Alright y’all, prepare yourselves for a whole lot of rambling. About halfway through this month I realized that I completely forgot to post my December ramblings. December was a crazy month and it just slipped my mind, so now I get to do two months worth of rambling in one monster post.

Lets start with good ‘ol December. December was both a great month and a terrible month. For time and simplicity sake I’m just going to make a list for both categories. So here are the great things…

It’s December! It’s full of holiday cheer, Christmas music,  decorations, food, and family.

It was my birthday. I turned 28 and Adam took me out for a night on the town, we did dinner and a play. I even got to dress up…that doesn’t happen very often these days.

Adam bought a new truck.

Well, not new…just new to us. We sold his VW passat AND motorcycle and bought the truck with that money. We have needed a truck for a long time, but Adam is also a gas mileage guy. His commute is about 2 hours a day so good gas mileage is a must. He bought a 2003 Mazda B2300 (its like a ford ranger), but he wanted the four-cylinder 5 speed in an extended cab. Let me tell you something, this is a weird combination and is nearly impossible to find. But eventually we did and it gets about 28 miles to the gallon. Plus he can pick up Craigslist furniture for me now AND he’s not riding a motorcycle for two hours through traffic everyday, which is a plus in any woman’s book. If  for any reason you want to know more about our vehicle history, I wrote a post about it HERE.

I got a haircut. I know this isn’t a noteworthy event for most people, but for me this only happens every year or year and a half. I had six inches cut off and that should last me until next December.

Elijah started potty training himself! He had no interest for the longest time and I wasn’t forcing it (yet). Then one day I had leftover cake from one of the eight or so family birthdays in December and I told him “this cake is for when you go poo poo on the potty”. He just looked at me confused and clarified “Go poo get cake?” ….and just like that I can’t remember the last time I changed a #2 diaper (well, on him). We’re still working on getting number 1 down, but he’s doing great and its been relatively pain-free. That’s the power of cake people.

We converted Elijahs crib into a toddler bed (we might have done this in January, I can’t remember). We had a few rough nights trying to get him to stay in his bed after we put in there at night, but we have pretty much gotten that part down. Now the trouble is that as soon as he wakes up, instead of rolling over and going back to sleep like normal he sneaks into our room. Sometimes we hear him and put him back, most of the time he slips in like a phantom in the night. Suffice it to say we have woken up to find him in some very interesting places…sleeping on the floor, in our bed, on a pile of laundry….a few nights ago we woke to find him standing next to our bed with his head on the mattress, fast asleep. Impressive.

I can’t actually remember much else, December seems so far away now. We had a great Christmas though, my boys were spoiled completely and we are very blessed to have families that we thoroughly enjoy spending time with. Plus Elijah was old enough to be excited about “Jesus’s Birthday” and I loved that.

Oh we had family pictures taken, my friend Amy took them. She did a great job despite the fact that Elijah was the grumpiest he has ever been for the entire hour or so. He had fallen asleep in the car after a failed nap time attempt earlier that day, and we had to wake him up for pictures. Moms of two year olds are groaning for me. We had to get a little creative and work around the fact that he was a crying and rolling around on the ground. Anyway, please allow me to photo bomb you…

Now the bad….

My kids were sick THE ENTIRE MONTH. If you are a parent you know that having sick kids is the worst. Literally I don’t think there was a single day in the month where both kids were healthy. Blech. Oh, and on Christmas I got (according to Adam and google) food poisoning.  It lasted less than 48 hours, but it was not fun either.

So here is my monthly video for December. Adam was proof watching this with me and commented that “you sure do make people watch a whole lot of boring stuff”.  Haha, he’s right, they aren’t exciting. I’d just like to say that I don’t make these for y’all, I make these for me so that I have all my videos condensed into a watchable format and I just happen to post them here. I know they aren’t exciting.  Truth is we really just aren’t that interesting. In fact, on New Years Eve we pulled our patio chairs to the end of the driveway and watched other peoples fireworks – cause we’re to cheap to buy our own. Then we went to bed around 10:30. So yeah, “thrilling monthly video” isn’t my middle name, lol.

And now for January.

I actually can’t think of what we did this month. I had taken notes for December and not for January…my mom brain is failing me. I do know that January is one of my favorite months. It’s the beginning of the year, everyone is pumped up with new goals and you get a fresh start. Plus Christmas is over and all your decorations are taken down and packed away. I love Christmas but I know I’m not the only one who is relieved when it’s over…the Christmas season is BUSY. January is like a nice deep breath of fresh air.

I do know that my kids have NOT been sick this entire month, thank goodness. And the January weather has been awesome, it’s been 70 and sunny a whole lot and we have been getting lots of outdoor work done. We went to the zoo a lot. Wow I’m really struggling here.

Okay, I remember what we did last week so I’ll just go from there. So I had an allergic reaction to something and it was not fun. I’m not allergic to anything that I know of, but one night last week I started to break out in a red, swollen, INSANELY itchy rash. It started on my upper arms and then over the course of a few hours spread to my entire body, from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. It lasted less than 48 hours (just like my food poisoning or whatever it was) but it was miserable, I didn’t get a wink of sleep, and Adam thankfully got to stay home from work for a day. I’m suspecting it is related to the 15 yards of (free) mulch we have been moving, but who knows. Either way we now have a giant pile of mulch in our yard that I’m afraid to touch…at least now I’m stocked up on Benadryl!

This weekend Adams Dad went into the ER with chest pain and ended up having emergency triple bypass heart surgery. He is doing great now and will be in the hospital for a while longer, but he/we are very blessed to have discovered it in time. Thank goodness for modern medicine and skilled doctors (and awesome father-in-laws).

Two days ago our internet went out. You know when your internet goes out and you look at you spouse and wonder what y’all going to do all night if you can’t watch TV shows online? We totally did that, then we worked like mad to try and fix it and didn’t succeed. The next day (yesterday) I figured out it is our router and after many attempts to fix it I had Adam pick up a new one on his way home from the hospital. We set it up and it worked….for like five minutes. So frustrating. It’s still not working… the only reason I’m able to write this is because we got a longer blue internet wire and I’m sitting on the kitchen counter with the computer on a stack of books so the cord can reach.  That is how dedicated I am to my readers. Are you feeling the love right now?

So here is my January video and my favorite pics from the last two months.

Also, I would like to announce a Valentine inspired link party that I’ll be hosting with a few other bloggers next month. This is not for your valentine crafts, oh no…this is so much better. This is the “Hey Girl” link party. Many of you are probably familiar with the “hey girl” Ryan Gosling pics that have been taking over the internet lately…..and if you’re not then here are some examples of my favorites…

For this party you are going to “Hey Girl” the man in your life. Your husband, your boyfriend…your dad, whomever you want. I’m not picky, you can hey girl your dog if you want. This is just a lighthearted, totally ridiculous, link party just for the heck of it. You don’t have to be a blogger to link up, you can upload your hey girl as a pin to pinterest and then link to that pin. The party goes live February 7th and will be open for a week, then I will feature my favorites on Valentines Day. My only request is that you get permission from your man, I don’t need any upset husbands/boyfriends/dads/brothers/sons/dogs on my hands!

 Well, that’s all for now. I know y’all are patiently waiting for me to show you my kitchen shelves all decked out, but I have got to get these computer problems figured out first. A girl can only blog on top of a kitchen countertop for so long, you know?