Cowboy School

Calvin & Hobbsian Marshmellow Snowman

Pictures!

Eating Ice Cream and Riding the Santa Train.

Trailer Life

We are down at Nana and Pop's and staying in the trailer for extra space. I am thankful to have made it safely down here. It's a little strange to be in the trailer again because we haven't been in it for a year. Every time we talked about taking it some place to go camping our schedule just didn't work out this past year. So it is good to be using it again. A few things have changed. Since we are just vacationing in it we don't have nearly the stuff in it that we had. Doug and Andy are now big enough that they are sleeping in the top bunks. Josie is sleeping in a bottom bunk rather than her spot on the floor. At least the kids are excited about sleeping in the trailer.
In some ways it feels a little like coming home because we lived in it for almost 5 months. I have a lot of memories associated with the trailer. There is something about the tight coziness of everything being so close together in the trailer that makes the world feel like a much simpler place.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!
We had Christmas whether we were ready or not.
We ran some errand Christmas Eve. Ended up getting to church just as the service was starting. I don't know if it was the sitting with us (rather than the couple the boys sit with while Jim & I sing in the choir), the not having a nap, the different time of day, or what but the boys were really squirrely the entire time. So we (and they) survived. The lady behind us told me at the end of the service that "your children are precious" which are code words for "I enjoyed watching them but am glad they are yours and not mine."
Andy fell asleep in the car on the way home but did manage to wake up to leave cookies for Santa. He picked out seven cookies for the plate and Doug left a packet of hot cocoa in the Santa cup so Santa ate well at our house. Andy even insisted on leaving a napkin for Santa to wipe his face.
Doug was the first one up and came running into our room shouting "Santa came." He emptied his stocking before the other two were even awake. Andy was up next and I thought the poor child was going to cry because Santa had left half of a cookie on the plate. However, I explained that Santa probably got full and had to move on to the next house. That seemed to make him happy and later we thought about how Santa might have had a full belly and even perhaps taken a nap out our house.
Jim started breakfast and when there were twenty minutes left on the timer for the coffee cake Josie ripped into the boys' gift to her. So we did the gifts under the tree. We finished before the timer was done.
I do have some pictures. I don't have any of the carnage directly afterward. I forgot to charge the new camera last night and so I plopped the battery in the charger in between stockings and the tree. I didn't look at it right away so I didn't realize at first that I had the battery upside-down. This sort of follows the trend of me knocking the entire box of dryer sheets into the washer and then washing a load (which was definitely NOT a time saver by the way).
Merry Christmas and give hugs to your family.

And on the third day of Christmas my truelove gave to me....

Three bottles of amoxicillin.
Doug woke up saying that his ear hurt this morning. We decided to take Andy along for good measure. Josie already had been diagnosed with an ear infection on one side. So Doug and Andy have matching ear infections (Doug on the right, Andy on the left). At least we caught them early on.
Now I just need to get everything else done that needs to get done around here. The kids are excited and I'm sure that since they are 3 and 1 that pretty much no matter what I get done and don't get done they will be wowed.

100 times and counting...

Doug has developed a few Christmas/winter fetishes. Last year the only thing that surfaced was that he loved the song "Jingle Bells" and we would get smiles for a month after Christmas as we would enter stores and he would start singing it.
We had a love of hot chocolate two years ago when my brother gave us a Hot Chocolate warmer/machine thing (it wasn't unpacked last year). This year Doug is back to his love of Hot Chocolate (or as he would say...Hot Coffee).
He also currently has an obsession with Rudolph. I don't really know how many times we have now watched the video. We constantly sing the song in the car. We turn up the song in the car when it comes on the radio, and when "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" comes on we turn that up too because Burl Ives sings it at the end of the Rudolph video. Ironically enough I think his favorite part of the video is the snow monster.

Imaginary....

I haven't really heard anything recently about Andy's imaginary friends. However, we have developed an imaginary set of keys. The imaginary set of keys apparently unlocks the car and the house. Occasionally the keys get lost or left some place to be found later. Recently an imaginary watch was added, and this afternoon I learned that apparently he has an imaginary radio in his room that has been playing Christmas music composed by him. I'm a little surprised that the only "cell phone" I have seen has been temporary pretend play.

Busy Day

We had a busy day yesterday. We drove three hours to go to church at our old church in our old town. It was kind of cool because not that many people knew we were coming so when we showed up we had the "oh wow" factor going for us. We hadn't been there since we moved so basically a year and a half had passed.
Then we drove back home to go to a Christmas party with our new church family. It was a lot of fun. The kids had a great time. So much so that when it was time to go they didn't want to leave. There was an ornament swap. We were strategic this year and took two ornaments. Both ornaments were "stolen" at least once. We ended up with a nice wooden Santa and Andy helped me "steal" a fishing snowman. It was fun, but now it is time to clean up the house some and actually get ready for Christmas at our house.

I survived

I survived Wal-mart on the Saturday before Christmas...with three kids in tow...
We needed to go today because there were some ornaments we needed to get for an ornament swap at a Christmas party we are going to tomorrow. So I started by bribing the kids that if they stayed in the cart (rather than walking) they would each get a treat. I was thankful for this because we did actual encounter a little girl who was lost and right as I was heading her towards a Wal-mart clerk her brother showed up.
I got two carts just so the kids could spread out. They helped me pick out the ornaments (a John Deere Tractor and a set of Jingle Bells), we got the food things we needed (which interestingly enough the food section was a lot less busy than the merchandise section), and then we got the Ferrari we needed. A child at our church was going around asking people to get him a Ferrari. Jim, being the slightly twisted guy I married said yes. So hence the trip to the toy section and a Hot Wheels Ferrari. We couldn't find a red one like he wanted but they had white, yellow and silver to choose from (we ended up with white). I had already known that I wouldn't make it out of the Hot Wheels section without the kids wanting a car so promising a new car for good behavior was not a stretch. Doug and Josie each picked different cars with flames and Andy opted for a Matchbox Fire Engine. Doug had his package open before we had even left the aisle and Andy had his out before we reached the check-out. We lucked out and got through the check-out quickly and Josie happily had her car immediately after it crossed the scanner.