Major hodgepodge. Don't let your head explode while reading this post. Stay with me.

Let me tell you all of the things I've been meaning to blog about over the last couple of weeks:

-Thanksgiving

-The birth of my beautiful niece Eve Sophia

-The one year anniversary of my brother Jesse's death

-My jaunt to Idaho

-Our trip to Southern Cali

-The NorthStar Christmas Party

-Our 4 year anniversary

-And as always, the general adorableness of my children and in-love-ness of my husband and me.

Can you see why I've been avoiding you? Can you see why I have anxiety every time I even see a computer? Can you see why I've been wetting the bed regularly in the middle of the night and waking up in cold sweats?!? What makes it worse is that we are on a major Cinderella kick at our house and I've had Bippity Boppity Boo in my head for 3.5 days straight now. I fall asleep to salikadoola michikaboolah bippity boppity boo and wake up to it as well. Not that it has anything to do with my being an overwhelmed blogger but it would probably just make everything more annoying.

So what I'm gonna do is touch briefly on some of these items, spend as much time as I deem fit, and perhaps expound more on others. Are you following me? Or should I start from the beginning?

Okay, Thanksgiving. It was a truly wonderful day. None of my siblings could travel this year and it was Jason's off year for his siblings, so it was a small gathering. And by small, I mean less people but just as much food, which actually means, a lot more food. Still eating leftovers.

My parents came down from Idaho Falls, Cathy (Jason's sis) came in from Seattle, and we went to Jason's parents house for the decadence. Take my childhood favorite holiday dishes and add my mother in law's homemade rolls and Frozen custard on top of basically everything and you get a very, very slap-happy sleep-inducing paradise for me.

Next: Vanessa had her baby girl! And wow, it's quite a story. Let's just say she was not planning on having a natural birth but labored just a little too long at home before going in to be epi-eligible. My mom called me and yelled into the phone, "She's too late for any medicine! She's pushing now!" to which I replied, "Whaaaaaaat?!??!" and immediately burst into tears. Not out of joy. Out of sheer panic and horror for my sissy. But it turns out, our bodies really are equipped to have babies! Even without the wonders of modern medicine. For the full scoop, go here.

Can you believe how beautiful itty bitty 6 lb 7 oz Eve Sophia is?? And if the rumors are true, she's an absolute angel babe. Look at her, with her crumpled wee little mitten covered fists and her big pouty lips! Ahhh I will go get mahself pregnant again right away if I keep looking at this picture. She looks exactly like her mama here. But for sanity's sake, I must move on.

Since my mom was in Chicago to be with Nessa for the welcoming of the newbie, my poor, poor pa was left without her in Idaho Falls. So I loaded up the girls and ventured up for a few days so he wouldn't be so lonely! December 1st was the one year mark of when Jesse passed away. And I will write some thoughts in another post when I have the energy to be more profound about that. But my dad and I decided that the anniversary wasn't going to be a dark and sad day. We grieve Jesse's death and miss him every day, some days it's harder than others, so the 1 year mark shouldn't be any different. Just a day to be grateful for what we have and to hold our loved ones close. Things we should be striving for every other day, too. It's always nice to spend a few days at home. And with my cousin Mitzi, her kids, and my uncle Brent staying up there for a bit, it turned out to be quite a party!

Next on the agenda! We went to Southern California with the NorthStar alarm managers for a leadership training and hit up Disneyland while we were at it. Oh my goodness, Disneyland is the CUTEST place on earth around Christmas time! And there were NO lines. Seriously we walked right on to every ride. You gotta hit at the right time, right before the holiday rush. Oh, and you gotta create a diversion and cut everyone else in line too, a lot.

Lucy was so excited to meet Minnie and Micky and the princesses that she completely choked when it actually took place. And she may or may not have given each of them the bird while we walked away.

This is as close as she got to most of them:

Notice mom trying to shove her over closer to Cinderella. She fought it pretty hard. Which as her mother, I have to appreciate. Maybe that Cinderella is a real pervert, and Lucy is just following her gut instinct. She probably is.

Love these two faces. A lot.

Lucy has a real love for ranch dressing. Wants to just lap it up like a little puppy dog! We just think it's so adorable! I just can't stop taking pictures when she does it! She actually has the same relationship with blue cheese dressing and sour cream.

Just kidding. We think it's disgusting. And we try to stop it from happening. But what do you do?

For some reason Luc opted for the cross-eyed-stare-at-mom-with-grease-and-ranch-dressing on-my-chin-pose for this pic. She's just so artistic and creative.

Again, leaning as far away as possible from Goofy. Love it.:)

One of my favorite parts of the day was looking in the mirror and seeing my alfalfa cowlick sticking up in the back that nobody told me about. I probably had a huge piece of spinach in my front teeth and toilet paper hanging out of my pants too.

Loved these teacups.

And she hated Santa as well. She wanted nothing to do with him. Here we pride ourselves on having this spunky outgoing girl. She did manage to yell, "Baby doll!" in his face before getting as far away from him as possible.

So fun! But our whole family got sinus colds while out so we were grateful to get home. Who takes care of mom when the whole family gets sick? Huh??

Next! The NorthStar Christmas Party was just last night... You can see Jason is still suffering from his head cold but it's unfortunately moved to the outter extremities.

Our happy holiday-lovin' family:

This was the general reaction that Mr. Grinch got from children:

But not our girls. Scarlett was lunging toward him all night long, whenever she could.

And Lucy, our sweet little Cindy lou-who, couldn't get enough of him either... When she first saw him we were walking toward him outside, and the only thing she said was, "uh-oh" and stared at him. But once he talked to her and she knew who he was, she kept happily saying, "My daddy! Mean wolf!"

Hank didn't win the ugly sweater contest, but he did get major points for creativity. (Yes, this is the infamous fighter, Hank the Vice-Weiss. I think he'll probably wear that sweater for his next fight. It would probably confuse his opponent, not knowing where to swing to hit him in the face. Plus, I'm thinking anyone would probably hate to get their rear kicked by a guy in any kind of holiday sweater, so it would be that much more humiliating, if that's what you're going for.)

These two together are TROUBLE. Too cute for their own good. I just sounded like my grandma.

Afton has mastered her natural smile for pictures. So effortless.

Yeah... she knew who he was. I love this pic. Pretty sweet, knowing that Lucy's love for her dad has nothing to do with his rugged good looks. Nice to know she wouldn't pack up her tiny pink roller suitcase and leave home if he should ever let himself go, which she's threatened to do before for lesser offenses.

Yesterday was also our 4 year anniversary, and we are still pinning down a day next week to celebrate it together. It's amazing how much two lives can change in such a relatively short amount of time. I loved this moment:

And thinking about this day makes me feel all warm and mushy and lovesick inside. Like I could sing in a musical or go fling myself on my bed with a flower plucking off the petals one by one all while saying he loves me he loves me not. And I also look at it and feel like we look SO YOUNG here. Like it was much much longer than 4 years ago. It's strange. How much do two babies age you in 4 years? Does anyone know the equation? Something like dog years, right? So how much older are we actually now? Don't you worry though, I still got it. Just sayin'. Anyway, Jason you know you are my absolute favorite. In the whole wide world. I do know that I'm the luckiest girl.

Oh, and P.S. I don't feel like this post is just quite long enough yet so I wanted to inform you that we are now officially only changing the diapers of one wee lass at our house. And that's me. Just kidding. Seriously though, it's been a pretty easy and effortless potty training road with Lucy, and I would have been smug about it had she not pooped her pants while we were in Nordstrom yesterday. So maybe it's never a real destination, always a journey. Thanks for reading.