December has been all about spending time together. The beginning of December we spent so much time just hanging out, getting ready for Christmas, and enjoying the holidays. Then, we had two whole weeks off to relax and it was awesome.
It has been off and on winter around here. 60 one day and 30 the next. We spend time outside when we can, going to the park or walking with the dogs around the pasture. We even like to feed the ducks at Waterloo, though one day we were seriously almost attacked by hungry geese. One day we were tired of being inside but it was cold out, so I let her have free reign over WalMart. And one night, Cody took Harper out on a ride with the 4wheeler. He came back towards the house and I noticed that Harper had fallen asleep. On the 4wheeler. While it was going 20 mph in the wind over bumps. That nut.
We have done a few holiday things as a family. We spent a Saturday morning at Lowe's doing a kids workshop. She loves to hammer, or "Boom It" as she says. We made our holiday toffee, twice, and I'm sure that Cody and I ate one whole batch by ourselves. I also finally got a new phone, which is awesome because my old one wasn't working well. And now Harper and I can facetime our favorite people. I also have been making a few too many lists because I had to text this to-do list to my friends and see why I thought I had a "Grocery Party" that day? And I may have gone a little overboard with my technology lately. Some nights I sit and play on my phone while working on stuff on my computer and sometimes even watching a show on Cody's ipad. Multi-tasking to it's finest. I am seriously going to have to do a technology scale back in January.
Harper has been all over the place these days. You can tell she is trying to figure out how to deal with being only 2 1/2. She wants to do whatever she wants, but gets told no, alot. However, she is an independent player and gets creative in her toys these days. She is still into babies and barbies and clothes. But she can also take a kitchen tool and play with it for an hour. She loves to sniff spices and tell me which ones smell good. She likes to get her own snacks. Which may become a problem because I caught her trying to hide in our pantry (it's not a walk-in so it wasn't hard to find her) eating chocolate (can't blame her). Funny story - over Thanksgiving we had dinner at my Dad's and Grayson brought his special box with all his special toys in it. But they had to wake him from nap so he was a little grumpy and didn't want to share his special toys with Harper. But we spent a day in Frisco before Christmas and Harper found his box. I just had to let her play with it and she had fun. I love that sweet boy but it was funny!
Harper has LOVED having Cody home. It really makes a big difference in their relationship. She misses him so much when he's at work and she asked him every morning of break, "You go work today?" She was so happy everytime he said no. They play so well together, he's a lot more patient at playtime than I am. He plays Barbie and Princess and Doctor. Plus, he reads her books every night and they lay in bed talking about their days before she goes to sleep. I absolutely love that they love each other so much.
We have learned a few new things this winter. One being that living without a garage in the winter means that your car is cold all the time. We did this in Highland Village, but somehow it seems even worse when you can't at least run through your garage to the house but have to go around all the time. So the other day, we opened the back playroom window so Cody could hand all of the groceries in through their instead of coming around 50 times. It was actually a pretty good idea and we do it a little more often than we need to now. Harper is big into baking. She helps me do everything in the kitchen and loves to look in the oven to tell me when things are done. She also loves her Christmas PJ's. She has Santa ones, Minnie ones, reindeer ones, and she loves to decide which ones she gets to wear at night. And we are big into hide and seek and scaring each other. We run around the house and hide somewhere and she follows us and tries to find us. And at the last minute, when she gets close, we jump out and yell boo and she screams and is terrified for a half second before she dies laughing and begs to do it again. However, one day, I hid past the hallway and scared her and then she tried to hide again, in the hallway, while I was still standing there. She just kept telling me, shhh, I'm hiding. Haha. Good try, little girl!
Cody has been doing tons of stuff around the house and the outside. He has spent hours cleaning out the barns and even though I'm sure he has done a TON of work, they are still full and cluttered! He has been burning dead trees and brush piles. He has been cleaning up all the weeds and the thornbushes. He also put together my new laundry room cabinets. I love having a handy guy around the house.
Little Miss Priss has also been enjoying her Christmas presents. She got new cowgirl boots from KK and Mark. I figured she would wear them every now and then, to dress up, etc. But if I tell her it's time to get dressed, she almost always grabs her boots. They are easy for her to get one, so she likes that she can do it herself. And she does look cute, so it's perfect. We also started a holiday tradition of going to a movie over the break. It was her first real movie in a theater, we saw Frozen. She did great, especially since it lasted through lunch. She did keep asking, "Why her sad?", "Where her parents go?", etc. I tried to just move on, it's hard to explain sad parts to kids. But she loved the singing and it was a great movie. She even got to go to Chick Fil A afterwards and play. She's also been playing with her new playdoh set from Car and Tay. She loves playdoh and she likes that this one makes cupcakes and ice cream. And my parents bought a mini drum set for the grandkids to play on while Mark plays on his. She actually loves it and they don't mind the noise, so it's cool.
Harper and I have had our share of ups and downs lately. If she was a mama's girl before, she is an even bigger one now. Who can blame her? We spend all our time together since we live out in the middle of nowhere and don't really have much to do. But she has also learned how to throw a fit like I've never seen. Since it's been cold, we have been making her stay clothed with slippers. She likes clothes but she does not like being told what to do. She has sat/laid/cried/fussed in time out over clothing for 10 minutes sometimes. It is both hilarious and sanity-sucking at the same time. She doesn't nap in the afternoons, she just reads her books and talks and yells at me to see what I'm doing. It does mean for long evenings though because she's tired and grumpy. She has been stuck in time out quite a bit these days, but she just lays there and doesn't seem to mind (it may not be working...).
2013 was a great year for us. It had a BUNCH of changes but life is good and we are absolutely blessed. We are praying for guidance as we head into 2014, asking God to show us what is in store. Here's to a great new year!
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