Getting Ready For Christmas

I feel like there has been so much going on lately, but not much to show for it!  I've been trying to get ready for Christmas, the girls have ballet, Asher and David had an orchestra concert, I'm playing in a concert with the symphony this week, and we're only half way through the month!  Also, David's car died (again...but at least we know what's wrong with it and how to fix it!)  so we're a one car family right now.  So because of that I end up driving across town about 10 times a day trying to get everyone to their various appointments, classes, work, rehearsals, etc.  But at least it's not my car that died this time!  

We had our Ward Christmas Party a week ago.  They had the Primary kids get up to sing, which I always love.  They also had Santa come and the girls got a picture and a little treat bag!  Asher has never been one to sit on Santa's lap (which I am totally okay with) so I didn't get a picture of him.  But I think the kids had fun!

At the beginning of the month my brother and his wife had their baby!  I was so sad we couldn't see her until a week later, but we finally were able to make a trip to Rexburg and see little Jayda!  My girls have always loved babies and they both thought they were in heaven that they got to hold one!  They each took about 5 turns holding her and that little girl was so good and just slept through it all!  Asher even took a turn holding her, which I was a little surprised at!  But he did a great job.  On the way home Ava and Mia told me that they missed Jayda (even though we'd only left their house 15 minutes prior) so I think they are a little smitten.  We love seeing all the babies!

I told Mia I love petting babies heads and feeling their soft hair, so she spent the entire time doing it too.

Ava kept wanting to look at her fingers and toes to see how little they were!

Jayda was very patient with my exuberant crowd!

So cute!

I love seeing Ava's doodles on the back of her work.  This time she drew her and Mia with reeeally long hair.  She must get that from her aunt Joni because she used to do that too!

This week was Asher's first ever orchestra concert!  It is so weird and so cool to see him start this stage of life because it's something that I really love and now I get to watch him do it too!  He was pretty nervous before the concert, but I think he actually had a really good time!  I was a little worried about him in orchestra because he can get really frustrated with new things sometimes, but he has caught on so well!  He played great, and I even noticed he was doing a very "musician" thing where he would move his head with the baton on the down beat to start the song at the right time.😁  We didn't really give him much of a choice about joining orchestra, but I'm still glad he's doing so well and having fun!

Isn't that just the cutest little cellist you ever did see???

I have to tell a couple of Asher stories that happened this month.  First, one night we were reading scriptures as a family and we had gotten to the book of Revelations.  In there, it talks about a book with seven seals that no one can open.  Asher said "So when it talks about seven seals, it's not talking about the swimming animal, right?"  It took me about 15 seconds to process what he said and then I couldn't stop giggling!  I explained to him about wax seals and things like that, but ever since he said that I can't help but picture a book that has seven marine animals trying to hold the book together!  

The next story happened while we were driving around.  We were all in the car running errands and listening to Christmas music.  The song said something about mistletoe and Asher says "What if I don't want mistletoe?  What if I want mistle-finger??"  And that also sent me into a giggling fit.  Seriously, that boy can drive me insane, but he can also be so hilarious and random with his comments!

One last thing is a tip/strategy I use all the time, but it means I end up with a lot of random pictures on my phone.  Any time my kids say they want something while we're at the store I tell them 1) to put it on your Christmas/birthday wish list and 2) I tell them we can take a picture of the thing they want so we won't forget about it.  They almost always do forget about it, but at least they feel like I'm doing something proactive about it!  So here are a bunch of pictures of things my girls saw in the store, decided they couldn't live without it, we took a picture, and then they forgot about it:

 

And here is one more picture of my girls in a tiny little ride on car at Walmart.  I was surprised they actually still fit inside it!  My kids are so tall and growing so fast that I try not to think about it because it makes me sad.  But then I remind myself that we still have lots of fun and that makes me feel better!  That and the fact that I can now sleep in a little bit and am not running on 5 hours of sleep... ;)

November

Well November just flew by.  I can't believe it's already almost December!  

Every once in awhile Mia's teacher lets them bring a stuffie to school and keep on their desks. Mia is ecstatic every time it happens. This day she had me take a picture of her while waiting for the bus.

"If I had a Fairy Godmother for a day I would ask for a cat and gold and a pet horse and to lose a tooth every day."  - Mia  
The kids really want to get a cat.  And Mia loves pretty things (like gold) and horses.  She had also recently lost a tooth and was so excited to get money for it! 

Before this next picture, I have to share a parenting moment I think about all the time.  When Asher was in second grade I took him to school and picked him up every day.  He had such a hard time going to school and never wanted to go.  One day I pulled up to the school in the morning and Asher refused to get out of the car.  I tried being nice and encouraging and he still refused.  It didn't take long before we were both yelling at each other and I almost had to physically remove him from the car.  He eventually got out, in tears, and I felt sick to my stomach all day about how bad I had handled that moment.  I thought about it so much about how we could avoid having another morning like that.  I think it was inspiration from the Holy Ghost that gave me an idea.  I told Asher that he could pick whatever he wanted us to do after school so that he could have something to look forward to.  I thought to myself that I would even go as far as letting him pick out a toy from the store (at least once or twice), but he surprised me when he said what he wanted to do most was make cookies!  That tactic worked so well over those next few weeks until he no longer had any problem going to school.  Sometimes he wanted to make cookies, sometimes he wanted to play videogames with me, sometimes he wanted to invite a friend over.  Fast forward to today and I still sometimes use this tactic and Asher still picks making cookies about 90% of the time.  

Asher had a tough time going to school, so we made sugar cookies!  I actually really hate making sugar cookies because of how much work it is, especially with 3 kids who want to help, but they had such a fun time and all picked a show to watch (together!) while they ate.

This was after church one day.  No Bake cookies are much better in my book, much less work!

Somewhere in the month we had a concert with the Symphony and got the play Dvorak's New World Symphony.  I love playing this music and it was especially nice after our last concert where I did not enjoy the music as much.  The New World Symphony is so satisfying and fun to play and I had a great time.

It was also Thanksgiving which we spent with my family. We have started going to a church and having dinner there which means there is plenty of space for the kids to run around and play and we can set up lots of tables for snacking, puzzles, diamond painting, coloring, etc.  There was also an impromptu talent show which the kids had so much fun showing off their various skills!  I did not take a single picture but it was a great day.

We got a little snow on Thanksgiving and my kids were so excited!  They spent an hour playing outside after we got home from Thanksgiving dinner and the next day they spent a good amount of time playing in it too.

Asher wanted to try his hand at shoveling off the driveway.

They had so much fun carting each other around on that sled!

 I will say I was nervous for Thanksgiving break.  They had the whole week off and I had a little PTDS based on how rough the summer was.  And there was fighting and squabbles, but overall I think everyone had a good break.  We played a lot of games and the kids played with each other pretty well.  It does make my workouts much harder because any time I lay down I end up with someone sitting on me and anytime I make any kind of bridge (pushups, planks, etc) the girls try to run under me which wouldn't be as bad except it makes me laugh and then I fall or they don't quite clear the bridge and they end up knocking me over.  But it is fun to see them try to imitate me and grab the weights or the bands and do their own version of the exercise.  

On Friday the kids have Parent Teacher Conference which I always look forward to because I love hearing stories about how the kids act at school.  So that will be included in my next post, whenever that happens to be!

Halloween, Walks, and Cars

David and I switched cars for a couple weeks because I was too nervous to drive around in a car that decided to suddenly die on me.  So I drove David's little Corolla.  It was...interesting.  It was annoying trying to fit all three kids and their stuff in there, especially with two booster seats.  One night when I was going to pick something up, both girls wanted to come.  And so did Millie.  I usually let Millie come with me, but I don't think she realized I was taking David's car.  She ran outside when I said I was leaving, but got much more subdued when she saw what car I was heading for.  But she jumped in and then spent the whole ride trying to figure out how to sit in it comfortably.  She does not like David's car, but she loves going on rides.  First she tried sitting in back with the girls, but her tail was right in Mia's face (which the girls thought was super hilarious).  Next she tried standing with her back legs on the seat and her front legs on the ground (which looked ridiculous).  After that she sat with her but on the seat and her legs on the ground (which looked somewhat more comfortable).  Last she just laid on the front seat.  It was quite the ordeal. ;)

Another bike ride, another picture with the creepy lady.

When my phone gets stolen I usually find a bunch of pictures like this on there.

Or this.

Or this.

Mia decided she wanted to start going on walks instead of bike rides.  Millie was very happy about that because I refuse to bring her on bike rides.

Different walk with just the girls.  But still more pictures with the creepy lady!
I do not suggest these pictures, it is always Mia's idea.

There were lots of leaf piles that the girls had fun playing in!

Leaf angels!

There were so many leaves in their hair after this.

Asher really wanted to carve a pumpkin.  I finally relented and brought in the pumpkin so we could start carving it.  Luckily David took over and I didn't have to help at all!  They had a lot of fun and we ended up baking some of the pumpkin seeds for the kids to try.  They all did not like it, but I did!

They were all super interested.

David had all the kids help scoop out some of the guts and it made Ava almost throw up. 
So she took a break from carving and harassed Millie instead.

Asher doing some of the carving.  He did a pretty good job!

I thought it turned out pretty good!

Mia and Ava wanted a picture with it.

Whenever I hear people talk about how their first child is so chill and easy, I feel like I do not relate at all.  Learning how to parent with Asher as my first has definitely been trial by fire.  But sometimes he does things that are so annoying and sarcastic that it actually makes me laugh.  A couple weeks ago when we got home from church I told him that he had to hang his white shirt up in his closet because it wasn't dirty (I'm sure he's not the only boy who just throws everything into the hamper just so he doesn't have to put it away).  I didn't notice until the next day that he had just thrown the shirt on top of his other clothes the were hanging up so it was just sitting on top.  🙄  So the next week I told him to take off his white shirt and hang it on a hanger.  Later that day I walked past his room and saw that he had hung it on his curtain rod.  He said he had to climb on top of his bed to reach it!  So I relate much better to parents of kids who do things just to be a punk.

This week we took my car into a mechanic to have them check it out and see what the problem was and why it died on me.  It took them an hour to check things out, run the codes, and take it for a test drive for them to tell me they couldn't find anything wrong with it.  On the one hand, they didn't charge us anything so that was nice!  On the other hand, I feel like my car is gaslighting me because now I'm starting to doubt myself whether it even happened because it hasn't given anyone else any problems.  If it was a person, I would for sure break up with it.  So I guess I have to keep driving it around.

On a happier note, we had Halloween!  The kids were all super excited.  I wasn't sure Asher was going to dress up this year, but he decided he wanted to be Gru.  Unfortunately for him, Ava dressed up as Wednesday Addams so everyone thought he was Uncle Fester.  But either way his costume turned out better than I thought it was going to be!  I asked him if he wanted to get a bald cap or be young Gru with hair, but he wanted the bald cap.  I didn't have a ton of time to put it on (morning rush before school and all) but I thought it looked fine.  I ended up using Elmer's Glue to do the edges and it held up all day!  But Asher said his head got really hot during school so he ended up undoing part of it so his head could get a little air.  Mia had so much fun being Wonder Woman!  They got to wear their costumes to their ballet class and every time they did a move she tried to do some kind of super hero pose which made me laugh so much.  Ava was so excited to be Wednesday and she tried so hard to be super serious and intimidating, but that would last about 10 seconds and then she would start laughing and giggling.  She kind of has the opposite personality for that, but she had a lot of fun!  It wasn't the warmest Halloween, but we still went around the neighborhood trick-or-treating and the kids all got way too much candy.  All in all, I think it was a pretty good holiday! 

Doctors, Cars, and Pumpkins

Last week we had another concert with the Symphony.  I have to say, I normally love playing concerts but I had a really hard time with this one.  Each piece we played was so busy and sooo many notes and it just wasn't super enjoyable for me to play (I know some other people liked it, it just wasn't my personal favorite).  Though, when I listened back to the recording I was actually very surprised at how good it sounded!  I'm glad it's over.  

Last week was also a little crazy for other reasons.  I had a little bit of a hard time lining up babysitters, but we did get it all worked out in the end.  I also had to take a child to (yet another) doctor appointment.  Ava was having another checkup on her arm bump.  I really like her doctor, but those appointments always take forever because he's apparently on the pediatric organ transplant committee (during one appointment he had to leave in the middle to organize some stuff for that) so he's always running around, but he also makes sure he spends plenty of time explaining everything and making sure Ava felt comfortable so that makes him late for every appointment and when he is in the room it makes them very long.  But I would rather have that then feel like he was rushing us out the door!  What he told me at that appointment was that her bump wasn't any bigger and wasn't really changing, so we could either do another surgery now or wait a year and check back then, it didn't really matter much which road we chose to take.  I decided to wait another year because if I have to take one more person to the hospital this year I'm going to scream...  But yay for it not being any worse!

Waiting in the room.

We kind of started a tradition of playing I-Spy while waiting. 
It's very hard in that small room, but we make it work! 

Last Friday was the Homecoming parade and Mia's teacher called and asked if I could come with their class to the parade (their school is within walking distance) and help keep kids from running into the street.  She even told me she'd have her class sit next to Ava's class so I could hang out with both girls, so we had fun watching the parade!

It was super bright out!

The weather was perfect!

As I was driving home after helping with Mia's class I decided to cut through a neighborhood and go to the dollar store.  And just as I was getting to a stop sign my car just died.  Like no warning, no sputter, just dead.  I had 3 cars and 2 pedestrians pass me before a guy who lived across the street helped me push it around the corner to the side of the road.  Luckily I was only a block away from David's school so I walked over and took his car home.  When I picked him up we went back to my car to see if we could get it started, and it started up no problem.  We ended up having the battery, starter, and alternator checked and they all checked out fine.  So now we have to wait until November when the mechanic can fit us in to see what happened.  There hasn't been a problem with it dying again, but it makes me too nervous to drive it so David takes the van and I take his car. 

The weather is still nice so Mia and I still go on our bike rides.  One night Ava and Asher joined us.  When we got to the swinging tree I told Asher that Mia loved the creepy ghost lady and he was just as shocked as I am!  Mia and Ava both insisted on having their picture taken with it.

I really don't understand why they love it so much.

They also wanted a picture with the pumpkin head skeleton.

Last winter I got a little plant from Home Depot.  When I was reading online about how best to take care of it, one thing I saw was that this plant is very dramatic.  If it needs water it will wilt and look dead, but once you water it, it will perk right back up.  Every time I see the plant all wilted I just think "What a drama queen." 😁

Sad plant.

Sprinkled a little water in, and this is it the very next day!

Every year my kids beg to carve pumpkins.  And every year I know that it's going to end up with me or David doing all the work and them running away and playing.  So every year I talk them into painting pumpkins instead!  I think it's way more fun and they stay engaged the whole time and we just have a great night.  I just got dollar store paint, spread Press-n-Seal on the table, and let them go for it!  

I think all the Mitchell's will recognize our family team shirts.

Ava decided she wanted to fingerpaint instead of use the brushes.

Princess and a vampire.

Among Us characters

2-faced pumpkins! There was another face on the back of each pumpkin in opposite colors,
but I didn't get a picture of it.

On Wednesday of this week David had a late start for school, so he didn't leave until after the kids had left.  He walked out the door, drove the car onto the street, then ran inside telling me I had to take him to school because the van had a flat tire.  Because of course.  So I ran him to school.  Then worked out, then picked him up and drove him to his other school, then took a shower, then picked him up and drove him back to the first school, then got groceries.  He didn't have to time to run home between classes and I had some errands to run, so that's why I had to keep running him around.  That afternoon I changed the tire and put the spare on.  I have to say, I'm getting pretty fast at that!  And it was much more relaxing than the last time I had to do it because that time it was negative degrees outside.  I hate this stupid car so much and I curse it all the time.  I told David if I win the lottery, the first thing I do is going to be buy a new car.  And then take this car to the dump and beat it with a baseball bat.  We have just had sooooooooo many problems with it.  But one thing I have learned from this car is that you should always always always listen to the Spirit.  I had a bad feeling when we bought the car but couldn't think of a reason not to buy it (because it looked fine at the time even after we had it checked out) and so I didn't listen to that feeling.  Now I know!  But after I picked David and Asher up from school (it was an orchestra day) we got the car to Les Schwab and they fixed the tire for free and put it back on.  So even though the day was super stressful, at least it didn't cost us any money!

I'm just glad the weather was nice!

I'll leave with one more story and a picture.  Whenever we get a fly in the house, I always try to trap it and put it outside.  I just feel bad killing them because I feel like they want to be outside as much as I want them to be outside.  I also really hate cleaning up bug guts.  Earlier this summer when I was trying to catch an unusually tricky fly, I yelled out in frustration "I'm trying to save your life, just let me catch you!"  Well that must've stuck in Ava's memory because this week we had a fly in the house that the kids saw before school.  Mia hates flies so I told her I would take care of it while she was at school.  Ava yelled out from the back room "Don't kill it, try to save its life!"  That gave me a little chuckle.  I did indeed save the flies life, at least for a few hours until it got cold overnight.

Here's a picture of some cute little pumpkins!