Coffee Chat - Starting The Year With Bleeding Eyes

My life has been taken over by photo books.

I had grand plans for this week, to spend a bunch time reading and planning for the new year.  I was going to sort out my personal goals, and get organized for an amazing start to the spring semester of our homeschool.

I just had that one little photo project to do first.  Should be able to get it done in a day, clean up my Christmas decorations the next day, and then have the rest of the week to let my inner planning nerd out!

Well, that is not how it's gone.  Instead, I've been staring at my computer screen for 8 hours every day this week.  I have bloodshot eyes - literally, there was a big bloody spot in the corner of my eye when I woke up this morning - and I still have to finalize the books today before I can get them ordered.  I severely underestimated how much time it would take to put together even basic photo books for five kids.

So if you need me, I'll just be over here, hyped up on coffee, eyes drooping, promising myself that this year I'm going to add photos to the kids' photo books at the end of each month, instead of killing myself sorting through a year's worth of photos all at once.  At least his experience has led to a solid New Year's resolution.

But before I get back to the grind and make my eyes bleed more, a chatty blog post is in order.

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The girls are going to Grandma's house for birthday fun tonight (for Gwen's birthday - she just turned 9!  Remember when I had her in an ambulance?).  Whenever some of the kids are gone doing something fun, we try to have a movie night or go out to dinner with the other kids, so I'm trying to think of a movie the boys would like to watch.  

We just finished watching Star Wars with our big kids on New Year's Eve, and I'm happy to report that they seemed to like it.  Derek could care less whether the kids like Star Wars, but I have some big Star Wars fans on my side of the family, so I decided we needed to watch the movies with the kids at some point.  I was completely thrown for a loop, because they kids were not bothered at all by the parts I thought would disturb them, but we had some emotions over scenes that I wouldn't have thought twice about.  Movies are kind of a minefield for this current age group.  At least for us. I never quite know what things are going to bother the kids and what things won't.

We also rung in the New Year with about 8 inches of snow, which was so badly needed.   We actually had a couple grass fires last week, before the snow.  Fires in December.  That never happens around here, but we've had a winter drought for months now, to the point where we now have to be worried about fires.  So it was a relief to finally get some moisture! 

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Going back a little further, our Christmas was lovely, and I got some really interesting gifts this year.  My whole family really tried to think outside the box, and I love the things they picked!  The kids got me a variety of candy, notebooks, pens, and embroidery floss (I'm finally getting into embroidery after procrastinating for two years).  And Derek got me a great planner, books, a cross stitch kit, and a carved candle - which is so cool, but hard to explain - see above photo.  I'm too scared to burn it!  And of course, my favorite gift:

The first rule of the Sweet Baby Gang is that we don't talk about the Sweet Baby Gang.

Everyone else seemed to like their gifts too - Derek's big gift was a Kindle Paperwhite.  This gift was possibly a little self-serving on my part, because this way when Derek reads at night, I don't have to cover my head with a pillow to block the light.  

We also got the little girls Calico Critters.  We tried getting Gwen Calico Critter when she was 4 or 5, but she really didn't get into them at all.  I was heartbroken...that may be a little dramatic, but I was bummed anyway....because I thought they were so incredibly cute!  Somewhere along the way we gave away her un-played-with Critters, and I forgot about them until I realized I needed to even out the Christmas presents for the little girls, and Calico Critters fit the bill.  This time I sat down and played Critters with the girls for a while, and lo and behold, they spent the rest of Christmas week playing with them!  I guess they just needed me to show them how.

Thankfully the week after Christmas was much more peaceful than the week after New Year's so I worked halfway through this book then.  The Wingfeather Saga really is a good series, and fantasy series are always so cozy for winter.  I'm enjoying it so much.

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A couple nights ago I went out to dinner with someone at church, and it started to snow.  With the lights in town, it was so pretty and peaceful.  I'm telling you all this basically just so I can show you the photos - it was so Christmas-y, and technically I guess it was still part of the Christmas season if we're looking at the traditional church calendar.

Next week the kids' Awana group starts back up, and I'm looking forward to resuming date nights with Derek.  We've had hardly any time to just hang out together lately, so getting back to routines in January will be a good thing.

Speaking of routines, I need to go finish this cursed photo project so I can get back to my own routines.  I have plans to do a quick grocery shopping trip this weekend, and to finally sit down and at least do the bare minimum of homeschool planning before we start back up again - but none of that will happen if I don't get these photo books ordered!  I have my eyedrops and my coffee at the ready.  Wish me luck.

How was your New Year's?  Have you had time for New Year planning yet?