A Night To Remember

I would love to be able to tell you that the title of this post comes from a wonderful date night that Barry put together for us, we had a candlelit dinner, followed by a show at the theater, we danced, and watched the sun rise over the ocean....

But no. 

That's not what happened. 

What follows is the play by play of my night last night. ;)

6:45 - Wow. The boys actually ate a pretty good portion of their dinner. With minimal screaming. That's odd. Hm. These colds must be really wearing them out. 

7:15 - I think Nathaniel is actually ready to go to bed. But it's too early. But he's falling asleep on the floor. All right, to bed with him. 

7:20 -Aaaand there goes William. I guess I'll put him to bed too. Poor babies, hopefully they'll get some good sleep and feel better in the morning. Maybe tonight I'll get my cleaning done and still have time to work on my cross stitch! Yay!

8:30 - Aaaah... The cleaning is done, Barry took Bear Bear to bed with him. The house is quiet and clean, I have control over the tv! I'll put Vampire Diaries on in the background and work on my cross stitch! Finally! Some free time for mommy!

Fourteen stitches later...

*William cries from the nursery*

8:50 - Poor William sounds like a pot of coffee percolating! Time for the snot sucker! *twenty minutes of crying and rocking him to sleep*

9:30 - Omg! Nathaniel! Why is he shrieking! He's so dramatic lol! 

9:45 - Ok, we've cuddled, rocked, swaddled, given him something to drink, walked around the house, and sang to him. Maybe he has a tooth coming in, I'll give him some Tylenol just in case he's hurting. 

10:13 - Nathaniel! Go the eff to sleep! This crying is nuts! 

10:20 - Oh thank god, the Tylenol is finally working. A little bit of rocking and he'll finally go to sleep. 

10:35 - Aaaah.... Finally. Quiet. Cross stitch. 

10:40 - WTF!!!! William! Why are you awake!!!

10:50 - So. Much. Snot. 

11:00 - "Mommy! Wat-eh! Wat-eh!"

11:05 - Nathaniel...if you wake your brother up so help me god...

11:07 - Damnit Nathaniel! 

11:10 - Ok! Maybe I'll put a movie on to distract them from themselves. Frozen it is!

12:00 - They're still awake. I wonder if I should put on a pot of coffee. 

12:45 - Finally. They must be so tired. Maybe they'll stay asleep. 

1:30 - Oh these sheet feel so goo- wet. Damnit bear bear! Fresh sheets it is. 

2:30 - "Mommy! Wat-eh! Wat-eh!" Bear Bear! You're not even awake!!

3:00 - All right William. You're just going to come to bed with me. 

Needless to say, last night was eventful. :) but we had some good cuddles and I did get some cross stitching done so there's that. 

The boys are in that stage of sickness where they're well enough to want to do stuff but too sick to actually do stuff. Barry is working (yay!) but I'm starting to get sick so my plan is to stick something in the crock pot and watch cartoons all day. That's about all my brain can handle right now. 

What do you guys do when the whole family is sick?

2014 Holiday To Do List

In case you're new here...I have a terrible memory. I am a list queen but as soon as something is marked off the list it is gone forever. Not too big a deal you would think, except when it comes to family time. 

Every holiday I keep a list in my head (my first mistake) of all the things I would like to do. Then the holiday comes and goes and I've done a couple things but I have no record of having done those things so I bemoan by existence saying I'm a terrible mom for not doing things with my kids, I'm always home, I never get to do nuthin' and so on. This is a big reason why I'm on Facebook and Instagram all the time. I can look back on the photos and and say "Look! I did it! And I did an awesome job! Look how awesome I am!" :) 

Which brings us to this post. Here is my list of things I want to accomplish this holiday season!

-First and foremost, I want to have a clean and fresh home. We're working on getting the clutter out (thank GOD!) and I have a bunch of stuff I want to sell on Craigslist, donate, and just plain throw away. Barry is finally getting the idea that less is more...and he is going away on a feature the first three weeks of December which means I'll be able to get more stuff out of the house! :D

-I want to spend time with both sides of the family but I also want to have an intentional Christmas at our house. I don't want to be lazy because we will be spending time away from our house on Christmas Day. I won't be making a thanksgiving dinner this year because we will be out all day, I don't want this to happen with Christmas as well.  I want to make a great Christmas meal with table settings and everything. No more skating by just because we don't have company. We are worth linen napkins! ;)

-I want to decorate the house in a timely fashion. Two years ago we decided that the Strickland Christmas season officially starts the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We spend Friday doing a general cleanup around the house and then Saturday morning we go pick out a Christmas tree! 

-I want to send out Christmas cards out the first week of December. 

-I want all presents bought by the second week of December. I forsee a lot of amazon purchases this year. 

-My mom and I always go crazy with the cookie making. I think since this year will be the first year in their new house this will be the First Annual Clark House Cookie Fest! We usually only do chocolate chip cookies and fudge but with Pinterest being the best thing ever and my baking skills getting better and better we will try some new recipes this year!

-I want to start some Christmas traditions with the boys:

Watch Christmas movies

Make Christmas Eve Boxes

Take them to go see Christmas Lights

Make an activity based Advent Calendar

Santa Pictures!!!!

Read Christmas books - I'm going to buy three classic Christmas books and then place a scrapbook sticker envelope thing on the back cover of each book. Every year we will get a pic of us reading the book to the boys and place it in the envelope. Every year we will open the envelope and squeal over how tiny the boys were the year before :)

These are just some of the things I would like to do this year. I'm sure I'll come back and edit and add to this list as Pinterest explodes with all things Christmas. 

*** Edit ***

Ideas for next year:

-Definitely sending out photo holiday cards instead of regular cards!

-I want to make a small gift for the neighbors that distribute our monthly civic club newsletter. Something with a mason jar of course. ;)

What are some of your holiday traditions?

Pennsylvania Trip: The Driving

Last week my mom decided to invite me along for an impromptu trip to see her father, my grandfather, up in Pennsylvania. Traveling with three babies is no joke but we made do. By the end of the trip my mom and I were completely spent but we did have fun!

We made a LOT of pit stops. In all it took us three days to get there and three days to get back. 

Bear Bear discovered puddles and it was the cutest thing EVER!!! I didn't even mind the sopping wet shoes. :)

And William discovered air conditioners. At every hotel he crawled from the mirrors to the ACs and back again. He would turn his face away from the air flow and then slowly turn it back and act all suprised when it blasted him in the face. The giggles were endless. :)

There were some moments of silence and we savored those brief times when all the babies fell asleep at the same time. 

This was at Elmwood Park in Roanoak Virginia. It was a twenty minute detour that frustrated me to no end. We were desperately trying to find a park so the boys could run around and play. They'd been in the car seats for hours and were starting to get restless (read they were screaming for release). I finally found this park and when we realized it had no playground we thought we were doomed. But bear bear LOVED running up and down the stairs. He couldn't get enough!!

And there was a water feature so bear bear had many puddles to splash around in! 

Little Nathaniel absolutely blossomed on this trip. I have rarely seen him give so many smiles in such a short amount of time. It was such a sweet thing to see, he's so serious all the time. 

Every night we made it into the hotel just around the time the boys start having screaming fits. This meant I didn't get to bottle washing until very very late at night. It's was kind of soothing to be able to have some peace and quiet after putting the boys down for sleep. I just put my headphones in and got it done. 

It wasn't until we were back in Virginia on the ride home that we realized we hadn't gotten any pictures of the boys with the fall leaves. But luckily at the Tennessee Virginia border we found this gorgeous tree that was losing its leaves and it made for a very picturesque location. The boys loooooved rustling around in the leaves. 

Mom and Mark bought a DVD Player for watching the movies in the car. It. Was. Awesome!! It had two screens and the wire connecting them was just barely long enough so that I could have one screen facing Barry, who is facing forward and the other screen facing the twins, who are facing the back of the vehicle. It was a great investment and made a huge difference to the boys. 

This was a rough trip simply because I was on the timetable to get back to Houston for an event. But I did get to see that the boys do really well on trips. I am now comfortable with the idea of making a trip to Austin or Dallas with the boys and we have a great friend who is willing to watch our girls (dogs) for us. I envision many trips in our future!!!

I'll be posting about our time in Pennsylvania soon!

-Ri