Thanksgiving Week

• The days leading up to Thanksgiving were spent preparing for our family. Mom, Dad, Diane and Hou and their family drove here on Wednesday, and we spent those 3 days cleaning up the house, doing laundry, shopping and running errands, all in preparation for them coming. We got it all done, and with time to spare. The girls were so helpful, and we got it all done, so we had a little Thanksgiving movie night on Wednesday night and watched "Free Birds" before bedtime. I didn't feel like making food that night, so we had pumpkin pie and popcorn and bananas for dinner. 😆
• We made pies on Wednesday: 2 miniature pies and a full sized pecan pie. Each of the girls decided what kind of pie they wanted in their mini pie plate. Camille chose coconut cream and Brooke chose a berry pie. We had a good time making those pies together. 
  
• Sawyer reached up to touch Daniel's face, felt his beard and starting giggling. He rubbed Daniel's beard, and Daniel rubbed his face against his hand, and he just laughed. It was so cute.
• Jack, saying to Declan, "Do you want to snuggle with me, Ducky?"
• We had Thanksgiving by ourselves this year, and it was really nice, actually. We spent a few hours in the kitchen making all the traditional food. I got a pre-seasoned turkey breast from Costco, and all we had to do was throw that in the oven for a few hours. It was just the right amount for us. The food was so good, and it was so fun to spend it with each other. We talked about the things that we are grateful for while we ate. And then we had pie and hung out. 
• I ran a 5k race on Thanksgiving morning. My friend, DeAnna, ran it with me. We've been running the last few months in preparation for it. The training was a little too slow for me, I didn't feel entirely prepared for the race; but I enjoyed running with DeAnna. The race was fun. So many people came out to it. The route was over by Thanksgiving, running through the golf course and on the Jordan River trail. I ran the whole thing! The only time I walked was halfway up a really big hill. I thought I'd have to walk a lot more. I really enjoyed it, though, and it made me want to run more races. It was a wonderful way to start Thanksgiving day, out with other people, exercising and being active before we went home to cook and glut ourselves the rest of the day. 😂
• We've had a good time with Diane and Hou here. We haven't done too much -- just chatting, playing games, eating, taking care of the kids together, shopping and errands. But they're fun to be with.
• There's been a lot of wedding stuff this past week, after Thanksgiving. Friday was bachelorette and bachelor parties, the ladies in the morning and the gentlemen in the evening. It was a very scandalous party, tea party for us, and with funny activities and gifts to make Melanie blush. We had a lot of fun. Diane and I went to Victoria's Secret to get a gift for Melanie beforehand. That night when the boys were at their part (all night long, btw), after putting the kids to bed, Diane and I had Zulus for dinner and watched Sweet Home Alabama.
• Saturday was the "Food Shower" for Melanie and Scott. We all went to Denise's house for dinner and gave the bride and groom foodstuffs as gifts, to get their kitchen started.
  

The Election + The Latest Developments

 This year, more than any year in the past, I've been interested in politics and have tried to keep up a little better with what's been going on in the country. I haven't done it perfectly, but I was pleased with my little progress.

Anyway, I voted for President Trump. I couldn't vote for Joe Biden. I really don't think Democrats are doing good things for the country, as much as they like to say they are. And I don't agree with any of their policies. 

But I had a lot of fun following the race on Election day! No matter what happens in the end, I actually enjoyed watching newscasts about the election and what was happening. I watched Glenn Beck's broadcast of the election.

Since that night, there has been a lot of shady business happening in the swing states. Ballot dumps that go 100% to Biden. Republicans being shut out of ballot counting places. Sharpies given out in polling stations, and then those ballots not being counted. I mean, just a lot of shady things. The democrats are trying to cheat this election, it seems fairly obvious. President Trump has gone to court for a lot of these things, and it'll be interesting to see how things play out. But they basically already called the race for Biden. I personally doubt that President Trump can still pull this out of the bag, even if fraud is proven in these specific states. But we'll see. 

 Either way, I'm glad it's mostly over. What will happen will happen. I hope democrats don't win house, senate and presidency, or our country will be socialist in 4 years. So many socialist in the democratic party. But, I'm trying to be positive and have faith that things will work out in the end.

The Sleeping and Breastfeeding Story

 Sawyer is a beautiful, delicious, delightful baby. But he hasn't been a walk in the park. His first few months, he seemed like a pretty easy baby -- he didn't cry or fuss too much, he slept really well considering his age, and nursing was the same challenge it's always been (but I had taken the stress off of breastfeeding from the get-go). He was particularly jumpy those first few months; any loud noises or excessive craziness from the girls would scare him and he'd start screaming. But that was the only thing that was remotely hard. 

Obviously, newborn sleeping is hard. The night waking is killer. But it wasn't the worst we've ever had. He was a dream compared to Brooke as a baby. 😆

But once he turned 4 months, things got pretty difficult for a while.

The breastfeeding story in short: I started nursing him at 1 month old, and he was just a lazy nurser; not efficient enough to nurse along. I pumped until my birthday, and as my gift to myself, I weaned myself off of pumping in the few weeks up to my birthday so that I could be done ... on my birthday. So, I pumped for 5 months. It was 5 months of nursing, pumping, feeding from a bottle. Now, we still nurse and I still supplement from a bottle, because he still doesn't get enough from me. I am totally good with this arrangement, partly because I have so much stored and frozen breastmilk. It's been a month, and we still have a lot of breastmilk in our freezer, and in Daniel's parent's freezer (they were kind enough to store a lot of it, because our freezer isn't big enough for all of it). And that's where we're at. And I'm contented with this. He has given me at least 6 good months of nursing, we've gotten some good bonding with it, it's helped in putting him to sleep these last months, and so whatever happens from here on out, we've at least done this. 

The sleeping is more complicated. We sleep trained a few weeks after he was 4 months old, and it was disastrous. Especially since we had to stop swaddling at the same time because he was rolling. It was a very hard transition for him, and he was back to waking up every few hours. And he didn't seem to be taking well to the training. So, I stopped training him and started swaddling again, with one arm out.

But things didn't improve. So the week after my birthday, we tried again. And in the meantime, naps were going terribly. He wasn't sleeping well at night OR in the daytime. And neither was I. There's been a lot of back and forth try to figure out what to do for him. Last week, I think we turned a corner. He had a few days in a row when he went to sleep without crying at all for bedtime, and he stopped waking up so frequently. He went down to one feeding at night, sometimes late enough in the morning that I got 6+ hours of sleep. I'm sure we still have some bumps to get over. We still have to do nap training -- his naps are still not stellar; he usually misses at least one nap a day because he just wakes himself up or doesn't transfer well to his crib. But at least I seem to be getting most of my sleep at night now. That makes such a huge difference in how I feel and how I manage my emotions. 

•  When I gave Sawyer and Jack a bath this week, Sawyer was fascinated by the water. I poured cupfuls and cupfuls of water over his little body, and he loved watching it and putting his hands up to it. I loved watching his interest. And he got mad whenever I stopped pouring the water on him to pour it onto Jack. It was so cute. 
• Sawyer popped his first little tooth on Friday! A little one on the bottom. And I can see another one on it's way. It'll probably break through tomorrow.
• Sawyer was 6 months old on Saturday. I can't believe that. His first year is half over! He's been such a sweet and also challenging little baby. I love the stage he's in, while at the same time I'm missing his little newborn self. He's rolling around like and champ and holding his head up while he's on his belly so he can look around. He smiles and laughs very easily. He is working on improving his sleep (it's been a slow process). He's really ticklish, which kills me. His delighted squeals delight me. He's happiest when he has everyone's attention. His siblings, especially Brooke, fawn over him and love him and always try to make him happy. 
• Brooke is reading Pippi Longstocking and LOVING it. She read a little of it to me and Camille tonight, all the funny parts that she loved, and we were cracking up together.
• Brooke put together a fall festival for our family that we held yesterday. She planned and carried out the whole thing, with very little help from me. She wrote the whole plan with rules and game instructions out on several sheets of paper and had a score sheet for the teams. We were separated into 2 teams: me and Jack vs. Daniel and Camille. We bobbed for apples; hunted for the coolest leaves; ate caramel apples; drew and cut out our own leaves; and had a paper leaf hunt. It was actually really fun, and I was pretty proud of Brooke for planning and doing the whole thing. She's been talking about doing it for over a month, but kept forgetting to do it. I'm glad we finally got to do it yesterday. She's the cutest little boss.
• The kids watched Toy Story 3 on Friday, and there's this extended scene with a garbage truck and dump site in the movie. Jack is now obsessed with the movie and is already asking to watch it again this coming Friday.
• President Nelson did a video message on Friday morning about gratitude and issued everyone a challenge to flood social media with gratitude posts. I took that invitation and have loved seeing so many people do that same. The #givethanks challenge has brightened my mood so much just in the last 3 days, and I have loved sharing what I'm grateful for. It has certainly helped me dispel the gloom I've been feeling over the past several months. 
• Last weekend we moved the big crib into Sawyer's room and started having Jack sleep in the other bunk bed. He looks so tiny in that big crib. 
  

October

 Some pictures from October + bullet points that I missed:

Everyone is obsessed with this baby. Sometimes Brooke and Camille get to be a little too much for him, but I think at this point, they've basically learned how to be around him without upsetting him. Mostly they hug him and play with him and talk to him in a baby voice. It's so cute to watch.

General Conference weekend at the beginning of October was wonderful, and also hard to pay attention with all the kids ... like usual.

We went to Jakers with Brian and Sammy the first Monday of October for family home evening. Daniel couldn't come because he was working late. But was had a good time. Jack's favorite part was the corn pits that we played in. He LOVED them. And also the hayride, because a tractor was pulling the wagon. It was really fun! Smaller than Cornbelly's and more little kid friendly.

Reading Halloween books: one of my favorite things to do in October.

Sawyer started rolling around in October. He had a hard time rolling from his belly to his back, though, so every time he flipped onto his belly, he would get mad and start fussing and screaming. It made sleep very difficult in October. We did some sleep training a couple of different times; that's a story for another day. But we'll just say Sawyer has been a challenging sleeper.

I wore a hat one day for running errands, and Jack really wanted to wear a hat too. We dug one of Daniel's work hats out of the closet for him to wear, and I couldn't get over how cute he looked.

One Sunday afternoon, after we had a Sunday lesson, Jack asked if we could all go get into my bed to snuggle together. I don't know how he knew it was exactly what I wanted to do, too. I don't know where Camille went, so she was missing from our snuggling Sunday activity. But it was pretty spectacular to all be laying in bed, playing and talking. I hope we do that when they're teenagers.

Since we moved Sawyer out of our bedroom and Jack into Camille's bedroom (so that Sawyer could take Jack's room), naptimes for Jack have become very difficult. He actually slept at naptime less than half the time, and he would be so noisy that he disturbed Sawyer when he was sleeping. Plus, bedtime would be a nightmare because he and Camille would stay up and play late at night instead of sleeping. So I made the difficult decision to stop napping Jack. Nighttime sleep got better, because he falls asleep at night really quickly. And since we now stagger his and Camille's bedtimes, it's been very manageable. But ... he still kind of needs a nap or at least some quiet time every day. So every now and then he'll just fall asleep. This particular day, I was getting Sawyer down to sleep and getting ready for the day. And by the time I came downstairs to play with Jack, he was on the couch sleeping.

Camille's best friend, Becca Frei, and her family took me and Camille and Jack to Cornbelly's one day, and we had a great time with them. Jack's favorite part was, of course, the giant tractor.

Sawyer's delicious bum-chin is one of my favorite things ever right now.

Gramma Holbrook gave Camille a cool doll house for her birthday. Now we just need some dolls for the girls to play with it.

When Sawyer wouldn't stay asleep for his morning nap after I tried to transfer him to his bed, he had to come downstairs and help me with laundry. His big smile was kind of distracting me, though.

While I was working out one morning, Sawyer built a house out of pillows around him and Sawyer so they could play together. It reminds me of something the girls did when Jack was a little baby. I love how much Jack loves his little brother. He's very excited and anxious for Sawyer to grow up so that he can play with him.

These 2 little boys often both fall asleep in the car at the same time. Especially if we are running errands late in the afternoon. I find it very cute.

The girls all dressed up for their Halloween parties at school, October 30th. Camille made the cutest little witch, and Brooke loved putting together her own costume.

Birthday Week + Halloween Festivities

Our pumpkin patch visit came a few weeks before Halloween on a Saturday. We picked out pumpkins, took some pictures and went home for a fire and roasted dinner and marshmallows.

 The girls had fall break from school for the few days before Camille's birthday. We didn't do exciting things, just hung out at home. Camille took a bag of candy to school on her birthday to share with her class. Daniel and I had decorated the house the night before with streamers and balloons. I think that afternoon, some friends from the neighborhood came over to play. That night we had pizza for dinner, and chips and salsa (Camille's current favorite food), and I had made a candy corn cake -- vanilla cake with candy corn frosting. It wasn't my most stellar creation -- taste-wise or decoration-wise. But she was happy. She opened her presents and played with her new things. It wasn't an overly exciting birthday. But, again. She was happy.

My birthday was equally uneventful. I did no housework whatsoever, without feeling guilty, which was lovely (of course, I paid for it for the next week and a half when I was behind my schedule and the house got completely out of control ... especially laundry. The girls kept complaining about no underwear and no pajamas). Jack and I played, I hung out with the girls, I let the kids watch some Halloween shows, I ate complete and utter "fun food" -- which ended up making me feel sick for a good portion of the afternoon and early evening. I had asked Daniel for In 'n' Out for dinner. But I felt so gross that I just asked for a big chunky salad. And he made chicken nuggets for the kids. Brian, Sammy and Cap came over for dinner and festivities, and Daniel and Brian and Sammy gave me some nice presents -- a hair wrap for after the shower, and some BYU paraphernalia. Also, Sawyer was 5 months old on my birthday, and the most delicious little pumpkin ever!

I think one of the reasons I felt so gross on my birthday was because for over a month before birthday week, I was sugar and flour free. That's a whole story on it's own. But for 3 days straight, I ate very poorly of all the things I'd previously been avoiding. It was a pretty clear testament to me of the benefits of healthy eating.

 

We carved pumpkins the Monday before Halloween for family home evening. Daniel basically carved Jack's and a bunch of Camille's, aside from his own. But Brooke did her pumpkin almost entirely by herself, and Camille dug her pumpkin's guts out basically on her own. All the pumpkins were cute.

From left to right: Jack's pumpkin, mine, Brooke's, and Camille's. Daniel wasn't done with his when I took the picture.

The night before Halloween was out Annual Halloween Feast, on the 30th. It's unusual for me to have our feast so late in the season. But many activities were cancelled this year due to covid, so it wasn't as busy as usual. For our feast this year, we had "Snail Shell Soup", "Graveyard Dip" (back by popular demand) and chips, "Bone Chunks", "Eyeballs", "Ghost Cookies" and "Potion". The kids loved helping me prepare for it, and we all had fun eating and listening to spooky music. Our movie selection this year was once again "Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie". I had shown the kids "Halloweentown" earlier in the month, and they thought it was too scary. So, I figured any of the other movies we could've watched would've been too much for them. Maybe next year, when they're a year older, we can introduce something else.

 

Halloween was a much lower key holiday this year because of Covid. I would say most people in our neighborhood were not participating in Halloween. Many people just left bowls of candy on their front doorstep, and some houses were just closed up. It was very anticlimactic trick or treating this year. Both girls said something about how many houses were duds. We didn't trick or treat as long as usual, either, maybe just less than an hour or so. The girls' haul of candy was quite pitiful. 

The kids costumes were ... special this year too. I really let them decide what they wanted and here's where they landed:

• Brooke wanted to do her costume all on her own, even though I offered several times to help her or at least buy a costume. She wanted to be a vampire, of the Vampirina style: blue skin, bat pigtails, black clothes and shoes, etc. On Friday before Halloween, for the school parties, she dressed in all light blue clothes, painted her face blue, and fashioned fangs for herself out of flossers which she'd cut into teeth shape and painted white. (*shrugs*) She was happy with it, and I was happy that she was happy. Also, that I didn't have to do hardly anything. I bought the blue shirt and helped her start her face paint application. Most of her classmates thought she'd dressed up as a smurf. On Halloween, she did the same, except that she added a cape for greater effect. 
• Camille just wanted to be a witch, using the witch costume Daniel had bought on super discount at the Party Store a few months back when it was going out of business... due to covid. She painted her face and neck green and put on the purple dress and hat. Halloween night she also added a cape. And she made a pretty cute witch. Again -- I didn't have to do anything. (*fist bump*)
• Jack really just wanted to be a ghost. So Daniel pulled out a flat white toddler bed sheet and rigged it up for him and painted his face white. He was an absolutely ADORABLE ghost! I could not get over it. (*heart eyes*)
• And we pulled out the old skeleton costume for Sawyer, which he, of course, rocked. 

So we had a vampire, a witch, a ghost and a skeleton. We were a very Halloween themed family this year. I bought myself some black cat ears to go along with the theme. 😊