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....

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