December 2020

I feel like it's been forever since I've written, but I also feel like very little has happened since my last post. Sooo.... I started my job about a month ago. So far it's been good. I work 9 hour days and get every other Friday off, which is awesome. I've always worked 9 hour days anyway, so it's nice to be recognized for it now. Everybody just works straight through lunch and leaves 9 hours after they get in. It's kind of nice because we don't lose any momentum from shutting down at lunch time, and then have to figure out what we were doing and find our place or whatever. It's tiring, but the day goes faster. I spend most of my days on the phone in virtual meetings all day long. When I get in, I'll check my calendar and maybe I'll have 3 hours of meetings or so, but by the time the day is over, I'll have spent 6-7 hours on the phone going through spreadsheets, getting trained, being pulled into last minute meetings, whatever. One kind of funny thing is that the day I got laid off from my last job, there were 3 other office people who got laid off. Two of the others now work at Northrop Grumman too. So it worked out well for 3 out of 4 of us. Tille and Hattie have started calling each other 'Sweetie Heart.'We don't know where they came up with this. I call them Sweetie Pie or other things, but they came up with Sweetie Heart on their own and they use it all the time and only for each other. It's so cute. A month or so ago I told the girls that little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Tille said, 'No, we're made of bones!' haha, very true! This year was the first year that the girls really understood Christmas. It was fun to get excited with them for all the Christmas things. They learned a few Christmas carols (Away in a Manger, Hark the Herald Angels Sing) and they'd get excited and sing along in church when those hymns came up. We went through the nativity story with them and they acted it out with their Fisher Price nativity people; on Sundays they watch Jesus movies (ldskids on youtube- so great) while I make dinner and their favorite one lately has been Samuel the Lamanite prophesying about Baby Jesus. And every time we drive to the grocery store for the past few months we drive past where the city has been setting up Christmas Village and they were so excited to get to go see it. We finally went to see it a week before Christmas. It was great. It was during the only big snow storm we've had, which made it more Christmasy (and less crowded). It was a lot of fun. Christmas morning when the girls came out of their room, they were so excited that Santa had eaten the cookies and milk they left out, and to see all the presents he'd left. It was so much fun to see Christmas with them! Blogger has changed something so that it's much harder to caption pictures. So I'm just going to tell you what they all are here: 1. The girls love helping us rake leaves. 2. Tille was posing for the camera one day while I was helping them get dressed. There was a whole series of poses ranging from grumpy to smiley, all within seconds. I went with the 'thoughtful' one. 3. This is Tille giving thumbs up. And wearing her Wizard of Oz dress. She loves this dress. We finally found the movie on tv last week and the girls loved it. 4-5. Treehouse Museum fun! We've been able to go to the Treehouse a couple times since it repopened this fall, and it's been great. Now that they have to limit how many people can go at a given time, we don't have to wait our turn at exhibits and we don't have to fight crowds of kids. It's been pretty good. 6. Tille got her first black eye. Both girls were running around like they always do and bonked their heads like they always do, but they must have hit just wrong because Tille had a shiner that lasted about a week. She was really sad, but I told her she's a real kid now. All real kids get black eyes. 7. One of the more common moods at our house. Here's Hattie taking it for a spin one morning. 8. We were playing hide and seek. I was 'it' and was counting. Hattie ran and hid in her room. Tille ran and hid behind a pillow right next to me on the couch. 9. Christmas village! 10. Hattie sometimes has a hard time falling asleep at night. One morning after both girls had woken up, Hattie needed more sleep so she passed out on the couch. Tille practiced her photography skills on the sleeping Hattie to pass the time. 11. Tille took a picture of Matt and me. I think she's pretty good. 12. Tille posing by the tree in her Christmas pjs. 13. This is the standard position at dinner time. This was even a night that I had made Tille's favorite dinner. Usually before I can even get to the table after dishing up the plates, I hear groans and moans and the girls have assumed the position. Dinner time is always a pleasure at our house. 14. On Christmas Eve Hattie wanted to dress up in her Christmas dress and have fancy 'Elsa hair' and take a picture by the tree. 15. This was after Hattie's cute photo shoot. Both girls were looking pretty cute. 16. Christmas Eve party with Matt's family. Tille got a play makeup and purse set that she was pretty happy with. 17. Christmas morning. Hattie was excited to get pictures taken. Tille wasn't. 18. Hattie got a scooter at Matt's family party. She looks like such a big kid riding it around. Even with her fuzzy unicorn slippers. 19. The girls love playing with their Frozen Lego sets. 20. Both girls got nail polish sets. We had a nail party where Hattie and Matt took turns painting each others' nails and Tille and I took turns painting each others' nails. 21. I hope this video works. We've read The Night Before Christmas to the girls just a few times for their bedtime story, and one night they started reading along with it. I was surprised how much of it they knew!