December

Our December was also pretty busy. We started off unpacking in December and managed to get the Christmas stuff up the first week. I was ready to start our holidays and it was a little more fun than unpacking other boxes of our stuff. We let Baylee do most of the decorating of the tree, which partially adding to the falling of our tree. It was very bottom heavy despite our encouragement of different spots to hang ornaments. She went to plug in the lights on her own, Odin ran past it with his big self at the same time, neither of us were in the room and in a flash, down it came. I think the series of events all happening at once caused the fall. It then fell 2 more times that weekend and finally broke the stand resulting in a ghettofied fix of our stand. Our tree remained quite crooked but at least it was stable. She was VERY proud of her tree and wanted to have her picture made with it often. We had our first decent snow. Our driveway caught all the snow. I got stuck going back into the driveway after running to town. Blowing snow was not our friend. We quickly learned the value of snow fences. Cody had to rescue me...and I know he didn't hate having to move snow in the backhoe. Baylee loves to play in the snow this year, complete 180 from last year. She loves to make snow angels. Every time I turned around she was on the ground making another and another and another.
Christmas was a lot of fun. Baylee was a lot more calm and polite than I expected from a 2 year old. But it was enjoyable. I think she changed outfits about 20 times. I was ordered to wear the crown for a while. Odin paid his dues as well. (still the most patient dog EVER) We all got really nice gifts and had a great time.

December was still filled with lots of working on the house and now are only left with odds and ends....thank goodness. I finally feel like I can breathe even though I look around and see things that need to be done. Though somehow I'm having no problem looking past the painting :)

I also had an untimely battle with migraines 4 in 5 days, compared to my 2 or 3 a year. My little Baylee was the sweetest thing. Not only was she well behaved while I was hunkered in my cave of a room, she would constantly just lay by me and rub my arm while repeating in a whisper "I'm so sorry Mommy". She was then very concerned about me taking my medicine from the doctor and made sure I kept up with it. And then this sweet little girl pulled out the big guns calling me Adrien whenever her little heart desired. The attitude on this fiesty little fireball is ridiculous to put it nicely. However, after the shock of it all, I still am amused when she calls me Adrien, though I do go through the lecture of who I am to her and what she should call me then turn around and snicker to myself. It has been about a week straight since she's pulled that one out, so we are making progress!

November

The month of November was quite chaotic for us. We were extremely busy renovating the house. Most every day for the entire month was spent destroying, sanding, painting, patching or repairing almost every inch of the house. Poor Baylee was a trooper. It wasn't really a blast for us so I know she would have rather been doing anything else but watching VHS movies in a cold house with loud tools in the background. After the work, we moved in at the end of November without a kitchen due to a problem with our cabinet order being shipped...but we had propane(heat) so it was tolerated. We had a kitchen within a few weeks and were about 80% done with the house. To this day, I am not done painting trim and hope to get done soon so that I do not have to look at a paintbrush for a while.

In the midst of this, we got Odin fixed, so he had the collar of shame. That was nothing short of entertaining. Baylee found it the funniest by far and even thought the stuffed puppy needed to take a turn with the collar for a while. I walked in the room at one point and she had it on her neck running around....the things that entertain.

Our friends Sarah, Dave, Thomas and Anna invited us over for Thanksgiving since we had less than ideal circumstances for fixing a feast. It was awesome of them and we had a great time.