It's the most wonderful time of the year...so I've been hearing on the continuous Christmas music radio station since before Thanksgiving! I love that it's December, but that means I'm a few months behind on updating our blog. I'll just hit on a few of the high-lights.
The first weekend in October I drove back to Indiana for our annual Ya Ya get-a-way. We had a wonderful girls weekend in Brown County, shopping, hanging out in the cabin, horse back riding, talking around the camp fire. I am grateful for dear friends and a loving husband who lets me get away once in a while!
The next weekend, Barr's band had a gig at the Scotts party held at the zoo. It was a perfect night to dance around outside to the music, even if our family was the only one dancing! A few members of the audience probably mistook us for the monkey exhibit, but I don't work with these people, so I don't care if they think we are crazy! Lately the band has been working on some Christmas music to play at the Holiday party. I think the drummer may even come out from behind the drums and sing a little.
Ben went on the 6th grade Outdoor Adventure camp.
I would love to tell you about it, but the only information I got out of him was "It was good", a typical 11-year-old boy answer. Something he will talk about all day long is music. It's funny how he knows more about bands in the 80's than I do. He's also really gotten into writing music. He writes a few songs a week. They are mostly just lyrics, but some he has added a guitar part. I am impressed at how serious the songs are, very well thought out. I see this passion only growing as he gets better at the guitar. Barr might soon have to add him to the band!
Brittany finally had her dream come true of being the owner of a guinea pig. We were a little nervous at how Max would react to it after hearing horror stories of dogs eating pet hamsters. Luckily, Max loves him. He gives him more attention than Brittany does! Puddy is very cute and well behaved, but poops more than I think is humanly possible...then again he's not human. Brittany is still swimming a lot. I can't imagine swimming for 90 minutes like they do at practice. I'm glad it's her and not me!
Brigham's happiest day of the year came on November 23rd when the elves arrived back from the North Pole. He has carried his elf, Holly, around with him ever since. The elves brought their baby sister, Mary, for Brooke this year.
After a few years of not wearing any corrective lenses, Brooke got glasses again. Her prescription isn't too bad, but she has a stigmatism in both eyes that need to be corrected. She's doing pretty good at keeping them on, although once in a while we see them fly across the kitchen table. We're hoping they will help with her balance. Her talking is really coming along. She is starting to say 2 words together, but only with prompting.
She still stops everyone we see and greets them with a big smile and a loud "hi". It took 5 minutes at each door trick-or-treating because she would stand there waving and saying "hi" over and over again. Then as Barr would be dragging her down the driveways she would be turning around to wave and say "bye, bye". Yesterday we saw a man walking 2 dogs and I said, "Brooke, look at the dogs." She totally suprised me by saying, "two dogs". I almost started to cry! That was the first time she counted something on her own and then verbalized it. Not only that, she said both words together. I wanted to buy her a frosty!
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving down in Cincinnati.
Three of my siblings came with their families making 26 people in all so we had 2 house fulls! One of my favorite things to do is the early morning black Friday shopping with my sisters. This was the first year there were Thanksgiving morning sales too, so we had 2 early mornings in a row. The deals weren't that great this year, but it was still fun to be out at 4:00 with all the other crazies! By Friday afternoon I was pretty wasted, but the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular woke me up.
It was a great way to start our Christmas holiday and we all enjoyed it even though Ben won't admit it! I was happy that even with all the Santa and reindeer hoopla, they also represented the birth of the Savior and the visit from the wise men. It set a nice tone for our nephew, Adam's, baptism that evening.
Saturday afternoon we drove my grandfather back to his home in Danville, Indiana. It was nice that he was willing to spend Thanksgiving with all the chaos of great-grandchildren! We took advantage of being close to Fishers so visited with our friends, the Andersen's and the Field's there that night. We had to cut our trip short because Brittany was coughing all night and feeling sick in the morning.
Thankfully the throwing up didn't start until an hour after we got home. I've had someone home sick every day this week. That's why it's taken me until Thursday to get this update written!
Stay tuned for our Christmas blog edition....
Love
The Hill's
