Notes from 2023 (Fleshing out the Christmas Letter)

Some of this may be repeat news from the posts that I have put up for this year. Things were written at different times, so this is where we see how consistent I am with my stories.

Gretchen played basketball in January. She learned a lot, but decided that basketball was not the sport for her. She tried volleyball in the fall and liked that better. I'm not sure if she liked it enough to try again next year or not.

Fifth grade offers lots of opportunities for students, and Gretchen is interested in all of them. She is in band and now lugs around a percussion kit as big as she is. They only used the xylophones for the Christmas concert, but I believe she should be starting snare drum this upcoming semester. She also signed up to be a cantor at Mass and to play in the bell choir. As far as I know she is doing both of those things and enjoying them, but I haven't actually witnessed either.

Kaitlyn played kickball this summer and enjoyed it. It was a coed 3rd to 8th grade team, very reminiscent of all my sports experiences in grade school. :) She was intimidated by the bigger kids, but improved nicely over the course of the season. She liked it enough that she will probably play again this next summer, and Olivia is talking about joining her. Kaitlyn started 3rd grade in the fall and seems to have had no trouble adjusting to real grades and more work. She is doing after school bowling once a week with her friends and has a blast. Fall soccer season went well, but halfway through Kaitlyn decided she didn't care about soccer anymore. I think this is a yearly thing that happens with soccer, so she might play again next year still.

Third grade is the year that we have our kids pick an instrument to study in private lessons. Kaitlyn, who rarely commits to anything for more than a month or so, had been telling us resolutely for about a year that she wanted her instrument to be drums. I finally gave in and started looking for a drum teacher. When I mentioned that to her, I casually asked if she was sure about drums, and she replied, "I really only want to do drums so that when I'm angry I can hit something." ... We had a longer discussion and she decided maybe voice was the way to go. So I started a new search and after several false starts I finally located a voice teacher with openings and we had a preliminary lesson to meet her and get regular lessons set up. Those start January 8.

One of my Music Together mothers this past summer is an assistant junior high cross country coach. She asked if Olivia was interested in running and Olivia gave it some consideration and decided that every day practices were a deal breaker. Unfortunately for Olivia, the older you get, the more likely you are to have every day practices. After running the Healthy Kids series this fall, she is more open to the idea, and I have been reminding her that no matter what sport she chooses she will have to practice every day. We'll see.

Matthias is jealous of everyone else's activities and wants to have his symbol on the calendar. He did a basketball skills thing in the late fall and is hoping to join basketball in January. He'd also like to do soccer and bowling and baseball. Pretty much if it's offered, he's in.

Speaking of the calendar, we have a new calendar system. I loved the giant calendar with magnets, but I wasn't keeping up with it anymore. We would go entire months without a visible calendar, and Bryan did not approve of me just putting whatever weeks were coming up next on the calendar whenever I got around to it (half of February with half of March did not go over well). I looked into options and reluctantly switched my own paper planner over to Google calendar for the express purpose of being able to automatically cast our activities to a device. I found a TV on Facebook marketplace, obtained an Amazon fire stick, and set up a system using a website called dakboard. Everyone picked an emoji to represent them on the calendar and now it's been several months and we're all used to it. The biggest downside is that there are no pictures for Theodore, so he isn't able to follow along as well as the other kids could when they were younger. Everyone else can read, so it's great. I put things into my phone, they show up on the screen, and all our calendars are synced.

I've taken up a new hobby: jigsaw puzzles. It all started in February when Keshia found a puzzle competition being put on by her chamber of commerce. She invited me to come compete with her, because this is something that she's always wanted to do and because everyone knows (somehow?) that I'm the puzzle person in the Barhorst family. I didn't think I was especially puzzle-y at the time, but it's definitely part of my personality now. Anyway, we recruited Angelina and one of Keshia's friends, went the the local competition, and won! We beat the second place team by less than a minute. Of course then we started wondering how good we really were. Turns out, we're pretty average. But this event started a whole cascade of research and websites and videos and, well, now we do puzzles. There was a virtual speed run puzzle competition through the United States Jigsaw Puzzle Association that involved doing the same puzzle over and over for progressively better times. Entries were submitted with a time lapse video. I decided to enter that, ended up having to buy a second copy of the same puzzle because I wore the first one out, and improved my time to 29:18, which was 4th overall. Then, because I was obviously following the USAJPA facebook page, we found out that there was an in person competition in Columbus during the Board Game Fair. So Keshia, Angelina, Shantelle, and I signed up for that and finished at the 50% point. Angelina and I finished similarly in pairs later in the day.

Since I made so many time lapse videos to upload, I have them available here to watch if you care: https://youtu.be/KERII050QEM Definitely don't feel obligated to care. :)

December

Highlights:

The lockers I acquired at the end of November have been cause for rearranging furniture. They went where the coat rack used to be and the coat rack moved to the back of the lockers where there once were bookshelves. The bookshelves migrated to Olivia and Kaitlyn's room to divide it in half, but then Kaitlyn missed being able to see Olivia, so one bookshelf is along the wall instead. The other two went to the boys' room and to our room. The small appliance shelf that used to be directly across from the entrance is now by the coat rack and is a baby toy shelf (side note, our baby toys are pared down to a few tasteful buckets!). The small appliances needed a shelf still, so I took one that was in our bedroom (since we had a new bookshelf now) and moved that to the kitchen. At the same time that all this was happening, Bryan decided Theodore needed a bigger dresser, so the little dresser he had been using is now a pantry dresser. Bryan is resigned to the changes and will even admit that the lockers are working beautifully, although in public he likes to complain about how his wife put lockers in the kitchen.

Somewhat related, Gretchen has her own room now. I don't remember exactly when that happened. Recently. Kaitlyn had asked for the middle room over the summer, and we cleared out the toys and set up a full size bed (one of her requests). She made it almost until we were done putting kids to bed before she bailed because she missed her sisters. Bryan and the kids had a meeting when I was gone one night and decided that people would take turns sleeping in there, but it turns out most of our kids don't like being alone. We had a couple of awful weeks where we were constantly negotiating whose turn it was to sleep in there and who would get it tomorrow and where the other boy would sleep when he was lonely because his brother was gone. Once the novelty wore off, the bed just stayed, but no one really used it. Then the middle room spent some time as an inconvenient craft room due to the bed. Finally, Gretchen asked if she could have the room. She wanted her bunk bed, though, so I moved the full size mattress to the boys' room to be their bottom bunk since they always sleep together anyway. We got Gretchen's bunk bed moved in and she's happily taken over. We still needed a smallish craft space, so Gretchen has 2/3 of the room and the closet and there are thin fabric dividers blocking her space off from the craft space.

My midlife crisis (1/3 life crisis?) is turning out to be colored hair. I have a bleached streak that I change periodically, but decided this month to go to a hair place for the first time in my life to get some more color done. It's very subtle since my hair is so dark, but now I have blue and purple hiding under the top layer of my hair.

The middle kids had a Christmas play and band concert. Matthias was a donkey, Kaitlyn was Shepherd #12, and Gretchen played xylophone (she still plays guitar, but there aren't guitars in band, so she's trying her hand at percussion). I told Bryan he's lucky because I have some sort of weird appreciation for beginning music events, so he never has to go. It's not even "That's my Barney!" appreciation. I just sit there and cheer for the tiny successes while I giggle at the fails.

We had Barhorst Family Christmas, aka Grandma's Christmas, on December 9. There was a train theme, so the kids got train conductor hats and there were boxes arranged like a train to hold the presents. After the presents were opened, the boxes held the kids. :)

Barhorst Family Christmas is not to be confused with regular old Barhorst Christmas, which is when we get together with Bryan's dad's side of the family for a big Sunday afternoon party. It's crowded and crazy (15 siblings, 49 grandchildren, and an ever growing number of great grand children will do that) and we only go sometimes. We went this year and took some photos in the cutouts.

Bryan said we should start a new tradition this year, which is an idea that I obviously did not appreciate. He decided on a hot chocolate charcuterie board, claiming I had been inspired after last Christmas and that he was just reminding me of my goals. Regardless of whose idea it was, we pulled together a hot chocolate charcuterie board this year on Christmas afternoon and it was the fanciest thing I've ever served. It was also quite delicious. I guess this tradition can stay.

My family started arriving the day after Christmas. We saw the Bossards, the Smiths, and the Columbus Fentons. When we built our basement we considered guests, but somehow we only considered one family at a time, which is not generally our reality. The Bossards took the suite, the Fentons took the music together room, and the Smiths snuggled in upstairs, 3 in Gretchen's room, 2 in the boys' room, and Gretchen in with her sisters.

Pictures:

Furniture changes:

Hair:

Enjoying the photo board:

There was Thanksgiving on the other side:

Christmas play:

Family pictures:

Hot chocolate is the best kind of charcuterie board:

Josef hides from Mia:

A very satisfying puzzle:

Kaitlyn and Lenore:

 Theodore digs dinosaurs out of eggs:

Vivian, Juliana, and Kaitlyn at church:

Elaine and Olivia at school:

Grandma's Christmas:

Bonus Post: Sound Bites 68

Theodore, in July: Dad, can we build the Christmas tree? Because I like Christmas. And can we have Christmas again?

Theodore: If there's a loud noise up in the sky and there's smoke on us, I need to get a pillow.

Gretchen: Twix breath is the one kind of breath I want to have.

Theodore: Kaitlyn cutted my nails, because they were tall. On my foots and on my arms my nails were tall.

Me: Do you think it's beautiful?

Theodore: No, because it's for a girl.

Me: How do you know it's for a girl?

Theodore: It's for Aunt Jacque, and she's a girl.

Me: What if I told you it's for Uncle Will?

Theodore: Well, Uncle Will has a mother, so it's still for a girl.

Matthias calls this symbol [ ! ] a yikes.

Theodore calls this letter [ X ] an oops.

Theodore calls tall buildings (pretty much anything bigger than a house) "scrapeskyers."

Theodore: When I was running the race that I winned, I was saying quietly to myself, "You can do this Theo."

Theodore, pointing out the door at the FedEx truck: Treasure!

Matthias: What's for dessert?

Justine: Buckeyes.

Matthias: But Buckeyes are people! We can't eat people!

Theodore: Dad, how old are you?

Bryan: 37.

Theodore: How old is mom?

Bryan: 36.

Theodore: Is 37 bigger than 36?

Bryan: Yes.

Theodore: Then 36 is skinnier than 37!

Bryan: ...Yes.