Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Christmas recap :-)

Well, I hope everyone had a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS :-) Our plans ended up changing a bit, and everything (sort of) worked out in the end. This is how things ended up going. Well, for starters-- for anyone who doesn't know/remember, my husband does snow plowing and salting of business parking lots during the winter. He got a phonecall at 5:30am Christmas morning... one of his buddies who also does snow plowing/salting during the winter called to let him know he was out salting and that it was really snowing hard out. It was hardly doing anything when I went to bed, so that was a bit of a shock. Russ got up to check things out and we had about 1 1/2 inches of snow on our back deck by that time. He ended up having to go out by himself and salt a few parking lots of places that were open at the time. I was pretty upset about the whole thing, being that our kids would be up soon... but really, I couldn't get mad because snow is our livelihood in the winter...it's what brings us income. But still-- I was upset he had to leave!

I ended up staying up after he left....it was about 6am and I figured I'd play Santa and put the gifts under the tree afterall. I got all the kids' gifts under there and put Aly and Will's new train together. By 8am, the kids still weren't up... thankfully, because Russ wasn't home yet. He ended up getting home about 8:40 or so, and I could *just* hear Alyson waking up. I swear Aly and Will must coordinate their wakeup times each night, because a few minutes later, Will woke up.

We opened presents up about 9:15am or so... Aly was LOVING it this year! Will is just starting to sit up really well by himself, so he got to sit on the floor by Aly the whole time she opened presents. She opened his presents too, but by that time, she already had a few of HER presents she really really wanted to play with, so her attention span was zip by that point. I had to keep reminding her that she needed to help Will. Finally, she left about 3 of his presents under the tree so I opened them myself...lol.

After present opening, I made breakfast for everyone... pancakes, sausage, and scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. By the time we got done eating/cleaning up, it was 10:30am. I hadn't gotten a shower yet, the kids needed to get dressed, and we were supposed to be at Russ's mom's house (20 min away) by 11:30am. Yeah....not gonna happen. Russ called her and told her we'd be late. We didn't end up getting there until after 12:30pm. Everyone opened presents then we ate around 2pm. Russ and his family are originally from Virginia, so there are a lot of southern foods at their family gatherings... one being collard greens. I usually avoid them but figured I'd try them for the first time on Christmas. And yeah....not a fan. Blech. But at least I gave them a try....lol.

We stayed up Russ's mom's house til 4:30 or so, then came back home. Aly and Will both fell asleep on the way home, they were SO tired. As soon as we got in our front door, Aly laid on the living room floor for a few minutes...lol. My parents ended up showing up about 6:15pm and stayed til close to 9pm. I tried staying up and getting my nightly dose of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies, but my eyes were slamming shut by 10:30pm. I was asleep by 11 and slept for 9 hours. It was great...lol.

The past few days have consisted of gift exchanges with friends, and attempting to get all toys out of their boxes and into the appropriate child's room...lol. I usually keep some toys in our living room since the kids' bedrooms are both upstairs, so I moved all that stuff back upstairs and replaced them with all the new ones. In the next few days, the "Great Toy Purge" will be taking place. We need to scale down the amount of toys in this household, majorly. I already have a bunch of clothes to give to Goodwill, so maybe we'll add some toys to the mix.

As for tomorrow (well, today, since it IS 1am...) I'm planning on meeting up with my cousin to do some shopping, then I need to go get groceries since it's been almost 2 weeks and we're almost out of everything in this house. My parents got me a gift certificate for the mall, and I CAN NOT WAIT to go out and buy some things for myself. Everything I buy is for the kids, so it'll be nice to treat myself for a change. I'm just hoping the kiddos feel ok tomorrow. My parents are supposed to watch them for the afternoon, but both kids weren't feeling so hot today. They both have runny noses, poor things. Aly is coughing a little, so Russ went and got those Triaminic strips for her (which the pediatrician recommended) and I put the vaporizer up in her room tonight. As for Will, you'd never know he was sick other than his runny nose...he's still little Mr. Happy Baby as usual!

So we'll see how things go in the morning. If the kids aren't feeling so hot I'll just do the grocery shopping and hold off on the "me" shopping. I hate seeing my babies sick :-( Hoping they feel better soon.

Well, I'm off to bed. Night!

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Just not the same.

Well, it's officially Christmas Day, so....Merry Christmas! We spent Christmas Eve with my side of the family tonight at my Grandma's house. It was nice, but seems like it gets shorter and shorter every year. Everyone is all grown up with their own kids now, and everything's changed... everyone has their own traditions and other places to go now... it's just kinda sad. In a way I miss the days when all the cousins were little and just hung out and talked for hours.Just not the same now. But don't get me wrong-- I'm just thankful to still be able to get together with my whole family!

Plans for Christmas Day include church at 9am, then we're going to Russ's mom's house at 11:30 to open presents, and dinner at 1:30pm with his side of the family. We'll stay over there til 5-ish, then head back home. My parents are coming over our house around 6pm to exchange gifts, and they're bringing us dinner :-) We'll probably just wait until then to have Aly open up gifts... I hate to do it that way, but with our schedule tomorrow, that's the best way to do it. Next year that won't fly, I'm sure!! Right now, Aly's starting to understand the whole Santa thing, but still doesn't totally get it....she doesn't realize the whole "Santa comes at night and you wake up in the morning to a bunch of presents" idea. So we can still get away with opening presents later in the day. Next year we'll have to change things all around.

We should have gone to church Christmas Eve, but everything at my Grandma's house started at 4, and since my Grandma's getting older, (not to mention the fact that everyone always has other places to go) everyone always seems to leave by 7pm or so. If we went to church tonight we would only have an hour or so with everyone before they left. Now I'm kicking my butt though.

Is it bad that I don't want to go anywhere tomorrow?? I just want Christmas like we had it when I was growing up. I want to wake up on Christmas morning and do the present thing right away, then sit down to a nice yummy breakfast.... then just lay around and watch A Christmas Story while Aly and Will play with their toys that are scattered all over the living room. That's all I want to do. I just want to stay in my jammies and not have to worry about going anywhere. *sigh* In the coming years I told Russ we're just gonna have to tell everyone that if they want to see us, they have to come to our house. Once kids are in the picture everything changes,it seems... and it gets harder and harder to go fifty million places over the holidays. For me, anyway. I just don't want to step on anyone's toes by saying that we're doing something at our house. My mother-in-law and her husband always do a big dinner for each holiday at their house, and those are the few times all her kids get together. I don't want them getting the wrong idea and thinking we don't want to see them, but I don't have the room in our house to invite everyone and their brother either. I can't possibly make a dining room that barely fits a 6-person table hold 15+ people, so as much as I'd like to offer to host things, I just can't.

I'm just bummed because I can't even put presents out tonight like everyone else is busy doing. I already have to wake up at 7am so I can get myself and the kids ready, and if Aly wakes up (she doesn't usually get up til 8 or after) and sees presents she is not going to want to leave the house. It doesn't even feel like Christmas Eve since I can't do that. Thank God Aly doesn't "get" the whole Santa thing, like I said... :-(

Anyway... enough of my moody rambling. I just needed to vent...lol. (Whether anyone reads it or not.) I'd better try and get some sleep now. Hope everyone has a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS, surrounded by the love of family and friends!!!

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Loving this time of year!!

I really should be sleeping now but I'm not even close to being tired....

Just sitting here on the couch, listening to Christmas music and enjoying the lights of my Christmas tree :-) I just got done baking cutout sugar cookies and now I FINALLY get a chance to sit down. I was bummed for a bit because the first batch of cookies I made turned out BEAUTIFUL and so yummy looking....but not yummy tasting. Turns out my baking soda was old and the cookies had a yucky aftertaste to them. NOT good. I just about said heck with it and gave up on baking for the night, but I REALLY needed to get some more done. SO... I made another batch (same recipe but with baking powder instead) and they turned out AWESOME!! I made snowflakes and gingerbread men and trees :-) Can't wait to put icing on them... I *might* have Aly help me...but the question is-- How messy do I want things to get??!! lol

So now I officially have a whopping TWO cookies made. Chocolate chip and cutouts. I want to make a few more things since we'll be going a bunch of places over the holidays... not sure what yet. Probably Divinity (my grandma's favorite-- I make her a batch of her own every year), peanut butter cookies w/ reese's pieces in them (yum) and who knows what else. I tell ya-- I have eaten more sweets over the past few days than I have in the past few MONTHS.My tummy is yelling at me for it... it's not used to a lot of sweets...lol We hardly ever have sweets in the house since Russ is diabetic, so it's very tempting right now! My mom gave me a tin of cookies to bring home to "have around when company comes"-- YEAH RIGHT. Those won't last for the company...haha!

It feels great to finally get a chance to sit down today. It's been go-go-go from the minute I woke up this morning. We had a birthday party for our friends' son who just turned 3, then once we got home around 4-ish I did a bunch of cleaning/laundry, made dinner, then it seemed like it was time to get the kids ready for bed. This day FLEW!

Russ is still gone... he left around 9:30pm to pick up his brother and his family from Pittsburgh airport :-) I just feel bad because their carseat and stroller got LOST... they had a connection in Las Vegas, I believe Russ told me. So, guess their stroller is livin' it up in Vegas right now :-( Seems like something gets lost every time they come here. Last time, Russ's brother's whole luggage got lost, and it was finally brought to our house 2 days before he had to leave. That's my worst fear everytime Russ and I fly somewhere-- I'm always a mess while we're waiting for our luggage to come out!!

But anyway....I'm so excited to see them! They live in Alaska, so we don't see eachother much. MAYBE once a year, if that. They have 2 kids-- an 18-month little girl and a 3 month-old baby boy :-) I'm looking forward to seeing if our boys resemble eachother!

They will be in town until New Year's Eve... unfortunately they can't stay longer than that because they both have to work at the beginning of the week following New Year's, and flight time back to Alaska is looooong.... they need time to recover after getting home.

Well I gotta cut this short now... Will just woke up crying so I gotta see what my baby boy needs. Nighty night!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Sleepytime for everyone but me!

Ahh, nighttime. This is my favorite time of day....everyone in the house is sleeping and I can actually sit and hear myself think. I get to sit my butt on the couch, turn on a Hallmark channel Christmas movie, and enjoy the peace and quiet and my Christmas lights. Love it.

I got some more gift wrapping done tonight. Little by little, things are getting accomplished. It's just hard because Will's nursery is in what USED to be our spare bedroom, so now I have no place to stay up late and wrap presents without disturbing anyone. I have to do it all at night once Alyson is sleeping, when I go take Will up to his room for the night. He gives me about a half hour of his time before he enters that fussy "mommy get out of here and let me sleep" mode. I have everyones' presents up in his room... wrapping paper, ribbons, bows, and boxes all over the place. Poor kid, it looks like Christmas exploded in there right now. Luckily he's not old enough to realize what's going on yet. Mama's gonna have to find a new place for everything next year because he won't be confined to a crib all night next Christmas!! (I'd like to say we'll be in a new house next year, but that's a longshot. Maybe in the next FIVE years. But anyway.) Keeping Alyson out of his room has been rough, because she always wants to go up there with me when I put him down for naps, etc... she caught a glimpse of some wrapped presents the other day and got all excited. I wrapped all her stuff in Spongebob Squarepants Christmas paper (she LOVES that show right now) and she saw it... she goes, "My spongebob wrapping paper! I LOVE IT!!!" then proceeded to grab the roll of paper and give it a hug. Gotta love her. So then I had to tell her those presents were for someone else. She said, "Oh... ok, mama" and then turned around and said, "Can I open it??" She definitely keeps life interesting around here.

Not much else going on today... just had to open a case against a buyer on ebay though... that was a first. I've had good luck with ALL the buyers I've dealt with so far,except this one person. He emailed me on 12/8, a few days after the end of my ebay auction, and said there was a problem with his paypal account that would be resolved by Saturday the 11th and he'd pay me asap. Fine...I emailed him back and said it wasn't a problem. Didn't hear anything from him all all weekend. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I thought, "ok, maybe the paypal issue will be resolved on Monday." Monday came, and nothing. So I emailed him and nicely asked if the issue was resolved, whether he still wanted the item, etc. Told him to get back to me asap and let me know. That was yesterday afternoon. Didn't hear anything all day yesterday or today. It's going on 9 days now. I just want to know what's going on, but I'm not getting a response. Ugh!! So, now he has 4 days to pay me or I get my ebay fees back. The way I see it, if you want an item so bad that you purchase it using buy-it-now, wouldn't you at least pay within a day or so?! Maybe I just feel that way because I pay immediately when I purchase something. Who knows. It's just that I was reeeeeally looking forward to getting an extra $50 around this time of year. :-(

Man, can I ramble or what? ;-)

So that's my interesting life right now. Still battling this sinus cold. Don't have the balloon feeling in my head so much now, but it's turned into a scratchy throat and that tired, drained feeling. I just took some Nyquil...and that green nyquil is DISGUSTING! It tastes like black licorice,and I'm not a black licorice kinda person. Darn grocery store didn't have the red kind. Blech. I just hope this cold is gone for Christmas. Our whole family was sick for Christmas last year (but with the flu, which was worse) and I don't want a repeat of that! So for now I'm just gonna rest up and curl under my Steelers blanket and enjoy a Hallmark channel movie...that is, until this nyquil kicks in and knocks me out.

Night!

Monday, December 13, 2010

Another year gone by....wow.

I refuse to believe it's been almost a year since I posted! Guess now is a good time to start back up.

Let me just say that this Christmas season is going so FAST! Hard to believe there are only a few weeks left until Christmas. I still have over half my wrapping to do, have NO cookies baked, and I need to thoroughly clean my house since lots of company will be here soon.

I'm just getting stressed out now...lol. Being that we've had another child this past year, I told myself that we were only going to buy for KIDS this year...no adults except for my in-laws,my parents, and my grandma. I told some of our friends a few months back that we were just buying for their kids, so they shouldn't buy anything for us. Everyone was fine with that. But NOW, I found out they DID get us something...now I feel bad because we have nothing for them, and truthfully we've already spent way too much on Christmas already. Now I feel like I should buy something for them so we don't feel bad when we get the gifts they bought us. They're really good friends of ours--practically like family-- so I don't know what to do now. I really don't want to have to rack up any more money on our credit card.

And THEN-- my sister-in-law called the other night asking what size clothes the kids were in. I told her Will is in 6-9 month but will be out of that size soon. She laughed because her little boy is 3 months old and is in the same size, also ready to grow out of it already!! And of course, all the clothes I got her son for Christmas are Carter's 6 month size, which is actually 3-6 months. GRR! I ordered them from the Carter's website,and can't find my receipt anywhere. So now I have to call them and see if I can still mail everything back.

And I thought I was done with my Christmas shopping...guess not. :-(

Sorry for the whiny post but it seems like when we try to save money, it never seems to work out.

Onto more upbeat subjects--my kids.

I can't believe Will is already 6 1/2 months old!! He's growing SO fast! At his 6month appointment he was 18 lb 15oz and 27 3/4 inches long...90th percentile for height and 70th percentile for weight. He's sitting up on his own for short periods of time (tries to himself to a sitting position on his own,but only gets halfway there...) and is starting to say some consonants now( ba,na,ma.) So, maybe hearing the word "mama" isn't too far off! :-)

Aly is 3 1/2 years old already... she's my little ornery princess. She tries to be my little helper where Will is concerned...which is a help *sometimes*...lol She's in that "I want to do what I want to do" stage, and is going through yet another naked phase...lol I swear, the girl only stays dressed when we go somewhere other than our house. I get her dressed in the morning and 10 minutes later I hear, "Look mama,I naked!"(Great, honey....great....)

I'm still staying at home full-time with the kiddos, which has its ups and downs.
I absolutely love being home with them and feel so blessed that I'm able to, though I sometimes miss adult conversation (though I make time for mommy's day out with friends,etc!), and especially contributing $$$ to the family. I've been putting some of Aly's older clothes up on ebay (since I'm pretty sure we're done having kids) and have been doing great with that, so it helps out with extra little things I want to buy :-)

Well, I'd better end this here...I am battling a case of sinusitis which has my head feeling like it's about to explode:-( My jaw and ears hurt because of it...NOT FUN. It's made my night-owl self very tired, so I think I'm gonna head to bed soon. I'll post pics of the kiddos soon!

*Nighty night!*