The Wasians and the Rest of Us: What we're thankful for

I know, I know, I am a few weeks late on this post. I hadn't gotten a chance to talk about in addition to all the other stuff in our lives though, and its not like Christmas is a time to not be thankful. Here's the details of our last 6 or so weeks.

We headed up to Iowa the day before thanksgiving. Mom, Lela and My sister went shopping at Jordan Creek that day because they didn't want to miss the Iowa/Nebraska game on black Friday.... Bad idea. I prefer to pretend the game didn't happen. But if it were to have happened and Iowa were to not have showed up for most of the game making a miserable 3 hrs on black Thursday, then it would have been their fault for jinxing them by changing a holiday tradition. Since the game never happened, won't blame them for anything. Anyway, we had a great time with the fam. Emma has 2 older cousins who are unbelievably great to her. They love to play with her, are extremely patient with her so it is really a blessing to just watch the 3 of them interact. Plus there is the whole Emma is entertained and worn out from trying to keep up so we get some chill time factor. My mom also has about 20 activities for the kids to do, so Emma had a blast. To boot, on our way back my parents bought us all tickets to Disney on Ice. Emma didn't know a lot of the characters because when it comes to tv she has the attention span of a gnat, but she thought it was great. We came back feeling very blessed and sad we weren't going to be able to go back for Christmas to enjoy that with everybody. It will be too close to baby #2's arrival, so we will have to have a facetime Christmas party with the fam.

We are starting to get close to the arrival of baby #2. So very exciting. So very exhausting. I am scrooge, I know but it just seems like there is so much going on with that and Christmas that sometimes I feel like we need to slow it down and get frustrated with life. Oh and in the time honored tradition of things I do when Lela is pregnant I changed jobs. It was a great opportunity and what I wanted to do with my life when I grow up, so I couldn't pass. Its scary to do that though and it adds that much more going on with life, so life has been crazy at our house! Anyway, we are excited for our little miss to join us.

In preparation for that event we moved Emma to a big girl bed. She looks so tiny in it, but she loves it. Knocking on wood. Its sort of a pain to put her to bed because reading on her bed creates a situation where she can be extra lively in bed, because like her mommy she likes to procrastinate on the whole going to sleep thing. Random semi related note - Emma has started requesting that I sing you are my sunshine immediately followed by the Iowa Fight song ("The Go Hawkeye song"). Again clearly Emma is turning a blind eye to the state of Iowa athletics the past month and how depressing it is. I am glad we are raising a sunshine pumper, pun intended.

Finally, last weekend we went to see Santa. A local Hallmark had him and I think we are the only ones who go the memo (or email) as there was nobody there to see Santa. No line sounds great in theory, but it would have been helpful to have some examples of what to do with Santa. Tears were appearing, it wasn't pretty. On top of it this Santa clearly had an agenda, selling Elves on the shelf. So while he was pushing his product on us (even though I think I told him 10 times that we were going to do it next year when there as a chance Emma might slightly understand), Emma wanted far far away. Finally they suggested that Lela sit on his lap and have Emma sit on her. A little creepy yes, but it was worth a try. Then Lela claims he put his hand on her back, creepier. Then they suggested I sit on his lap too. We entered a new weird level of creepiness. Anyway, we got a few pics at the bottom. A few nights later Lela's work had a Christmas party with Santa. Emma and I waited in line for awhile (10 min extra due to a poop break), and when we got there Emma was only a little afraid of Santa. As we were the last ones there, and this Santa was a good Santa rather than a creepy, Elf on the Shelf peddling Santa, he talked Emma into sitting on his lap and even giving him a kiss. So lesson learned, a good Santa won't creep you out and won't sell you stuff, he'll just talk your daughter into sitting on his lap and giving him a kiss, which somehow isn't creepy.