Crunch Time

Justin turns in a draft of his dissertation on Friday.  To say the adults in this house, one in particular, are maxed out would be a slight understatement at the moment.  He's quite literally working around the clock.  After Friday, it will be up to the powers that be to determine the next step.  We're hopeful the outcome will be to defend this sooner than later, but again, it's not up to us.  If you're the praying kind and would like to send a few off on our behalf, we'd appreciate it.

I am due to write a recap of 2014 and divulge some hopes and dreams for 2015 on the blog.  I can't really see the forest through the trees right now, so I'll save all that for another day.  Right now there's another thrilling dissertation chapter waiting in my DropBox for a quick review.

Christmas 2014

Well, hello and happy new year!  Here's a recap of our lovely Christmas holiday:

 We had our friends over for cookie decorating on Christmas Eve.

 We went to church together.  Morgan was a perfect angel during the service despite what this picture shows.  (:

 We came home and had a Christmas Eve pizza party.  Delicious!

 Christmas presents arrived while the small ones slept.

 And finally, long-awaited Christmas morning arrived.

 Lego building commenced right after a waffle breakfast.

 We enjoyed good conversation with our special visitors.

 The boys used their new sleds to haul around their Christmas loot.

 We played games and the big boys had some fun with the Wii in the evenings.

 It snowed Christmas afternoon, so the new sleds were broken in.

 Here we are...another Christmas and another year blessed.

 The snow continued so we enjoyed winter walks and a trip to the sledding hill.

 We did puzzles...I can't really say that wine helped my puzzling skills all that much.  (:

The boys did some programming with Uncle Jared on their new Raspberry Pi computer they got from Daddy.

It was a wonderful holiday and we were very thankful to share it with family!

Lots of Updates

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, and now we find ourselves in the final two weeks of school before the winter break!  Can't wait--this is one of my favorite times of year!

Here are a few updates from the weeks before and after Thanksgiving:

 We got our first major snow of the season before the holiday.  The boys love snow!

 

 We went out for a snowy walk and all this boy wanted to do was throw snowballs at his mother...

Jacoby's playful side doesn't surface often, but when it does it's a blast (and it's relentless)!

 

Morgan is as happy and silly as can be!

 

The boys got their rental skis.  We have a family pass to Eldora Mountain this year and can't wait to hit the slopes closer to home!  No I-70 for us this year!

Justin went and had lunch with the boys at school.  These are Jacoby's BFFs who sit with him everyday at the peanut free table...that means their moms pack them something other than PB&J every single day so they can sit with our boy and we are so very grateful for that.

I squeezed in some time to give my latest $7 thrift store finds a quick Annie Sloan face lift.

#ilovepainting!

Our biggest excitement before the holiday was the oven breaking.  The boys had a quick moment of panic and worry that our feast might be canceled, but we ended up with a delicious meal thanks to three slow cookers.  We're always up for a challenge when it comes to food and cooking!

#bringiton

 We enjoyed a very peaceful, relaxing holiday.  We played games and read books.

 

The weather was gorgeous so we spent time outside and even had an impromptu football game.

  We thought about why we're thankful

 

 The boys are thankful for PE, school, friends, Legos, parents, food and feasts.

 Mommy & Daddy are thankful for our family, our health, and all the many blessings we have in our lives right now.

 And then we spent some time putting up Christmas around the house.  Look how far they can reach now!

 Morgan had the important job of placing the star on top of the tree.

 And they love the Polar Express of course!

 The boys set up the nativity while I made dinner one evening.  It's fun to listen to them explain who the characters are and what the story is.

 For Advent this year we're opening a "new to us" Christmas book each evening.  I've been collecting these since the summer from Half.com.

 They enjoy unwrapping a different book each night and reading together.

 And then we had our annual appointment with our team down at Children's Hospital.

The boys are doing so well...we even got to take them off of two of their medications!

 I took a picture of this, not because it's more testing, but because of how few scratch tests they had to have this time.  Only five, compared to 20+ in their very recent past.  We've come a long way, people!  We've got some blood work to do before we can see about adding anything to our diet.

I ran the ColderBoulder 5K with friends on Saturday.  Great course all around the CU campus and it was definitely cold.  I've managed to collect 2-mile, 5K, 10K, half marathon, and full marathon race bibs this year...it's safe to say that I've ran a tiny bit more than I expected to but it has been great fun (well, maybe "fun" is not how I'd describe a marathon, but you know what I mean).  (: 

Happy Thanksgiving

From our home to yours!

Turkey Trot

We had a great time at the Turkey Trot yesterday morning!

 

 Justin PR'd in the 10K...and the boys and I ran the 2-mile much fast than we did last year!

 Jacoby ran the entire race, mostly ahead of us.  When he'd pull back to catch up with Morgan and me, he had the biggest grin on his face.  I think he's caught the race bug like his Mommy!  Morgan ran 90% of the race and had fun doing it with one of his buddies from Kinder.

 Hey, check out that girl with the short pony tail!  I whacked about 8 inches off my hair this week and have zero hair cutting remorse. (:

Otherwise, it's nothing but Legos around here!