Oh my gosh what a whirlwind the last several days have been. It feels like a month since I last posted, though I know it's been less than a week! Our weekend was so busy with Thomas on call. I was such a crab, too. Thankfully, the weekend ended on a better note. Sunday, Thomas got done with work early enough that we were able to go out to the Christmas Tree farm and get our tree. We go to the same one each year and the whole family looks forward to it.

Here are the kids sitting on the big sleigh before we took off for the woods.



If it looks cold outside, it's because...it WAS. It was incredible though...We were all bundled up with our hot apple cider. This is exactly the way it should be!













Bouncing up and down on the hayride!


Brrrr. Poor Zoe was in such shock that she didn't utter a word the entire time!


Oh yah...don't be fooled. After he finished posing for this picture, you KNOW who really had to get down and saw the tree down.

That's right...as soon as he realized that he would have to kneel down in the snow, it was all me. I actually ended up having to lay down in the snow to saw it down close enough to the ground. Fortunately, there are no pictures of me doing this.

The Math Family Christmas Tree...


We're so busy that we still don't have the tree decorated. The lights are only up on 1/2 of it, but this weekend it will get finished!

Tuesday was another full day. Amanda's choir class put on a Christmas play and it was Andrew's birthday. Since family tradition dictates that on every birthday we head over to Space Aliens, this made for an interesting conundrum. Amanda's concert was supposed to be from 6:30-7:30, so I fed the kids a small snack and anticipated being at Space Aliens by 8 at the latest. Ahhhh, what do they say about the best laid plans?

The concert ended up including perfromances by the 4th, 5th and 6th grade bands first. The band teacher veered from the program adding encores and extra things. By the time that Amanda's group finally took the stage, Aidan and Zoe could be found like this:


I caught this much of her performance

before Zoe snuck out from beneath my grasp and ran towards Amanda screaming "Foo Foo, Foo Foo" (Amanda's nick name!). I had to usher her out of the hall and....I missed the entire thing.

We made it to Space Aliens by 9pm. Zoe was so tired that this is all she did:

It of course screams Captain Obvious, but 9pm is a little late to be heading out for dinner with little ones.


And so....the little boy who made me a mother....turned 13 on Tuesday.

He officially entered the world of teendom with fanfare, emotion and pride. He moved to our spare bedroom on the other side of our home for more privacy but not until he had broken my heart with his confession about his life and unhappiness.

I'm not sure what brought it all to the surface. This is just the time of year that our thoughts seem to wander to the traumas of the past couple of years. We were sitting on the couch and he suddenly blurted out that 2 years ago for his birthday he had gotten the game Mario Kart Double Dash for the gamecube....and within days I was diagnosed with cancer. He worked his way up #2 in the US
http://www.mkddusa.com/ by spending countless hours hiding from his family to play. He joined a busy online forum for players of this game and he explained to me that they became his family. Since school started, we have not allowed him to play endless hours of computer games or spend much time online and he nearly cried about how in the darkest days of his life, these were the people who supported him and listened to him. He misses them and is no longer as good of a player and seems to be grieving over it.

"Mom, they say that when Jim Henson died, the Muppets died with him."
Andrew has been a huge Muppets fan for years. He loves Kermit.
"When you got cancer, my mom died. She never came back."



I played my game because I didn't want to see you. I didn't want to be around you. I didn't want to know anything.



Such joy and sadness....all in one day.

No wonder I look so exhausted....


Happy Birthday, baby boy.

With the sadness though comes the realization that healing is happening for him. He can articulate his feelings and feels strong enough nwo to share them with me.

It's amazing that the experience that we had 2 years ago can have such far-reaching consequences. We'd all like to think that it's over, but it isn't....life has changed for all of us and navigating those changes is a real struggle sometimes.

Kris[/quote]