Our Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (or happy spring, depending on when you get around to reading this)!  We hope that 2013 has been a blessed year for you - we can definitely say that we have been graced with yet another year of life for which we are thankful.

Family happenings:
- Chris turned 30 in February!
- In March, Parker received fabulous news and was taken off of his prophylactic antibiotics that he had been taking since birth!
- Parker and Reagan turned 2 in April and had a Circus-themed party at the park
(and those circus decorations were later used for their toddler room)
- Over the summer, P & R moved into big kid beds. And we all survived. (it was a close call ...)
- Mallory turned 30 in July! (Yes, Chris will always be older than me!)
- P & R started school in August, and they are learning some amazing things
- In September and October, Mallory forgot she had a blog and posted next to nothing.  So, here are some pictures from the fall to catch you up:

Family outing to Kinsey Family Farm

Helping daddy carve the pumpkin

Attempting to break into our house with glowsticks ... 

Pebbles & Bamm Bamm going trick-or-treating!

Halloween in our neighborhood is way too much fun!

So that brings us to November, right?  I can't remember much of November, either ... which reminds me that I made a list of things that I never want to forget about my children.  Oh, and we had a great (and chilly!) Thanksgiving here in Atlanta with Chris' family!

My company, Metro Music Therapy, has had a wonderful year with 6 music therapists on staff.  We are working with new facilities and clients every month, and we are still loving the fact that we get to bring music therapy to the city of Atlanta every day.  I was honored to be a presenter and a panelist at the National Conference of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) in Jacksonville, FL, this year - definitely one of the highlights of my music therapy career thus far!

Chris is still working for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and just finished his 4th semester of graduate school with the Georgia State Executive MBA Program.  He only has 2 semesters to go until graduation!  We were all feeling the "end of the semester crunch" over the past few weeks as he was gone from home a lot to study, finish projects and take his exams, but he now has a lengthy break until the next semester starts up again in mid-January (cue the Hallelujah Chorus)!

Chris and I just celebrated our nine year wedding anniversary on December 17th (where has the time gone?!).  We have had a lot happen in the past nine years and we are so grateful for what we have together.

Here in the Even household, we are all getting in to the Christmas spirit, we are singing Jingle Bells ad nauseam, and we are all ready to celebrate the birth of our Jesus!  We pray you have a Merry Christmas with your family and friends.  We look forward to receiving your cards so we can see what you are up to, as well!

With Love,

Christopher, Mallory, Parker, Reagan, & Moses (yes, he still loves us enough to stick around, see?)

If you need a laugh ...

... please enjoy one at the expense of the Even family.

@ 3:30 this fine morning ...
Reagan: "MOOOOOOOMMMMY!!"
Me: Oh geez, this is not a drill.
{Commence the throwing up}
Me: "CHRIS! A TRASH CAN NOOOOOW!" (if you know Chris, you know it was a miracle he woke up and heard me)
Chris then flips on the light to the kids' room which provides Parker with a very rude awakening and makes the total sum of people asleep in the Even household: 1 (if Moses counts).

3:35am - 6:30am ...
- Bathing Reagan
- Rinsing and then laundering 10 loads of blankets, comforters, sheets, mattress pads, extra-layer-of-protection mattress pads, pajamas, lovies; scrubbing carpet.
- Washing hands until they cracked
- Cleaning off the spare bed (which was covered in Christmas presents that still need wrapping) so that the kids could sleep in that bed while I was fixing their room all night/day
- Calming kids down
- Answering questions like, "Mommy, what is on my bed? What did Reagy do? What's that called on my bed? Can we go downstairs? Is it dark out?"
- Putting kids in spare bed to sleep, but had to lay down with them, because while we have a camera for our monitor in that room, I cannot find the handheld portion of the monitor because Reagan was playing with it a week and a half ago....
- At 6:15, I finally moved back into our bed.
- At 6:18, Chris' alarm went off.  SON. OF. A. NUTCRACKER. 

I don't remember 6:20-7:30 so I guess I fell asleep...

7:30am ...
I heard my kids in the spare room laughing it up and having a ball.  I go in to check on them, and they are surrounded by Lindt Chocolates - some still in wrappers, some still in the bag, a lot of wrappers in the trash can (at least they threw them away), and a lot of chocolate in their mouths.

Good, because I think most medical professionals recommend chocolate 4 HOURS AFTER THROWING UP.

Why were the chocolates accessible?  They were supposed to be a gift for one of their teachers, and while cleaning all of the gifts off of the bed at 4:00am I didn't think to move them to a higher shelf, because I didn't think it would be a problem.  Rookie.

We made it through the morning with a lot of coffee and a lot of Polar Express-ing:

and then they went down for their nap in the spare bed again (because I am still doing laundry) around noon, finally falling asleep around 1:00pm.  I took the chance to lay in my bed for a little, hoping they would sleep for a few hours.  NOPE.  Up at 2:00, and when I went to get them from the spare room, they had broken into one of my craft boxes and had craft glue EVERYWHERE.  Hands, feet, the dry-clean only comforter, the carpeting, their hair, etc.  Reagan still has glue stuck to the top of her foot because she wont let me peel it off.  "It hurts, mommy."  It hurts me, too, honey.

We made it through the afternoon with more caffeinated beverages and more Polar Express with a little Thomas thrown in there.  I am now making Reagan rice for dinner, will happily bathe their sweet little selves and throw them into their clean beds ... OH WAIT.  Their room still looks like this:

Everyone, for the sake of my sanity, PLEASE pray that Parker, Chris and I stay healthy.  Please.
PS - ask me if I have even brushed my teeth today ... and then ask me if I care.

Jangle Bells

We definitely have the Christmas spirit in the Even household!  Parker and Reagan have been talking about baby Jesus and Santa for weeks now (not necessarily in the same conversations - but sometimes), we have an Elf on the Shelf thanks to Aunt Erica and Uncle Scott, we have our Christmas tree up and decorated haphazardly (and we "redecorate" it a few times a day), we watch The Polar Express 5 times a day, and we have been singing, "Jingle Bells" until we are blue in the face.  And then we sing it 10 more times.  Reagan has been picking up a southern accent somewhere - not sure where - and she says it more like, "Jangle Bells."  It's worth a quick listen.  I promise it's fun for all ages.

Yes, Christmas is imminent!  And we are having a blast celebrating the season with two 2-year-olds!  I am learning to be very sneaky while shopping with the kids, and a Target employee even helped me hide some gifts by scanning them at her feet and then double bagging them on the floor behind the register so P & R couldn't see what she was doing.  Best. Lady. Ever.

The kids keep telling me what they want Santa to bring them - and after one particular phone call to my mother-in-law that had me spelling out a lot of words (aforementioned sneakiness), Parker said, "Was that Santa, mommy?"

Mmm, "Yes; yes it was."

We ordered our Christmas cards from my talented sister, Selena Fettig, owner of BeanPress Modern Digital Stationery Design and I am IN LOVE WITH THEM.  I have been saving one of our Christmas card for the last few years to put in an album, and I can't wait to add this one to our "album." (air quotes because who knows if I will ever make one).  But instead of typing, printing and mailing out a letter with our cards this year, I had Selena put our blog web address on the back of the card so you people can just come to this here blog and read the letter at your leisure!  When you get 10 Christmas cards with letters in them that you don't have time to read right away every day for the rest of this year, you'll thank me.  So, you're welcome.  {it'll be the next post, by the way}

Ok, I have to go work on a million things, some of which include wrapping my nephews' Christmas presents so that my children will stop trying to play with them.  I will leave you with pictures of our Christmas happenings from the past few weeks! :)

Our Elf that Parker and Reagan affectionately named, "Boy." :)

Watching Polar Express

Our cozy and well-loved little tree.

Looking at the rotating Christmas tree in the Pottery Barn window ....

... And then a nice sales lady invited us to sit INSIDE the window display for a cute photo op.
She was obviously out of her mind.

Parker clapping for himself after hanging an ornament.

Reagan and daddy getting ready to put the star on top.

(Note: I wanted a more vintage-looking star to match my house but bought the $5 light-up star for the kids. Sucker.)

Helping mommy and daddy with the tree.

 

We hope you have a wonderful time preparing your hearts and home for Christmas!