Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!


Friday, December 21, 2007

Papa's Coming to Town

My Dad will be here tomorrow! Wahoo! It will be the first Christmas I've spent with him in five years! He flies in tomorrow and will be staying with us for two weeks.

Today was the usual end of school/start of winter break for the kids. They had a day care party in the morning, and then Q had kindergarten today. While our class doesn't officially celebrate Christmas, me and the other Room Parent brought a craft and snacks today. I think it went well ... all the years of me working in Parks/Recreation/Museums came into play.

So, the fudge is cooling on the stove. The Rum Balls are sitting out overnight, per the directions. The brownies will be baked tomorrow. I will brave the early crowds and pick up two forgotten gifts at Kohls, and one "we have no place to put it so buy it at the last minute" from Target. This may not be fun, but I can hope for the best.

The Daughter and I will be going to my cousin's performance of The Nutcracker, while The Husband and The Son pick up The Father from O'Hare. Let's hope that the fog lifts and his flight is not delayed. My husband is a patient man, but I still wouldn't want to be hanging around the airport with a five year old waiting for a flight to land.

We're having chili for dinner tomorrow, if anybody cares. Chicken pot pie on Sunday.

And, I almost forgot, I got my blood test results back, and my cholesterol is 169! Hot diggity! It hasn't been this low in years, even when I was an anemic vegetarian. And I don't even eat oatmeal.

Enjoy the weekend - don't get too caught up in the last minute stuff to forget to take some time for yourself and your family and friends. Don't just get ready for it, but enjoy it.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

The Kids Favorite Gifts


My kids got these as gifts last night ... huge hit! Who would've thunk it? Her ski mask goes remarkably well with the red sparkly shoes she got as well.

Thanks Aunt Becky!

Photographic Week in Review

Since I've got a fancy schmancy new camera, why not have a photo week in review!

Last Sunday, at The Nephews 8th Birthday Party. Me, The Husband and The Father In Law taking a few minutes out of festivities, chatting. I think that The Husband eventually fell asleep ...





Our advent calendar, passed down from my Mother In Law ... she made it for the boys, and they used it growing up. Now it's ours ... it needs a little work, and after last nights party, a couple of ornaments are missing, so I'll be making new felt ornaments this week.









This is why I'm not fond of fund raisers, amongst other reasons ... I had to figure out where to put eleven cookie cubes until I could get them delivered. Luckily for me, most of them were delivered that night. In the middle of a icy snow storm. That's fun. At least if I would have wrecked myself, I had sustinence with me in the car.



This is what happens when you're in a hurry. You can run over your recycle bin. At least we weren't late for the school field trip, and the newspapers didn't blow away down the street. Downside to that, a new recycle bin is in my future. Woo Hoo! Merry Christmas to Me!


So today will be a day of recycle bin shopping, grocery shopping, driveway shoveling (darn snowblower isn't working for some reason), lazing around the house, eating leftover yummies from last night (cookies, cookies and more cookies). I may even make some stuffed green pepper soup - yum!


Whatever your week brings you, I hope it's fun!

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Celebrating, Round 2

Today is the second Christmas Party of the year for us, and the first one that we are hosting.

I've got a list a mile long, and yet I choose to ignore it and cruise around the blog world for six more minutes. This is most likely the only quiet time I will get today, until after everybody leaves at 9:00, if not later. And, as a note, they are getting here at 2:00.

I've got a floor to mop, prizes to buy, gifts to wrap, surfaces to decorate ... it'll happen. If it doesn't, that's fine too ... I'm more of a minimalist when it comes to decorating. I don't like having every flat surface covered with "stuff" ... plus, the kids end up playing with it and then the "NOEL" train, says "NOL" for the rest of the season.

We'll be using the new camera today, so that will be fun. I've been having a lot of fun taking a lot of pictures. The quality is so much better too! If anybody is thinking about SLR, I say go for it. It's a lot of money (for us anyway), but it's so worth it. I've actually been able to get pictures of my daughter dancing, and she is not just a whirl of hair with a blurry face.

I have one minute left, on my self imposed internet time limit, so I am off to be joyous and merry, or something like that.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

something I shouldn't have bought

Chocolate Covered Peppermint Ice Cream Bites from Schwans.

Too yummy for my butts own good.

At least I was smart enough to put them in the basement freezer, so I have to go down there and eat them - if they were in the kitchen freezer, I would be in serious trouble.

Monday, December 03, 2007

did it

Well, I did it.

I bought the camera and all it's assorted accessories. But, by waiting almost six weeks, the price dropped by about $80.

I will admit that I'm excited to be getting it, and as an extra selling point, The Husband is getting a bonus at work this year, so we won't have to make payments, but will actually be able to pay it off when the bill comes in.

Let's hope I like it.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

weekend in review

It was an interesting week/weekend for us here ... nothing bad, just busy and interesting and mildly annoying.

Where to begin ...

Last week, our opening mechanism on our front door went out. You could still lock the door, you just couldn't get in from the outside, so the fact that it did lock was pretty pointless. We had to use the garage all week, which wasn't a big deal. Until Saturday.

You may have heard about the Winter Storm that hit the Midwest this past weekend. It hit us around 3:00 Saturday. We were getting ready to go to a Christmas Party, and because I hadn't felt well the night before, I didn't make a dessert, so I had to run to the local dairy store and picked up some cheesecakes. I made it back home, and because the door didn't work, I tried to use the garage. You may notice that I used the word tried. This indicated an attempt that was unsuccessful, due to a quarter inch of ice on the front of our house. Lovely.

And of course nobody heard me pounding on the front door for at least a full minute, so I got sleeted on too. Beauty-full!

So today DH took the door knob off and out fell some little plastic piece that is apparently vital to the proper functioning of a front door. He gave the rest of the knob to the kids and I think that they had it completely stripped in under ten minutes. I went to the hardware store and picked up a new door knob - did you know how many choices there are. Good Lord. All I wanted was a doorknob that locked and let me in when I wanted. So, I picked one up and brought it home, and I put it on. This was, without a doubt, the easiest door knob I have ever installed. The backplate just slides right over the screws, so no more dropping them. That in itself is so worth it. So now, we can actually let ourselves back in our house. What a nice feature.

And tonight I used my "super coupon" at JC Penney and finished Grandmas shopping - I managed to get clothes for five children, pants and a shirt for each, for under $97. Not too bad, I must say.

I learned something about Penney's tonight - if you have your own totebag to bring your purchases home in, which I typically bring with me, so as to not bring home more plastic bags, they will not use it. They have to put your purchases in a plastic Penney's bag. I asked her why and she said it was for security purposes. I said, even if I have my receipt in hand and am going the ten feet to the door (this is a free standing Penney's, not in a mall, which I would understand). She said yes, that there was no way to know if I had been wandering through the store shoplifting. And, the thought I had, but did not say was, "Okay, but I gave you an empty cloth bag, and am literally going straight to the door, but I'll take your stupid plastic bag, and trash the planet in the process. Thanks, Penneys, the Earth loves ya babe!"

For the past several months DH has been at a client site twice a week working on a system conversion. I'm not exactly sure what they are converting, but there is an inventory involved, and a lot of columns. The last few weeks have been hellishly bad for them all, and even at 4:30 on Friday (the conversion was scheduled to start at 6:00) they (not management, but the people doing the conversion) were hoping to get it delayed. But no, there was one other change made at 5:15, DH got home at 5:30 and went to the basement and kicked off the conversion at 6:00. He literally had to sit there and watch it until 6:45 Saturday morning, just to be sure it didn't stop for some reason or there was some other error. Did I mention that he had already worked a full work week by Thursday at noon and still worked from 8:00 - 5:15 on Friday.

There was a knock at the door at around noon, and the company set me flowers as an apology for keeping my husband busy the last few weeks, especially during what is normally family time. Do you know how hard it is to stay miffed at a company when they send you pink roses, cream gerber daises and white carnations, amidst greenery and pine? They're beautiful, and they totally took away my steam. So I guess they do realize how much DH has/is putting into it (he's down there working right now, fixing some problem they found).

And, keeping in the thread of being miffed, it's been so damn windy here that the plastic I have covering our west windows has popped on five of the eight windows I covered. I guess I sealed them too tightly. So now I can sit here and watch my blinds literally move with the breeze as the wind is gusting like crazy tonight. I think they're blowing at something like 25 - 30 mph. I suppose the blinds wouldn't dance as much if it was coming in all around the window, but now that it's funneled through the one spot where the plastic popped off, it almost looks like my window is breathing. It's on my list of things to fix tomorrow.

Speaking of things to fix (can you tell my DH has been busy and I haven't talked to another adult in what feels like forever?!) I fixed the stoppers on my bathroom sinks today. That was kind of cool - much less expensive than the $100 faucets I want to replace it with. DH says I can, but I'll look around first, I'm sure I can find something cheaper.

Quick list of my Home Repair Skills
  • Repair drywall
  • Painting
  • Kitchen faucet installation
  • Fixing the stoppers on the sinks
  • Hang blinds
  • Replacing light fixtures (safely, and without creating a fire hazard)
  • Re-screening windows (very costly to have it done for you)
  • Replace the float on the toilet
  • Insulating, which is not very fun

It's not the most impressive of lists, but it's still something I can do myself and don't have to hire out. My next task is to repair the leak in the bathtub upstairs. I'm a little more hesitant with that one, since I'm supposed to drill a hole in my bathtub and put fill foam in there, and then seal the actual crack in the tub. There is something about drilling a hole in my bathtub that makes me leery ... I think I'll wait until my Dad is here in December and he can help me.

Speaking of which, my Dad will be here for two weeks in December. Yay us! He gets here the 22nd and leaves the 5th. It will be the first Christmas and New Years we've spent together in five years. Now I've got to get ready for it ...

I think that's enough for tonight ... off to look around on the internet and see what else is out there.