Winter Funderland

With the whole past week off of school, the kids have enjoyed the blustery weather:

Amanda, being a more thoughful person than I am, suggested we do a Kids' Christmas party. So we had the kids get together for some cookie decorating, a white elephant gift exchange, and a baby Jesus in a manger craft.

With Twin Toothless Wonders this year, I had to have them sing "All I Want For Christmas" (I remember when I was 7 at Christmastime, my mom wanted me to sing it and I think I refused. Sorry mom, I was very uncooperative - this is for you.) (Also, we don't really live in a dark cave, it just always looks like that in pictures)

Why I Don't Often Have Dinner Guests

For a person who loves good food, I have a strong dislike for preparing it. As a result, dinners at my house are often sub-par. Take today for instance. I planned on trying to copy my friend's delicious shepherd's pie, so I went out to the freezer to get some ground beef to defrost. Hours later, when I was ready to cook the meat and assemble it all, I find out it wasn't ground beef I'd defrosted after all. It was strawberries. So we had waffles instead.

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I blame my mother somewhat. She is a good woman, but her freezer organization skills did not prepare me to be an upstanding culinary genius. We used to joke about my mom's "freezer stew". Whenever it came time to clean out the freezer, she'd throw a bunch of odd vegetables and stuff together and call it dinner.

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Her excessive resourcefulness is another trait I picked up. It has many benefits, of course. I'm not wasteful and I can manage money well. If I grab something and defrost it, we're eating it for dinner darn it, I don't care what it is. There were many instances growing up that were painfully embarrassing for me as a child that I know I would totally do to my kids even so. One that made me want to sink into the floor as a middle-schooler was my homemade trumpet case. My old case was cracked and pretty cheap, so my mom being the creative woman she was found a sturdy wooden white suitcase at a flea market and cleverly combined the innards of my old trumpet case with the outards of the sensible, dreaded suitcase. It was about 150% bigger than any other trumpet case, and looked distinctly like what it was. It didn't help that every time I walked down the hall in the morning the wood shop teacher would holler, "Hey, you goin' on a trip somewhere?"

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But my kids don't complain. They think I'm a great cook. I guess I've successfully trained them to be happy with anything that won't kill them. I shouldn't pick on my mother so either. I can't say I starved as a child, and she's not quite the most creative cook I've ever met. I have a friend who told me her mother-in-law once substituted pork and beans for refried beans, italian sausage for ground beef, cottage cheese for sour cream, and mozzerella for cheddar all in the same meal. That was the worst excuse for a taco I've ever heard of!

Creche Exhibit

I went to a creche exhibit last week and I loved all the different styles of nativities that were displayed. From use of creative mediums to cultural differences - it was really interesting. Here are some pictures from the exhibit:

(Look -it's Veggie Tales! Cute, huh?)

And my personal favorite - my very own nativity:

Sophie's Choir Concert

Not the whole thing, but a small sampling of the songs. I think they did a really nice job and I loved the songs they chose. I'm glad to live in a town where we can still sing spiritual Christmas songs without offending anyone. I was so pleased to hear my kids tell me about the Christmas hymns they were singing in music class. What a wonderful time of year!

Santa Excitement In Monmouth

Santa excitement is in the air around here. Last weekend, Brooke and Janelle wrote letters to Santa and yesterday they got an unexpected response in the mail!
And here's a little Christmas cheer from our house to yours:

The "Mistress" Is Dead

Here's a riddle for you:

Q - What do you get when you cross a laptop with a car going 60 mph?A - Technological Road Kill

I kinda told him I wouldn't blog anything on this, so for Todd's pride's sake, don't make fun of him please. Last week as he was getting into the car to head off for his day of work and school, Todd put his laptop on top of the car, got in and drove off. Whoops! About a mile down Hwy 99, it flew off and landed in the opposite lane. Blissfully unaware of his expensive mistake, Todd drove on until about 6 miles down the road, someone got his attention and gestured what had happened. So Todd turned around and looked all up and down the highway for it to no avail. He came back home to enlist me in the search. We drove like snails, annoying everyone on the road who was running late for work, no doubt, looking in ditches for any remains of the former "mistress". No luck. I put in calls to the local police stations in case it was turned in, and tromped through mud and gunk to post signs at the nearest intersection.

Todd mourned the loss of his beloved. No more multitasking by sitting in front of the TV to work on the computer. He had to work at the desk ,on the PC (yes, we are "PC's", and we are not a stereotype). Hence the brief hiatus from the blog. It also kind of stunk because it meant I couldn't download episodes of "Project Runway" and watch them anymore. (Hey, we all have our vices.) The biggest concern was that it could be used as a tool for identity theft. Todd's notes and stuff he needed for his final were in there, as well. Also, it is his other true love.

Anticipating that he might not have it returned in time for finals the next week, and that it might not be working anyway, Todd purchased another laptop. On Saturday, we got a call from some people who live just down the street from us. They'd seen it fly off his car at 60 mph, and picked it up. It took them a while to figure out who it belonged to, but they called us as soon as they had a name to go on. Hooray for honest people!

So it doesn't work anymore, BUT no one was able to access any personal information that could be used in identity theft, we have the case back, Todd has his notes, and it looks like we'll be able to retrieve the information off the hard drive. And hey, what if it was a kid he'd left on top of the car?! All in all, it makes for a happy ending. I am concerned though. The new mistress is younger and better looking.

Wake up call

Just because the last post on Thanksgiving has become obsolete, I thought I'd better put something else up here. The only thing of note that happened today was when Sophie walked into my room fully dressed at 3:13am, flipped on the light and started to fix her hair. I asked her what was wrong, and why she was up, and she very flippantly answered, "It's time to get ready for school, mom. (duh.)"

"In four hours!"

"Oh, whoops. I thought my clock said it was 7."

So she went back to bed. I'm just glad she didn't wake up her sisters!