Phew...part 1

Things have been busy.  I was always told winter was slower for farmers than the other months.  I can't say that everyone that has told me that was wrong, so I'm going to chalk up this busy time to the fact that it is officially not winter yet.  I can't even recall the last time I wrote, but I have the youngest one in his highchair with a snack and so I'm going to take advantage of the short time that I have and write.  Generally I would take this time and start getting dinner prepared and ready to go since just like every other household, dinnertime = chaos and numerous interruptions.  However, since it has been so long my dear friends, our family is going to take one for the team and forgo worrying about dinner in order to catch everyone up.  We always try to put others first and instill that value in our children.  So tonight, when everyone is starving, I will remind them about the need to put others before themselves and that our friends and family have been left waiting far too long without an update.  That ought to calm everyone's hungry bellies.  However, the reality is we're only having spaghetti tonight, so it's not going to be that hard to get dinner on the table. 

We spent 5 days (not 4 like my husband said) in Washington D.C. and the kids had a blast.  At least I know our oldest had a great trip as many of our youngest's pictures were of him parked in his car seat in front of an exhibit or zoo animal in a deep sleep.  So when he looks back and says he's never been to Washington D.C. and he doesn't remember a lick...I can show him the pictures of why he would recall not a thing.  I have the same types of pictures of him when we went to Philadelphia last year.  I am guessing he is trying to relay the message that family outings for him are a bore and that he'd much rather be left to his own devices.  Well, until he stays awake on our family outings, he's going to be forced to keep going on them, and he's going to like it!  After returning from D.C., we were home for about a week then turned right around and drove to Philadelphia to visit my family.  Phew, what a whirlwind of excitement the month of November was.  Thankfully I was able to get all of my Christmas decorating done before Thanksgiving so that December could be a little bit more relaxing (which I didn't know was possible).  The only thing I have had to do was put up the tree. 

On  a side note, the count for broken Christmas balls is as follows:

Mom -1

Dad -0 (no gloating, your time in the house is minimal in comparison to everyone else)

David -1

Snickers -1

Reese -1

Nobody -1 (not sure how/why it fell)

Ethan -4

*Now some would question why we still have Christmas balls on the bottom of our tree where our little one could reach.  Well, for multiple reasons.  The first being that David picked out the tree as he does every year, and it's not exactly "full", so we would literally have about 5 balls on the tree.  Second, David never broke a ball until this year and never paid attention to the ornaments on the tree, and I feel that after 4 broken balls, Ethan should be over his fixation with the tree (or I can hope).  Finally, we aren't exactly rolling in the dough and well, the child is going to need scholarships to get into college. so we're honing his baseball skills.  So one day when he's got more money than he knows what to do with, he will graciously share it with his wonderful parents who have sacrificed a whole Christmas of Christmas balls.  My hope is that he will repay us by replacing all of those broken balls. 

Here is a picture taken of our family in Washington D.C.  We were very lucky as 4 out of 5 days the weather was perfect and even hit 70* two of the days. 

Part two of the post will be up tomorrow...