So, here we are - Christmas week! The biggest events in life in November for us were Zelle making her 6th grade basketball team and enjoying playing on that, and Thanksgiving. We also continue to make lots of decisions about the house, and are making progress there. I have never seen a wood stair railing put in, and that was actually kind of interesting. Who knew they spent weeks bending the wood to the right curve of the staircase - at least in this case because it's a pretty tight angle.
Anyway, for Thanksgiving, we traveled down to St. George to be with the Harris side of the family. Everyone talked about the snowstorm of the century coming, so we quickly got out of Salt Lake, only to have it be a pretty normal snowstorm. Oh well, better safe than sorry! Within a couple of hours of our arrival, Mark started feeling really sick. He ended up with the flu that night, and we proceeded to pass it along to a houseful of 20+ guests :) - awesome! Luckily it was the 24 hour variety, and there was usually a sick room downstairs of movie watchers, and the well people would go out golfing or play basketball or something. Luckily I didn't get it. Lu and I were the only ones in our family not to. We decided to head home Saturday instead of Sunday because we wouldn't be so rushed that way, and there was a little snow in the forecast, so why not? It turned out Sunday was the crazy snowstorm, which no one said much about, but it was so bad, that school was cancelled Monday. That means a lot of snow! The kids were, obviously, pumped to have the unexpected extra day off of school and get to play in the snow, and it even gave us time to put out our Christmas decorations.
By this first week of December it hit me that I had a lot of Christmas things to pull off in just a few weeks, so I hit the online shopping each night for the first several nights in December. What would I do without Amazon?? I love that site! You can find just about anything and the prices are great. Best of all, I have successfully avoided malls, parking lots and lines very effectively :) Packages keep arriving on my doorstep and it's kind of a fun way to shop. Anyway, we also had Abby's birthday and she said for her birthday dinner, she wanted to go "somewhere that they sing to you." Never mind if you like the food, it's about being sung to - so Abby! So we went to Beppo's after Zelle's bball game that night and had a mostly nice family dinner, if you ignore the fact that Goosa is out of control. The next night, on Friday, we had 3 girls over for Abby's party she had planned. It consisted of crafts - making your own scarf, hair clips, and foam pictures. Then we had pizza, decorated cookies, had cocoa, peppermint ice cream and mini brownies for treat! We finished off by watching "elf," our favorite Christmas movie.
The next day, Mark and I headed out to California. We got to visit lots of our old favorite spots, eating at Zibibbo's downtown that night and doing a little shopping at Stanford Shopping Center. It's funny how many memories and which ones come back when you visit an old hometown. Just driving down Santa Cruz avenue, going to Stanford Campus, or eating at Hobee's brings back floods of random memories - I'm starting to sound really old! The next day, we visited the Woodside house, which I haven't seen in years, so it was great to see. It's amazing and we were getting really excited about being able to spend some time there. What a setting! We also got to visit with John and Gale Bunnell, which was great to check in and get caught up. Gale seems to be doing well, all things considered, although this is clearly the most difficult situation you can face. It's sad. The following day, we headed to the East Bay and to Mark's work dinner. It was a great evening to catch up with each of his partners and their wives, and to celebrate the sale of a chunk of their company.
The next day, I headed home, and just checked in with my Dr. about some bleeding I've been having over the past month, quite a bit more over the weekend, though. They had seen me 10 days ago and were very casual about my concern about it, they told me to check in at the hospital, which I did and was diagnosed with complete placenta previa. I suddenly had a lot of information about being on bed rest and all the dangers associated with this condition. It was a lot to process all at once, but I got home to the girls and Mark decided to take the late flight home that night, rather than stay out in CA for meetings until Thursday as we had planned. Since then (6 days now, but who's counting...) I have pretty much been lying down! I get up to shower, use the bathroom, and get food. It's already been an amazing experience, full of challenges and blessings. The biggest challenge is definitely Natalie - no 18 month old can understand this. That said, she's been as good as I could have imagined, playing by me while I lie down or lying next to me and reading a story or something. She lets her sisters hole her a lot more now, which is good, but yesterday at church, Bec had to bring her to Leah and Peel because she just wanted to be held. They held her and she just put her head on their shoulder the whole time and would occasionally say, "mama." SAD...A blessing has been that I divvied up daily chores - laundry, trash cans, dishes, food prep, clean up and the girls are doing pretty well with it. It's definitely not a habit to do all the extra stuff they're doing and a lot of nagging and reminding is going on, but I don't see how this can't be a good thing for them to pitch in a lot and learn some new household skills :).
Well, enough of that. I'm sure I'll have some really boring blogs forthcoming about my thoughts here on my couch spot, but for now that's it! It's harder to type lying down than I ever thought - an unexpected bummer in all this. But, we have so much to be grateful for, and I'm so thankful that I have this condition in a time and place where I can be taken care of with a great family for support and a husband with a lot of flexibility in his job. I'll check in again soon from the couch!
