the 365 of 2009

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?

watched my youngest child learn how to ride a bike, tiled a kitchen backsplash, visited Connecticut and Rhode Island, completed training for Missouri State Foster Care, took on infant childcare full time

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Last year my goal was buckling down with a budget and, well, mark another resolution in the fail column. I did do better as far as groceries... I think I cut that bill fairly well and stuck to planning and lists and was better with coupons.
I'm working on a whole list of things to make 2010 better... more to come on that.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Kasey, Erin and Heidi

4. Did anyone close to you die?

no

5. What countries/states did you visit?

Stayed in the states again this year... hit South Dakota, Oregon, and added Rhode Island and Connecticut to the list.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

discipline and motivation

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched in your memory, and why?
Evan's birth day and Levi's birth day... can't think of any other dates that stand out.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
hmm... achievement makes me think of a lot of effort put into something, and nothing big like that comes to mind.

9. What was your biggest failure?
budgeting. and losing weight. and not being the parent I know I should be.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
nope

11. What was the best thing you bought?
?

12. Who's behavior merited celebration?
Last year I said my husband and I'm going to have to go with the same answer this year. He has been absolutely amazing... dealing with me and our crazy summer and fall this year, taking up more than his share of slack with the house and the kids and even helping out with the kid around here that's not his... he's got more patience for me than I'd dare hope from anyone.

13. Who's behavior made you appalled or depressed?
someone who I thought was a good friend.

14. Where did most of your money go?
the mortgage, trips, entertaining

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
road trips, birthdays, dinner parties, haircuts, new babies

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
I've Got a Feeling, Black Eyed Peas

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? happier
b) thinner or fatter? the same
c) richer or poorer? poorer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
time management, blogging, taking pictures

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
spend money, procrastinate (as usual)

20. How did you spend Christmas?
here at home, in our jammies all day playing games together.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Yes; with my new boyfriend, a certain Sailor named Jerry ;)

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Lost and Big Love

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
no

24. What was the best book you read?
reading- Hold On To Your Kids by Dr. Gordon Neufeld. Amazing.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
hmmm....

26. What did you want and get?
a point and shoot camera


27. What did you want and not get?
thinner
a new car
a baby

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Away We Go

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Absolutely nothing... I opened a few presents earlier in the week, Savannah had cheerleading practice that night, and we didn't even have a cake! I turned 34.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? completing an adoption

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Still a jeans and t-shirt mom for the most part, guess I'll always be? I did branch out a bit and made a conscience effort for more prints and textures and definitely accessories on the t-shirt half of that jeans and t-shirt ensemble... and gotta have the cute shoes.

32. What kept you sane?
I think my sanity was in question this year. My husband, again, was my life saver. And see Sailor Jerry answer above. Also knowing there were girls I could count on for real in my life; Kasey, Heather, Sarah... they're the ones that "get" me right now.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I still have a thing for Robert Downey Jr...

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
not very stirred...

35. Who did you miss?
Annie, ironically moreso when I spent a couple of days catching up with her... realizing how much of her life -big stuff in her life- I've missed out on. It reminded me how much I love, admire, appreciate and miss her and her family. And it made me sad that I struggle so much with keeping up on long distance relationships. :(

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Sarah Pearson... what a special friend.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
time stops for no man...

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
It takes a thought to make a word
And it takes some words to make an action
It takes some work to make it work
It takes some good to make it hurt
It takes some bad for satisfaction
It takes some cold to know the sun
It takes the one to have the other
And it takes no time to fall in love
But it takes you years to know what love is
It takes some fears to make you trust
It takes those tears to make it rust
It takes the dust to have it polished
It takes some silence to make sound
It takes a loss before you found it

Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle
Ha la la la la la life is wonderful
Ha la la la la la life is meaningful
Ha la la la la la life is wonderful
Ha la la la la la life it is...so... wonderful
It is so meaningful
It is so wonderful
It is meaningful
It is wonderful
It is meaningful
It goes full circle
Wonderful
Meaningful
Full circle

december's ending

I did want to make a few more notes of Christmas before the year completely gets away from us...

I was quite unhappy that Christmas came so quickly this year. I mean, I know it does -and moreso- each year, but this year I was so disappointed in our preparations for it that it just made me really sad.

We had done the majority of our Christmas shopping and crafting before and around Thanksgiving while in Oregon. We managed to get all of our gifts for all of our families done there, to wrap and leave while we were there, ready for the Christmas holiday. Perfect plan; shopping in Oregon= no sales tax(!!) and getting it all done there= no shipping from our house! So we did it and we were set. I was so excited to have it all done so early and out of the way... that's 90% of our Christmas gifts and preparation. All we had left to do was a handful of gifts for the kids and some crafty stuff for neighbors and teachers and the like back home.

I was so looking forward to a relaxing December with plenty of time for catching up on things at home and having fun with our last little list of Christmas projects and gifts, lots of baking and creating and fun! Oh and a couple of parties. :)

Alas, that was not our December to be.
Ryan had essentially four job offers in the three weeks before Christmas. Which is great in theory... except that all these offers were out of state and require oh a weeee bit of actual consideration and prayer and possible life changing decision making.
I've obviously already mentioned the NorthEast option and the fact that we felt we needed to take the pre-decision trip that was offered. So that was a whirlwind of a last minute trip after what felt like just getting back from our two week vacation. Not to mention all the legwork that goes along with a prospective cross country move; researching communities and house prices and looking at houses and schools and what the area has to offer and whether it might be a good fit for our family.

Here I was all excited to be back in my regular blogging habits after the NaBloPoMo of November, but yet looking back, I only had ten posts here in the month of December.
All of my time on the computer was spent elsewhere... all over the country to be exact.
We're slated to physically take another trip to another state as well in the next week or two, so I feel I've been online overtime again... only mostly looking into all the aspects of that area, not the blogging, facebooking and photo editing I want to be doing.

All that to say, December completely slipped away from me. And I hate that because I love December. I love everything about getting ready for Christmas and I hate that I feel so much of that was left out around here. Sure we got (most of) our decorations up and we did manage to read a book from our Christmas basket together as a family most nights before bed and we did crank out one batch of (refrigerator dough) decorated Christmas cookies (that we had to do for an exchange party) and I did manage to get Christmas card greetings out (the week of Christmas), but that, my friends, is about it.
I had big plans for a great season of Christmas preparation and almost none of it happened. And if anyone knows me, you know that kills me.

I didn't do any sort of advent activity with my kids, we never made Christmas sugar cookies to decorate, or even my favorites, we didn't make the teacher gifts I had in mind for the kids (we gave BeadforLife bracelets instead, which were perfect!), we didn't invite any friends over for dinner, we didn't make the all the ornament neighbor/extra friend gifts we bought supplies for, we didn't do a neighborhood progressive dinner this year, we didn't go to any Christmas shows or see the Zoo lights... we didn't even make a simple Christmas countdown chain like every year. We didn't even once take the time to just sit in the living room together with just candles and tree lights with Christmas music on. I didn't get a gift for my husband and I forgot half the things I wanted to have in the kids' stockings. We never made our traditional Christmas donuts this year.
Our house was a wreck, we had kid school stuff to do, normal life to live, my mind was cluttered and my heart was just not on Christmas this year.
And that makes me sad. I feel like I missed it.

I have thanked the Lord though for His timing... although obviously I'd have liked all of this to be AFTER Christmas, at least He gave me the foresight to have all our long distance gifts done ahead of time... if we hadn't been in Oregon or thought to have our Christmas prep done there ahead of time, I would have gone crazy trying to get last minute shopping and shipping done in the midst of our December. Everyone would have ended up with gift cards or I would have just lost it and said no gifts this year. Which is crazy talk coming from me... I LOVE the giving gifts; it pains me to give no gifts gift cards because I just love the hunt and the thought and the everything put into giving personal gifts for loved ones.
Anyway. At least I didn't have that on my plate as well. God knows what I can handle.

But I missed having a real December this year. I'm dreading taking down our tree and decorations next week because I don't want it to be over.
I loved our Christmas Day... I loved slowing down and being together as a family and not doing anything else but be together. Not worrying, not deciding, not house hunting, not wondering. Just enjoying.
And it's almost time to put it all away and get back to normal life.

Before I do that, I did want to share a couple of things we did get done this year...
our favorite (and almost only!) homemade gifts we did these last couple of weeks:

The kids made these books (too many if you ask them) for their little baby cousins and for Caleb and Evan this year. I love them and I know the kids are so proud of them! They're double strength cardstock and laminated so hopefully they'll be actual books that can withstand toddlers!














Here's a sampling of the pages... some were illustrated by Savannah and some by Sawyer. Can you guess who's are who's??




































































Also, I made these photo plaques for Jen, the mom that I babysit for. I had grandiose ideas of doing a whole secret "photo shoot" with Caleb and then presenting his parents with a whole disc of great images and to print up a couple of especially great ones or have one nicely framed to go along with it. Well, between us being gone and other stuff going on, that never happened. I did manage to squeeze in a quick "session" one afternoon and got a couple of good shots out of it. And instead of just framing it, I decided to do this:


































I thought they turned out wonderfully. It's just the photo and matching paper modge-podged on a piece of painted wood with some ribbon and embellishment. I modge podged over the top of the picture and gave it some texture so the photo actually looks almost like canvas. It cost me all of about $2!
Jen actually teared up when she saw the pictures and said it was the best gift she had ever received :)














I may or may not be making more of these for next Christmas!!

I'm seriously thinking about trying for an entirely handmade Christmas gifting next year. The kids made all of their aunts and grandmas gifts this year and they enjoyed it so much. And the gifts I made were my favorites as well.
We all received a few handmades as well and they definitely stood out... it just feels so much more personal; and it's usually simpler and that's nice! Sawyer's aunt sent him a basic wooden box that she painted for him to house his matchbox cars and it's one of his most treasured gifts. I love the simplicity and the practicality of it and I'm thinking I might want to get creative and stay on those lines next year for all our gifts. Really, most of it's not hard, it'll just take planning. Maybe I'll start in June.... :)

christmas with pictures

And please forgive the pictures... it was either my new little point and shoot which I have yet to really pay attention to, or my big camera with the external flash which I still haven't (yes, after a whole year) actually learned how to use the flash correctly. New Years Resolution #23.

First I should throw in some Christmas Eve pics... the kids actually wore the same outifts as last year which was lucky for me because I never really got pictures of them in their fancy Christmas attire then, so we got a take two this year!

Here's with Santa at the Merrits party on Christmas Eve (stolen from Kasey!)...















And here's at home before opening our Christmas jammies

















































not entirely sure what he's doing here exept thinkin he's a homie?






















and letting Sawyer take one of us










And then after the jammies



looks like someone had a little too much eggnog at the party...









(there's actually a whole family pic that's rather good looking with all of us and our new jammies, but Ryan's new jammies happened to just be boxers and yes he posed in those and yes I'll spare you)

So on to Christmas morning...
The "pre" shot...













at like one in the morning. I've never been up so late playing Santa before... I hadn't wrapped anything ahead of time and forgot that I also had to wrap all the gifts to the kids from my parents and some of their aunts. *yawn*

The kids' already open Santa presents were a gumall machine for Savannah and a tent for Sawyer's top bunk bed. Here are the kiddos before opening their other Santa gifts...














Savannah's was the Easy Bake Oven she's been begging for and Sawyer's was...


the puppy he'd been dying for.










Okay, not technically the one he'd wanted as of course he'd been dreaming of the real thing, but with this cute little puppy was a note from Santa himself explaining that as much as he knew Sawyer wanted a real little puppy, Santa is really only good at making and bringing toys for children, not real live animals and he was sorry he couldn't help out with that...














Savannah made Sawyer a ceramic pig to add to his collection

















And the other fave gift of Sawyer's was his robot arm otherwise known as a "garbage picker upper".














Believe it or not he'd been asking for one for months, this garbage picker upper. He's obsessed with liter he sees on the street or in parking lots or out in public... he just has to put it in the garbage where it belongs. I do let him pick some stuff up, but obviously some stuff I'm not going to let him touch. I told him he needed to get his dad to get him a garbage picker upper so he could pick up trash and he's been bugging us about it for the two months since that conversation. Needless to say he was absolutely delighted when he opened this up. And he spent pretty much the next hour doing this:





















































































and the start of our white-ish Christmas that morning...

sawyer's debut

Better late than never, here are pics from Sawyer's first preschool Christmas program...

Notice my son ended up right in front of a microphone.

This is where Sawyer tells his teacher (or the whole audience because he's right in front of the microphone), "I will sing it really super loud!"

And this is where he loud-whispers to me (or the whole audience because he's right in front of the microphone), "Mom, can you take a picture of Sam?!" thumb pointing emphatically to the friend on the right.

Scratch that-
stage pictures turned out blah. Here's just the video instead...
(if you want to see Sawyer's one-liners, just watch the first three minutes. Grandmas and anyone else hard up for entertainment can watch the whole six minute performance)

Sawyer's Christmas Program from heather morrison on Vimeo.

Here's Caleb watching the show (irritated with me for trying to get his attention) and then flailing clapping for Sawyer




















The afterparty:















Sawyer and his buddy Sam














Sawyer's artistic shot of Sam (or maybe the oreo crumbs on his mouth?)(he's obsessed now that I have a little camera and wants to take pictures all the time)
























And Sawyer and his teacher, Mrs. Fetsch :)

simply christmas

I suppose it's about time for a Christmas recap :)

We've really just been enjoying our holiday time this weekend. It's just been the four of us the past three days hangin' out, playing games -we all got lots of games- and enjoying the afterglow of Christmas.

I should back up a little for prosperity's sake;
We started celebrating Christmas on Wednesday... we had the Swinigans over for a Christmas Brunch -for dinner. Christmas Brinner if you will. Christmas Eve Eve Brinner if we're being technical in the title. :) We ate lots and opened a few presents and just really enjoyed hanging out before the whirl of the holiday really hit.

Thursday, on Christmas Eve, we joined the Laughlins at Kasey's mom's family's celebration... huge Christmas party (80+ family members) complete with Santa! We enjoyed some dinner and lots of visiting with the Laughlins and the Merritts. It was fun to be included in a big crazy family at Christmas... we felt like we were at home!

Christmas Morning the kids actually slept in... after seven a.m. anyway! Sawyer didn't come down until after 7:30! That there is what you call a Christmas miracle!
We were done with presents by 8:30 and seriously spent the rest of the day (rest of the next three days really) never leaving our Christmas pj's and just hanging out together playing new games and snacking and watching the snow outside. Yes, snow! It was a mere inch or so on Christmas, but it's basically been snowing constantly since Christmas morning and it just puts me in such a good mood! We had up to maybe two inches today, on Sunday.
And that's basically been our whole holiday weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday;
playing games, eating candy, playing games, watching Christmas movies, making oatmeal, playing games, baking cookies, playing games, eating pizza, watching more movies, playing games, easy bake oven baking, napping, playing games, skyping with family, reading new books, cuddling, snacking, playing in the snow, drinking hot chocolate, eating cookies, playing games, napping, eating candy, playing games, doing puzzles, watching more movies, playing games, more eating, more playing games.
Just the four of us.
Oh and we did a little shopping today and went to church.
Being reminded that there is a world outside of our four walls...

It's just been so nice with all the to-do lists and the decisions to make and the job/moving worry we had filling our weeks before Christmas to just hunker down with our little family and forget about all of that and focus on the celebrating... to focus on the peace and the joy and the jolly and the fun and the rest and the renew and the everything else of what Christmas is for us. Together.
I've really enjoyed this time out.

Ryan's got this whole coming week off too, so I'm really looking forward to just extending our holiday that much more! I'll have the baby here tomorrow, but after that he'll be off on vacation too so it'll once again be just us.
I think at some point we're going to try and head out to Columbia to visit the Laughlins and their family while Dan and Amanda are in town. And then also I believe at some point the Robertsons are coming here to stay with us for a night or two -not quite sure on the definite plan yet- and we're so excited they're able to join us this year for our big New Years Day Dinner with friends!!

I'll get through some pictures tonight and get them posted tonight or tomorrow.
If I don't get too sidetraked playing more games this evening... :)

three days as new englanders...

Here are pictures from our quick CT trip last weekend... before it all gets buried in more Christmas stuff!! And be warned I was a little snap happy with my new birthday present...

Once again, we were in the Groton/New London area on north side of the Long Island Sound. Two hours from New York, two hours from Boston. There's a Naval Submarine base there and also the Coast Guard Academy. Pretty cool stuff.

After a dark and very very rainy arrival Sunday evening (in which we seriously questioned what we had gotten ourselves into in seemingly the middle of nowhere)























(but in which Ryan was happy and could easily survive considering the seven ESPN channels on our tv. apparently the ESPN headquarters are in CT)










Anyway, Monday turned out to be a beautiful day.
We spent the morning on a "tour" of the area with our assigned realtor, checking out the various areas and communities. It's a different region than what we're used to- that's for sure. Everything seems quite laid back... but a different laid back than MidWest laid back. I don't really know how to explain it. Very small town feeling... only one Target and one mall in the whole area and it was out on the far edge of the "metropolitan". We saw only two McDonalds the whole time we were there.
But.
To say the scenery is gorgeous is an understatement.
You're at the most, ten minutes from the water no matter where you're at;
















These are the views from everywhere, looking out at the sound and the mouth of the Thames river
















































































































Ryan spent Monday afternoon in meetings and at the lab. Here's where he would be working

































And here's what you'd be looking at across the street from the above picture
















On Tuesday we drove around the area some more, pinpointed a few houses we could afford
(hint: NOT this)















and then headed to the airport early to take a nice scenic drive along the coastline to Rhode Island. It was amazing. I would so love to come back and vacation here. It was perfect.












































Okay, a little chilly and completely deserted,















but I can imagine in the summer it'd be pretty much perfect.















******
So you should know that as eager as they were to recruit Ryan to join their labs in CT, they asked for a quick decision/answer and after a few more days of prayer and deliberation Ryan declined thier offer for a job there. It's just not the place for us right now. Great place to visit, just not where we want to live and not where Ryan wants to work.

So things are still in limbo, we're still searching and wondering what's coming down the pike for us. Keep praying for us as more options and decisions come to fruition.