December 29-January 12

I already remembered some things I forgot to write about in my last post of 2019.

Bryan and I both had birthdays. We're 33, hooray for us.

A snow day happened. There was a two hour delay one Monday, and then a full snow day on Tuesday. There was much excitement, and even some playing in the snow. It did make scheduling a little inconvenient since the Christmas program that was scheduled for Tuesday night got bumped to Wednesday and that was the same day as the dance dress rehearsal. Gretchen got to perform in the lunchtime program, but not the evening one.

We took the kids to see the lights at the Toledo Zoo on December 20. Since it was cold and dark, the animals weren't much in evidence (we did see some seals in the water), but the whole zoo was festooned in sparkly Christmas lights and everyone was very excited to see the "decorations Christmas." That's Matthias's phrase. He sounds a little European putting his noun first. We combined the lights trip with a visit to Bryan's cousin and her family, staying overnight in Toledo so that the kids could play and the adults could get some euchre in.

Everyone here had various levels of a cold the whole vacation. Only three people actually threw up (Matthias on the 24th, but we're pretty sure that was mostly poor management of snot drainage, Kaitlyn on the 26th, and Walter on the 30th), but everyone was congested and coughing and germy. Justine and I enforced more frequent hand washing, did extra laundry, and sprayed disinfectant liberally after kids went to bed. Jacque and her family, to their credit, came anyway. :)

The Smiths arrived on December 31. We had a great time watching the cousins interact and playing games after the kids went to bed. They stayed one day longer than the Bossards so that they could attend the annual Messiah party (fun, as usual) and then we played a game the next day before they finally had to hit the road.

Oh! We made ice cream! I was looking up where to buy peppermint ice cream (nowhere, it turns out, if you wait until after Christmas) and stumbled across a recipe instead. I have an ice cream maker, so we bought heavy cream and half and half to try it out. Well, my ice cream maker is two single serving bowls and a small paddle. And one of the bowls might be missing most of its inner liquid that keeps the walls cold after you take it out of the freezer. So I made one bowl of ice cream before it all fell apart. Then Justine did some more research and we decided we could do it in 9x13 pans using an immersion blender. It was not available the night we originally wanted it, but we did have some delicious peppermint ice cream with hot fudge the following night. :)

School started again on the 6th. Morning comes too early these days, although I'm suffering more than the girls are right now since the Bossard kids run on an earlier time zone than the rest of this side of the country. All of the cousins were up early that second week of Christmas vacation, but I was able to sleep in a little, sequestered as I was behind a closed door on the other side of the house. Now it's back to early mornings again and I'm sad to have to adjust.

The girls have two new word "games" they like to play. One is the chant "I say ___, you say ___," except their words don't necessarily make sense together. Sometimes they're just two parts of one single syllable word. The other thing they've recently discovered is jinx. You can see how these two discoveries might work well together. The best part by far is that Matthias has picked up on what they're doing, but with zero understanding of the process. He will look around the room for inspiration, pick two random objects, and say, "Mom, you say [truck], I'll say [ball]." Dutifully following the script, I will say truck, he will say ball, and then he'll immediately yell "JINX!" This goes on for as long as the other participant will allow it.

The weather has been unseasonably warm around here recently. Christmas was probably warmer than Easter in 2019. At 59 degrees, it was definitely warmer than when we went to Chicago for Julian's baptism on May 1. It stayed in the high 40s and low 50s for a bit, dropped down to high 20s for two days, and then was back up in the 50s. We've also had a lot of rain. One of these days Ohio is going to remember it's winter and we're going to have a whole lot of ice as the temperature plummets overnight.

Theo is coordinated enough to make everything more difficult than it needs to be. He lifts his bum off the table to scoot with his legs during diaper changes. He grabs the insides of his sleeves when getting dressed. He gets his arms tangled in his car seat straps as soon as I unbuckle him. He grabs my shirt or skirt fabric (whatever is closest at the time), shoves it in his mouth, and, more often than not, spits up on it. The nuisance is real.

Bryan makes Supermario Maker 2 levels on the Nintendo Switch and uploads some of them for other people to play. Normally you just give the level code out to your friends and they try your levels when they get a chance. Or you sit them down on your couch and they play right there. But. There are also popular people who play levels for a living, streaming videos of themselves playing (and generally winning, but sometimes losing, and always with commentary). Nintendo facilitates this by allowing you to try to beat a random string of similarly difficult levels with a limited number of lives. On Tuesday, one of Bryan's levels showed up in the super expert (that's very difficult, meaning it has a low clear percentage) random string that was played by a popular youtube streamer AND someone Bryan knows saw it, recognized it as his, and told him about it. The odds against this happening are huge. Anyway, if you're interested, here's the video. Bryan's level starts just after the 7 minute mark.

Pictures:
Jacque and I take a picture with Matthias. Also, for posterity, Jacque says, "Matthias is not wearing pants in this picture." Which is absolutely true. He is wearing underwear, but had not put his pants back on:

I'm trying the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day method that Justine recommended after Jacob recommended it to her. Here's my first batch of dough right after I mixed it, and then one of the (beautifully puffed!) pitas that I baked with it that evening:

This was a staged picture, but it turned out well anyway. :) I was trying to recreate one of Olivia and Gretchen (which I would link to, but can't because there are about two years worth of posts with missing pictures :/ ...at least I have the blog books), in case I ever do another side-by-side post:

Kaitlyn wanted to know why the magnifying glass made everyone else bigger, but not her, so I took a picture of her using it to prove that she was bigger, too: