Catching Up to Christmas

Another accidental break from blogging. Life has been crazy (always?) and Milo sat on my computer and wouldn't let me type.

He's not at all sorry.

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And that is all I typed 1 full week ago. I don't know. It's like life with a full-time job, new house, tons of travel, needy bulldog, two hungry (but dieting!) and cuddly cats, three kids with very active sports and social lives, and a husband you really like and want to soak up all the 1-on-1 time with you can possibly find makes it hard to sit down alone and type out a summary of your days. Weird.

I'm going to attempt a quick round-up of some highlights from the last 3 weeks before I need to go pick up Cora from basketball practice.

First up, as described in my last post, we drove to Colorado for Thanksgiving to see my sister and her sweet family and my parents!

It was wonderful.

Tiny cousins are the very best and my kids adore them.

My tiny nieces also adore Maggie who briefly became a mountain dog and loved it very much. Mostly the part where she stole my sister's dogs' beds by the fire and delicately snored all day.

There was a lot of reading and snuggling and playing and eating. We visited the llamas down the street, took walks in the snow, cooked up a storm, and played card games at night.

We ice skated and drank hot chocolate and loved being in/near the mountains.

It's rare for us to have a traditional Thanksgiving meal as we usually do some sort of international travel Thanksgiving week, but this meal was one of the best I've ever had. Deep fried turkeys for the win forever.

It was a wonderful stay, though unfortunately Landon had an accident on the trampoline and dislocated his kneecap. It popped back into place with a scream and his knee swelled up like a basketball. This was Wednesday night, possibly the worst night to be injured since we had a 4-day holiday weekend ahead, so we had him rest, ice (with snow in gallon ziploc bags), and take pain medicine until we could get in touch with an orthopedist. His dad and uncle helped carry him around the house and the drive home was probably good for his resting and he got to an orthopedist on Monday.

One x-ray and an MRI later and the doctor determined he did not need surgery, but absolutely would if he ever did it again. It's a 3-month recovery process, which would cover his whole Districts-Regionals-State end-of-season competitive swim calendar which is devastating, especially since he has a relay with 3 graduating seniors that just broke two school recoreds at their last meet and have really great prospects at State, but he's already working on PT and taking his taping and brace-wearing pretty seriously. The doctor thinks there's a chance he could compete.

Mostly we just yell at him to take it easy(er), slow down, and not do things like try to place basketball with his sister in the garage on a rainy Sunday.

In house projects, we continue to get furniture and schedule installations and various projects. A few recent ones:

New kitchen pendants (LOVE):

Installing a light I bought for Fort Worth but never got to use and re-purposing it for a little over-the-tub glam for my nightly bath.

Lights installed in my closet so I can see my clothes on the bottom shelves:

I've been wearing my outfits Bonnie put together for me to work and for various holiday events. Like this one:

And this festive ensemble for the Women in White Collar Defense gala in DC. That is a velvet blazer that my mom picked out on our last shopping trip and I LOVE it. I kept petting my arms all night.

The gala was a wonderful night full of amazing women of the law- Loretta Lynch was MC, Sally Yates was a past honoree, and they keynote was given by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I saw so many women I've gotten to know over the last ten months of my travels and still met many more.

My firm hosted a party the next night and I got to invite lots of people and we had a LOT of fun.

My the time I went to bed at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday night/Thursday morning I was hoarse, exhausted, and so very full of extrovert battery energy. And then I got to wake up and fly home to see my favorite people and take a walk along my new favorite lake.

After that trip I actually spent 6 consecutive nights in my new house, a new record since we moved in mid-October and I don't have any trips for the rest of the month! It's glorious. Every day I make James or the kids do some other house project that didn't yet get completed and I'm sure their love for me grows with every day I'm present to remind them to do things.

But it's working- rooms are increasingly settled, art work is increasingly hung, and the house is increasingly seamlessly functional. Sometimes I just sit in my new study and marvel at how perfect this house is for us. I love it so very much.

Oh! I almost forgot my other big new love - the musical SIX! Written by two women, performed by six women, with an all-female band up on stage with them, it's a play about Henry VIII's six wives and it is WONDERFUL. I went with a friend last week and loved every second so much I got the girls hooked on the soundtrack and have now purchased tickets for this Saturday's matinee to bring them to see it! And I got a ticket for my mom as a Christmas present and she's going to drive over! I'm so excited and so are the girls- we have great seats and we all know every word to every song.

My other recent highlight was our family lock-in I instituted this past Friday-Sunday. With lives as crazy as ours, and kids as social as ours (CLAIRE), we've really had to schedule our family traditions into the calendar in advance. This Friday was tree decorating (and homemade pizza, as always), Saturday was cookie baking, and Sunday was cookie decorating. Phones were taken, Christmas music was playing, movies were watched, and the AC was turned down so Christmas pajamas could be worn without sweating. It was so fun. We also cheered on Cora at her late night basketball game, went out for tacos, hung a million things throughout the house, cleaned someone's room (CLAIRE), hung curtains, did laundry, and ate a lot of icing. Pictures to come in the next post- it was sugary and magical and everything a family Christmas lock-in should be.