Sota, Light Night, Petroffs

It's been a week.
Highs and lows for sure.

The biggest goal of the week was to get the pickup back to Bismarck. It arrived back at the body shop on Friday afternoon. One of the biggest successes of the week was the other insurance company admitted liability for the wreck - something we knew but hearing confirmation was good. I went to two chiro appointments and have 2 more scheduled - hoping to feel more aligned by the end of the year.

Mom and I also assisted in sorting through some of Janice's things. It was hard for me to see a life and person I value so deeply come down to the bare essentials of her everyday living. There were essences of her there is some of the items - things that I have seen her use daily and things that were so drastically her. I saw the pictures she hung of my children on her wall in her kitchen and I couldn't bring myself to remove them from the wall - like doing so would mean that she's really gone from their lives as she is from mine and that they will never know this spirit who has been so interested in the people that they are becoming. It breaks my heart. I did attempt to gather her essence for them - even though I know it's somewhat useless. Each will be given a teacup from her special collection.
I brought some things for Matt too - her gin, a decanter, and a box of Bob's ties. Which he examined that night and picked 10 or so out of the box of 75.


Baby had a cardio echogram on Monday, which we were glad for the timing given the accident. All looked good. We also followed up with a 28 week health check - all good there, 158 was the heart beat and no gestational diabetes! Health baby is the best news we could have at this point after the scary weekend.

We also had a lot of Christmas activities over the week -
We took our trip to see Santa - I thought this was the year that she really took it on. We've been asking what she wanted from Santa, she's been practicing her "HO, HO, HO" repeatedly, and even has been somewhat singing Christmas carols. She sat on his lap and just pointed at me. The only thing she said to Santa was Mommy. Grady was better-ish. He just kept kicking his shoes off. All in all - it wasn't horrid, there were no tears, and both kids left Santa (or Sota as it sound when E says it) happy and giddy with candy canes in hand. So... success?

We also had annual Light Night - which Matt and I've been looking forward to because E is so observant of the Christmas lights this year. We ate at Taco John's - which I think was Grady's favorite part. He ate more than anyone else. He had a bean burrito, half a quesadilla, half a soft taco, his own portion of ole's, and all the olives off the Feliz Navidad nachos. Oh, I forgot to mention the graham cracker for dessert too. E's favorite snack of the night was the candy cane that we gave her while driving around. She ate half of it and then handed to her dad. It was a good night - Grady fell asleep for a majority of it - that's consistent with last year's performance as well.

The next day, we prepped more Christmas things including organization of the house, setting up the toddler Christmas tree, wrapping a few presents... and so on.  Had to make another run to the clinic for Grady - another ear infection. UGh.

On Sunday, we had Petroff's over to play and exchange gifts. They had a blast playing with Alice. Alice may have been a bit unsure about them - I don't blame her. They beautiful moments of play and when Alice left there were hugs and waving. G kept hugging her time after time - made me chuckle. E also liked reading books with her godmother Shantelle - it's fun to see those two interact together as I know they don't get as much time as we'd like.

ALR: Eleanor, can you show how you do somersaults? 
EER giggles and gets herself ready.
EER does somersault.
All cheer.
Alice does somersault.
All cheer.
Meanwhile, GRR watches. 
GRR sets himself up.
GRR does somersault by himself
All cheer.
GRR keeps doing them, laughing the entire time!