What it means to 'over do it'

I generally know that I have the personality that LOVES to overdo events.  So I should not be surprised that the holidays were for us a smorgasbord (thank you Charlotte's Web for teaching me that word) that left me (and my hubby) feeling over extended and ready to hibernate.

But it was wonderful too.

Want to know what we were up to?

Thanksgiving was so perfect, with a family meal where we all shared the load, and the kiddos and I made cornucopias for treats at each place setting.

You fill the bottom of a waffle cone with water, and let it sit in the cup for about 5 seconds.

Thank your helper for doing them fast.

Then set them on a plate to microwave for 30 seconds (which makes them pliable)

And finally have your 3rd helper bend the tail up so they look like a real cornucopia.

Then put them on a pan and let them bake

In the end we dipped the rim in chocolate and filled them with Runts candies.  It was cute.

This happened, and for the first time I was successful at baking a juicy turkey.  It was like a miracle.  Thank you allrecipies.

We went to a celebration with cousins where their neighbors had a lighting ceremony and open house.  It's pretty serious.  We also got to celebrate our grandpa's birthday!

Next came setting up the Christmas tree, and the tradition we have of all the kids getting under it to look up at the lights.  Our tree looks smaller and smaller with these kids growing up!

Then decorating gingerbread houses early in December.  We had a competition between the boys and I and Hannah with Dad.  It was surprisingly fun and creative!

This is the boys and my work.  Basically it was a trick of keeping the thing standing as we weighted it down.

This is Hannah and Dan's.  It was brilliant, and reinforced from the inside.  Of course.

The kids couldn't have been more pleased, and the whole thing was eaten within 3 days.

I think they won the contest, but they took like 45 minutes longer, too.  So we win for speed. ;)

Then the school plays came along, and the sing along.  Our kids were darling, if I do say so myself.  So were their classmates!

Then came this party, at my moms.  My sweet sis is in the middle of ratting out her husbands most embarrassing quirks.  It was pretty good.  We laughed hard.

My sweetheart, who is still recovering from his surgery 2 weeks earlier.  He's such a good sport.

Then came this fun party, which was really great, but involved traveling without my honey (which was really undesirable) because he couldn't travel for 5 hours in the car.  Poor guy.  I feel so sheepish for abandoning him for the 4 days.  

There were also 2 other Christmas parties scrambled in the mix of things, and a very cute, new to us Christmas Elf named Chris Happy that visited daily.  

You can imagine my stress is coming to a head.  Sick.  Sorry about the imagery.

Then we had Christmas, which was glorious and full of family and wonderful.  But the day before we also found out about this:

Though it says it belongs to Aagaro and Melendez, it actually ours.  And here we go.  We're both very happy about having another babe, we meant to.  But somehow between the combination of the holiday stress and the morning sickness, and the anticipation of becoming a mom of 5 I sprung a gasket.  Its been going for a while as I slowly come back to my faith and hopeful thoughts about holding that sweet babe in my arms, so I don't even want to go into detail, but I've been especially grateful to my wonderful family and in-laws who have helped me daily.  I'm also really grateful for Anxiety medicine and exercise.  Especially for my Hubbin.  He's so incredible and patient and he's never complained it's too much.

So I've learned my lesson about holiday partying, and I'm super thankful for how it's all rounding out.