Some Unintentional Time Off: What's going on around here

I seem to have disappeared from this blog. I am sorry. It was completely unintentional, but I will attempt to excuse away my disappearance during this post.

So what has been going on over here?

Little Victoria turned 5 months old last month on the 20th

 At 5 months she weighed in at 19lbs and was 28inches long, putting her once again into the 100th percentile. She is wearing 12 month clothes already!

Which prompted me to get out on Black Friday (something I NEVER do) in order to take advantage of a buy 1 get 2 free baby clothes sale at our local Meijer, where I picked up about 10 outfits (some of them sets of 2 onesies and a pair of pants or jackets with the outfit), several pairs of pajamas, and 2 packs of 6 socks for about $80. All in 18 and 24 months

At this point I am planning on her being in 18 month clothes come late January, and 24 month clothes in late Spring or early Summer. My giant baby!

Thanksgiving was a great time with my husband's family. We switch off major holidays every year with our families because they live in different states, so this year we will do Thanksgiving with my husband's family and Christmas with mine.

Thanksgiving was a great time for Victoria to spend some time with her relatives

Concentrating on playing cards with her uncle

Scanning the black Friday sales online with her aunt

Wearing matching outfits with her grandma

Trying, and failing to take a decent picture with her twin cousins. (This is seriously the best photo we got)

We also exchanged Christmas gifts with Andy's side of the family, and Victoria received this amazing stocking from Andy's brother and his family.

Afterwards we came back home and tried to get everyone on a good schedule again. This was our first big trip with Victoria since our disastrous trip to Buffalo in August, and she did great. We were so impressed. But babies will be babies, and everyone's sleep schedule has been out of whack until very recently.

Now we are gearing up for Christmas, and I would love to show you some seriously awesome Christmas decorations, but....we don't have any. Am I terrible or what? We have decided not to put up any Christmas decorations this year for three reasons:

1) The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is so short this year, we just don't have the time
2) We are spending 10 days starting in a week with my family for Christmas so we won't be able to enjoy the decorations for long
3) We just don't have the space

And two of the reasons we don't have any space include this:

 and this:

(Excuse the grainy cell phone photos.) Andy's brother gave us these after Thanksgiving, as his twins don't need them anymore. I don't allow her to spend much time in them, because they aren't great for babies' hips and back, but she truly loves them, so I give her about 15 minutes in each every day. So our small living room became even smaller.... sigh.

We may not have decorated for Christmas, but we did send out these cute Christmas cards to everyone. I got these cards made with a Groupon where I got 70 cards for $28. Can't beat that!

Now a little more about the not having any space thing (point #3 above). This is probably the biggest reason you have not seen much of me, and it is because I am spending a lot of my time house hunting. We are looking for a new rental house, and we have to give our notice soon to move out of our apartment, so time is ticking! We are trying to move a little closer to my husband's work, are looking to get into a house (yay yard! yay garden!), and are looking for more space (see baby's monstrous toys above that make my minimalist tendencies cringe).

Because even though we can make it work in the space we have, we are seriously feeling cramped these days. And when our family comes to visit, it is ridiculously cramped. So we decided it is time for something bigger. I am also looking forward to not having neighbors to worry about. Or maybe I will even have a GARAGE to put my car in so I don't have to scrape the snow off of it (!!!happy dance!!!).

So Victoria and I spend a lot of our time combing the area looking for and touring rentals.

On top of that my old work has contacted me to continue doing some contract work for them now and again. It has been an amazing opportunity to bring in some extra money, and I can complete it whenever I have a free moment (such as during nap-time when I used to blog....).

But friends I promise I am still around and still planning things for this blog. Are you hanging in there with me?

What are you up to this Christmas? Have you decorated your house this year?