Christmas and New Years

We made it to 2024!  The kids got out of school on December 15th and returned today, so we had 2 1/2 weeks of family fun!  Okay, it was more like family chaos but it actually was a pretty good break.  Okay, the kids all said they had a pretty good break.  I was sick the entire time with some awful lung thing that made it so I was always coughing and got winded just walking up our stairs.  I'm still getting over it.  I would not recommend getting that sick the week before Christmas when there are a million things that need doing and to prepare for.  So me being that sick either made the kids break much better because I did not care how much screen time they had and they got to eat all the hot dogs and mac and cheese and ramen they wanted, or it made it worse because I wasn't able to do a lot of the things I wanted to do with them.  It really made me feel horrible that I messed up their Christmas break, but they all said they had a great time!  But just know that through all the stuff we did, I felt like garbage but tried super hard to do at least a few fun things.

The whole week before Christmas we made many trips to the store to get all the presents for each other!  Like seriously, at least one trip to the store per day.   I have each kids pick out a present for everyone else in the family, so it was fun to see them be able to think about what each person would like!  And they actually are really good about picking presents for each other, and it was fun on Christmas to see how excited they would get to see their sibling open their present.  

On the 23rd we had a big get-together with the Mitchell side.  We all gathered at a church so there was plenty of room to run around, do puzzles, eat lots of snacks, and play basketball.  We even had a little music group form with a violin, viola, cello, bass, flute, and drum set where we played through some Christmas music!

Christmas Eve we had church and then went home to do our normal Christmas Eve traditions.  We decorated sugar cookies, the kids got to open their ornaments (which I forgot to take a picture of...), we watched the Church's nativity video, and David read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.  The kids actually all went to bed pretty easily that night.  Since Asher had been told the truth about Santa, I let him eat the cookies and drink the milk before he went to bed, which he was pretty excited about!  David had started to feel sick at this point, so both of us limped our way around the house trying to get everything ready for the morning.  It definitely wasn't our best Christmas, but the kids said they all had a good day.

Ready for Church!

Decorating cookies

Listening to David read the book.  I thought this was super cute! 
The blanket monster in the back is Ava.

Christmas morning!  They actually didn't wake me up as early as I was expecting.  But we were done with opening presents by 7AM.

Lots of Squishmallows this year!  Now the kids are being edged even more off their beds.

I found swim flippers for each kid!  But since it's winter they just ended up wearing them
around the house the whole day.

Like really, they just walked around like this.

On Christmas David started getting a fever so he just kind of slept the whole day.  The day after Christmas he had a fever of 102 and started getting a little bit of the same lung junk I had.  I am stubborn and try to never go to the doctor, but David did and he ended up getting some meds for both of us.  He tested negative for everything (covid, influenza, etc), so we weren't sure the meds would work.  A couple days after taking the medicine, I started breaking out in hives.  I thought it was the meds so I stopped taking them, but I still get hives every morning.  So I started taking the meds again.  I think the steroids are helping my lungs, but I still have a bit of a cough.  And for the hives I just take a Benadryl and that clears them up.  Still no idea what is going on, so I may take a trip to the doctor this week.  David is getting better a lot faster than me and the kids have hardly gotten sick at all, just a cough here and there.

We were going to go to Utah to spend time with David's brother and family, but since he and I were sick we had to cancel that trip.  The kids were so disappointed and I felt horrible, so we are going to have to reschedule that trip and have twice as much fun to make up for it!

My parents had a New Years Eve party for whoever wanted to come over, so we had lots of junk food and the kids watched a bunch of movies and we all stayed up way too late!  New Years Day we were all super lazy and then the kids went back to school today.  I took a nice big nap after I got them on the bus and did my best to clean up the house a least a little bit (my housekeeping skills took a big dive during the break).  It will be nice to get back into our regular schedule again!

Happy New Years!