24 weeks

I finally got Kevin to take a preggers photo of me. This is me on Christmas day and I'm 24 weeks pregnant. Kev said to Zach, "Doesn't Mommy look like Santa Claus?" Now, do you think he meant my belly or my hat?!?

Happy Holidays!

This was our first Christmas in our new house and I was excited to continue our old traditions, and start new ones. Last weekend Kevin, Emily, and Zach assembled the Christmas Village in the dining room (which worked out just great considering we don’t have any furniture in there). It looks nice but we have so many houses and villagers that they all didn’t fit on the table so we couldn’t put them all out. I think it’s time to buy another folding table, for next year!

Over the past week we all baked various forms of cookies. Kevin and Zach made cut-out sugar cookies, I made peanut butter blossoms, and Emily made chocolate chip as well as peanut butter/chocolate swirls. They were all so delicious! I have not been very good on the diabetes diet this week, in large part because of those cookies! Santa enjoyed them all, and gobbled them up. He drank all his milk too.

We have found a new church in Framingham and went to the 4:00 p.m. mass on Christmas Eve. Note for next year – we really should go to the family mass at 6:00 p.m. The church was filled by the time we got there, and they sat us in the choir loft (a new experience for me). It was so quiet at times in the church you could have heard a pin drop – except for Zach’s chatting throughout most of the service. And since we were in the choir loft, they had hanging microphones to capture the choir’s voices, so I was sitting in fear that they could hear clearly everything we said up there. I tried my best to keep him quiet, but Zach doesn’t know much about “inside” voice yet. Oh well. Hopefully everyone in the church thought we was charming and cute anyway.

Following mass we drove around and looked at the lights in Framingham. More so than Brookline, Framingham decorates quite lavishly for the holidays! (the individual homes that is, not the downtown) We found a new Chinese restaurant for our traditional Christmas Eve Chinese food dinner and it was delicious! And extremely crowded. We apparently aren’t the only family who goes out for Chinese for Christmas Eve – this place was hopping!

Following cookies for Santa, stories, and prayers, Zach had a good night’s sleep and woke us up around 8:00 a.m. I actually woke up earlier than that and got the coffee going and turned on the tree lights and got breakfast ready. Emily apparently thought we’d let her sleep in luxuriously until whenever she decided to wake up and then we’d open gifts. I think 8:00 was pretty good for a toddler, but Em wanted a few more hours of sleep. By 8:30 we were ready to see what Santa had brought us.

Unwrapping gifts took a really long time. It’s hard to tell a toddler that they can’t play with the gift they just opened because there are 500 more gifts for him under the tree to open. We finally got through everything about 2.5 hours later. Emily got some nice things, especially from our relatives and friends who sent packages (and money!), but also got gift cards and happily already used some of these at the mall over the weekend. Zach got a new kitchen, choo choo trains and track, an easel, toy tools, books, puzzles, and a million other things. Our house kind of looks like Toys R Us threw up in it. But we’re all having a blast reliving our childhoods and playing with his toys with him.

One of the best gifts we got on Christmas Day was the news that Kevin’s brother Scott proposed to his girlfriend Rachel! We are absolutely beyond thrilled as we love her to death and so happy to officially welcome her to the Mullen clan. Of course we’ve thought of her as family all along anyway, but so excited to make it legal.

I hope all of you had a beautiful holiday season this year as well, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or something else entirely. Happy holidays and lots of love from our family to yours. That sounds kind of corny and like the end of a Christmas card, but I mean it!

Merry Christmas!

To all of our friends and family -- Merry Christmas! I hope you all had a blessed holiday and are enjoying time with your loved ones. We had a great day. I'll post photos and an update soon!

Insomnia

Isn't it ironic that when you need sleep the most, it eludes you? I get insomnia at various points, but mainly when I'm stressed or pregnant. I've currently now had sleeping issues nearly every night for a few months, and I'm not stressed. I am a girl who likes her sleep and functions so much better when well rested. Right now I'm wide awake and have been since before 5:00 a.m. (aka the middle of the night). Prior to that wakening, I woke up once or twice as well but was able to fall back asleep after about 10 minutes.

The children are nestled all snug in their beds with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. Kevin's alarm is going to go off in a few minutes. I think he'll be happy to find the cup of warm coffee that I'll bring to him. I think he won't even mind that it's decaf.

Fall Frenzy

I’ve become horrible at updating this blog! The busiest time for me at work is roughly September to December so that is my excuse, combined with a few other life-altering things that have consumed most of my free time. I’m going to try to make the effort to be better at my updates, weekly if not more frequently, if possible. Apologies to anyone who reads this and has given up on me… I do want to write more often and will put in a good concerted effort going forward!

So how to sum up this fall? Hmm, when I look back I’m overwhelmed by thoughts of work (and I’m determined to not write about work on this blog, mainly so it remains pleasurable to me! Don’t misread that, I do like my job, but I want to have a work/life balance which tends to be out of whack each fall and that’s when work starts to really feel like WORK to me!) Anyway, outside of work, we’ve had lots going on. Kevin and I did buy this great house which we moved into at the very tail end of August. We both had to travel a lot for work this fall (see, here I go talking about work again…) which meant that we didn’t have a lot of free time to work on house projects. And we do have plenty of projects! The house is in really good shape, but we have some wallpaper to take down, rooms to paint, a foyer floor to replace (just not our taste), a front walk to re-do, a deck to do something with, trees to take down, landscaping and gardening to do, a garage to organize…the list goes on and on! We did find time to rake and rake and rake the tons of pine needles that have fallen on our yard, driveway, and roof. Who knew we would ever rake our
roof? Or driveway? I actually think I mistakenly thought that pine trees didn’t drop their needles (doesn’t evergreen mean they stay ever green, not dropping their green needles?) Well now I’ve learned. We bagged so many bags of needles and pine cones and still have tons more that have fallen that are now hidden under several inches of snow. Oh well. Maybe it’ll nourish our yard for the spring.

Anyway, I haven’t really summarized our fall, but I’m not sure how to do so without saying that it’s been a whirlwind! One thing that I haven’t mentioned yet is that I’m pregnant! We found out in August and are completely delighted. I spent the first few months of pregnancy totally exhausted which also slowed down our unpacking and decorating process. Kevin has been great, organizing the basement and listening to cranky pregnant woman orders on what to do next since I can’t lift or move anything. I’m feeling great, especially now that I’m in my second trimester. I’m due in mid-April so will have a spring baby which will be a nice change from being hugely pregnant in the summer like I was with both Em and Zach.

Now would be a good time to insert a belly photo, but I actually don’t have any. I’ll post one another time. Trust me though when I say that I’m quite big.

Emily has adjusted quite well to college and being independent. We actually do still talk (or text or email) at least once a day (or sometimes a million times a day, especially when she wants money). I’m glad that we’re able to stay really connected since I was pretty concerned about her being so far away. She’s home now for her holiday break and it’s great having her home! She has a really short break and is actually cutting it shorter so she can visit one of her college friends on Long Island. At least I get her for a few days though.

If I don’t post this now I’m afraid I never will, but will try to post something again in the next few days!