December has been a very busy month for the Lance Party of 4. At the end of November and into December, Elias had walking pneumonia. The doctor said it was the best (meaning worst) combo of crackling and wheezing she'd ever heard in lungs. Even though it sounded pretty bad, he at not point had trouble breathing, so that was good. We've been pretty fortunate in that he's good at taking medication, but the nebulizer was a whole other ball game. We'd have to hold him down as he just screamed for 5 minutes. After a couple days he came around and understood that its medicine and wouldn't hurt him. Plus, he got to watch Disney Junior on the IPad, so that helped :)
Kevin is loving his new job here in York as the Youth Pastor at Zion UMC. The church is large congregation, and they have really big outreach programs. One of them is the annual Breakfast with Santa. Gavin loved Santa! So much in fact that he tried to eat his beard. Elias, on the other hand, only wanted to give Santa a high five. He was not a fan.
We got Gavin a new bath seat so he could take baths with his big brother. As you can see, Gavin loves bath time now that he can sit up and see what's going on.
Elias being sick through off my plan for getting our family photos taken, which in turn meant delaying my Christmas cards. We finally went and hard some pictures taken though, and we're just happy we got a few good shots of the kids. Elias was great for the first 10 minutes, but then all he wanted to do was play with the candy canes on the Christmas tree. Fortunately the photographer was great and caught all his happy moments. I literally teared up when she showed us the pictures because I thought they all were going to turn out terrible. Next Spring/Summer we're going to get some really nice outdoor family portraits, but until then, Picture People will do.
Then we made the biggest purchase of our lives thus far...we bought our house! We settled on Friday December 21st, and moved that same day thanks to our amazing family and friends. My sister in law Abby and Grandma were a huge help and blessing with watching the kids while we were at settlement and taking the first trip with the truck down to the house. We thought it would take 2 days to move, but we had SO much help from people from our church that both truck loads were unloaded and placed into the correct room in the house by that night! My family came the next day and helped unpack the kitchen and kids bedrooms.
That night, we went out to find a Christmas tree. We went to two places that were already closed, and in a last ditch effort, drove by Walmart to see if they had any. We didn't see any but Kevin insisted on running in. Here there literally were 5 trees left out front, and after smacking a couple against the ground and watching the needless fall like crazy, one tree didn't look to shabby. We strapped that sucker on, and went to target for some lights. Of course, all the have left are those LED lights that we really don't like. We wanted just plain white lights. Target was sold out. I called 4 different places and finally ACMoore said they had a handful left. They were closing in 15 minutes, so we had to get there quick. I got on the highway and stepped on it, only to then hear screeching on the roof...the Christmas tree! I totally forgot it was up there, look in my mirror, and its dangling off the back of the car. Whoops. A few quick adjustments and off we were to get the lights. We set it all up that night, aside from the decorations. Then of course I realized I never got Gavin a stocking so the next day I made a mad dash to Target. They had some stocking holders that matched ours too, so we made out pretty well for being so last minute with all our decorating!
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Christmas was filled with lots of family time, starting on Sunday afternoon. We had lunch at Grandma and PapPaps, with Grandma's yummy shrimp and Andrews delicious French Onion soup. Then Christmas eve morning we spent with Kevin's dad's family, and Christmas day my family came over. We opened presents and then made a big dinner. In all the choas of moving I didn't have the camera for most of it, but I managed to few shots. The first 4 are of Elias trying to wink. Such a goofball.
Happy New Year!!!
