Wrap it up

The holiday season this year has been busy and wonderful, just like it always is. It started the week before Thanksgiving with a little holiday miracle. Jazz, the adorable Siamese kitty that the Winns adopted back in July went missing. She was last spotted on Friday afternoon, and there was no sign of her all weekend. Since the last Siamese cat they had vanished, Jarom was quite concerned. On Sunday evening he even told the kids that Jazz was gone. But Monday morning he got a phone call from Alixa with a very hungry, loudly meowing cat on the other end. No idea where she went or what she was up to for almost 3 days, but she found her way back without a scratch on her.

Thanksgiving had the usual traditions. Jarom woke up early to go play his once-a-year game of football and loved it. Lix baked some amazing pies and rolls and the clan headed over to eat a wonderful meal with Mario and PJ, along with the Nate Winn family. There were some football games to be watched, and some fantasy football teams to still care about. By the time Christmas arrived that would no longer be the case as Jarom and Alixa failed to win any of their leagues this year.

 Winner twinners

December has been a whirlwind. Jenna could not be happier at school and loves learning. She is a reading machine, going through books like a hot knife through butter. We are all continually amazed by her. She got the eagle student achievement award of the week or something for her class, which is given to the student that shows good leadership. She was very excited about that because it meant they read her name over the intercom to the entire school. Alixa helped her class with their Christmas party, the first of hundreds of class parties she will be working on.

Bo has also really started to catch on in school. He goes to a preschool run by Sister Kanzler, who is also his primary teacher, and he loves her to death. And he should because she is awesome. When we got a Christmas card from her family Alixa showed it to him and he was so happy to see her. He likes to explain that she is Sister Kanzler at church, but Miss Bethanne at school. She’s done a good job getting Bo excited about learning his letters and starting to read and write. We’ve been doing some letter flash cards with him and he is good with all the sounds they make. Emmy also likes to play with them. Jarom walked in on Alixa working with them and heard Alixa say this great tidbit to Emily, who wanted a flashcard: “You can have U. Nobody likes U.” Poor Emmy.

 Everybody in the house sticks their tongue out when they concentrate, except Lix

Emmy refuses to start speaking. At least she refuses to speak words. She makes a handful of noises that aren’t really associated with any particular object. And she will repeat them loudly over and over while you try to guess what it is that she wants. And either you will find the correct object and get her to stop or you will be forced to kill her or yourself, because that is how annoying it gets after about 20 seconds. But she is an adorable little kid when you don’t want to strangle her. Unfortunately she spent the week before Christmas deathly ill. For about 5 days she would throw up anything and everything that we managed to get her to eat, which was almost nothing. We thought it was a bad case of the flu, but after a doctor’s visit we found out that it was pneumonia and an ear infection. We got her some shots and drugs and after a few more days of being mostly comatose (except at night, when she wouldn’t sleep for more than 30 minutes without crying unless someone was cuddling her) she started to mend.

For Christmas all an utterly exhausted mom and dad wanted were a few uninterrupted hours of sleep, and Santa came through. The 24^th was the first night that Emmy didn’t wake up, sleeping 14 hours. Which meant that after a fun dinner and evening at Mimi and Opa's house with Abe and Mikah, Jarom and Alixa got nearly 10 hours of sleep. That made for a great start to Christmas. It was followed by watching the kids open up an assortment of fun dolls and cars and train tracks and books and games, all of which they loved. Emmy probably loved her gifts the most. She got a mop and broom cleaning set and wanders all over the house wiping things, and she got a new purple scooter that she can ride just like her older sister and brother. The family went back to Alixa’s parents’ house for a late brunch and some hanging out, and then left the kids with Mimi for a few hours to go see Into the Woods, which was great but a little too long.

Our biggest Christmas present really came a trimester ago when Lix got pregnant with baby number 4. That info has been spread on Facebook and instagram, so this probably isn’t news to you. This wasn’t really a planned baby. Jarom has pretty much always been ready to be done having kids, but his resistance has gotten progressively stronger after each one. Alixa wanted to have 4, and here we are. Alixa 4, Jarom 0. They both agree that this is the end, though. The baby will be here in June, which gives Jarom a few months to figure out how to not let this happen again. The pregnancy has been rougher than the first three on Lix from a nausea perspective, but she is past that point now and seems to be doing well, although she is always hungry, which is totally different from the non-pregnant version of Alixa. She’s still working out like a crazy person, so she hasn’t gained very much weight.

The other noteworthy even from the past month is the minor raccoon invasion that Jarom had to evict. We’ve had raccoon visitors in the past when one took up residence in the attic for a week or so. Jarom had to go up there and block off the vent that he had used to crawl in. We see coons around every now and again, but they don’t really bother us. Until recently when Jarom left for work one morning and found Jazz’s food bin had been knocked over and opened. He thought it might have been Jazz, but when it happened a second night in a row he knew it was those dang coons. So they moved the cat food inside, and Jarom kept an ear out for the troublemakers the next night. Around 11 he heard some rustling out in the garage so he headed out. He turned on the light and was face to face with at least 4 big raccoons poking around the garage looking for the now missing food. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. One had climbed to the top of the ladder, one was investigating a pile of golf balls, but none of them were happy to see Jarom. They started growling at him, so he grabbed a baseball bat, opened the garage door and started laying the smack down. However, as annoying and meddlesome as coons are, they are still pretty cute and he just couldn’t bring himself to really hit any of them. So he poked and prodded and growled back at them. He chased one into the back yard and over the fence, and then over the neighbors fence as well. It was quite the production. He just wanted to make sure that it was sufficiently stressful that they would think twice before coming back.

The next night Jarom was coming home from basketball around 11, and sure enough as he pulled into the driveway his headlights lit up the little coon eyes of at least 4 critters. So he grabbed the bat and started round 2. This time he decided he needed to send a stronger message so he actually treed one of them and landed some solid body blows. No permanent damage, but Miko will definitely be waking up with some bruised ribs. Eventually it got down out of the tree and ran like the wind for the nearest storm drain, with Jarom chasing him. A hilarious sight if there were anyone to see it, I’m sure. Since there is no longer any available food, and being around means they might get violently assaulted, the coons have stopped showing up.

Jazz helped put away the Christmas decorations

Hopefully everyone else’s Christmas season was filled with gifts and family and fun and adventures just like ours was. Here’s hoping that 2015 is another great year for the Winns and for you!