One way to honor your spouse for Christmas (or why there were mice in my fridge)

Sometimes my husband feels like he takes a back seat to my kids...and a lot of time he's right.  It's easy to do when you have little ones that require so much of your attention and assistance throughout the day.  Lately my kids have been very mommy-needy.  That coupled with all that we've gone through this year, has been leaving my husband feeling a little neglected lately.  With Christmas right around the corner (which is usually focused more on our kids) I wanted to do something special for him.

I read a blog, though now I can't remember which one, about doing a 12 days of Christmas for your spouse.  I thought that sounded like a great idea!  So I set off at the beginning of December to figure out how I could make this work on a VERY meager budget.  So far it has been a HUGE hit with my husband and it's been lots of fun for me!

I'll post after the holidays with the full 12 days, but wanted to share with you about what I did yesterday.  Yesterday was day 7 (Christmas Eve will be day 12 as we open gifts on Christmas Eve).  And here is what he got...

The card says, "7 mice (and no your wife didn't turn into a cat)".

He had no clue these cute little chocolate cherry mice were peering out from our refrigerator :)

It hasn't been the most elaborate thing I've ever done and most of the "gifts" have been token things (a toast with our wedding flutes and sparkling cider or a walk through the Rhema Christmas lights), but the thought behind it (according to the hubs) has been the cool part!  We have gotten to take this chance to look back on some of the things we've done with one another since we started dating almost 7 years ago and it's been nice to have that time to reconnect during this busy season :)

Pressing On

I feel like every time I get on here to write I think about how crazy our life is right now.  Throughout the day I think, "things will slow down after xyz is over" or "after I finish xyz we can relax"...only to realize that after xyz comes abc and we start a crazy season all over again.  I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that life is just that busy.  There are things we could stop doing that would slow us down a little, but we feel that the things we're doing right now are exactly the things God wants us doing.  That includes a pretty big change that will be taking place for our family within the next few weeks.

We're moving.

I don't have time or the energy to go into all the details leading up to this decision, not right now anyway.  I am working on a longer post about the journey God has had us on the last 6-9 months, but for now we just wanted to let everyone know what's going on with us.  And answer a few questions we've been getting lately :)

No, we don't know exactly where we are moving yet or the exact dates of our move.

We will be moving into a rental, but will still be in the Tulsa area.

Hopefully tomorrow we will know more concrete details as we are hoping the application process for the duplex we're looking at will be complete.  We are praying that God orchestrates this move for next week, but we know that we will be out of this house by the middle of January at the very latest.  We would certainly appreciate any prayers you can send up for us as we make this transition.  Also, our oldest has an appointment with the developmental pediatrician for more testing on January 4th and we'd love prayers for that also!  Hope to be back soon to share more about this journey!

S'more Trail Mix...good enough for frazzled mommy's everywhere

Things around here have been CRAZY busy the last week or so.  I promise I'll update more on that soon, but I wanted to pop over and write a short post on how one frazzled mama was able to giver herself 15 minutes of quiet (to do dishes).

My youngest is 13 months old and has been teething almost non-stop for the last 2 months.  Normally he's a real trooper!  Today, however, circumstances got the best of him.  A morning running errands, an itchy rash on the back of his head, and a very late nap time all conspired against him today.  It all added up to one super clingy baby who refused to take a nap.  Did I mention that he has also hit that wonderful milestone where he wants to climb up and down and up and down on every.single.thing.in.sight?  Oy.  Unfortunately, I was in desperate need of getting some dishes done and working on a final assignment for school.  What is that quote?  "Necessity is the mother of invention?"  And thus was born...drum roll please...indoor s'more trail mix :)

Took out two bowls (one for each child), threw in a handful of honey nut cheerios, a few mini marshmallows, and some mini chocolate chips (though I would recommend regular size ones for this in the future).  Mixed it up and...voila!  My children were happily occupied for 20 minutes without a single peep!  Quite the feat considering our issues today.  The best was that I was able to quickly get some dishes done and get myself that much closer to "daddy home" time!

**Note** This is not the kind of thing I would normally feed my children nor would I make this a constant source of snacks.  The last two days have seen LOTS of car time and both of them have done amazingly well!  We all needed a treat and some quiet.