Sleep (or lack thereof)

Kind of ironic that I'm posting about a lack of sleep after bragging in my last post about getting lots of it, but this just can't go without posting...

So I have this problem where, if I get woken up in the middle of the night, my mind starts racing and I can't go back to sleep...like, for hours. You know me- I'm a thinker like that. Actually, I think I'd chalk it up to some weird anxiety issue, but that's a story for another post. Anyway...Alex woke up with nightmares at approximately 2 am on both Tuesday and Wednesday night of this week, which subsequently resulted in me being wide awake from approximately 2-4 or 5 am. So, Thursday night, because we were leaving for Florida on Friday morning (sans children!), we had shipped the kids off to Grammy and Grampy's and had shipped Deacon off to "camp." As you can imagine, I was thrilled at the thought of having an entire night of uninterrupted sleep. No nightmares. No snoring dog. Just silence. Until....at 12 am.....Hoot! hoot! Hoot! What's that youask????? A *^#%*ing OWL!!!!! Yes, An owl decided to make his presence known for nearly 30 mins at midnight. It was so bizarre that at first I didn't even ow what it was. I had set the alarm on my iPad that night for the first time and thought that maybe it was the freaking alarm making some weird noise. But, nope. I opened the window and sure enough. It was an owl. So then of course, not only do I start to have anxiety about 50000 things that don't even matter, but now I'm having anxiety that this thing has a nest in our trees and a) will wake me up every night or worse yet, b) swoop down and take one of my children. I swear! They have been known to do that. I can see it now. I will be getting no sleep for the rest of the summer and will be forced to stay indoors at all times for fear of the swooping owl. Awesome.

We have reached that amazing point in our lives...

What amazing point, you may be asking yourself?  Well, the amazing point that on Saturday mornings, these kids...

Are letting these kids...

sleep in on Saturday and Sunday mornings!  How is this possible, you ask?  Well, because, they (well, Avery) are finally old enough and capable enough to go downstairs on their own, turn on the tv, and watch it by themselves without waking us!  It is insanely wonderful.  Not only that?  But, they are even in training to take this big guy out AND to feed him...

We are still perfecting this part.  So far, we have had a weekend where we let him out, but forgot to let him back in and another weekend where we let him out, let him back in, but failed to notice his muddy paws that then tracked mud throughout the house and we are slowly running out of weekends where they are able to feed him because the bag of food is getting too low and they can no longer reach it (I guess I'll have to forgive them for that). 

Regardless - it is still insanely wonderful.  Granted, we are most likely not winning parents of the year given that our kids are now watching a good hour - 90 mins of tv every morning on the weekends. But, really?  What's more important?  Our kids brain cells or Mom and Dad's sanity? 

The Final Christmas Post

This year, in the spirit of new holiday traditions, we went to Houston to spend the week with Lexi and Will and the girls for Christmas (Merry Christmas to Lexi and Will!  :)).  I will say that I have to give them credit -while their house is plenty big enough to host all of us - it is still a lot to take on.  But, they did a great job and we had an excellent time. 

We got into Houston early enough in the afternoon so that the kids could run around (in the gorgeous 75 degree weather!) and burn off some steam and of course, my favorite - have dinner outside!

 

 

The following day was Christmas Eve.  Santa spent most of the day wrapping presents and then that night, it was off to the children's service at the church at Annabel's school.  We thought that it would be a cute thing to take the kids to and really, how long could a children's service last?  Um.....try 2.5 hours??????????????????  Seriously?  I mean, really - is there a need to sing every single one of the 14 verses of every Christmas carol?  Don't get me wrong - I was embracing the opportunity for these pipes to be used again and I do love myself a good Christmas carol, but wow.  It was a bit crazy. 

Surprisingly enough, all kids were great.  However, the parents were getting antsy and figured the kids would soon, so needless to say, we waited until communion, paid the $$ and hightailed it out of there.  Before heading home, we took advantage of the nice night and the playground...

That night, we had a nice dinner at home and then drove around the Heights where everyone had their houses decorated - like, ridiculously decorated.  It was pretty crazy.  Unfortunately, my camera didn't do the lights justice, so I don't have any pictures.  You'll just have to trust me on this one. 

When we got home, we put out snacks for Santa and the food for the reindeer that Avery had made in school

and actually managed to get the kids down to bed early enough for Santa to come and eat the food and leave stockings and presents...

As you can imagine, Christmas morning was a bit chaotic with 1 5-year-old who was busy making sure she got the exact same number of presents as everyone else, 2 3-year-olds that were perfectly content playing with just the first present opened and still didn't quite get the concept and then a 1.5-year-old who really just wanted to continuously play with whatever her sister got and as a result, really piss her sister off.  But, we all lived and the kids loved their gifts.

We kind of lolly gagged the rest of the day and then finished up making dinner right as the electricity went out!  I swear - the Hollands are cursed - power outages follow us.  ANYWAY...thankfully the men were able to do the manly thing and use their head lamps (note my father's hat that was actually a Christmas gift from William this year - quite good timing!).  Also thankful that dinner was actually pretty much done at that point and it just forced us to have Christmas dinner via candlelight, which was very nice.

The rest of the week was spent with fun activities like....

Going to the aquarium...

 

Taking moonlight rides on our new scooters that we got from Opa and Grandma for Christmas...

 

 

Going to the zoo.  Clearly Houston has a weird fetish with providing plastic tubes for kids to look through (see aquarium pics above) and clearly our kids took advantage...

 

 

Going to the Nutcracker.  This was just a girls' day out with Lexi, Annabel, Avery and I.  The girls did great and really got pretty into it!  Granted, Annabel asked a couple of times when we were going to go home and nearly jumped off of the balcony in front of us, but other than that, it was a lovely performance..

 

 

 

Catching up with Jess and Amy (one of my favorite traditions when coming to Houston).  As always, it was like we just saw each other yesterday. 

 

 

Going to the children's museum, which I'll be honest - was a lot of fun and I do have some cute pictures, but they are on my other camera and at this rate, if I wait to download those and post them, it will be Christmas 2013 before I get this post up.  Not to mention, I'm sure you have had enough pictures at this point, anyway.

 

 

Building Pizzas to be cooked on the Big Green Egg by Uncle Will...

 

 

And, just generally being silly and having fun with family....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, it was a great Christmas!  Thanks again, Lexi and Will for hosting!