we leave for houston in less than 48 hours and i have ALL THE THINGS to do... but instead, here i am. sitting in bed blogging (while randy irons his work clothes), and watching impractical jokers.

impractical jokers is randy's newest favorite show... and i'll admit, it is pretty funny. but it makes me SO UNCOMFORTABLE to watch. i get anxious during every episode, and basically i'm just a weirdo. bless my little introverted soul.

anyway. so yes. lots to do, lots to do. but i want to share our fun weekend before i probably (very highly likely) abandon this little blog for two weeks.

saturday night we went to bakersfield christmastown with our favorite neighbors!
it was so much fun, and the kids LOVED it. they had so much to do and see, and i have a feeling we will come back and visit every christmas as long as we are living here!

they had "ice" skating (it was some sort of plastic tiles, but you wore ice skates? idk, i let randy take presley, and by LET, i mean designated. not my kinda fun.), hay rides (eli's favorite!), snow tubing down a giant slide (presley and i went, so fun!), face painting, characters (elsa apparently got braces 😂), tons of bounce houses, and of course, christmas lights.

sunday at church was the kids christmas program that presley was SUPPOSED to sing in. but nope. she told me she "got shy". that girl!
sunday afternoon we had our neighborhood christmas party at the clubhouse. before we left randy said, "i wish we didn't have the party tonight. i just want to stay home and not go anywhere." that is literally something that comes out of my mouth at least once a week. we are so boring, and i'm not even mad about it.💁

the party was so cute! we took a horse drawn carriage ride around the neighborhood, and had some fun in the photobooth. they had an ornament decorating station for the kids and mr. and mrs. claus came for pictures (even though we chose not to participate for eli's sake!).

today presley had TWO christmas performances, which made for a super long day, but seeing her up on stage makes it all worth it.
this morning she had a little christmas show at dance class! they performed a couple little dances and she was just precious, duh. 💗💗💗

tonight she had her christmas program at school (at 6:30pm...why?). she did so great up there singing her songs. i took videos, but no pictures... ugh. of course. there were LITERALLY 99+ three to five year olds on stage and all of their parents and relatives in a smallish place and it was a tad overwhelming, so forgive me.

i can't believe my birthday is in a couple days. i told presley that, and she got really upset and just really wanted it to be HER birthday in a couple days. she started crying about it. i told her like 324 times that you CAN'T CHANGE YOUR BIRTHDAY. and she insisted that you can, and that she wants hers to be in two days. i told her NO, that it was MY birthday in two days, and so she said, "ok, then i want my birthday to be in three days." 🙄 

she is surely a mess, but so is her brother. he copies every.single.thing she does and says.

lately she has really been into sounding out words and figuring out which letter they start with... lots of "puh puh puh presley starts with P" and "sa sa sa sword starts with S". 

she was doing it in the car the other day on the way home and pretty soon eli started too. his weren't quite as acurate.... "sh sh sh MOMMY" "duh duh duh PRESLEY!" "ca ca ca DADDY!"

he had me laughing so hard. 😂😂😂

he NEVER wants me to take his picture, like ever, unless i am making presley pose for a picture... then it's all "eli's turn! my turn! eli's turn! cheeeese!"😍

alright, i've got to stop. it's 9:13 and that means it's way past my bedtime. byeeeee.👋

i've been putting it off for awhile, but today i finally just went for it... i took the kids to see santa.

if you've been around awhile, or you got our christmas card last year, you know that eli hasn't been santa's biggest fan...or the easter bunny, or any disney character (even the princesses.) for that matter. brother just doesn't do characters.
presley, on the other hand, total pro. she smiles on cue. gives hugs, high fives, talks. today santa asked what her favorite cookies were and she squealed, "rainbow ones!". he asked her to leave some for him on christmas eve and she promised him she would. and she has reminded me 82+ times today that we have to make rainbow cookies for santa. thanks old man. he also asked her what she wanted for christmas... "a baby! a baby alive! that pees." of course.

what did eli ask for?
well. i'll let you decipher that.

pretty sure all eli wants for christmas is to NEVER SEE SANTA AGAIN.

poor guy. but don't feel sorry for him. he was on santas lap for approx 40 seconds, "smile!" click. done. one take. then he got down and acted like nothing ever happened.

aren't those jammies presh? randy told me that one day eli is going to be really upset with me for making him wear those. really RANDY? i could have put him in so much worse. like the elf costume the kid in front of us had on. 

presley is such a sweet big sister, though. before we left she told eli there was nothing to worry about and that she would hold his hand the whole time. she told eli, "if you're scared, just talk to jesus. he will make you not scared anymore." MELT MY HEART. seriously i almost cried. sometimes when presley is fighting me to go to sleep at night, she'll tell me she's scared of the dark. and every single time i tell her, "if you're ever scared, just talk to jesus... he will make you feel safe." i mean, she never heeds my advice, but at least i know she's listening!

hello again!

so wild that we are already a week into december. why this month always seems to fly by at hyper speed, i will just never quite understand. give me a year of decembers, PLEASE!

anyway. let's talk about christmas traditions. i really need some for my little family. particularly some with ZERO ELF INVOLVEMENT. i'm not knocking you elf-on-the-shelfers, but i.just.can't.do it.
two years ago while perusing pinterest i found a pin for salt dough and made some homemade christmas ornaments. i cut out different shapes with cookie cutters and let presley paint them. i also got one with her handprint, and since he was just a tiny little thing, eli got a footprint.*

*side note--why do baby books have a place for hand prints?
foot prints? totally understandable. ink foot, stamp paper, done, cute. easy.
hand prints? have you ever even pictured this situation? try it. try just imagining what might happen. first of all, good luck unfisting that NEWBORN hand. second of all, maybe you're thinking, oh, well newborns sleep a lot, i could just do it when they are asleep. ok, well i'm not trying to wake up a sleeping newborn, so if you want to take those odds, then i guess you probably have handprints in your child's baby book.

idk where that came from, but you're welcome.

anyway, last year, since we were selling the house and showing the house and all that really UNFUN  stuff, we didn't decorate for christmas or do any fun things in our house. but this year i brought back the salt dough and presley declared it "the best day ever!". she was so excited to put on her "print", or what you and i call an apron, and paint. i got handprints for both kids and call me crazy, but i'm just really excited to overload my christmas tree with these special ornaments as the years go by.

so, in summary, salt dough is my only tradition. HELP.

not much else going on, the weather has been AMAZIIIIING. in my opinion, anyway. overcast, drizzly rain, you know, the good stuff. the best part of the rain is that it clears all the nasty stuff out of the air and you can actually see the mountains!

and you're not gonna believe this, but there's a mountain so close to us, i can just reach out and touch it. i believe we are going to call it mount laundry, and i have several news outlets reaching wanting to interview me about this "miracle". apparently it's the fastest forming range in california growing at record speeds and currently overtaking the entire second floor of my house. so, sorry, i must run. going to scale that beast!

just wanted to check in and say hello to everyone who's visiting from our christmas cards!
i started this little blog last year at this time as a way of documenting a huge transition that was taking place in our lives, and to give my family a place(since i gave up social media!) to see how fast the kids are growing! (even though we facetime a bajillion times a week)

it's been quite a year, and our time here has only just begun!

anyway, we made it back from texas in a much less dramatic way than we got there.
more people ended up sick, including my sister (who i only got to see for a whole 4 hours the whole time i was in texas😭). it wasn't the week of perfection i had expected to have, but we got to spend lots of time with family, and that made it all worth it. and i kinda loved that i got to take care of my parents for a change... they took care of me, and my kids, while we were disposed, and i got to return the favor. serving them was a blessing.

and let's also address the elephant in the room.... IT'S DECEMBER! birthday month! christmas! back to texas! i can't believe it's already my favorite month of the year. i'm hoping the days flow by like molasses so that i can savor them completely. i read somewhere that as parents we only get approx 18 christmases with our babies living in our homes... and that hit me like a gut punch. as if i needed another reason to be the crazy christmas lady, my status just upgraded to the maximum level of crazy possible. 🎄

if you're new here, (basically anyone besides my parents and sister.... also, HI AUNT JOAN!), thanks for taking a minute to read my run on sentences and overly-punctuated and always lowercase ramblings. if you like to hear silly stories about the things that come out of the mouth of sassy 4 year olds, or see pictures of the cutest kids that ever lived, or you're curious about what life is like in the metropolis (ha.) that is bakersfield, california, you found the right spot!