We've been working a lot and that is obviously something we are thankful for. Anytime you can say you and your husband both have a job and are both paying the bills and making things work is a good thing!! However, we'd like to be able to start up our savings again and get our footing back a little bit better! It's been a struggle the past few years, but we get by, and we're getting there. The Grace of God is with us and without God, we would NOT be where we are, not even close. He has seen us through many dark and scary moments!! I may not always understand his plans, but in the end I finally see the "ah ha" moments and I get it, even if little by little.
Recently our family decided to go get a real Christmas tree. I grew up with them, and they weren't much of a big deal to me. Just something we did. However my husband has never had a real tree in all of his years. My kids had never experienced a real tree either. So I caved. Plus I was too lazy to dig one of our two imposter trees out of the closest and wrestle the sucker up. So instead we drove to a nearby Christmas Tree Farm. We let the kids run wild through the tree field to pick out their "JUST RIGHT" tree. They loved that so much! We even brought the mother in law along. She didn't exactly get to have memories like this with her children, so I figured, eh, why not. I think she enjoyed going, and I know the kids enjoyed it.
Circus Son #2 is the one that found "THE TREE". He hugged the tree and informed it that it was coming home with us. It was the "CHOSEN ONE". So my husband sawed the tree down, and my son stood behind the tree to "catch it" because he didn't want it to fall and hit the ground and get hurt. Such a considerate little guy. It was cute watching the kids help their Dad with the tree. They also were in charge of decorating the tree once we got home. I put on the lights, and they did everything else (well Dad put the tree up in the stand).
Most beautiful tree I've ever seen. This tree, every time I look at fills my heart with so much love and happiness! My children are so proud of their little tree. I am proud of my children!
There are many holidays that I love, well, basically all of them. I go super nuts over Halloween, but CHRISTMAS is the holiday where I focus on family traditions. There are things we do every year.
- Put the tree up together.
- Listen to Christmas music, like constantly.
- Wear coordinating Christmas clothes as much as we can, because well, it's FUN DARN IT!! If I could get everyone on board with ACTUAL Ugly Christmas Sweaters, that would be amaaaazing but my family is all "anti sweater" (they make us itch and squirm and wiggle like crazy, not a fan of sweaters!)
- Decorate like crazy all over the house.
- Christmas crafts.
- Making goodies to hand out to the neighbors.
- Going to see the Christmas parade (which sadly we missed this year due to it being so rainy and my kids weren't feeling well so we chose to stay home).
- The Living Windows event down town (which we DID go to and really enjoyed, and my daughter got to be a PRINCESS and ride in a beautiful horse drawn carriage :) )
- We go see Santa.
- This year we actually made it to the Candy Cane Hunt at Candy Cane playground. Well two out of three kids made it, the other was home with the flu today.
- This year we also made it to the Holiday Express Santa Train!! Oh my gosh, that was so much fun, yet so extremely frustrating at the same time. Two and a half ours worth of waiting in lines...my kids don't do well with waiting...or lines. BUT we all survived and yes...had fun for the most part. Even CS#2 was the one shouting in line to see Santa that this was not the "REAL SANTA" and yes...he made small children cry. I got many death glares from VERY angry moms. I wanted to crawl under a rock and die. My son believes in Santa, he just didn't believe THAT particular Santa was the REAL one, until we got right up next to him THEN he felt like a butt and said "MOM I WAS WRONG!! THIS IS THE REAL ONE!!" (It didn't make those angry moms any happier by the way).
- Elf on the shelf. HUGE thing at my house, and this year our Elf brought a radio that leaves the kids messages from the North Pole!! (Unfortunately...CS #1 was picking it up and messing with it today and DROPPED IT and I had to reset it and now it's replaying all of the messages again, and actually...it hasn't give them a new message this evening so I think he broke it and I'm not happy....)
We do not have a traditional elf on the shelf, and there is a long back story on our Elf, and the kids adore him.- Christmas lights!! We LOVE driving through the park and around town seeing people's creative Christmas lights! This year we found a house that has their lights go off to a radio station and it was awesome. We also found a house with a giant "Naughty or Nice" list in their yard and kids can get a marker and write their name on the list and they get a goody bag of treats from the kind folks that live there. I tried to trick my kids into putting their names on the naughty list...it didn't work, they figured out what I was up to, darn it!)
- We read the REAL reason we celebrate Christmas and we talk about what that means to us and how it is the most important reason to celebrate Christmas. That sure, Santa is fun, and presents are nice, but JESUS is the real reason we celebrate Christmas.
- Salvation Army Bell ringing! This is something new my kids did this year as well. My husband grew up doing this and had been wanting the kids to do it for awhile now, but well...my kids aren't always the picture perfect of cooperation and listening so we waited until this year to allow them to ring bells. If they had been split up it would have went even better, but they were all together so it was a little rocky, but no bad. They had 23-25 stop by their can in the hour they were bell ringing, and one guy even poked in a $20 bill and that just made the kids' nights! They were excited the money would go to help children in need. They were helping others and that made them so happy. (We can never go past hose little red buckets without the kids emptying our pockets/purse/wallet of any change!! And we often give them a few dollar bills to put in too). If they want to give, I'm not going to stop them!
This year was the first year we actually took the kids to the store to really buy presents for people. We made them write down a short list of people they wanted to buy for. A couple of friends, mom, dad, their siblings, teachers, Grandma A. It turned into a nightmare. They were telling each other what to buy for them, and it was just a mess. HOWEVER, it got done. They crossed people off their list, and tonight I let them wrap all the little goodies they bought and put them under the tree. We forgot a few though, we also bought some things from the Jingle Shop at school. I think they will do better next year.
Although, they've been so naughty lately that I'm really beginning to wonder if Santa is even going to visit our house or not!! Especially CS#2. OH BOY. He has had a REALLY rough time in school lately. I'm at my wits end. I don't know what to do. I pray and pray and pray that things turn around for him and so far...not so much. He has a couple of weeks that are amazing and then...BAM out of nowhere a HORRIBLE day or two that spiral completely out of control at school. I had to go pick him up from school on Wednesday afternoon because he was so out of control they wouldn't put him on the bus (I can't say I blame them, I would have done the same thing). I stand behind the school and I know how much they hate seeing him struggle. Just once I wish things could be easier for him. It's been a struggle since he was born. He had a SUPER rough week this past week, and then didn't do well at the Santa Train and I was just heart broken.
I have a hard time when it comes to CS#2. He fought cancer as a baby, he has been no evidence of disease for 5 years now. I feel like I should always be blessed, and happy, and lucky and grateful and thankful for everything concerning this particular son. AND TRUST ME I AM. I am so thankful every day that my son is still ALIVE, that he IS here 5 years later after treatment. A lot of families cannot say that. It breaks my heart to see so many families have their children ripped away from them. Then here I am complaining about how my children did XYZ awful thing at school/home and how he's driving me nuts and I'm at my wits end with him. I feel like an ass. Like the worst mom ever. However, what people don't realize....is what he went through really affected him. We don't really KNOW what kind of an affect it all had on him. We don't know what kind of problems he inherited from his dad (poor guy had many when he was younger) so that could explain so much too. I just, get so frustrated...it just feels like all he's had to do is FIGHT from the moment he was born just to exist, just to be normal. I just want him to be able to be a regular kid, that doesn't have to work a million times harder at everything (speech, reading, math, paying attention, following the rules, dealing with anxiety, frustration, anger, dealing with disappointment etc). He has trouble with all of that, and trust me, he works his little butt off on EVERYTHING! It's not easy working with him at all. You HAVE to be an out of the box thinker and know when to back off and when to push. It's exhausting. Taking him places can either be awesome or awful. You never know which side of him you are going to get. He has ruined so many of our family outings and I makes my heart ache. I WANT my son there on those outings I WANT us all to have a good time. As frustrating as he CAN be from time to time...and I know he makes my heart ache, often. I know that if he WEREN'T here there would be an ENORMOUS gaping hole in my heart where he should be. As much as he is my frustration, he is also my joy. He is my love, my hope, my excitement, my energy, my great big bear hugs and awesome squishes. He is my streak of naughty with just the right amount of goodness and love and light to balance it all out. He is my miracle. He is my blessing from God. He is prayers answered. I do not give up easily, and while he has helped me get gray hairs and wrinkles, and has caused me several tears and headaches, I won't give up on him. I just wish he could realize that the people at school working with him are not the enemy, they are trying to make him be the most amazing HIM that he can be, and he can be absolutely amazing!
Lately, he has been complaining of a numb spot on his leg, and it has me worried. It's near the inside area of his thigh. He says he can't feel anything there and he showed me, by pinching his leg and he didn't have an ounce of recognizing it on his face. I was like WHOA, that can't be good. So I have to make a call to his oncologist and ask if this is normal, because well, chemo can do some pretty awful things to people and yes...numbness is not an uncommon side affect from chemo, yes even this many years down the road. Who knows how long he's had it, maybe he can just now communicate with us about it and have the right words to describe it. It's been hard when he has struggled with speech for so long. His next check up isn't until February. I've been praying it's nothing, but at this point...I'm just going to call his oncologist because it's been going on for a little while now. When he was 5 months old he had developed an odd little 'kick' in his leg(s), and at first I was like Yay! He's feeling better he can move his legs more!! Because before the enlarged liver made it uncomfy for him to move so he didn't move much. So at first when he started kicking his legs I was excited. But as I watched, it didn't seem like something he was CONTROLLING, rather it was happening on his own. When I mentioned it to the doctors they didn't think it was anything at all, Well by the time he was 6 months old they told me the tumor was growing up his back bone and was starting to press up against things, (nerves, spinal sac etc...) and he'd need immediate surgery and to start chemo. So yeh, when weird things go on with my boy I kind of have a tendency to take it seriously and go to the Oncologist about it.
Otherwise, they are all doing well. Well, minus the fact that CS #1 has the flu bug (seems mild which is good), and I think CS#2 is going down next with it. I think I already had a slight touch of it. I am just hoping the boys are healthy enough for the Christmas program on Tuesday!! They've been practicing so hard for the school Christmas Program.
Last year CS#2 got sooo sick he missed an entire WEEK of school, and didn't go back until after Christmas break and was even sick most of Christmas break. I don't really want a repeat of that this year!! He missed his class parties too! Poor kid. We're hoping for a healthier Christmas!
For the mean time...I'm just trying to
KEEP CALM and get my CHRISTMAS ON!!
Mom Circus
