Thursday Thirteen - Christmas Joys

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!



Here are the 13 things we'll be doing today to celebrate Christmas!



13. Breakfast Brunch. We always have the same egg bake, frozen fruit (which I think I may have screwed up this year) and Hawaiian Bread. It's really yummy and we enjoy it once a year in between opening presents.



12. Christmas Dinner - we had Market Day Prime Rib for dinner last night. I love that we have our big dinner on Christmas Eve. It makes Christmas much more relaxed.



11. Playing Euchre tournament. Oh yeah, I"m the only one who doesn't enjoy that. I usually lose and lose money at that.



10. Doing a Christmas puzzle together. Last year the boys were great helpers on the puzzle and surprised everyone. It's a long standing family tradition to do a puzzle.



9. Opening tons of presents with the boys. It always looks like a toy explosion in our house after Christmas. Grandma loves to shop.



8. Leaving cookies for Santa. The boys loved picking out the perfect cookies to leave.



7. Putting out all of the presents after 11:00 church with the whole family and then having a Champagne toast!



6. Lots of good food and refusing to think about weight watchers for 3 whole days. I'll think about exercising again next week and watching what I eat.



5. SNOW! SNOW! SNOW! Enough said. I love it!



4. Our peppermint pig. I new tradition in our house. Lots of fun!



3. Having my whole family here safe and sound. THey all made it through the snow and we are all together to celebrate. You can't ask for a better present.



2. Christmas Eve Service. This year the boys sang at 3:00 and my choir sang at 11:00. It was a beautiful service we loved every second of it.



And our number 1 for Christmas is always

1. Welcoming Baby Jesus! This year we had the boys find and put baby Jesus in the manger first thing. That way we all remembered why we were celebrating Christmas.





All in all it was a fabulous Christmas! I hope you all had a great Christmas and good times with family!

WW #14 Christmas Cookies

We love frosting sugar cookies! Merry Christmas Eve!

Baking with Dylan

This year when I was making cookies for my cookie exchange Dylan decided to help me out. He actually did a pretty decent job. He helped roll and cut and didn't even protest the flour on his hands. He even enjoyed using the apron to wipe off his hands. It made for a nice afternoon. I usually avoid having my kids in the kitchen, but this time it turned out well and the cookies turned out very well.

Look at that concentration!

Tackle it Tuesday #7

I've been busy working with pictures of my grandparents when they were young. Here are some of the pictures that I finally got hung up on the wall. It all turned out very nice and the pictures look great on the wall. Since I won't be posting this until Tuesday I can also say that I made a hardbound book with these pictures for my mom for Christmas.





I've been planning to do this since Christmas last year, and have had all of the pictures sitting in rubbermaids downstairs since spring.



I was hoping to get it done for mom's birthday in July, but I never even started it. The deadline to have it done was Dec. 9. I started it about a week before then and managed to finish it two days before the deadline.





Talk about procrastination. However, the books came last week and they looks gorgeous. I'm so glad I took the time to do it and can't wait to see mom's face when she opens it.

Snow Day

Today was a snow day as expected. The kids had a blast playing in the snow. Dylan has the orange hat and Alex has the snow covered hat.

This is what Mark did all day. We got so much snow that he couldn't go to work, but he had a major project to finish so he sat here all day. Most of it on the phone on conference calls. The challenge there was I had to keep the boys quiet all day while he was working.

This picture and the next are all of the projects I couldn't finish while he was working. I couldn't run the vac to pick up the crumbs, the disposal, or wash dishes. NOt that I mind not doing those things, but Friday is my day to clean up and get things taken care of before the weekend.

HOpefully he will be done soon so I can get some things done.

Winter weather

Well, here it comes the big storm. They're saying we're going to get almost a foot of snow. A lot of schools in Milwaukee have already canceled classes for tomorrow. We're assuming the boys won't have school tomorrow. Both boys are supposed to have their parties tomorrow. Dylan's teacher told me they'd plan for Tuesday, I don't know what Alex's class will do. At least they have 2 more days next week. We're all settled in for the long haul tomorrow. I hope any of you that are in the path of this storm are able to be out of the weather and stay home.

Weekend top 5 - church concert

Well this was a huge weekend for me. I don't have any pictures and it was an all consuming one sided weekend.

5. Saturday morning the boys and I had rehearsal for our big choir christmas festival. We actually managed to get done in barely over an hour. Pretty impressive for 7 choirs. All of the kids paid attention and worked hard, as did the adults.

4. In the afternoon on Saturday I slept for several hours. And the boys all let me sleep. I think they knew how worn out I was. Oh yeah, and I got a chance to sleep for an hour this afternoon too. I really, really needed it.

3. For dinner Saturday I made my favorite meal, Beef Stroganoff. My mom used to make it for my birthday when I was growing up, and both boys liked it and ate it. A miracle all by itself.

2. Tonight was the choir party at one of our choir members house's. I have hosted the last couple of years and it was nice not to have to spend the afternoon cleaning and preparing.

1. My big thing for this weekend was our program this morning. Everyone did fabulously. We had 32 adults, 13 in the bell choir, 35 kids from 4 to high school, 6 instrumentalists, and 3 directors. It was an amazing feat. The kids sang great and played lots of orff instruments.

The pieces that were combined with kids to adults were the highlight. Our bells played exceptionally well. It was a great morning, exhausting, but great.

I don't have any pictures, because I was too busy to take them and Mark and I agree that church is church, even with a program and we shouldn't take pictures. I do have to admit though that I had a dificult time with Dylan. First he was too hot and wanted to take his sweater off, then at the second service he was tired and really crabby. I was standing on the podium trying to get him to stand up and behave. The congregation thought he was so cute and the choirs were laughing at me trying to parent from that far away. But, he's only 4 and a very active 4 so what are you going to do.

So that was my crazy busy weekend. Boy am I glad it's over. I still have a ton to do next week, but the big exhausting one is over. YAY!

Did I do the right thing, or am I just a horrible mom?

Well, my birthday now officially sucks!

I feel like a horrible mom. Alex never got off the bus today so of course I got a little (huge understatement) concerned. So when his friends mom called and said that he had gotten off there I was upset. Since this was the 4th time this year I was a little angry. So, when I got him in the car and he said, "but mom, it wasn't my fault" I told him I didn't want to hear it, because I was too angry and I didn't want to yell at him.

So, I called Mark and told him what happened. He was going to take away TV for the whole weekend, but I said that we should stay home from the Birthday party for Jesus tonight, since he's been really excited about it all week. When I told my coworker that I'd be there for music, but that I wasn't bringing the boys to punish Alex, she felt that it wasn't very good to take away a church event, but I felt that it was an immediate and enforceable consequence.

So, I went to talk to my by now crying son, only to find out that his friend had blocked him into the seat and wouldn't let him off. He said he tried really hard to get out, but B wouldn't let him. At that point I felt horrible and really wanted to be nice and rescind my consequence. However, the more I thought about it, the more I thought that I should stick with it, because throughtout his life Alex will be faced with choices to go along with his friends or do the right thing and I want him to know that just going along carries the same consequences sometimes as when you do the wrong thing on your own. I also gave him some ideas for next time, but I didn't back down.

So, am I a horrible mom, or did I do the right thing? All I know is that I am having the WORST birthday ever right now.

Christmas Crazies!

I love Christmas, I really, really do, but this week feels totally crazy. More than usual.

I have to admit today is my birthday. Not that any celebrating is going to be happening.

OK prepare yourself for the whining. I'm tired and a little crabby. So here's my schedule from this week.

Wed. night Choir
Thursday night funeral
Tonight 2 funerals and the Birthday party for Jesus which I"m now doing music for since Karen is playing for one of the funerals.
Tomorrow choir rehearsal
Sunday choir program at all 3 services
Sunday night choir CHristmas program

Then we have next week with preschool rehearsals and the preschool christmas program, 4 K (Dylan's class) rehearsals and christmas program. Yes I'm doing the program for Dylan's class. His teacher called me last week to see if I would put one together and since I"m so good (ha, ha) at saying no I'm doing that next friday.

Then if that's not enough. The staff from church 15 is going over for lunch next Tuesday, oh and we mustn't forget that Dylan has his 2 friends coming over for lunch you guessed it next Tuesday. I kind of double booked myself. And last, but not least my church circle is coming here on Thursday for the cookie exchange.

Somewhere in there of course we need to fit in baking cookies, frosting cookies and important family things.
am I overwhelmed, oh just a little. I keep reminding myself that once I get through this weekend it'll be a cake walk.

Of course I also haven't started my Christmas letter yet either. I am thinking that with 3 funerals this week and all of the other stuff going on I'm going to choose to write a New Year's letter. At least that'll take a little pressure off. It's hard to be creative when you're totally overwhelmed by everything going on. We'll see.

OK whining over. at least this year I"m not fighting the overwhelming depression like I was last year. If I was dealing with that too I think I'd be falling apart.

WW# 13 Christmas fun!

Weekend Top 5 - Christmas fun!

This weekend was probably the busiest we've been in a while.





5. Breakfast with Santa - The boys school PTA puts on a huge breakfast with Santa event each year. This was the first time I've ever gone, but Mark took both boys last year so they were experienced. After pancakes and sausage we headed over to visit Santa. After telling Santa what they want (none of the things that they'll be getting I might add) they did several crafts. The fifth grade choir was singing so we enjoyed listening to that.


Then the boys went to the gift shop to pick out some presents and frosted a cookie before leaving.











4. After the boys left I stayed to help with the crafts. A friend of mine was also helping so we had fun together. I also saw a ton of other parents I knew so as much visiting as crafting was done. It was a nice time. Oh yeah, and I got to bring home a huge container of frosting. There was a TON of frosting left and we all took what we needed. i figure I'll have enough frosting cut outs and then some.

3. Really cold weather. Ok so I'm a little weird, but on really cold days like yesterday we start a fire in the fire place and relax in front of the fire. I love fires. It's so nice and cozy.

2. On Saturday night Mark and I got a chance to go out for a date. A very rare occurrence. We went to dinner and a movie. We went to see "Quantum of Solace". It was ok but must surely not a favorite. It was really nice to get out and have time to talk and spend time together.


1. The highlight of our weekend was decorating the Christmas tree. The boys really helped this year. Dylan's ornaments are pretty much all on a few branches, but that's no big deal. The only problem with all of the low ornaments is that our cat is having fun chasing them. Big surprise there.







Alex is very deliberate in where he puts ornaments and likes to reach as high as possible.



Dylan putting an ornament in just the right spot.

This year it was Dylan's turn to put the angel up.

We do love Christmas in this family. The boys were so excited to play by the tree and to be done decorating.