." and he'd look at me and smile and reach for another one. So, I took it off the table up high where he couldn't get it, and he started to fuss for it. I then thought a good distraction for him and his little friend. One that I wouldn't mind as much as ornatments all over the floor: easter eggs! So now instead of a sconce with ornaments, we have trick or treat pails full of easter eggs for Owen and Daniel to play with.

Natalie is liking it too. We're having a big holiday mix-up around here!

A neighbor recently gave these to us. She was getting rid of them and remembered how much Natalie was admiring her daughters pink pumpkin bucket this past Halloween. Very thoughtful of her. So that's what the kids have been playing with today. Eggs all over in every room.

The house is a mess, but that's okay. December is a beast all it's own and I'm not fretting about being on top of the housework until the tree and all it's clutter is put back away. I'll probably put it away on December 26 or 27th. Does that make me a scrooge? I need to try a little harder to get into the Christmas spirit.

What else? One more thing - last night Corey shared this 60 minutes video with me and the kids, about a man from South Africa named Brett Archibald who fell overboard during the night when he was sea sick and he was lost at sea for 28 hours before being rescued. Corey's story for the kids was about how he faced the things that were obstacles to him. First a reef shark showed up and was checking him out. His first reaction was one of fear, but then he thought - "A reef shark! It's going to swim back toward a reef! I'm gonna grab him and ride him back to the reef where I will be able to stand up and wave for help!" As it was though, he was just a small head bobbing in the ocean that no one could see. As he was floating on his back later, some seagulls came upon him and started going after his eyes. At first he was just trying to fend them off, then he decided to go on the attack - I'm gonna catch one and I can drink it's blood for food. So, Corey's story for the kids was - when problems come at attack us, don't hide from them, but try to be like Brett and think of how you can use those problems to survive. (Though not sure how to face jelly fish?) Great interview here - Part 1 and Part 2 - "We all worry about the wrong things. Friends, family and faith - that's all that matters." Incredible story.

It goes along nicely with some things I learned during the courage challenge about fear. Holly had a little acronym that I liked - Fear can mean two things: Forget Everything And Run! ...or... Face Everything And Rise. And one more talk about fear was this BYU devotional talk given by BYU President Worthen in September titled "Fear Not". It was excellent! I especially liked the story about Sheri Dew and trying out for the basketball team - under point #3.

Of course, might not be the best analogy for us (business wise) cause neither of those plans worked out for Brett anyway, doh! And he was like an hour from death (from salt water and swollen tongue). It really was a miracle he survived. It will be a miracle when we get out from under the weight of this business burden. Though it was very appropriate that last night we were talking about seagulls and it was just one year, again on December 6, after we discovered the BLR Yoda Seagulls video. Now when I think of Seagulls poking at yoda's head, I'll think of this guy.  Darn seagulls, stop it!

O Christmas Tree

Abi wanted to put up the Christmas tree last week after Thanksgiving. I told her we couldn't do it yet... it's got to either snow or atleast be December before the tree goes up. There hasn't been any snow, but since it is now December, I had to give in. So the kids brought up the tree and put it up. We also have a white tree that we usually put in the side room, but I told the kids we have to wait on that until we fix the overload of furniture in that room which has been there since Corey moved out of this office two months ago. Wow, time goes by quickly. Anyway, the little kiddos are super excited! Natalie has already been sleeping under the tree in her room.

We put some mini trees in their room earlier this week. Natalie slept under that and in the morning there was a present - a toothpaste box, unwrapped, with a note that said "To Natalie From Santa (aka Lily) Ho ho ho!" Inside were some plastic gems that the kids have been playing with. Natalie was excited. Today she was asking if it was Christmas yet.

Santa is not coming yet sweetie. But atleast we're "ready" now! So you little kids can put your minds at ease!

We'll see how long the ornaments last - they have to make it through a whole month of being down within toddler grabbing reach. The kids pull them off and play catch with them (little kids) or break them for no reason at all other than seeing if their powerful hands are strong enough to crush the glittery plastic ball (Ethan). Corey is working late tonight, I went to the temple and struggled to stay awake the whole time. I just can't sit still or the battle with weariness begins. I'm find during the day cause I stay up and moving. But sometimes I have to slap myself or call a friend to talk if I'm driving cause I get drowsy. And definitely no sitting still in a room with the lights off like in the temple. Ugh. 

Business wise - probably shouldn't share this here, I don't know, but it's the truth of our life - Corey took out a loan yesterday with horrible interest to pay for some business bills. I said successful/rich business people are successful cause they know when to say when, when their efforts have been enough and they need to stop giving more. But Corey said he's not doing this for the money, he's doing this cause he's tired of making excuses - giving excuses as to why he's not paying bills and employees. So the answer again is more debt for us. I really do feel like we're stuck in the ocean, waiting to die a slow and possibly painful death with no rescue ship in sight. Yeah, I'm sure we'll still be alive as this holiday month ends and another calendar year begins, cause that's what's happened every other end of the year. And I think that someday this business won't be the source of stress and worry. But still, ugh. Maybe that's why I'm feeling like such a scrooge. Hard to focus on giving when I'm all stuck in my head with worry and wondering how we'll get by. I know I need to get outside of myself and help lead our children in giving of ourselves (but that's kinda all you do as a parent for your kids all day every day anyway...) and I want to do the Light the World thing, but it's probably going to be just simple things cause we're just getting by - with $, time management, and previous commitments. Happy December, we'll see if we can make it one to remember and not just one of surviving the holiday. :/

Breaking the Rules

This morning Wesley made a blueberry smoothie for breakfast. Melodie, who was finishing her homework by the computer in the study, asked Wes if she could have some. Though it was against the family rule, I, the enforcer of the "no food out of the kitchen" rule, took a cup of the shake outside of the kitchen and gave it to her in the study. I handed it to her and told her to be careful. I assumed she ate it, she finished her homework, and then they got in the car and I took them to school. I returned home again and carried on with my day. This afternoon, shortly after Daniel woke up from his nap, I was in the kitchen milling wheat into flour (using food storage). The kids were walking around the main floor playing with toys and bouncing little balls and doing whatever it is that toddlers do. I was left uninterrupted for over 15 minutes, which should have been a warning in itself. And then Daniel toddled in to the kitchen to greet me. He had blueberry on his face, his feet, his hands.... Oh drat. I grabbed him in a way that he couldn't touch me with his mess. I walked to the study to survey where the damage was and what was the cause. Ah! It was Mel's blueberry smoothie! Up to the tub Daniel goes. I gathered my supplies so I could begin clean up after Hyrum was home to help watch the kids. So that is fun. I shared a polo video of this with my family. My mom and sisters were all worried that the shake had been spilled on the computer, so they were relieved that it was just the carpet. And I wasn't too bad to clean it up. I'm not finished yet, but it looks pretty good considering it's dark purple juice on a cream colored carpet. I'll give it another scrub in a bit after I vacuum the messy room... cause the study is Mel's job and she's a bit overbooked with her time, so it hasn't been getting done. Daniel helping me scrub after he got out of the tub...

No, actually he came with freeze dried blueberry slobber on his chin to remind me what he's capable of, then he took my scrub brush and fled the scene.

Cute little guy. One more thing, this morning was able to go to study group. Owen and Daniel and Natalie were all being noisy in the room, so after trying to take them into the nursery several times, I eventually gave up and went into the nursery with them, where they nicely played. A good friend, who knows the details on most of our business drama, came in to offer to watch the kids so I could go in to the discussion, which was so nice. Instead the two of us talked for a bit and I got some perspective and ideas for how we can best go forward. We continue to search and pray to hopefully, somehow, get ourselves to the mainland and "rest of the blissful shore", whether that's by abandoning this sinking ship or if we're able to somehow make it seaworthy. We'll see. Hope we get something figured out before Christmas or we're gonna be having a repeat of Chile. ...which wasn't bad by the way. The kids' Chile wish list, Chile Tree, Chile Christmas Eve, Santa at work, and Christmas morning  ... That is probably one of their more memorable Christmases. It's all about creating low expectations, ha, which should be pretty easy for us right now.

Day After

So not much going on here. The kids are playing with their toys. I'm taking down Christmas decorations. I woke up this morning and did a treadmill run, then I stretched out my hips as I squatted by the tree and started taking off ornaments. I figured since I put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving, I had the right to take it down the day after Christmas.

I got all the ornaments off, stuggled with the lights for a while but finally got them off too, then it was time to take down the tree piece by piece. It's nothing personal, Mr. Tree, it's just that we already have more than our share of clutter, and you've fulfilled your purpose this year. I was really excited to see you gone, but we look forward with pleasure to seeing you next year. So I'm trying to clean and put away and hide things, the kids have been putting together lego sets and coloring. Here is the favorite received gift of each child ...well, except the first three. They didn't get any one particularly amazing gift, and the Christmas magic is a little bit gone for these older kids, so we're gonna skip Joseph Mel and Ethan, but I'm sure they liked their new headphones and socks and ACT book etc, right kids? As for the younger kids:

Hyrum - Millenium Falcon drone
Wesley - Neon Street Rollers. He would say his x-wing fighter, but it doesn't fly so well, drat.
Abi - Friends Lego Hotel ...which I ordered online and we picked up at Toys R Us today... Corey and I had a mixup and I thought he bought her gift, and he thought I got it... so she didn't get a toy on Christmas and quietly mourned in the corner that all she got for Christmas was a book and some shoes, so sad.
Lily - Elves Lego Set with the Baby Queen Dragon
Sophi - Lego Queen Dragon
Natalie - I'll just guess the Belle Lego. But yesterday she seemed most excited and pleased with all the Hi-Chew candies in her stoking.
Owen - Hit the 4 balls toy
Daniel - I'll speak for him too and say his new muslin blankets. :)

So yeah, the house is a wreck. It's nice to have a whole week to try and clean it up. :) Any chance they'll actually do any homework? I find it highly unlikely. We're all going to enjoy the break from school and responsiblity.

Christmas Eve

Hi, It's Christmas morning. But this is what happened last night... The kids all slept by the tree in the front room. It's a kid tradition that they started 10 or so years ago. They all look forward to their sibling sleepover ~ staying up late and chatting with excitement for what the morning will bring.

So last night Corey and I didn't bother making the kids go to bed. They were still up and wired with energy, but I was putting Daniel to bed, so I got Owen and put him to bed too, and that meant I was done and could retire. It was just 10:30. Corey soon came in, we decided to set our alarm for 2 am to put stuff out. When the 2 am alarm sounded I got out of bed. The house was quiet. That's good, that means hopefully kids are snoozing, and they should be at 2 am. Corey said he'd be out in a few. He had bought presents and wrapped them and wrapped the ones I had bought too, so I wasn't totally sure what gifts were what or what the plan was for the morning. We don't really have time to talk or coordinate things lately. I snooped around in his office and found the candy he bought for stocking stuffers and slowly took care of those. I ate the mangoes and drank the eggnog the kids left out for Santa, and munched the carrots for his reindeer, wishing Corey was awake to drink the eggnog so I wouldn't have to.

It's against weight loss rules to consume calories in the wee hours of the morning, right? But I had to get rid of them, but I don't like to waste... I thought snooping in the kitchen to try to find their plastic packaging would be too noisy. So I munched those out of duty, drank a little egg nog and brought the rest upstairs and put in a cup in our bathroom for Corey, then returned the glass empty downstairs to show that Santa drank it. Then I continued to wander around trying to figure out what to do. Eventually I just put out everything. Stockings and presents under the tree all ready.

I went to bed at 3:45 and Corey told me he got up at 4 for a few minutes to make sure the gifts were out, and then he went to bed. I snuggled back in with my baby.

I guess we're as ready as we're gonna be. This Christmas wasn't as well planned as others have been. We're still trying to figure out how to juggle this many kids and all their schedules. Plus with Corey being gone for 2 weeks that made it a little harder. Thus we plan to pre-empt the unwrapping in the morning with statement to decrease expectations, disclosing again that their parents have been stretched thin lately!

Christmas Trees

True to Hibbert tradition, we've got our tree up before the month of December starts. If I were die hard like my dad was in the 90's, one of them would have been up before Halloween. I say "one of them" because sometimes there were like 13 trees of various sized in my childhood home. My dad was a major Christmas man. The years have tempered him a little bit, which is a factor of age and also that he doesn't have all the kids around to help him put everything up. We usually put up two trees. Our kid/family tree in the front room holds any ornaments that the kids make at school or crafty things (just in case something like this happens!!) And our tree in the side room is our Jesus Tree - white, red and gold with a few nativity ornaments and a little nail from Corey's mom from a few years ago, to remind us of Christ and his sacrifice.

Mel and I put them up last week after Thanksgiving while the kids were up at Park City. Then we all decorated them over the weekend. Although now that we're a few days into it, I'm taking a mental note to wait a week or two next year, cause it's just too long of a time for kids to ruin any efforts we adults or big kids made to have it actually look nice...

Owen and Natalie pulled the lights off so they were totally loose, so I had to re-string them up which was a pain...

And they like to take off the ornaments. I don't mind as long as they put them back on. I don't even care if they're all concentrated around the base of the tree. But I hate having them scattered around the house. We have enough junk to clean up without adding a hundred plastic ornaments to the mess.

Owen is the main culprit for the ones loose on the floor. I blame Ethan for the broken ones since I caught him crushing one in his hand then saying "I didn't know it'd break!!" Natalie thinks they are shiny balls and throws them as high as she can on the bookshelf. Natalie and Sophi also use them as food (apples) when they play. Owen took note and puts the little ones in his mouth

Yummy!

So I was excited to put up the tree, but I'm also already looking forward to taking it down.

Coloring Books

These little girls are serious about their coloring. At Christmas time, after taking my 3rd group of kids to Dollar Tree to buy presents for each other, I decided to stock up myself on the Strawberry Shortcake coloring books that they had there. They've been super busy coloring this past week, so I only have one more and might need to make another trip, but I love seeing them color. Here they are right before bedtime~ (Natelie is always attentively aware of what kind of work and which characters her sisters are working on...)

Sophi stopped to go to sleep, but not Natalie, so we left the light on in our bathroom and let her keep coloring in the dim light on the floor in our room. She was being sweetly quiet as she worked, so we fell asleep to the sound of little pencil strokes.

And then as soon as Natalie woke up, her eyes barely open and barely able to form words, she requested her pencil and coloring book as was back at it at the kitchen bar as she waited her breakfast..

Super cute. Abi and Lily are getting quite good at detail, as you can kind of see in Lily's coloring book. Lily also gathered the whole case of coloring pencils to have at her disposal. Sophi goes through most of the pages using just a single color. She's using a marker there above, but lately Natalie prefers using a standard led pencil or one single colored pencil for her artistic expression.

I walked over to the church today for a scripture study group and pushed the girls in the stroller ~ Natalie was in the front seat of the long double stroller, with coloring book and pencil in hand, coloring away. It made me laugh, I should have gotten a picture of it. Maybe we can recreate the moment next week. I love these kids.

Countdown

I think I'm going to take down the tree today. I've taken down some of the Christmas decor and just kept up "winter" things. One of the Christmas things that I shall be storing soon is this countdown board that we had kept by the kids' rooms this month. Christmas 2015 is over, is it too late to start thinking of next year?

Yeah! Only 361 days! Walmart's "53 days" countdown that I shook my head at ain't got nothin' on these kids!