Today started off mildly crazy.

And by mildly I mean that at one AM, Josie was stumbling around the house, with her eyes sealed shut from pinkeye gunk, with brownish yellow discharge streaming down her cheeks, and after soaking her face with a warm washcloth she could only open her eyes in slits so we couldn’t get the (worthless) medicated drops she had been taking for 4 days prior even into her eyeballs. So off went Joss and Mom to the ER (sorry, Lauren and Adam—I know how much you guys cringe when moms take in non-emergency case kids into the ER!), where they gave her a much stronger eye drop prescription. Whew. Back home by 3 AM.

Nick was an absolute prince and let me sleep in until 9, taking Brynn to school, so high five for husbands who step up!

We had a house showing at 12:30, so it was finish laundry-change kitty litter-clean fish bowl-hide random crap under pillows for the next 3 hours! Selling a house sucks. We are trying to look at it like a jaded high school girl, all “Love is like a butterfly, it lands on you when you least expect it”…except applying that to selling our house. We’re *trying* not to go crazy and force it to sell fast. We really just want to be closer to the kids’ school, our house is fine–small, but fine, so there’s no hurry to sell. But still. My hopes are up. Meh.

Brightside? The house looks awesome. Plus we put all of our decorations up last night…boo-yah!

our elf, Dinglebert, has a knack for stealing the cherub’s horn 😉

Our family in 2006—I lovingly printed and cut out this tiny picture of us and proudly hung our first Christmas as a married couple on that tree <3

3 years and two more kids later, this lovely family has done an *excellent* job of, erm, holding our spot until I find one gosh darn second to lovingly print/cut/dig up a family picture from 2009. Eep.

Thank you, Mom, for being such an avid ornament collector for us when we were young…I love that I have *my* baby’s first Christmas ornament 🙂

Aw. Love this kitty 🙂

A cluster-erm-mess of ornaments 🙂 Note on the right hand side, down and right from the tennis playing moose, another fake picture lurking inside what *should* be Nicholas’ first Christmas ornament. Double eep.

This baby is biding it’s time. Christmas Eve it’s the star of the show…we light it and by the light of those candles, Nick reads the Christmas story from the Bible…my favorite Christmas tradition!

Love this. Christmas sleighs me. Budum-ching! 😉

Note: cherub looks stupid missing his horn. Baaaaad, Dinglebert!

AND, “Merry Christmas” banner from this talented lady: http://www.etsy.com/shop/thegirlsmom

Purdy.

Back to todaaayyyy…

So by 4:00, Brynn was home from school (nice one hour round trip drive for this Mama), it was SEVENTY-ONE degrees out. Dude. Can we talk about that?!?!?! I feel like this is the fifth time I’ve told the kids, “GET OFF THE COMPUTER AND GET OUTSIIIIIIIIIIDE! You won’t have a nice day like this for MONTHS!” and they oblige me, but now they grumble, “you told us LAST week it was the last warm day…we’re ready to hibernate.” I’m taking every. second. I can to get them outside before winter finally arrives. Outside that doesn’t involve layers of fleece and puffy coats, snot trails, chapped cheeks, numb fingers and tracking melted snow all through the house.

They procrastinated today for a bit, and insisted that they needed to play with a snowglobe for the first time, ever…

After they took off outside, I peeked in on Joss while she was napping, and hallelujah! her eyes were clear (ish) while she slept! This is the first sleep she’s gotten in two days where thick crust didn’t form on her eyes and glue her eyelids shut! Hooray for killer, stinging, burning eye drops that WORK!

No, this face is not from the pinkeye. This is her honest to God, “I’m sleeping and you are bothering me so I’m going back to sleep” face.

See? Back to sleep.

So now I get to the good part of the day. The part of the day I hinted at on Instagram …it was such a magical evening, and the cherry on top was that I actually remembered to record video of it. I don’t know if any of you are like me, where sometimes I have mini-panic attacks at night when I realize how FEW home movies I’ve made of the kids. I am so wrapped up in taking pictures that I have sorely neglected the video aspect of capturing these moments. Tonight I remembered and I’m so glad I did. I always worried mostly about saving/storing the videos, so I decided for us the best way would be to buy external hard drives *just* for family videos, label them, and keep them that way! So far, so good!

Of course I had to take some photos, too…my camera just feels like a part of me sometime, and I feel like while videos are amazing to see your kids and how they sounded and moved…for me, photographs really remind me how those moments felt.