It's Officially Christmas Time Around Here

Our Anorexic Christmas Tree

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...especially around here.  The kids couldn't wait to put up the tree. They were almost as excited as they are on Christmas eve.  I got the tree and all the pretty decorations out of the closet, I carefully unwrapped each figurine that I had wrapped in paper towels, newspaper and even a sock last year and placed them on my kitchen counter.  My daughter decorated the bar in the kitchen with garland and all the Christmas cards I received last year.

Meanwhile, my boys were playing some sort of sword game with each other. I gave them a quick, "Knock it off!" before I got my "Mommy Voice" and snapped at them to "Knock that off right now or we will NOT put up the tree today."  Both boys looked at each other and grinned, then put down their "swords" which were actually just water guns I got on sale end of season this past summer.  They sat on the couch and I told them I would pull the tree out of the box in a minute.

I wasn't in a very good mood by the time we put the tree up. I had been up since a little before six in the morning and I was a little annoyed at someone(not my children) and why they annoyed me wouldn't stop going through my head.

So you can understand why, by the time 9:30 rolled around I was grumpy. I didn't want to be grumpy, I tried so hard not to be grumpy and thankfully my Scrooge-like persona only came in a couple of limited tiny waves during our tree-trimming adventure.

It went fairly smooth for the most part, other than the garland trimming incident where my boys were standing on the left of the tree, my daughter and I on the right and she was pulling the garland so tight before we had any slack to wrap it around the other side. I thought she was going to tear it apart. It's dollar store garland(only the finest in my house right?) and it isn't as sturdy as that name brand stuff.  The garland was finally on, and we were now on the way to placing the angel on the tree. Figuring out who would be the lucky winner of that highly anticipated job almost caused a nervous breakdown in all of us. Finally, the boys agreed my daughter would put it on and they would be the "angel adjusters" if needed.

They kept saying she was tilting no matter how many times they adjusted her.  I finally told them "Well, how would you be standing if you had a stick up your hiney?"  They just laughed.

So there is our anorexic tree.  It serves it's purpose and although I would love nothing more than to have one of those big, fancy, fully decorated trees you see in all those Hallmark Holiday Movies, I like our anorexic tree. My kids and I kind of giggled when we stepped back to admire it, then we all applauded at a job well done on a beautiful tree.



Next we went into the kitchen to make some gingerbread cookie dough. That was "fun". I asked my daughter if she wanted to help, she said she would help with the next recipe, which was sugar cookies.  She told me that her stomach hurt, and I thought maybe it was just too much food. She laid down on the couch and shortly after she fell asleep.

My oldest twin wanted to help me so I let him measure out the dry ingredients while I creamed together the other ingredients in the mixing bowl.  I tried to keep an eye on his measuring but at one point I was really into a conversation with my other twin son and when I looked over at the bowl my oldest was mixing in. he had measured out three tablespoons of baking soda instead of three teaspoons.  Then, he had asked me how to get the ginger out of the bottle and I just stared at him for a brief moment, grinned and said, "Umm...I'll let you try and figure it out son."  See, he was the one who took the safety seal off of it for me.  And he really is a pretty smart kid, so I wanted to make sure he learns how to problem solve.

Life has bigger problems he will have to face so I need to start him early on logical thinking.

About thirty seconds after I told him to figure it out...he did.

We finally got the dough together and wrapped it and put it in the fridge, when I look over on the counter and noticed we didn't put the syrup in. My son also informed me we didn't put the two teaspoons of milk in either.

Crap!

So I go back to the fridge, unwrap the dough and lay it back in the bowl. I'm trying to break it up a bit so it's not a big glob of rubber that will make the mixer explode. I hurriedly add the forgotten ingredients and mix for about 20 seconds and throw it back on the foil I had it wrapped in.

I threw it on the bottom shelf.

Shut the fridge door.

Grabbed my soda, sat my tired ass down in front of my computer and began perusing some old photos on  Facebook with my boys.

*warning....this next part of my blog post is not for the squeamish. Being a mom I post about mom things...one of them being sick kids....you've been warned* 

  My son went into the living room about ten minutes later, and said "Mom, she is gone," referring to his sister, I said, "Huh? She is on the couch." He said "No, she isn't." I walk out there and no daughter, only a folded blanket of hers and the other blanket she was lying under. Like a cat in the night, she managed to walk to her room, undress and get under her comforter on her bed.  I saw her lying there on her Hello Kitty pillow. I put my hand on her head and she opened her eyes and told me "I think I threw up in my sleep."  I didn't see anything on the couch. Then the waves of wooziness hit her and I ran as fast as I could to get the bucket from under the bathroom sink. She tried to hold it in until I got there and I told her "You'll choke, hit the carpet!" as I ran to lift her head upright.

Poor baby.

Her brother was getting tired and wanted a blanket. I told him to grab the other blanket that was on the couch his sister slept on. As he goes to lay it down and put his head on top of it, he jumps up rather abruptly and I said "Let me guess, it smells like vomit."

He runs to the bathroom trying desperately to wipe the smell off his arms. I thought for sure he was going in there to toss his cookies too. I took the blanket to the laundry room and came back to sit with my boys in the living room.

Forget relaxing at all this evening...I thought to myself.

My daughter woke up several times during the night. Surprisingly, like a fire alarm in my dead sleep, I could hear her tiny little voice calling me with cries of "Mommy! Mommy!Mommmm!" throughout the night. I remember at one point still half asleep running to her room.

Now she is sleeping. I sure hope she is okay. Her and her brothers have a big road trip they are taking with their daddy tomorrow. I'd hate for her to miss it.

Just got done baking some gingersnaps. My daughter helped me make them. Yes, she is feeling 100% better. She woke up this morning and took a bath, had a few crackers and some hot cocoa.  She is good to go. We made two pans of gingersnaps and I made my traditional Roshky dough so I can roll some out for a batch of some almond and apricot flavored Roshkies to take to my neighbor's house this afternoon.  

I was invited to dinner.

I'm so happy.

I get turkey after all!!!

Yesterday I had a sushi Thanksgiving.  I really wanted one of those individual Turkey and Mashed Potato dinners that are usually found at the front of the store but the warmer wasn't there, only garlic bread.  So I settled on buying sushi. I wonder how many other Americans out there had a sushi Thanksgiving.  Maybe the pilgrims had sushi too, but being that it's not very appealing to most Americans, they wrote that part of the dinner out of the history books. 

We weren't there.  Neither was the person who rewrote the story.  So maybe, like Chinese telephone, the facts were distorted a bit over time being retold so often through generations. 

*shrugs*

Who knows?

Okay, time to skee-daddle here(Yes, I said skee-daddle...I say all kinds of things on my porch).  I have gingerbread cookie dough to cut out with my kids and roshkies to make and all kinds of fun stuff to do today. My kids will be leaving with dad later on, so you know more than likely I will return.

Have a wonderful black friday you crazy mall-shopping, bargain hunting crazies. You are much braver than I, that's for damn sure. I have a post on that in the works too here.

Stay tuned....

Magickal Graphics

I Am So Thankful!

For those of you who may stop by my blog, yes, I'm still alive.  For over a month my monitor wasn't working. I blamed Mercury, that tyrant of electrical gadgets on a retrograde day, and I decided that I would give it a last ditch effort this morning after I unplugged it and was ready to throw it all away.

Voila!

It's a Thanksgiving Day Miracle!!!!!

HERE I AM!

This has been a very crazy week. There is so much to share and as much as I'd love to delve into all that has happened the past few weeks, I shall divulge it all at a later date.  I will say that I did try to post a blog from my phone. For 30 minutes my not so good eyes and my fat thumbs typed away a blog post. I went to post it, and dammit wouldn't ya know it, the stupid thing froze on me. Froze up completely that it caused my phone to fizz out on me and I couldn't access the internet at all. I was not a happy camper. That was my only lifeline to Facebook. My only way to know what was going on in the real world, virtually speaking that is.

I called the phone company and after they tried to work their magic, the woman told me they could do a data restore which would erase EVERYTHING.  I told them I would call back.

The next morning, it was working fine again.

I am spending the day solo, as my kids will be with dad today. I was invited to join them, he swore nobody would be "mean" to me, but there is a giant german shepherd who isn't very fond of me(the feeling is mutual) so I declined his offer and thanked him kindly.

Then I was invited to a friend's house for dinner. At first it was going to be just me as originally the kids dad was going to take them. Then I got the invite and called and asked him what his plans were. He had none. Wanted to watch football and said he didn't care if I took the kids to my friends. Then my friend said that her hubby had to work. So dinner was cancelled for today. Then she offered an invite for this Saturday. As my luck would have it, it was at 7 pm. I don't drive after dark, unless it's well lit and I know the road well enough. Call me a "safety first" kind of driver. I may as well be drunk and behind the wheel driving at night in uncharted territories. Because that's how I'd be driving.

So I declined her offer.

Then she explained how much money she had spent on buying items for the dinner expecting us to be there.  An LOL followed her explanation, but I could not help but feel guilty for not being able to come.  This is what happens with lack of communication, not to mention the tone which is why I hate when people don't just pick up a phone once in a while, I hate texting and messaging for that very reason. You never know the real intent behind the words of someone else.

 Maybe I should have asked her when she offered the Saturday dinner what time was the dinner. Or maybe she should have told me first. I don't know. It's one of those tricky...what if scenarios. Ya know? 

Anyway, no harm no foul. It's not like my kids eat a ton of food anyway. My daughter eats like a bird and my boys eat fairly well, but not $100 worth of food on one day. Even for the 4 of us, my shopping is usually 10 bucks per day to feed all of us. And not having more than one child of her own, perhaps she overestimated how much food 3 kids actually can eat.


It just bugged me.
I hate messaging, I hate texting.

You get the point.

I got a third offer to go to a friend's house from work. I was jumping up and down when she invited me. No joke. The kids in my class were laughing at me. I told her "You really DO love me!" ha ha. She was rolling her eyes, and grinning at me. We are a good team. If anything I am thankful for a coworker / friend like her. She even offered to come get me, and she lives in North Las Vegas, which is quite a drive from where she is to me.  She knows my van is crap, she knows I can't drive at night, and she just..well, knows me.

Then she told me she would bring me a plate anyway today. I told her just save me leftovers for Monday. She said she'd figure something out.  Either way, I'm Thankful for her friendship. You rock D.

Was watching the Macy's Parade with my kids and some poor girl fell while doing their little dance routine. I watched her back up during the routine and then her little hat covered ear-muffed self flopped flat on her hiney. But to that young lady, you did a swell recovery and kept up with the rest of your clan there. Good job!

Okay, I had to get a quick post out. More to come...provided my monitor lets me post more.

May you all have a wonderful, fun-filled, family and friend get together on this special day.

Kids and I will be putting the tree up this evening.  I will post some photos of the festivities and our baking that will follow after.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!