Barhorst Brewed: December 22-January 5

After much holiday traveling, we finally returned home this past Thursday. It was snowing in the morning when we left Steve and Murry's house, so the drive took longer than usual. As we drove, we debated the wisdom of leaving in time to get Bryan to work rather than having him work from home one more day. The snow continued to fall pretty heavily all day, though, so I guess it was better to drive in the morning.

Olivia's most treasured possession is now the Barney stuffed animal that her Grandma found her for Christmas. Murry apparently had to drive an hour and a half to find it (because Barney isn't really a "thing" anymore), but find it she did. It sings the "I love you" song, but it's not too obnoxious and we've convinced Olivia that Barney has to sleep, too, so it gets turned off for naps and bed. It didn't leave Olivia's side for two days after she opened it, but now she takes occasional breaks from holding Barney to do other things, too. Somehow I do not have a picture of Barney yet, but I think Jacob took some, so when I get those pictures up then you can see it.

Although Gretchen had not yet conquered forward motion when I wrote the Christmas letter, she is now beginning to look like an old pro. She doesn't crawl yet, preferring to move along like an inchworm most of the time. She does occasionally slip into an army crawl, but her favored motion is to stick her little rear up in the air and then lunge forward with her arms. When on carpet she'll get up on hands and knees and rock for a little bit before dropping to her stomach, but she's failed too many times on the hardwood to care much anymore. Olivia, though surprised at first, has been adjusting well to the necessity of keeping her toys on elevated surfaces if she doesn't want Gretchen to get them.

Olivia's surfaces are going to need to get higher soon. Gretchen is also trying to pull up on things, although she is again thwarted by the hardwood floors. It's also not really a fair fight, because her mother insists on keeping her toes warm with socks and/or sleepers. Even the feet with sticky things on the bottom are still too slippery. On the rare occasion that she does get to a standing position, Gretchen mostly balances cautiously on small portions of her feet (usually her toes, but sometimes the sides of her feet) and looks tremendously concerned at her precarious position.

Alison and I are training for another half marathon. This one is in April, so most of our training will be done when it's cold and dark outside. These two things alone would not be a huge problem (although they would make running miserable), but there's also ice to consider. Here, at least, almost all of our snow has a layer of ice underneath, making running particularly treacherous. I tried running at the local Y, but 17 laps to a mile is tedious and I worry about my knees (I had a knee injury in high school related to running lots of laps around the gym during track practice). I decided to give treadmills a try, and decided that I like them well enough to go to Planet Fitness for a quarter of the cost. Bryan decided, though, that driving to Planet Fitness and back every night was more than a little inconvenient, so he insisted that we buy a treadmill for me to use during the winter months. Hopefully this will keep me running even after this half marathon is over. :)

Our Christmas photo was (we think) the best family one of a photo shoot that happened about a month and a half ago. If you would like to see and/or order the other photos (including some individual ones) or if you'd just like to laugh at the spectacle that is Olivia hating pictures, try clicking this link. If the link doesn't work for some reason, someone please tell me so I can try to fix it!

Pictures:
Just phone pictures this week. I took my camera with us on vacation, but when I got it out, the battery was dead. In the next week or two I'll put up some of the pictures Jacob took.

Alison took a picture of William and Olivia:

Gretchen plays with her drum from Aunt Keshia:

This is how Gretchen falls asleep. Those are her feet sticking straight up in the air:

Every mother should have a little girl so that they can do this at least once:

Gretchen and a box:

A picture from when I made Spritz cookies. My vanilla cookies were all quite exciting:

Steph sent me a picture of Eli standing up. I sent this one back with the caption "It's amazing the difference three weeks makes."

It's a hassle getting two little people out in the snow. We had some warmer days between snowstorms, though, and the three of us went outside for a bit to play in the melting snow: