Update:Christmas, Getting settled, New Years

Alright, long post!

First of all, we had a great Christmas, spending it with tons of family back home in California. I will not be posting photos on here from the trip, as it takes forever to upload photos to blogger, because they are individual. If you would like to see photos, I uploaded a bunch onto facebook, so check them out there!

We got to spend our first ever Thanksgiving with family, and we got to do it 2x. We spent the afternoon with Geoff's side of the family, and the evening with Stacy's! We hope it doesn't take another 8 years to be able to spend Thanksgiving with our family.

Our trip consisted of A LOT of busyness! The 4 of us decided over the summer, that we would attempt to go to Hawaii while we were in Cali. We wanted to try to take a space a military hop flight. This is the only way we flew when we were stationed in hawaii, and it saved A TON of money. It is very stressful and frusturating at times, trying to get to where you want...but in the end it worked out. We ended up not getting to Hawaii til about 5 days after we planned, which led to us not being able to stay quite as long, but we spent almost 3 days there, and did a ton of stuff. We stayed in TLF on base and got a rental car. We went to lots of beaches, watched some sunsets, did a drive around the island, walked Waikiki, hiked Diamond head crater, and ate at some of our favorite "Hawaii" resteraunts that we missed!. The girls even got to do a Hula lesson! They had a BLAST, and we are hoping to go back again in a couple of years when the girls are a little older, and Jordyn can really appreciate it more like Abby did.

We also did a lot of fun Christmas stuff such as ride The Polar Express Train in Sacramento. This was amazing! We went with Stacy's parents, and Katy and her family. Most of us wore jammmies, and the kids all had a blast being the center of attention because of how cute they 4 of them where all matching. We also spent a night taking the kids to go look at Christmas lights, which is always inspiring for our family :)

We had our4th Annual Happy Birthday Jesus Party, the week before Christmas at Stacy's moms house. This year only family came, but we all had alot of fun, and helped the kids and ourselves remember the real reason we celebrate Christmas. We love that our girls already know this and get so excited about the party each year. We did Crafts, ate yummy food and cake (made by Grandma...it was yummy!), read the Christmas story, and opened goody bag presents.

We spent Christmas Eve at Grandma Bettys house, with most of the family there (missing a few, but still good times). We ate some yummy food and opened presents and spent time together.

Christmas Day was spent at Stacy's moms house with..for the first time ever...all 4 sisters, significant others, and kids! Geoff finally got to meet his brother in-law (Jeff) and the girls got to meet their uncle for the first time. It was hectic, but awesome that we were all together.

We left to head home 2 days after Christmas, had to drive thru some rough weather, but we made it home just in time for a welcome home to Minot small scale blizzard. We missed home and it feels great to be back in our own house.

We spent New Years Eve at a friends house with lots of friends and kids running around like monkeys. We ended up having to leave at around 9:30 from all of us being exhausted from being up at night with Abby (thats next). We were glad to be able to hang out for at least a little while.

Now onto Abby. Most of you know about Abby's sleep issues. Most of her life she has sleep walked and has night terrors. Basically she wakes up 5-7 nights a week...either sleep walking (calm, sweet, affectionate) or night terrors (screaming, inconsolable, very upset). Well while we were on vacation, she was having trouble sleeping..falling asleep, staying asleep...not a whole lot of sleep walking or night terrors, just trouble sleeping in general. We chalked it upto she just needed her own bed back. Christmas Eve was horrible..she was up until about 1am throwing fits because she couldn't sleep (she coudln't handle the excitement of Christmas, nor did she understand that its normal to feel anxious and have trouble sleeping on Christmas eve...most adults still feel that way!). Well we got home and it only worsened. She is up all night screaming, crying, and throwing fits. She has only sleep walked once or twice in the last week. The rest of the time, once she falls asleep (anywhere from immediately, to a few hours to finally fall asleep) within the hour it begins. She wakes up crying, and then wont go back to sleep. She comes out of her room, goes into the bathroom, comes out to the living room or our room, and just throws a huge fit, like an out of control toddler! (Yes, she is 6 years old, this is out of control) We have hardly gotten any sleep since we have been home because of this. She is up at least every 2 hours, and stays up for anywhere from a few minutes, to over an hour...just screaming and throwing a fit. We are at our wits end on what is wrong with her. We have given her meds to help her sleep, tylenol, allergy meds, stuff to help her poop...nothing is working. We dont know if its an actual medical issue, or just her acting out and a behavior issue....so she is actually going to the Dr. later today to see if there is anything that we can do. I will post on that later!

We hope you all had a Blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Years.

I will try to post some more updates soon!