Barhorst Brewed: December 11 (2016)-January 29

I used to be so on top of blog updates... Ah well, life happens. Sound bite and pictures are the most important things to me right now, so I try to get those up once a month or so. I would also like to periodically note things the girls are doing, though.

If you didn't get a Christmas letter yet, it's coming. My blog is not the only place I'm behind. :) The letter is written, addressed, and (hopefully, by the time this post goes live) stamped and mailed.

Here are some long overdue updates.

Kaitlyn:
-She talks all the time now. All of what she says is understood by her. 75% of it is understood by me. 25-50% is understood by others, depending on their toddler-speak skills.
-Words worth noting: bless you, you're welcome, hey! (always in an offended what-do-you-think-you're-doing tone), I want to!, hold you, my turn
-She runs and plays and interacts with the big girls. She whines and tattles like one twice her age.
-She dislikes being told "no," and will preemptively tell me to "go play!" when she thinks I'm going to stop her from doing something fun.
-If I can catch her in the right mood, she'll make faces with me, one of us mirroring the expressions of the other one.
-She's very interested in the potty. She sits probably five times a day, but so far hasn't performed. Any attempts to catch her in the act in order to put her on the potty just result in her freezing up and then filling a diaper past capacity twenty minutes later. :/

Gretchen:
-She has two pairs of sunglasses that she likes to wear. One pair is her seeing glasses, the other is her sunglasses. Often both pairs are worn together.
-She enjoys her alone time. At least once a day I find her playing happily by herself, despite her sisters' best efforts to draw her into their games.
-She's very interested in knowing the proper names for things. Olivia will just describe things (the thing that I got for Christmas, that game where our humans run and punch), but Gretchen learns the names (iPad and Raskulls, for the above examples) and uses them.

Olivia:
-She's getting pretty good at games. She knows several card games and recently learned a real live video game in which she can almost beat her mother.
-She discovered legos. She got two lego building sets for Christmas and put them together all by herself. Bryan is very happy/proud and a little bit teary/sentimental.
-I made a number line on the floor out of masking tape and she can add using the line. We're working on subtracting, but she doesn't quite have the terminology yet.
-She is very frustrated by Gretchen's solo play. When Sophia is here it doesn't matter as much, because Sophia and Olivia can play together. At other times, though, if Gretchen isn't willing to play then I have to deal with Olivia whining about how no one will play with her.

What we've been up to:
-The cookie walk happened. I think I even mentioned it. We baked a lot of cookies, we sold a lot of cookies, we're done until next year. :)
-Orchestra took over my life for a little while there. I had four concerts in December and just finished up a January one. Now I'm back to the usual one a month.
-Christmas was busy. The whole family (plus Zach) came for a week and our house was delightfully full. The normal number of people for dinner was 18, although it fluctuated due to extra visitors that stopped by to visit everyone. One night mom and I made a quadruple batch of Mexican Chicken to feed 28 mouths.
-Sarah, Elesha, and I got together one Sunday afternoon to prep crockpot freezer meals. Each of us now has 20 crockpot meals in the freezer waiting to be used. Well, less than twenty, because we've been using them. :) It went really well, and only took us 5 hours from arrival to departure, including clean-up, dinner, and three minutes of a football game. That comes out to 15 minutes per meal, which isn't bad at all, especially considering that this was our first try. We already have ideas for improving our efficiency. We're hoping to find some lent-friendly recipes for next time.

Miscellaneous other stuff:
-We borrowed a scale to weigh boxes of books for dad, and the girls love it. Olivia is 44 pounds, and she's very disappointed that it's always the same. Gretchen weighs 35 pounds, but the scale almost always registers 33 and then 35, so she proudly proclaims that she's 3-3-5! Kaitlyn weighs 27 pounds.

Pictures:

Walking on the obstacle course line:

Someone got into the dinner leftovers. That's spaghetti that she's putting in the cup:

New winter hats, gloves, and scarves from Grandma:

"Mom, the babies are eating all the cookies!"

All the kids (and Luther) watch a movie:

A partial cousin line-up:

General hanging out:

The other cousin line-up -- my girls with Rudy:

Santa came to the Barhorst Christmas party and gave each kid a gift (not sure what happened to the picture of Kaitlyn):

A funny story about the above pictures: The Santa is just a neighbor who doesn't know any of the kids. The parents provide the gifts and he calls out names. After the first kid went up to get a present, he asked for Audrey but looked at Gretchen who was sitting in the front row. Gretchen thought this was a great deal and went up there to get a present. Over all the noise, it took me four tries to let him know that the child sitting on his lap was named Gretchen, not Audrey. She got sent back to her seat and came up to get her present later. :)

Christmas morning relaxing on the couch: