My Overthinking

Philly Area mom, Life forever changed by adoption

King’s Speech

Since my husband is a little more into this

than an English drama, I wasn’t sure if he’d like King’s Speech or not. But, we committed to go with some couples from church (some Brits in that mix, no less) to a little local theater to see it tonight. Once that sitter is lined up, we’re committed.

And….we loved it. We both really really liked it. Didn’t even matter that there weren’t any crazy chase scenes or plot twists or spies with gadgets or any of that stuff. Who wouldn’t simply love a true story of a great man who feared the greatness that he was called to but was able to overcome a disability to be the man he was meant to be.

I loved story of the King’s wife. She said she turned down his first two wedding proposals because she did not want to live the life of royalty and have to live in the public eye, fulfilling duty and giving up her own life. And, yet, she married the Duke of York who became King of England. And, she was never depicted as giving it a second thought. In fact, she took her job as his wife very seriously. I love how dedicated she was to getting him help to overcome his speech impediment. And, I love seeing how his fears and failures so deeply affected her and how his success and growth brought her such joy.

Mark loved the story of hope and of a man’s victory over his fears and insufficiencies, victory with the help of a man who lacked all qualifications on paper but was able to see through the pomp and circumstance to see a man who was worthy simply because of who he was.

The Brits with us were crying through it even.

Gotta see this one, people, if you haven’t already.

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Christmas Recuperation

It’s now the 29th of December, a week after my last post. So, here’s a whirlwind recap.

Our Christmas celebration starts on the 23rd each year as we journey to Bethlehem (not kidding), drive past the spot where we got engaged on that very night (always have to point it out to the kids who seriously don’t care as we smile at each other and remember that night), and arrive at Mark’s mom’s house to finally sit and simply talk over food and coffee and hungarian kiffles after days of crazy busyness. No kiffles this year though. Mark’s sister and brother-in-law were celebrating his doctoral graduation in Hawaii (also not kidding) and Mark’s mom (St. Grammy) was watching their 4 children (yes, 4 kids. She had two quiet children of her own and ended up with 8 grandchildren….so far…had to put that in there). For some reason, caring for 4 children (9, 7, 5, and almost 2) kept her from her usual Christmas baking…can’t imagine why. So, as you can imagine, our quiet sitting and talking wasn’t all that quiet. But, the kids sure enjoyed each other until we left Christmas Eve night. We even let them sleep in forts in the basement. So not safe (please look past the ironing board and the dangling Christmas lights). Please note that Lydia slept very safely in a pack and play.

Drew is our king of facial expressions. Loved this one of the sheer awe factor as he admired cousin Wyatt’s new Star Wars figure.

And, this one, happy as can be with his new slinky (it was going to be in Lydia’s stocking. But, Grammy slyly moved it over to Drew’s upon hearing about his meltdown at the kids’ school the day before when Evan’s teacher gave the kids each a slinky and Drew could not get it through his noggin that he didn’t need to have one too).

Christmas morning — 4 kids in front of our tree. The classic picture. Lydia was super excited about the presents. Afterall, she had opened 24 advent presents from Nanma and Granddaddy already (not counting the ones she not-so-secretly opened ahead of time from Ashlyn’s calendar). And, the word “present” had become the first word she said when we got her out of the crib each morning. Nice.

We give our kids 3 gifts each year (and a full stocking)–we relate them to the three gifts of the Wise Men to Jesus. The first gift is a practical gift–the girls got a Mickey Mouse tunic top I made and the boys got Mickey pirate tees. The second gift is an experiential gift–this year, since we are going to Disney World in only 30 days, a photo of Disney World is what they were given as their experiential gift. And, their third gift is a gold gift, something they really like–the three big kids got Lego sets and Lydia got a big stuffed dog.

Despite a folded over ear in this picture, I just love it. She is so pretty modeling the hair thing I made to go with the tunic top and another Disney outfit.

We headed down to MD by the afternoon to stay with my parents for a couple days. 9 kids at this location, so the fun just kept on going. Here’s Drew and his cousin Boh modeling their new G.I. Joe outfits. 
Ashlyn with the look of a child over sugared and over gifted.

A sweet picture of my boys.
Which quickly became a silly fest.

Celebrating Christmas with my fam is always a 2 day deal. This year, we had the special experience of witnessing the baptism of the newest family member, my nephew Thatcher. 

Here are my two sisters–Erin on the left, Megan on the right, and Erin’s 3rd child, Thatcher.

After some another feast of food–I should have taken pictures of the spread–we gathered together for a family game of Bingo which is our spin of the old White Elephant game. Winner picks a gift from the pile or steals a gift from someone else. It always seems like it’s going to be lots of fun and then breaks down when children are not happy with the gift they end up with, etc. etc. Next year, I vow to come up with a better structure to this tradition so that this Mama doesn’t end up having to scold any children.

All was well. We were sorta enjoying the calm on the evening of the 26th…until we realized it was the calm before the storm. That evening, we got hit with the plague. I will refrain from going into the gory details. But, I will say that during the night on the 26th, 4 people in my family got sick. My sister’s husband called my parent’s house to tell us Megan was throwing up at the exact moment I was cleaning up Ashlyn from the same. At 6am, when Lydia woke up, Mark and I called my parents from his cell phone (mind you, they were upstairs) to ask them to come get her because we were sick. They couldn’t because both of them were sick. My grandmother and my college cousin also got sick that night. We have no idea what hit us. But, it definitely hit us. Lydia was the last man standing in the end.

Our journey home had to be delayed a day because we just couldn’t make it as we were. But, we’re home now. And, we are finally eating normal food as of tonight, some of us eating off of new food face plates that we got for Christmas.

The good news is that I don’t have to worry about any holiday weight gain this year.

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O Christmas Tree

I think Lydia thought we were all a bit crazy. We got on a big wagon with a bunch of other families and headed out to a field full of trees that essentially looked all the same, fussed about which one was just right, then cut it down, had it tied up skinny, paid a lot of money for it, put in on our car, put it in our living room, put lights on it and all sorts of decorations. What in the world is all this about?

Ahhh….this is what we do every year, my dear Lydia. Welcome.

Taken from the hayride. Hundreds of trees just waiting to be cut down and decorated.

 Drew pointed to every single tree, saying “How ’bout this one?”
This one? Too tall.
Clearly too small.

Too fat.
Total dud.
Still hunting.
All these pictures of the wrong trees and the only recorded memories of the right tree is on video. Trust me, we picked a good one.
This is where it once stood among its friends. 

 And, now….
It stands in our living room. 

Ashlyn got to put the star on this year since she found the pickle ornament last year. Next year will be Evan’s turn. He found that pickle in nano seconds.
I love a fresh tree and the whole cutting-it-down experience. But, I have asked myself why I didn’t just think of this “artificial” tree. They are rather pretty, don’t you think?

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Sunday Snapshots {Thanksgiving Review}

I would have liked to post this earlier. But, Blogger gave me a message that I had run out of photo space. So, my free blog now is costing me a little bit since I had to buy more space for all my cute pictures. Had to do it. No one wants to read just my words and not see all my cutie patooties, right?

So, onto the review of Thankgiving…

My pumpkin rolls held together…as you can see, they indeed were glued with icing. But, cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar apparently make a pretty good glue (I’m sure the kids would love for me to make it their regular crafting glue). And, it was super yummy.

My sweet baby girl did wonderfully amidst the chaos there. In fact, she really enjoyed it. And, her little piggies are so darn cute. Is it strange to say I’m thankful for pigtails?

I’m also thankful for cousins. These girls are about 9 months apart in age. So, they are going to be quite the duo growing up together. My sister’s daughter Audrey is quite a kick. Lydia’s “lean in” in these pictures are her hug. She only gives head hugs. But, I’m thankful for head hugs for sure.

Classic picture of Dad cutting the turkey. I’m thankful that he didn’t cut his finger this time in this task. We all were. He’s looking quite festive in his crazy plaid, isn’t he?

Mmmmm….my wonderful husband. Super thankful for him. What a great smile he has. Just looking at this picture warms my heart. I love this guy.

Drew wore this for a good part of the day. He calls it his “king of fuzzies.” I’m thankful that he can wear this without screaming. Until about 6 months ago, he was deathly afraid of any sort of koosh toy. Odd, I know. Everybody’s got their thing. I don’t like loose teeth. Ashlyn lost her first tooth the day after Thanksgiving. I was thankful to get rid of that bendy loose thing…ooo…gives me the jeebies just thinking about it! I’ll have to do another post to show you the amazing letter the tooth fairy left her :). That tooth fairy is pretty cool. :)

The Thanksgiving activity (aka cheesy-God activity) actually went quite well. My uncle started it off with a bang by declining reading the Scripture given to him and instead reading a facebook status of a friend of his. Thanks, Uncle Jan. Well, it least it was clean. Everyone else read a Scripture on a piece of paper that they got to pick out from the pile I made. Then, they shared something they were thankful for that related to the verse in some way. After that, they poured some corn kernels out of a pitcher into a glass bowl to symbolize all the blessings God has poured out on us.

My 90-year-old Great Aunt (sorry, Aunt Verne, your age is now publicly published) got a little choked up doing hers which was really something.

We enjoyed looking at the bowl of thousands of corn kernels and using them as a reminder of the many many blessings, too many to even count, that God has given to our families.

Hope this becomes a new tradition each year.

And, yes, I did go out, just my Dad and me, to Target the next morning. If you can’t tell from the clock behind him (and the bags under his eyes…note that there is not a picture of me), we left a little after 5am. Unfortunately, he missed the doorbuster he was looking for which was a replacement GPS to the one he bought last Black Friday at Target which was stolen out of their car to replace the other GPS that was stolen out of their car. Yup, they have had two GPSs stolen from their car. I got a couple things but nothing huge. We only do 3 gifts for our kids for Christmas and then their stockings–so I don’t have oodles to buy, thankfully. (Somehow, it still feels like oodles though.)

Already counting down to Christmas. After going with Mark last night to the Walnut Theater to see White Christmas, I’m 100% in the spirit. 
Ho ho ho and the whole enchilada. (that’s for you, Dad)

Ni Hao Y'all

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