Santa Made It!

My children were out of bed at 5:30AM Christmas morning! That is very early. Oh goodness that is early. We had a few snafus, like my video camera wont work, but mostly everything went great. The girls all loved their gifts! Mykenzie got a Nintendo DS, a digital camera, a few DS games, a few Wii games, some board games and a bunch of littlest pet shop toys. Kaylee basically got My Little Pony everything, ponies, playsets, coloring pages, toothbrush, movies ect... all My Little Pony. She did get a Tinkerbell bike though. Her BIG gift was the Fur Real Pony! We got a GREAT deal on it and paid no where near the typical $300 price tag! Kaylee loves it and Mykenize has enjoyed it as well. The weight limit is 80 pounds so she can sit on it and "ride" her too, well unless Kaylee pushes her off, which has only happened once so far. lol

Travis got me the 8GB Ipod Nano in blue :) Mykenzie got the Ipod shuffle from her uncle and it is blue also so she thinks its cool that ours match. I also got a couple of shirts, some cute socks, the tape thingy to play the Ipod in my car and the perfume I have been wanting for a couple of years. From other people I picked up some cash, a couple gift cards and some new towels.

Kaylee made us a plate and a little nativity at school. Mykenzie made some gingerbread ornaments, and some sun catchers for us at her school. They are all very cute :)

Christmas Eve we did make it to see Santa as you can see by the photo below. We made some chocolate carmel cookies (so yummy!!) and we attempted to make our gingerbread house. While mixing the icing for it the motor in my mixer burnt out, smoke and all. So I couldn't finish mixing it and the icing was like putty. We tried to still put it together but it was just not happening so we ended up just pitching it. I am thinking this is our last attempt, at least for a while, at making a gingerbread house. It is not worth it. The kids just want to eat the candy anyhow. We opened gifts from other people too. I have photos below of the girls with everything they got except for the stuff from my dad. It was the first thing they opened so I guess I just didn't get ready in time? Who knows. Trust me I really wish I had a picture.

So now what? lol Now Christmas is over. All the prep for one day and then just like that it is over. Travis took all the outside lights down today. I only kinda want to take down my inside stuff. I really enjoy having it out and looking at it but I have some switch in me that is like the minute Christmas is done I am ready for spring. I know it doesn't work like that but my brain goes there. It isn't even the new year yet! lol

Speaking of the new year, time to start thinking of resolutions. Hmm. I have a couple in mind. One of the ones I made last year I didn't do. It was to get all of my VHS home movies and all the video camera mini tapes all burned to cd. It didn't happen. Now my stupid video camera is BROKE and I don't know how I am going to get the footage from my mini tapes onto DVD :( Everything since Kaylee was born is on the mini tapes! If anyone has a video camera that takes the mini tapes, smaller than a cassette tape but just about as skinny (Mini DV, DVM60) that I could borrow so I can burn the stuff to DVD I would love you forever! I don't know how many other resolutions I broke last year but I plan to go back and look what I had planned. That is for another post.

I hope that all my friends and family had a wonderful Christmas! May it continue into the new year!! I love you all!

Have a safe trip tonight Santa!!

Thank you Aunt Aimee and Abby!

Thank you Uncle Mike!!

Thank you Nanny!

Thank you Great Grammy!

Thank you Grandpa

Happy Early Christmas to me!

I guess it was meant to be a joke, but Mother Nature gave me an early Christmas gift today. My first grey hair. I am 28, shouldn't I have have a couple of years before I get these? I pulled that bad boy out and am crossing my fingers that it was just a fluke and I am not yet really going grey. I. Am. Old.

Merry Eve of Christmas Eve!

Yes I really just said that! I got out today, courtesy of Chandra, without the girls and got all the gifts that family sent money for. They still each have some money left over to get what they want with and they will also still have a gift card from their Grandma to spend after Christmas. Mykenzie is seriously getting about everything I could imagine this year. I have no idea what I will ever buy her again until she starts asking for clothes, I can't wait for those days for her. Kaylee will have an even longer line of My Little Pony's lined up through my house (she lines them all up like they are in a parade or something) and I think they are going to be quite happy this Christmas. Just wait till you see what they get! I am so excited I can't stand it!

I was going to go ahead and post the pics of the crafts I made for family members. I am so mad at myself and I didn't take a photo of the cutest thing I made! GRRR! I was thinking about making one for myself so I guess I will be for sure now so I can post it. So now I am waiting even longer to post them. Maybe I will whip one up tomorrow. Not sure how much free time I will have.

I totally suck and didn't take my kids to see Santa this year. How pathetic is that? Mykenzie saw Santa at my Mom's group Christmas party but Kaylee didn't go because she had a birthday party at the same time. She would be the one I would really want to go :( We may have to make the trek out to the mall and see the jolly ol' elf tomorrow.... on Christmas Eve. That does NOT sound fun. Travis thought he was going to have the day off and it turns out he has to work a half day so we could go do it in the morning while he is at work. We shall see how the morning goes.

Merry Eve of Christmas Eve!! 2 days left everyone!

My Rockstar

I finally caught it on video! Well, kinda. If you count the fact that you can't really see it and it is horizontal but shot vertical then I guess I got it! lol You can hear Kaylee singing though all you are missing is her spinning in a circle while she is singing. My girls love Pink too! :)

My Rockstar

4 days!

Wow time is flying! We are down to 4 days till Christmas now! All of the gifts are bought, the ones I needed to mail I mailed on Monday and Tuesday. We bought the fixin's for our Christmas dinner this morning. Everything right down the list is checked off. All that is left is the wrapping! Yikes! That will be fun. That will happen Christmas Eve after the girls are asleep though. I still need to get in the attic and locate their Christmas PJ's so I can get them wrapped before Christmas Eve. I have gotten gift cards from my sister and money from my BIL that I will go pick the girls some stuff with to open on Christmas Eve. Who knows when that will happen though since they are both out of school now.

Both the girls school parties went well. Kaylee had a typical party that was fun. Mykenzie had a Christmas brunch that we brought a ton of muffins for (and had a bunch left over). She got to have something fun everyday the whole week so she was loving going to school. Both girls made us gifts that are waiting under the tree for Christmas morning. I love getting school gifts! They are always my favorite things. I really love when they make ornaments especially cause they are fun to look at every year when we put them on the tree. I have no idea what they made this year but I am sure we will love them.

Tomorrow is our girl scouts party/ceremony. My first time being a part of a ceremony. I generally get an award at the end of each year, but this time I have a part in it, its different. We (all of the leaders) got together Friday night and it continued Saturday morning to make shirts for all the girls. They turned out really cute I must say. Took us over 6 hours to get them all done but I think that they will really like them. That is their Christmas gift from us leaders. We are excited that they will all have matching shirts for field trips now!

We tried to go to the live nativity at the church by our house last night but it started lightening so they had to pull everyone inside and we only got to see the animals. They had camels though so that was cool. Hopefully we will make it to Opryland hotel to see the lights. I wanted to go tonight but that doesn't seem like it is going to happen. Oh well. I am slowly changing my mind as I type and I think I may start wrapping gifts tonight. I guess I need to get off this blog and get busy making dinner so we can bake cookies and get the girls in bed early enough to start wrapping tonight.

What?

It is Friday already? I don't know where this week went. I stayed home all day Monday till the evening when we had a girl scout meeting. Tuesday I ran some errands and finished up Christmas shopping (that is a lie I still have 1 thing for Travis to buy and something for my BIL), Wednesday we were at home all day again, Thursday more errands and now it is Friday. It really flew by. I did manage to finish all of my Christmas crafts (lie again I still have 2 to do but it will only take me like 10 minutes so it doesn't count). I wrote out my Christmas cards, I bought new ones since the ones I had were blank inside, and got them mailed but I still need a couple addresses from some people who moved. Meredith gave me some boxes so the gifts are loaded up and I will be shipping them out on Tuesday morning before I have to go to Kaylee's school party. I read over 1000 pages in 2 books in 2 days. I am hooked on a series that has been around for awhile now since there are 4 books out and a movie, but I hadn't heard of them and then when I did thought I would have no interest. I finally gave in and wanted to see what all the hype was about, yeah, it is well deserved. I am restraining from picking up book 3 till I get some things done that I need to around this house. We will see how long it lasts. I want to read it BAD!

It snowed here today so Mykenzie is out of school. It is mostly melted now that it is 10:30am. Turns out she isn't feeling well anyhow so she would have been home regardless. She seems like she may be starting to feel better some now though.

I have an ornament exchange to go to tonight that I am excited about! I always love getting together with the ladies from my moms group. Tomorrow we have some things to do during the day and then Travis and I are going to his work Christmas party. Not sure what exactly is happening yet on Sunday I have a couple of tentative plans. I just can't believe it is already the weekend. It is officially 12 days till Christmas now! Well 12 days, 13 hours and 25 minutes!

That is it for our week around here. I picked up crafts for the girls to make their grandparents like they do every year so if Mykenzie is feeling better we will get that done today, if not this weekend at some point. Seriously I just can't figure out where this week went.

17days, 5hours, 24minutes, 55seconds,54,53,52 ...

Less than 20 days now! When I started counting down on here there were still 20 weeks! I have a counter in the footer of this blog now and I love it. I did some gift wrapping the other night for those who live far away. Now to find boxes to ship the stuff in. Chandra gave me one today so that is 1 down, 4 more to go :) I ordered some thing online for the 2 dads and I haven't gotten them yet and am getting very impatient about it. I want to get the gifts mailed soon and I need those in order to do it. Plus I am waiting on a picture so I can finish up a craft project for my MIL so I can get her stuff in the mail.

It has been an unusually busy weekend, tis the season for that though. On Friday night we went to our church's Christmas program. It was good, very different then I expected for sure. Preached without being preachy. It confused poor Kaylee to no end though. It was 2 angels trying to get to the birth of Jesus and in doing so they went through different time periods. One was the Elvis era where they were all talking about the king coming (the angels thought is was THE King) but it was of course Elvis. So Kaylee leans over and says, "Mommy is that REALLY a King?" Then another part they were at some blue grass thing and they were singing about Santa coming on a train and going choo choo train is coming. So she was very confused at this point and and says "So mommy, does Santa really come on a train or does he come on a sleigh?" Poor kiddo so confused but very happy when they finally found baby Jesus.

Saturday morning started with us out the door around 9am to head to a local nursing home to do a craft with the residents with our Girl Scout troop. Started out really irritating because 2 of the other leaders weren't there, 1 we knew way in advance that she wouldn't be there, the other called at 9:25 when we were meeting at 9:30! Freaking ridiculous. We only had 6 girls total come which is kind of sad because 2 of them were my kids and 2 of them were the other leaders kids, we have 19 girls in our troop. We made stockings with them to hang on their doors and it was nice. It is a little hard to be around old people like that when you aren't used to it. There was one lady wheeling herself around and saying "help me help me! I am all alone, I don't know what to do. Where do I go? Someone help me." I have always want to live to an old age to see my children grow and their children ect. And all of the old people I have ever known in my life still had their minds when they passed away in their 80's. If I have my mind I am happy to be alive but really if I am wheeling around a nursing home saying help me help me I'm all alone, I really just prefer to go home and be with the Lord. Some couldn't lift their hands, most couldn't write it is just really sad. We will take the girls back in Feb. to do another craft with them. It is good for the girls to be involved and they all enjoyed it.

After the nursing home was done we came home and had lunch and I whipped up a batch of deviled eggs real quick. Then Barbara came and picked up Mykenzie to take her to the moms group annual Christmas party to see Santa. I took Kaylee to her friend Avery's birthday party. They both started at 2:45 which I found strange. I asked Kaylee if she would rather go see Santa or to Avery's party and it was no contest at all. She loves Avery! She had a great time at Bounce U with all of her friends from school and Mykenzie had fun at the Christmas Party. I enjoyed chatting with the moms at the party but I wanted to be at the Christmas Party. This is the first one I have missed since I have been here and I am a bit bummed. They both wrapped up at the same time and Chandra brought Kenzie home for me, where I made a quick dinner for the fam and was out the door to get groceries for the shower today. I sat on my butt for the rest of the night, well I boiled eggs and cut veggies but that was it. I cleaned for a bit today but then just enjoyed the shower. I will eventually put all my furniture back where it belongs but for now I am just playing online waiting for Desperate Housewives and Brother's and Sister's to come on. I am especially looking forward to B&S tonight! Sooooo good. Now that my busiest weekend of the month is over with and most of my shopping is completed I don't know what I am going to do with myself now. Ha! I lie I have plenty to do but things will definitely seem slower now that some major things are over with. Travis' work Christmas party is Saturday. I have never been to it with him before so it will be interesting and I am not all that excited about it but I am sure in the end it will be fine. I just need to stop stressing! lol
I actually have no set plans for this week,till the weekend. Wow! I need to call a few friends I keep telling I am going to call and don't. Duh! Oh and I just found out that my friend Amy is coming to visit after Christmas for a few days. It has been 2 years since I have seen her so I can't wait to catch up! The next day Amber will be coming with her kiddos so that will be really fun too. Don't you just love Christmas time!!!
17 days, 4 hours,49 minutes, 15 seconds...14, 13,12,11,10.....................

Procrastination

Main Entry:
pro·cras·ti·nate
Pronunciation:
\prə-ˈkras-tə-ˌnāt, prō-\
Function:
verb
Inflected Form(s):
pro·cras·ti·nat·ed; pro·cras·ti·nat·ing

transitive verb : to put off intentionally and habitually intransitive verb : to put off intentionally the doing of something that should be done
synonyms see delay
— pro·cras·ti·na·tion \-ˌkras-tə-ˈnā-shən\ noun
— pro·cras·ti·na·tor \-ˈkras-tə-ˌnā-tər\ noun


This is the definition of me right now. I have had a long day. It has gone from 9am to 7:30 pm just running from thing to thing. Now I am home and I need to clean. I say alot I need to clean but this time I REALLY NEED to clean. I am hosting Chandra's baby shower tomorrow for her sweet miracle baby and I really can't find the motivation to clean my house! They are all tired moms too they won't mind my mess, right? LOL I will clean some I promise ;)

Biggest Loser

I am a fan of Biggest Loser. Though this is only the 3rd season I have watched of it I fell for it fast and now am addicted. This season I really just want to smack all of the contestants on the blue team. Seriously I don't like any of the ones that are left. None of them. Vicky is a royal beeach. I think she has some serious mental problems and I feel badly for her children. Heba and her slow talking idiot husband drive me nuts. She was a total PITA while he was gone but she has softened some since he came back but still. So now all that is left of the black team is Michelle. I so so so hope she wins. I will be so sad if they get her out of there too. Stupid stupid Amy, she should have voted to kick Vicky out when she had the chance, what a dumb ass. Especially since Vicky sent her packing the very next week. I hope Michelle wins it all and that Colleen picks up the prize from those who went home. What do you think about this season?

The Holiday Season has officially begun!

Today is known all over the country as Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving and stores every where slash prices for Christmas. People get up and stand in long lines starting as early as 3am just hoping to get their hands on a deal. Good times. I, however, was not one of those people. I stayed all nice and snug in my bed sleeping soundly. I find deals all the time so no reason to go out with all the crazy people. I am just about done with my shopping anyhow! Yay! Now I just have to wait for everyone to send the girls their gift cards and money so I can go out and shop all over again. We open gifts from family on Christmas Eve so I go and spend most (not all) of their gift cards so they have gifts to open on Christmas Eve. So basically I go Christmas shopping for the girls twice.

We had a nice Thanksgiving yesterday. Very low key hanging out. We had ham and all the fixin's. After we ate I seriously tried to figure out why in the world I even bother because the girls eat nothing I make. But it was yummy so whatever, their loss :) Today we enjoyed visiting with our friends and then listening to Christmas music (92.9 all Christmas all the time) and singing and dancing. Now we are watching the movie Elf. We put up our Christmas tree last weekend and it is beautiful. I love, love, love my tree! I wish a picture could capture how it looks all lit up at night but it just can't. It is a pain in the butt tree that you have to put together branch by branch, it is not pre-lit but I wouldn't trade it in for anything, it is perfect. Travis put up our outside lights yesterday. I love Christmas!! Less than 4 weeks now!

What have we been up to, you ask?

Well Travis ended up canceling his trip to Ohio and stayed home from work on Friday. This meant he got to go with Kaylee and I to Mykenzie's school for her Thanksgiving lunch. The food was, uh school food, but it was fun. It is always fun to see how your kids are at school with their friends.

We have a date for Mykenzie's braces and palate expander. She will be getting them both on January 7th. I hope this is all she will end up needing done so she doesn't have braces from the time she is 8 till she is done with middle school. That would be a long time for that. If all goes well she will be done with everything in 10-12 months and the palate expander will be done in 3. Fingers crossed.

On Thursday Chandra came over and we spent the day crafting Christmas gifts :) It was so much fun. I think I may be addicted. I have been doing it ever since (and some before then) I still have a couple things I want to do but it seems like every time I turn around I am picking up a new idea and making something else.

Today I spent parts of the day doing laundry and parts making vinyl lettering for my house! Another addiction that could be hard to break. I will post pics another time. My camera battery is charging so... Plus one of the things is for Christmas and well, it looks cute all by it's lonesome it will look cuter once the rest of the decorations are in place, which will either be this coming weekend or the Wed. before Thanksgiving. We shall see. Personally I want to go get them NOW and put them up! So some of it could be done before the weekend. I bought a ton (seriously like 20 boxes) of new ornaments with at least 4-8 ornaments per box, after Christmas last year so I CAN'T wait to see what my tree looks like this year with all my new pretty things :) If I remember correctly though I need to purchase some more lights for the tree this year.

I have way too many hobbies these days I don't know what to do with myself. It is funny because the thing that has suffered the most is my online time and I still manage to get online and do what I need to do. Guess I was just wasting time before. I haven't really scrapbooked in about a month either, well 1 LO but I don't know if you can only count 1. But I have managed to read a book (4 Blondes by Candace Bushnell, not that great) get a ton of crafts done, keep my house decent, spend time with friends and kids, have my DVR up to date, make and hang my vinyl lettering, ect... Are there suddenly more hours in the day because I certainly have not gotten better at time management. Oh we watched Kit Kittredge (American girl movie) and Get Smart this weekend too. We enjoyed both of them :)

The rest of the week will involve, getting ALOT of my Christmas shopping done, finishing up my outstanding craft projects, Get my Christmas cards written out (all but adding the pics that will be coming soon since I ordered them this weekend), lunch with friends, Thanksgiving program/lunch at Kaylee's school, oh and a few errands for good measure. And maybe pulling some Christmas decorations out of the attic.

Can you even believe how close the holidays are!! We only have 8 days till Thanksgiving! I guess I better go get my turkey!!! Christmas is now only 5 weeks away!! I am trying so hard to hold off on the Christmas music.... but I am singing "It's the Holiday Season"

Crazy Kids