Hello. My name is procrastination.

Well ho-lee shit!

Where did the last two days go??

I said on Tuesday that I would be back on Wednesday and here it is Friday and I am just getting back here. What the hell?

Well, at least I came back.

Right?

Since you're here, we might as well look at more Christmas pictures.

For some reason I don't have any pictures of the boy opening his presents. (Can you say Mommy guilt?)

It must be because I was helping him to open his and he was flying through them at warp speed!

I'll have to stage some at a later date. *wink*

Here's the rest of the gang opening their loot.

My mom broke her popcorn bowl about a month ago. Since then, I have heard the heart-breaking story of it's demise too many times to count. We got her a stainless steel one as a replacement. Hopefully, she can't break it.


The Man got the Bourne Ultimatum on DVD. He's seen it 4 times in the theatre already. He's watched it twice since opening it on Christmas. I think he has a crush on Matt Damon.


My dad came for Christmas. The last time I had both my parents around at Christmas was 7 or 8 years ago. It was really nice to be all together. He took a lot of naps. I think we played him out.


J got a gift that she LOVED. She thinks it's from us. It's not but we're not going to tell her that.


The girl got a Princess dress up set from Grandpa. She was so excited. She had to put on some jewelery immediately and get a little sass on. Isn't she adorable?
No. That's not bias, it's obvious. Ha ha!
She was so happy that she was dancing without even realizing it.


Here are the Man and the boy constructing his triceratops skeleton. Very small pieces and a totally movable, fully jointed skeleton in the hands of a four year old makes for many opportunities to re-construct the skeleton. Ha ha!


My dad and the kids during their first attempt at putting the marble maze together.



Half an hour later . . . racing marbles! Way cool toy!


This is a game that has a skeleton that pops out and steals the gold coins you accumulate. You can see by the look on the Man's face that the anticipation is just as much fun.
Oooooohhhhh, scary skeleton.



As you can see, we had a great Christmas, lot's of laughs, lot's of presents and (too much) good food. I should have asked Santa for some bigger pants.

I have been trying to have this video play here but I don't know how to do it, so click on the following links to watch one of my favorite comedians. Totally cracks me up. He was friggin' hilarious. (Mitch Hedburg - RIP)

There are three parts and some over lap, but it's worth it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBiNriy87OA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VHMXG9XNoU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgt1jnkpe7E


Laugh . . . and think of me.

Later, y'all.

Another one bites the dust.

Another Christmas, that is.

Merry Christmas
from the boy and the girl!

We had the BEST Christmas and I hope all of you did, too!

The kids slept in until about 8:00 am, I was up at 6:30, which is totally unheard of for me, so I had a chance to get a half a pot of coffee into me before I needed to be coherent.

The kids had SO MUCH fun. The first thing the boy did was check to see that the reindeer ate their snack. He was pleased to find the banana gone and the carrot mostly gone. He figures they must have really liked it by the way the carrot was gnawed on. ;) Santa ate his snack and left a chocolate orange for the family. The boy had been wanting to try one for awhile so he was very excited which was followed by disappointment when he found out that whacking it on the table would not cause things to fall out of the ceiling like it does on the commercials. I, personally, am grateful that a woman in a bubble bath didn't fall from the ceiling when I whacked that orange on the table.

Here they are with Santa's goodies the night before.


Here's what they found the next morning.

Santa is a good eater and as you can see, he drank all his chocolate milk.

Oh, Christmas Tree, oh, Christmas Treeeeee . . .
how something something sooooomething
(the words escape me . . . )

Here are the humble beginnings of our pretty little tree.




The finished product. Tah - Dah!!




There were no presents under the tree until this morning (it was piled just as high on the other side) so here's what the kids woke up to.


Fun, eh?!?


And here's what I woke up to.


Fun too, eh?!? Ha ha!

(He's such a good sport. I love him so much. *batting eyelashes*)

So needless to say, the kids had a blast opening their gifts. First they opened their stockings and then they started in on their presents. We just made piles for each of them and let them go to town!




It's late, but I have more to add. I'll finish it up tomorrow.

Goodnight!

Ok, I'm a little tardy.

Can you believe that it's been 2 weeks since I updated my bloggity-blog-blog?

2 whole weeks.

Crazy, eh?

Well, it is Christmas Eve and surprisingly, I am ready~ish. Ha ha! More ready than I have ever been but still not totally ready. The boy and the girl have been in bed for an hour and a half and the boy is still wide awake. He keeps coming out to check on the carrot and banana that we left on the deck for the reindeer. Little known fact - reindeer prefer grapes but will eat bananas in a pinch. :)

Santa is having some homemade goodies and a glass of chocolate milk. Who knew he liked vico?!?

Almost a year ago, the Man and I spent a week in Sweden which ( I think) is the birthplace of Santa. We hung out with a Same (pronounced Saw Me) reindeer herder. She is the "chief" (they don't use that term) of her village and was very, very cool. Such an amazing woman. I really liked her. I'll post more about this at a later time and show you more of our pictures. She was getting close to retirement and had sold off the bulk of her herd but still kept a small herd of her favorite reindeer, her pets . . .

which we ate . . .


while they ate. Ha ha ha!

Reindeer is GOOD!

Since beginning this blog entry, the boy has decided that he is tired enough to go to sleep so I can get on with my final preparations with a little less risk of getting caught. There is still a risk as those two have a tendency to "tag team" me, y'know what I mean? One falls asleep, the other fights it until they can no longer keep their eyes open, finally falls asleep, there is about 10 minutes of silence which gives me a false sense of security and I start in on a task, try to take a nap, a shower, whatever and then the other one wakes up. This is one of the many reasons why I am not a napper.

In the spirit of the season, let's take a look at a photo of Christmas past . . .

The girl and the boy one year ago today.

She got that dress for her birthday and she was so in love with it. She called it her pwincess dwess. Aaaaawwwwww . . . too cute. She looks really different with hair, doesn't she.

I have a tendency to dress the boy by my interpretation of how men "dress up", which is mainly clean jeans, a button up shirt and a t-shirt, with a nice tight neck hem, underneath. Poor kid. He'll likely opt to dress himself as soon as he can.

Man, you don't realize how time really does fly until you have kids. *sniff*


It's time for me to sign off. The longer I am awake, the more calories I consume. I didn't do ANY baking until 2 days ago and I only made one batch of about 6 different things. I so don't need any extras around after tomorrow. Every time I walk by the goodies I have one. It's so sick. Seriously.




This is me after only 2 days of mindless snacking.

Ha ha ha! *Ack* I laughed and almost choked on my cheesecake square.



On that note, Merry Christmas everyone.

I'll make it a point to be back in less than 2 weeks!

The pox X 3.

I didn't post this weekend and almost didn't post tonight. Why? Well, let me tell you. I am BEAT!

The girl has developed chicken pox, or tickin' pops as she refers to them, again, which is the 3rd time in 8 weeks! Yes. You read that right. 3X in 8 weeks.

She and I spent 3 grueling hours waiting for a walk in appointment at the clinic (I detest going to the clinic. It is chock full o' sick people.) and then an hour at the hospital (Not crazy about going here either.) to get blood taken.

My baby had to get needles. She had to have it taken from both arms as she flinched the first time and the needle went through the vein. Yeah, so that was a lot of fun. *dripping with sarcasm* But . . . she was a little trooper and was very brave and it's over and done with. So in a couple of weeks we'll find out if she has or hasn't developed the immunity against chicken pox.

I also got blood taken to check my immunity against chicken pox. I've never had them and I keep hearing how getting them when you're older can KILL you and how everyone knows someone who knows someone who's cousin's best friend died from the chicken pox because they got them when they were OLD!!!

So yeah, I figure I'm immune since I've had the cp's in my house 4 times in the last 2 months and I'm still here and still pock-less, pock-free, I am the anti-pock! Although, It doesn't hurt to have a doctor confirm it I say as I check my skin for anything that looks remotely like a pox, a bead of sweat forming on my unpocked brow.

Oh, and in addition to the pox, the girl has a cold, a runny nose and an intense need to have her back "wubbed" every half hour through the night. The man and I take turns getting up each night and last night was my night. So needless to say, I gots to go to bed.

Here's a poem I received via e-mail (Thanks Laurie!) that I thoroughly enjoyed. I wish I had the talent to write beautiful poetry like this. Some poets make it look so easy. Enjoy!

" WINTER "
a poem by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

" SHIT, It's Cold ! "

The End

We got elfed!

Here's a little Christmas cheer from my family to yours.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1232899714

Who knew the man could dance? He has the best rack and some pretty sexy moves.

Gettin' down with his bad, elf self!


Now, go elf yourself!

Oops, I forgot to add this link . . .

I forgot to add the link to this funny blog entry I read today.

Here it is,

http://boobsinjuriesanddrpepper.blogspot.com/2007/11/now-with-more-va-jay-jay-uptown-with.html

That's the first time I did that so I hope it works.


And while I'm here, and giggling, I might as well add this,



Ok, that's it.

Queen of the EPIC posts!

Wow!

I didn't realize how LONG my posts were. That's a whole nights reading, right there. From this point on, I will try to be more concise. I swear.

Well, Christmas is fast approaching. We don't have our tree up yet, but I think we'll put one up this weekend. We do a fake tree which seems completely sac religious considering where we live, doesn't it? There is a reason for it, a very good reason . . .

When the man and I were living in the city I had no desire what so ever to put up a tree or decorate the house. It was just the 2 of us, no kids yet, and we were traveling home for the holidays so we wouldn't even be in our house on Christmas Day.

Well he really wanted one so we made a deal, I'd put up the tree and he would take it down, which was fine by me because that's the part I dislike anyway. Fine. I go to 7-11 and buy a tree. Crazy, eh? I bought a tree at 7-11. Anyway, I bring it home, drag out all the decorations and put up the tree. It looked nice, got us in the Christmas spirit and seemed like a good idea after all.

We get home after the holidays and decide to leave the tree up until after Ukrainian Christmas (Jan 7th) and then he would take it down. Sounds good to me. Well, Ukrainian Christmas came and went and the tree was still up, January came and went and the tree was still up, February came and went and the tree was still up . . . are you seeing a trend here?

Our tree was up until the beginning of April. By this time it's no longer a tree, it's a nicely decorated stick. Our neighbor's were thinking about getting their yards ready for spring and we were just throwing our tree out. Now while a fake tree kind of sucks, it doesn't suck as bad as vacuuming up an entire tree's worth of needles for 4 months.

Good thing he has a lot of other redeeming qualities.

Yes. It was me. I left our live Christmas tree up until Spring.

I won't do it again. I swear.

I only include this picture because I think it's funny.

(Even a decent camera's zoom has it's limits.)

Ok, ok. I'm including this one because it makes me laugh out loud! Ha ha! But that's it. I won't post any more pics of him that might potentially embarrass him on teh internets. I'm done.

~~~Edited to add~~~

Are you wondering where the aforementioned picture of the man went? Well, he saw it and thought his lips looked funny and he asked me to take it off my blog. I complied because I fear retaliation, (Payback is a Bitch.), and because I love him. *batting eyelashes* This Captain Kirk picture makes me laugh and his lips don't look funny.

In case you can't read the caption, it says
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
Ha ha!

Ok, maybe just this last picture of the man and one of his brothers.

Can you see the difference?

Shopping maniacs

Well, we're back from the city. (Kristin, we weren't in the city that I think you were referring to or I totally would have went out with you!)

We got all of our shopping done for the kids and we didn't spend as much as we'd planned!

Can you believe that?

Me neither. (seriously!)

I actually had to add the receipts twice just to make sure.

We stayed with friends, which was really nice. (If you are reading this. . . thanks again!!) We ate at not-kid-friendly restaurants where there wasn't even a kids menu (!) and we shopped like maniacs. I have never been done my shopping this early before EVER. I may have to wait until early Christmas morning to wrap them just so I don't miss out on the annual adrenaline rush and panic attack. Sweaty pits and anxiety are as much a Christmas tradition to me as Egg Nog is to others. Ha ha!

3 days in the city was MORE than enough for me. I was happy to leave there and get back home. I really am a bush baby. It's just WAY too hectic for me. We were at Best Buy and the line up went from the check out all the way back to the door. It was December 1st! I could see that on Christmas Eve, but the 1st of December?!?! C'mon. It was so busy in the mall that the man actually passed on a Tim's because the line up was too long! This is a guy who will wait in line for shitty coffee! I had to check his pulse when he showed up empty handed.

I read somewhere that Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) was doing another film called "What would Jesus buy?" I kept thinking about that all weekend. What would He buy? The man thinks He would buy a Wii. Ha ha. Or Frankincense and Myrrh. He'd probably have better luck finding Frankincense and Myrrh than a Wii!

The daughter-in-law of a friend went to her local Zeller's at 7:00am to get a Wii. Once there, she found out that there were only 10 Wii's available and you had to get a ticket to buy one. She got the 10th one and faced the wrath of those who didn't get one. Seriously. Adults calling each other names, swearing, etc., over a video game. 'Tis the season, right? At Wal-mart yesterday that announced over the intercom that there were 2 Wii's just delivered to the electronics dept. It was like a stampede. Of course, I was in the electronics dept at the time, looking for a tape deck. Yes, I said a tape deck. A ghetto-blaster. I got tapes to play, ok? A tape deck is almost as elusive as a Wii and twice as cool.

We also decided, on a whim, to go to a movie. It almost NEVER turns out well when we do that. The only movie we were on time for was Fred Claus. We paid $40.00 to see Fred Claus. Yep, we did. This movie is a $1.99 gallery rental movie, at best, and even then I think I would have felt ripped off. There were parts of the movie where I felt embarrassed for Vince Vaughn. Seriously embarrassed. You have been warned. It's only redeeming quality was the music. It would actually be a good Christmas album to have. You can't go wrong with "Ludacristmas" Christmas rap.

I'm trying to get in the Christmas spirit, so I thought I'd share some pictures from Christmas past.

Christmas 2005

Christmas 2006

Ha ha. I can't remember what book he's looking at here, I think it was one of mom's gifts. You can't see it in the picture, but he had a big wooly scarf tucked in his shirt like an ascot. It's silly, and it makes me laugh. I'm sure he'll laugh when he sees it on here too. Right, honey?!?


This is worth a giggle too.


The countdown to Christmas had begun!

Bedtime crankiness and birthday cuteness

Well, all is quiet-ish here. The kids are in bed but are not yet asleep. Bedtime can be a little hellacious around here. Things can get a bit touchy by the time bedtime rolls around. Let me give you an example.
The man is putzing around the house, just puttering, putting stuff away, flitting like a mustachio'd butterfly from task to task. Blissful. Unaware of the tornado blowing in behind him. The girl suddenly appears with an apple in her hand and begins demanding, "Wash my apple, daddy." Over and over, louder louder, until the words are are blended together into one big, loud word. The man takes the apple, carefully, lovingly washes it for his starving offspring who shrieks "NO apple!" when he hands it back to her. Dumbfounded is the only word I can think of to describe the look on his face.

We have an ABSOLUTELY NO NAPPING rule in this house. It sounds mean, I know, but these 2 only need a few minutes of sleep in the afternoon to charge their batteries enough to keep them up until midnight. Trust me, this rule is strictly enforced! If someone falls asleep . . . I wake them up. The protesting, faking still being asleep and "I'm tiiiiiiiiiired, mommy." falls on deaf ears. (And the mean mommy award goes to . . . )

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking, "Why is it a big deal to you, of all people, if the kids are up late? Aren't you up anyway, oh Queen of the Night Owls?" Yes. I am up. I am up really late every night BUT I am up doing stuff that I don't get to do during the regular hours of the day like the vacuuming and folding laundry and descaling the grout in the shower tile. Important stuff. I am not up surfing the net or playing computer games or mindlessly cruising E-bay. *wink*

Anyway, I have a few more pictures to throw your way. These are the recent birthday pics.

Here's the girl on her 2nd birthday. She and I and the boy had cake on her B'day, as the man was out of town on business. We had a party on the following weekend.

Is there something on my face?


Less cake on the face means more in the tummy.

These pictures were taken at the girl's party. It was the end of August and it was cold enough that we didn't know if we would be able to have her party outside. We had to bundle up and make a big fire. Crazy, eh? In August! Global warming my left cheek.

What?

The boy looking like a man.

He was chatting up his cousin, sitting by the fire, chillaxin. Look at him. They really do grow up too fast, don't they?


Well, the man and I are off to the BIG city for the weekend to do our Christmas shopping. Grandma will be here with the kids.

Bless her heart and wish her luck!

I'll let you know how it went when we get back.

Have a great weekend!!