It was the blergest times, it was the blargest times.

Daria commented on my last post with "do you ever get mad" which made me laugh out loud.  Yes I do get mad.

I haven't posted in the last few days because now I am finally experiencing the standard winter "everything sucks".

Since getting back from holiday I feel exhausted, behind on everything, and generally joyless.  Kids have had some bad days and I have had moments where I wish the floor would swallow me alive and then at least I wouldn't have to be standing in IKEA while Aubrey screams on the floor and Clara runs to the exit.

This is partially my fault too... on the day after we got back Andy went for an all day bike ride (well, to 3pm).  The twins only napped an hour in that time.  The kids were generally fractious.  I think I used all the energy needed for the second week of school holidays in that 7 hour chunk of time and now I have nothing left.

That afternoon I took the big kids to a local toy store to spend their £30 gift cards.  It was super cute and fun but we were late and a bit rushed.  While there I saw another family of four, who I would guess were ranged in age from 12 to 7, possibly with twins as well.  They were having a nice time and the mom looked super calm and while it gave me hope it also made me want to just crawl in a hole and wait 5 years until maybe I won't be the chaos family.

I usually love the age of 2 because toddlers become little people with goals and they can sometimes be reasoned with and they get more independent and it's great.  but two two year olds is, like all double things, just a lot.  I feel like we are now getting to a point where I can do less than I could before... and I could barely do anything before.  I used to load them up and go to sainsburys, but last time Clara took down a rack of boots while Aubrey rearranged the pyjama display and the big kids asked for grapes and mango and then no one would get in the cart and it was just... impossible.

Sometimes I'm having impossible times and people offer me help (like getting me a twin trolly at the shop) and now I mostly find myself having the kid of impossible times where everyone steps away (like when Aubrey laid on the floor of the IKEA line and wouldn't move towards check out and instead everyone went around me so I was further in the back of the checkout queue than I started)

Another thing - and maybe this is all because of the awful IKEA trip (which Andy was there for as well, FYI, and it wasn't as scarring for him) is that I don't really get the chance to think about anything if I am out with the kids.  We bought Skadis Pegboards (I have dreamed of owning one of these for years!) and because I can't think I just grabbed a million accessories and then we ended up spending £200 at IKEA because I had no ability to think about what we needed or the price or anything.  This is why I do all my shopping online, but online shopping requires time, and I got up at 6am to try and order a lampshade and instead I wrote a blog and now I can hear a toddler awake.

And I will caveat that all of this is fine because I am literally complaining about buying pegboards and lots of people have real problems and real troubles that are not an inability to pick out a light fixture.

So yes, I do get mad.  Sometimes at the kids (we have family visiting this week and the big kids spent 20 minutes shouting at each other in the car in front of the guests and so I took away the presents the guests had gotten them and I am still mad about it).  Sometimes at the twins (why are they awake at 6:30???!) and often at everything at once because this wasn't really what I signed up for (not that anyone signs up for what parenting is).  

And yes, I'm relying on this post not existing when my kids are old enough to read.

Christmas Recap 2025 - a not bad Christmas!

Happy post Christmas time everyone!

We have had a lot of hard Christmases in a row.  Not for any terrible life reasons, and this is going to sound rather counterintuitive, but it's mainly because we have had a lot of small babies a lot of years in a row.  Let's just recap:

Christmas Memory:

2018 - Ezra was 10 weeks old. On the way to Christmas dinner with husband's family we were informed that 5 year old cousin was attending with an active hand foot and mouth infection.  We waved through the window and headed home to eat leftover and questionably old fish pie.

2019 - Ezra was just over 1 year old.  I don't really remember this Christmas.  There are a lot of videos from around 5am where he's wandering around the house.  He didn't sleep well.

2020 - Covid Christmas in Wales.  We were under lockdown, and then extra big lockdown for November, and then the government said we were going to be allowed to mix with our families as long as we stayed at home for the start of the month.  Then they closed all the stores and then 2 days before Christmas the government said we weren't allowed to mix houses afterall and then we had a super awkward at home christmas.  Oh, and I had a 3 month old.

2021 - This one was kind of fun actually.  I think we cooked a dinner and had Andy's family over.  My brother visited!  But also I think it was still covid awkward.

2022 - My brother visited and we all went to Andy's family but his grandma's 3rd husband ended up in hospital and it was all very unfortunate and awkward.

2023 - We had 2 month old twins and life was impossible

2024 - We had 1 year 2 month old twins and life was still impossible.

This year we decided it was too many hard Christmases in a row and we booked a 5 night Christmas holiday to Bluestone - a holiday resort in West Wales.  We booked a 4 bed house and my brother came with us.  The resort park has a swimming pool with slides (which was open on Christmas!) and an indoor soft play and a outdoor kids adventure play area.  

This was also a test to see how the twins do away from home since we've booked more holidays this year.  The twins have never slept away from home before.  They have slept in their own cribs since they were born.  They slept in beds on holiday.  It went OK.  Except for one night where Clara stayed awake till midnight and then woke up Aubrey who then stayed awake until 3:30am.  Of course that one night was Christmas. 

But besides one difficult night, the trip was pretty good.  Ezra had a great time and cried when we had to leave and took a video of the whole house to remember the trip.  

We had been to Bluestone in 2021 when Lily was 6 months old:

And here she is now (5 years 2 months old):

Christmas dinner.  We had smoked brisket (slow cooked), mac and cheese, corn on the cob, and roast carrots.  It was really good.  I kind of want to get a meat smoker now.

Ezra and Lily Opened presents on Christmas.  We did most of our presents on Hanukkah but brought a few for Christmas morning. We've decided we are not a Santa family - Santa only gives presents to kids that haven't had 8 nights of presents already.  

Santa did a parade on Christmas eve.  Here he is waving to all the kids.  Moments later both Lily and Aubrey catastrophically melted down and had to be carried home.  It was very cold.

Ezra and Lily got tickets to Elf School for Christmas.  It was cute.

We rented a golf cart to get around the resort and decorated it like christmas.  

Here we are carrying 5 days of groceries back to the lodge.

Overall it was a fun but exhausting holiday.  I am not terrified of future holidays.  My brother was a great sport about helping with kids and staying with us, but I am aware it is A LOT to spend 5 nights with 7/5/2/2 year old kids.  

Christmases should get more fun and easier.  I don't think we will do Bluestone again (it was very much a "we haven't been on holiday in years" kind of expense) BUT it's fun to think about all the Christmas traditions we can now make as a family.

Looking forward to catching up on everyone else's Christmas adventures in blogland...

Christmas break, feeling better about the pile of life admin, Hanukkah thoughts and it's time for bed.

First, thank you everyone for your lovely comments on my disjointed chaos complaining post.

Today was my last day of work until January 5th.  I finished a really big project today which I'm about 75% happy with... I promised to circulate it "this week" prior to presenting at a meeting today.. and I circulated it 15 minutes before the meeting started.  But it's sort of the first big project of my new role and I feel like I'll have lots to come back to in 2026.

Yesterday evening I stayed up super late but finally packed my box for the USA, and booked shipping.  I have to drop it off tomorrow at a local corner shop (weirdly, FedEx is only received at a weird shop about 5 minutes away that sells mostly booze and cigarettes).  I feel relieved to have this in progress, and will feel even better when it is in the post.

Tomorrow I will also go to the post office to buy stamps and mail some UK presents. 

It's my last Friday morning with the twins, because in January they start a morning nursery (drop off!) for 2.5 hours on Fridays.  Well, they will start it if I get the paperwork done at some point.  Add it to the growing list of things to do.

We are halfway through Hanukkah now and I've managed to do presents every night so far.  Without buying much I had collected presents enough for 8 nights, although Aubrey & Clara are currently sharing presents and that's not going to work next year.  

Tonight Lily got a Unicorn Sticker Dolly Dressing book, and Ezra got a secondhand lego set.  Aubrey and Clara got a horrible talking light up Owl (£4 charity shop) which apparently costs £50 new!

I also had a major Hanukah fail this year because I didn't realize I had no Hanukkah candles. Oops! Luckily we have some birthday candle menorahs, so we are using that, but I also don't have 44 birthday candles because Hanukkah is a math problem:

So we are just blowing the candles out and relighting them the next day.  I have forever to figure out Hanukkah.

About a week ago I told the local Synagogue I didn't feel like it was safe to go to any events right now and then two days later the Hanukkah shooting happened in Australia.  I know that's Australia and not the UK, but I'm not particularly inclined to put the Menorah in the window right now, or go to the one public lighting in Wales (it apparently went fine?).  Which is... sad.  I find it disheartening to feel like the safest places to be openly Jewish are probably Israel or the USA. 

In other news, today I did my annual Christmas blood donation

Is blood donation selfie a thing?  I had two tasty chocolate bars after.  Now I am tired (probably from staying up late packing, and donating blood, and the stress of the work stuff this week) and I think a 9pm bedtime is in order.  I am currently reading Jill Mansell's A Walk In The Park which I bought on kindle because none of my books came in when I finished All Fours and I read a sample and liked it enough to pay £0.99 to read the rest.  It's nice.

I keep remembering and forgetting to-dos... but I don't feel as chaos as I did on Tuesday.  I think I might even have a nice twin day tomorrow, and a nice weekend... and potentially a nice Christmas?

Disjointed Christmas Thoughts, To Do Lists, Busy Season.

Christmas Fun.

Last year I took off an extra week of work before christmas and it was glorious.  This year I have 0.2 hours of annual leave left and I finish for Christmas on Friday.  I know other people work to Christmas Eve, and don't always get 2 weeks off work, but I am really looking forward to not being in work for a bit.

At the same time, I am really not looking forward to the 16 days of feeding my family.  Breakfast, Lunch, Snacks, Dinner day after day... wiping down the tables and the floors... asking if we've had too much bread and cheese... ugh.  

I am also tired of every kid thing that we eat and I'm tired of eating like a toddler.   Last night we had potatoes and beans for dinner, on thursday we have spaghetti and meatballs... I don't like either of these things.  I don't like any of our food but I just add a bunch of chili flakes and eat it because I also don't like cooking things the kids think are "disgusting" (like anything with flavour or texture)

Anyways, I digress.  

I also feel I am living all the days every day.   So while it is technically Tuesday right now, I'm also aware I am super behind on getting my gifts and cards to the USA.  Last night we spent an hour organizing our Christmas grocery orders (both before and after Christmas).  Today is swimming, Friday is a kid party, Saturday is tennis, yesterday was a dance recital, last week was school Nativity Play (there is no separation of church and state here y'all!)

In my understanding of time it feels that all of these things are happening at once.  Obviously they aren't, but I just feel so "aware" of what there is to do.

One of the apparently insurmountable tasks on my plate is to mail cards and presents to the USA.  We made calendars, which we printed for family.  I have had to do a proper project plan for this as follows:

1. Order Holiday Cards (done)
2. Order Calendar (done)
3. Order Gifts (done)
4. Address US holiday cards (done)
5. Buy Envelopes the right size for Calendar
6. Buy/Find Envelopes the right size for small gifts
7. Buy/Find box big enough for envelopes and gifts
8. Figure out how to mail box to the USA.

I was so ahead of schedule on this project plan... until I wasn't.  The dumb barrier is that I'm working forward in box size from the components, which also need boxes, to the big box, which needs to store it all, and the fact that I have to go to the store and buy packing materials, which is IMPOSSIBLE because it's Christmas and everyone is in the store buying packing materials.

Also, yesterday it rained all day and I didn't want to walk to the store in the pouring rain. 

All of this is also because I am being a bit cheap and not sending things directly from the UK because they put the price of mailing a single card up to £3.10 which is $4.  Shipping would be nearly $100 so I am hoping that by combining everything and having my helpful parent elves in the USA mail from the USA it will work out a bit cheaper.  

On the other side of the spectrum, we ordered New Years cards (not Christmas) so I feel like it's too early to send those in the UK.  But I'm fairly sure we will quickly go from "OMG it's too early" to "Oh how is it the 25th and we haven't' sent those cards??!" in about 5 minutes.  

Oh, and we need to buy stamps.  Why didn't I buy stamps literally any of the 100 times I had been to the post office not in the christmas rush?   Also, I can order stamps online, but I have to pay £3 shipping.  I'll see if I can magically get some stamps today while purchasing above mentioned envelopes and if not it's £3.

Speaking of delivery fees, last week I got ahead of the game and bought more school uniform AND some picture frames for some posters I would like on the wall and not just in a pile near my desk.  I even paid the £4 shipping to avoid going to the store with my gaggle of children.  Shipping was very quick, but the frames were clearly shattered and the box had the distinctive sound of broken glass when it arrived, battered and marked FRAGILE.  I ended up taking 3 of the kids to ASDA on Sunday to return the box, and as they ran through the isles asking for presents I wanted to tell every parent here "I ORDERED ONLINE TO AVOID BEING HERE! I paid £4 to avoid being here!" but I couldn't, and I also couldn't get my £4 back.  I got my £18 for the broken frames back... and the posters will stay on a pile for a while.

Anyways... here are some recent photos of things to end this whiny 6:15am post!  

Lily at her Ballet recital (after 4 classes)

Clara reading her age 1-2 photo album

Aubrey putting baby Jesus to bed at play group

Saturday Update: Charity shop wins, getting caught up on photo albums, things are sometimes nice.

We are having the kind of Saturday where things just *work*

I know it's only 2pm, so anything can happen, but I cannot believe how nice the hours between 6am and 2pm have been so far.

I think signing Ezra up for Saturday morning tennis was definitely the right call.  It feels so anchoring to have something to plan the weekend around.  Last week I took Lily with me, this week I took Aubrey.  While Ezra was in his lesson Aubrey and I walked to some charity shops on the hunt for Christmas decorations.   I had a mega win of a bunch of christmas stuff for only £15!  We have at least 4 new light sets and also a giant bag of tinsel.

I also refilled our spices at the zero waste shop. £1.50 for a new jar of Cinnamon and Coriander and also a bag of banana chips to snack on.  Yay.

Lest you think I'm a frugal dream, Ezra and Aubrey and I then went to the grocery store to buy nappies and spent £50 on random stuff (well only £35 on random, £15 was needed nappies)

I've started letting Ezra ride in the front seat sometimes.  

It's fun having him next to me in the car and he loves picking the radio.  He was astonished to learn that you cannot chose songs when listening to radio, you can just choose stations.  Also, you can't pause the stations.  The music plays when you are not listening.  His little mind was blown.

Aubrey and Clara both have pretty sad winter colds right now, so they are a bit sad and tired.  They went down for a nap and then I got some time to work on photo albums project.

But first I enjoyed my last pumpkin biscotti from Trader Joes

Part of the reason I've felt so behind and chaotic on my photo albums recently is that I do one album per kid, per year (from their birthday to their birthday) and then one album for the whole family.  All the kids had birthdays in September and October.  Because I didn't fully finish the kids albums I hadn't started new albums, but also some kids needed new albums sooner and some twins are born right at the end of the month.  I didn't want to start their next albums until finishing the last ones, but I wasn't really sure where I was on all of them.  Of course, this was easily solved with a google sheet:

I managed to complete and print all 4 kids albums (some were basically done already) and now I just need to work on setting up all of their new albums and updating for October and November.  And finish the family album for October and November.

The place we order books from had a 50% discount on books, so I ordered all 4 plus a copy of last year's family album for a family member that requested it

Spending almost £200 on photo albums certainly isn't cheap but it's way cheaper than £386!

Hopefully this evening we can finish (and order) our family calendar.  

Aubrey and Clara will wake up soon and we'll have to think of afternoon entertainment.  We might go look at a bunch of christmas lights.  The weather is atrocious but we are unlikely to last in the house until bedtime.  

I spend a lot of time complaining about kid stuff here so hopefully this post balances some of that whine-ness from me...

What's your latest charity/thrift shop win?  Do you shop at zero waste stores?  

Friday things, tidy house, kids disco, weekend plans

This evening I took all 4 kids to a school disco by myself.  The disco was at 4:30pm (great time for a party!) and we were home by 5:45.  Andy had his work Christmas party, so he wasn't home when I got back, and I managed to do a 4 kids dinner and bedtime by myself.  Kids ate yogurt and shreddies for dinner (the disco had pizza and hot dogs)... and everyone was asleep by 7:45.  

Andy does 4 kids dinner and bedtime twice a month when I'm in the office, but I can't remember the last time I tried.  It went fine! Tiring, but fine.

After they went to bed I wasn't sure what to do with my sudden free time.  I thought that I could go to bed early and get up early and workout... or I could do housework...

I could order myself a pizza and watch the Barbie Movie (it was a goal of mine to watch it this year).  This sounded great, except that ordering a pizza for myself seemed kind of weird.  We don't ever order takeout, and I know the one thing I can't do when at home with 4 asleep kids is leave the house, but it just seemed like not the best use of £20 right now. 

I decided to putter around the house and tidy it up.  I've been very intentionally trying not to spend all my free time cleaning and tidying lately.  I've stopped hoovering multiple times a week.  Friday twin nap time is Rachel time, I've been doing Peloton or other Rachel-adjacent things.  But this evening I started listening to some recent Organize 365 podcasts and enjoyed properly cleaning and tidying the downstairs. 

It took about 1.5 hours but it looks so much better, I've hoovered everything, taken toys upstairs, taken down the fall decorations.  I do feel nice when spaces are clean, and even though it's still somewhat cluttered (the rising tide of "stuff" that happens with a reachy & grabby 2 year old is legit!) at least things feel a bit more orderly.

I've also been intentionally not defaulting to putting away laundry all the time, which means that our bedroom has a giant clean laundry basket which gets fuller and fuller until Andy and I find a time to put it away together.  I used to operate a very "just in time" clothing system, where the kids had enough clothes to last exactly the time between washes.  I've slowly accumulated more clothes so that technically we could go 3-4 days between washes if we needed to. While putting away 3 loads of laundry recently Andy said "I think the issue is the kids have too many clothes".  I told Andy that was the point of the new laundry system - it was no longer dependant on me.

[BTW I feel this post is turning towards "look how much I don't do" but Andy and I both spend so so much of our life tidying up after kids that it's definitely not a "more or less" comparison.  It's a "there is endless work to keep things running but also we both need to carve our own time too" situation.]

Also,while I am on the division of labour topic, one great thing is that my favourite end of day routine is sortng the kitchen - loading the dishwasher (I am thankful for dishwasher daily), wiping the counter, putting away food, washing other dishes, sweeping the kitchen... if given an evening tidy choice I will always chose kitchen.  Andy always starts with dining room.  I hate dining room (sweeping under tables is awful).  It works really well.

****

I am not sure how this weekend will go.  Ezra has tennis lessons on Saturday morning and we need to go refill our spices at the zero waste shop in the village. Sometimes my life is just too middle class.  There is a local Santa tour around our village on Sunday which we will try and see.  We are hoping to get to the charity shop to buy some christmas decorations. I am making Turkey chili tomorrow with some freezer turkey from thanksgiving.  And otherwise, it's just a december weekend!

I'm feeling less Grinchy than I was last week now that our house is tidy.  Which maybe means I should tidy more? But then I feel grumpy about my time spent tidying.  There is no win.

Maybe next year we can find a cleaner again (I will someday blog about my multiple failed attempts at hiring a cleaner recently)

Tuesday Randoms - Christmas meh, Planning meh, Photo successes

OMG it's December.

I told Andy yesterday that I just need a half day to catch up on life admin, like photo Albums (still undone from December) and budget and house stuff and all the stuff which I need to do on a monthly basis (or ideally more, our house is kind of a mess)

Then decided that instead I could just not catch up on anything and wait like 9 more months and take a week off to catch up instead.  

My planning is not great at the moment.  Check out this weekly plan!

Oops.

On the plus side, I was very excited to get a family Advent calendar this year.  It's a Jam advent calendar from Bonne Maman.  The kids are delighted.  Many conversations were had about who opens doors and in what order.  Clara got to open first and Lily helped, because we are (apparently) going smallest to biggest in size.

We had honey apricot jam this morning on toast.  It was delicious. 

I have lots of fun stuff planned in December and I am kind of dreading a lot of it.  We went to our local village Christmas fayre on Saturday and I had thoughtfully bought the kids some light up wands because every year there is a light up wand seller who sells extortionately priced wands and I found discount wands at the local pound store.  The kids immediately said they didn't like my poundland wands and wanted other wands, or balloons, or food, or cake... basically they wanted STUFF!  and not the stuff I had.  OTHER STUFF.  It was very stressful and we went home.

Is Christmas just a pile of things and events that should be nice but are actually made kind of awful by the Christmas buildup?  Inquiring minds do not want to know.

This evening we ordered our Christmas cards! It might be world record early for us, and also they are New Years cards because I don't trust myself to actually post on time.  We have a spreadsheet of year on year Christmas cards and addresses and this year we had 24 for the UK and 19 for the USA.  Cards come in sets of 20.  So we ordered 60.  I might be reaching out for more addresses from my blog-o-friends.

Not our Christmas Card photo.  However... it is very hard to get 4 kids to look at a tripod camera.  We may end up paying a photo person next year.  I never regret having nice family photos.

Thing I am excited about this week:

• Going to the office on Wednesday
• Doing more stretching and mobility on Peloton
• Gym with my gym buddy on Thursday
• Omelettes with Jalapenos and Mozzarella cheese (new 10am second breakfast fav)
• Maybe getting some photo albums updated?
• Sleep
• Kids school Christmas Disco on Friday

What are you excited about this week? Are you a Christmas lover, a Christmas buildup lover, or a total Grinch?