Post Christmas

Well, I hope everyone had a very wonderful Christmas. I can definitely say that my family did. No one was forgotten, not even a little bit. Christmas Eve we went to my parents and visited with some family that lives in town and I headed to work at 6pm. It was weird because I never work nights anymore and I really didn't know anyone working. Tom was left to put the kids to bed and set up the SANTA gift. HA HA! Thomas was up bright and early in the living room playing with his new train table. When I walked out into the living room I said "Thomas who got you that train table?" He replied, "I don't know, you bought it for me mommy?" When I told him I thought Santa brought it for me he asked me if Santa was still here. It was very cute.

Three is definitely the year when kids start to really get it. He was all about the presents, but he thought every one was for him. We opened presents at our house and then went to my parents again. I got lots of fun stuff: clothes, gift cards and stuff for my scrapbooking room. Spoiled again just like every year.

To my very pleasant surprise though, I got something that made me almost cry. Back in June between dropping my kids off at my parents and heading to pick up my hubby to head to Las Vegas I lost my diamond pendent. It was the first gift Tom ever gave me, Christmas 2004, I wore it everyday since. I was devastated that I lost it. I searched my car and my moms house figuring it had to be in one of those places. I even had Tom sift through my moms very full vacuum bag in hopes she had sucked it up while vacuuming. No luck! Well long story short, while cleaning for my parents Christmas Eve shindig, my dad decided to vacuum the big chair that is in their family room. He went to my mom and asked her if she knew whose diamond he had found. She wrapped it up and gave it to me Christmas morning. I couldn't have been happier. We had never thought to look in the chair because the day I lost it I had never even sat in that chair. I think I am going to take it as a sign that 2009 is going to be a really good year.

Here are some pics from our Christmas. More to come once my mom sends me hers.



Me and Taylor Christmas morning, 5am wake-up call from Thomas. Yikes we aren't looking to hot.


Thomas playing with his new train table


All the presents, he had no clue what to do. This was the first year he had to help with passing them all out.


It took him all of about two minutes to fall asleep in the car after all of the excitement in the morning.



Our after Christmas trip to Cabela's. Excuse my husbands scary faces, he was refusing to cooperate during my picture taking. Oh and you will notice Thomas got a haircut this morning. He is SO much cuter with a nicely buzzed head.

Just a few days left

Where does the time go? Christmas is in 3 days and then the New Year. 2009!! Tom and I had our babysitter come over last night and we headed out to do.....well we really didn't know. We had no real plan, but that is usually how it is when you have kids and are always with them. Time spent with just your husband...what is that? We ended up just going to TGIFridays and sitting in the bar watching football and talking. It is amazing how nice it is to have a conversation without being interrupted. We laughed and reminisced about random things from years back. It was really fun.

As usual my day started at 5am with two kids and my hubby waking me up. :( Both of my kids are not feeling 100% which made for a very winy morning. I didn't really want to stay home all day so I ventured to Costco (not a good idea 3 days before Christmas) but what the heck. After that I went to the mall to pick up the kids pictures at JCPenny. The girl at the photo place was hesitant to give me my pictures because I wasn't picking them up at the designated time. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Picking a time two weeks earlier and being able to actually be there at that time is not easy with kids. Of course she wanted to sell me stuff and I was not having it. Thankfully my kids were crying and wining, so I don't really think she minded that I hurried right out of there.

Sandi just sent me pictures from Seattle and I have been looking at everything people have been posting. A little part of me wishes I was there, but only for a little bit and then I would be wanting my wonderful, but cold Arizona weather back.

Well, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and since by now everyone has hopefully received their Christmas cards I will post our 2008 family Christmas card picture.

How quickly you forget....

So, today I decided to have my babysitter come over and watch the kids while I went to get my nails done. I have the best babysitter and if it weren't for the fact that it is really expensive, I would have her over more often. It was the first time she has watched Taylor, but she has watched Thomas since he was 1. The nail place was busy, so I ran over to Target while I waited and when I got out of the car and was walking into the store I couldn't help but laugh at how light I felt. NO KIDS!! It is not very often that I walk into any place without a cart or a stroller and all the necessities that go along with children. No one to yell at and no one to keep from crying, just me. It is moments like this that I of course notice all of the women with their kids and see what I look like from the outside. It is an unspoken bond that all mothers of toddlers share. How quickly we forget what it is like to be without kids in toe. It was a very nice two hours!!

I have decided...

That for the month of December my new motto is....Go Broke or Go Home. Every year I say that I am going to be prepared, organized and ready for the holidays, in every way, but especially financially. As usual though, this year had turned out exactly like years past. I am no more on top of things than before and with only 9 days left it is crunch time. Anyone with young kids will probably agree with me that it is virtually impossible to get any shopping done or gifts wrapped. Each day I am left with a small window of opportunity after both Thomas and Taylor have gone to sleep, but this is only time well spent if my husband doesn't feel as though we need our quality time together. HA HA! Oh well, every year I figure it all out and on Christmas morning I am ready. This year will be no different I am sure.

Sunday night I took the kids to my parents to decorate cookies. I had to just laugh at how when most people decorate cookies with their kids they just let the kids go to town, big mess and all. Not us though, we had to stand right next to Thomas and guide him, for fear he would make some crazy mess that none of us wanted to deal with or cookies that looked like a kid decorated them. I think it is things like this that are the reason why my son doesn't care to be dirty and messy. I think the only time he has had free range to do whatever when it involved food was his 1st birthday. It was a fun night though and he really didn't know any different. He got to help and that is all that matters.

Totally tired!!

All I can say is that I am exhausted from Thomas' 3rd birthday today, but I will post a few of the pics. All he wanted was a skateboard and anytime you asked him what he wanted he would tell you a skateboard.....thank goodness for Aunt KiKi and Uncle Ken. He made out like a bandit with all of the things he got, including his skateboard. Here is our future Tony Hawk.

When it rains it pours...

First let me start off by saying that never will you ever hear me claim to be anything other than a procrastinator. It is never my intention, but nevertheless it is who I am. I got a new computer in February or March, I can't remember I was 8 months pregnant. I vowed that with the new computer I would do everything right, so as to hopefully avoid anything going wrong. Maybe two months after I got the computer I realized I had no sound. I was not happy at all, especially because I definitely started out with sound. I put off trying to figure out what was wrong, partially because of my procrastination and partially because I really never thought about it. So today, I received an email from my best friend and it was an email which required sound. Of course in this moment how mad I became at myself for putting off the sound issue.

Onto why my day has been one of those days.....I spent 1 1/2 hours on the HP chat with BOB B., very helpful was Bob until he told me to do something that inturn caused our chat to disconnect. I will be perfectly honest with you when I say that actual tears fell. Any mom of toddlers or infants knows it is not easy to devote this kind of time to something that does not involve your kids. I proceeded to try figuring it out on my own for another hour when I decided to try the chat again. This time I got TARUN.....he too was very helpful, but still no sound. In all I spent at least five hours of my day trying to get sound. NOTHING!!!

My kids picked today to be on their WORST behavior and almost the entire time I was chatting with Bob and Tarun I was listening to a screaming baby, a crying toddler and a barking dog. I accomplished absolutely nothing today. I ended my chat with Tarun because I couldn't take it anymore. If there is one thing kids know, it is how to get the attention back on them if it so wonders. I have given multiple time-outs today and bedtime will be as soon as I wrap up this post. Just to clarify that is 5:30pm, maybe a new record.

Like I said when it rains it pours!!

Yearly Tradition

I have to just write quickly about a tradition that my mom and dad started for us all about 6 or 7 years ago and I absolutely love it. Every year we go to the local mall and pull names of kids in need off of a tree. Today I met my mom and dad at the mall and was almost going to put off pulling tags today and then I couldn't resist. I read tag after tag and wish I could pull every single one. These kids want some of the simplest things and it breaks my heart to think that any one of them could go without. I pulled two tags, but will most likely bring more gifts to fulfill more tags. This is one of the best ways to give back and it is so easy.

Yes, it is finally Monday

This long extended weekend seemed to go on and on and I am very glad it is Monday. I can start to get back to some sort of normalcy and move through the last month of the year. WOW it is December 1st! I would ask where the time goes, but no one ever seems to have a good answer to that. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I worked from 4am-noon on Thanksgiving and then headed to my moms for Turkey dinner. It was delicious as every year, although I will say turkey dinner is not one of my favorite meals. It was a nice day with family though and that is all that matters.


This was the only decent shot of Taylor on Thanksgiving.


Thomas and Aunt KiKi on Thanksgiving with Seahawks and Cardinals jerseys on, both teams lost.

My true excitement on Thanksgiving week comes from BLACK FRIDAY!!! I tried to start early this year and made a trip to Michael's after we left my moms. Who could believe how many people were shopping on Thanksgiving night? Not me obviously because what I wanted was sold out in the first five minutes. Oh well, no big deal it was something for myself, so I could live without. I woke up on Friday morning and stood in line at Kohl's at 3am (they opened at 4), bought lots of stuff, but after all was said and done I didn't really feel like I accomplished any actual Christmas shopping. Tom hung all of the Christmas lights on the house and it looks wonderful.

Saturday I drug my family to JCPenney to have family pictures taken and what a mess that was. I should have known the weekend after Thanksgiving was not a good time to go, but we did it anyway. Long story short, it took forever, no one cooperated and I was not happy with the pictures. I spent a total of $20 on pictures, if that tells you anything. I will try again this week with just the kids I think and try to get a good one of them. We did Santa pictures too, at least that was something I could laugh about.