It has been a sincerely and completely crazy week. I’m not even going to try to tell all of it, that’s how insane it’s been.
Monday we wrote in our workbooks, ran Zhu-zhu & Kung Zhu hamsters all over the house, made food in the Easy Bake oven, looked up recipes to make reasonably priced food in the Easy Bake Oven, and generally stayed in our pajamas until it was long past time to be out of them.
Tuesday we did more of the same, but this time ventured out to a Post Holiday Jollies party at Double Daves with my former MOPS friends. 
The kids ran around like crazy, the adults ate far too much in an attempt to recomp some of the money we spent on food the kids weren’t eating, and we generally laughed a lot and agreed that Christmas is totally ridiculous. A good time was had by all. 🙂
Wednesday we got up and after a couple false starts drove to Ft. Worth for D’s orthopedic visit. We got completely turned around at some point (bad directions, yay) and ended up getting to our appointment with only 4 minutes to spare, which was agonizing, as we’d left more than an hour of leeway in our schedule. My friend Kay watched the younger two at the park (along with her two) while I took D in to the doctor alone. He had his xrays done, his legs measured four ways (on a block, on the xray, with a measuring tape by hand, and another way I’ve forgotten now), and we got the whole hemihypertrophy schpiel again, as the med student in with us had never heard of it. The doctor reassured us that despite D’s “deformity” (his word, not mine), he was actually in really good shape and did I read any hemihypertrophy blogs or belong to any forums? I tried not to laugh at that. (For a really long time I was one of the top three hits on Google for hemihypertrophy) I explained that I had at one time, but really it got to be too much. The doctor said that D’s leg length difference is getting worse, not better, and that we need to keep coming back at 6 month intervals to keep an eye on it to make sure it’s not damaging his pelvis or his spine or anything. When he’s around 15 (sooner, if it keeps growing too fast), they’ll have to break his growth plate on the one leg so the other can catch up. I’m hoping that the health industry comes up with a better answer by then, as that sounds incredibly painful and time consuming and what 15 year old boy wants to take a time out from life for something like that?! Aie. Anyway, after the appointment, we went back to Kay’s parents (now Kays home as well, but they have two houses at the moment and it gets confusing) house and took the kids on an adventure and let the play games and fed them multi-colored pancakes for dinner. I think Kay has better photos than I do, but I will post those when I see her next. 
Thursday I spent in pain because of all the driving I’ve been doing lately. Yay, pain. D and B each had friends over to play video games. G’s friends couldn’t make it, due to illness (argh), but B & his friend let him play Mario Kart & Wii Music with them, so he was pretty happy anyway.
New Year’s Eve day we spent running errands with Nick. We got fireworks for a future display (once the burn ban is over, I’ve been chanting this for months) and other stuff that required a trip out towards Nick’s parents house. Hung out there for a while with his dad. We had a big surprise over something that I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about yet, nothing family related, exactly, but something big we’re still talking over and making decisions about.
For the evening festivities, Nick made a whole lot of German food (sauerbrauten, red cabbage and apples, caramelized onions, etc) and
I made a lot of decorations that said 2011 and poppers for the kids. 
My parents came over to eat and celebrate.
The kids got to do both my kind of poppers (with candy inside) and the more explosive kind (confetti explosion) and smoke bombs and sparklers. We had a bit of dancing in the living room and then an early countdown to the new year for the kids. Actually, for everyone. 
My parents left right after that and Nick and I decided we’d had enough for the day and went to bed, too. 🙂
New Years Day was a Saturday and therefore a church day, but therein lies the madness, so we ended up going to services at two different churches. Like I said, not something I’m up for discussing at the moment, but it did take up all the day and into the evening. We had dinner at my parents house here in town, with the two D’s making us the Crazy Cantina Chili from the original Star Wars Cookbook. It turned out all right, kind of like Taco Soup, but without the meat (my dad threw some in at the end to fill it out a bit).
Yesterday we took the kids out for basketball practice, but there weren’t many kids there. They had fun, though.
We spent the afternoon at home doing necessary cleaning type stuff. I set up a Kids Command Center in their hallway with all their important info like calendars, lunch menus, emergency numbers, chore lists with dry erase markers, etc. I’ll do a post about that and the art we made today as well sometime tomorrow.
Anyway, hope everyone is having a very pleasant new year so far. 🙂
Lisa Holcomb 