Greetings from Texas

Happy New Year! Tonia called right after midnight (our time) to wish us a Happy New Year. She was out partying and celebrating with friends. I remember those days, and don’t miss them much. Another low key day for us boring folks. The weather was nice again, so we did spend some time outside.

Friday, Dec 26 - Today is much calmer. We have no intentions of fighting the crowds for a few random sale items.

Saturday, Dec 27 - Joshua and Isabelle are really enjoying their new toys. What a great investment. When the weather is lousy there will be plenty to do indoors.

Monday, Dec 29 - My son is obssessed with toy cars. He is currently only allowed to play with the cars in my bedroom while Isabelle is napping. We had to take this sort of extreme measure after having meltdowns every time Isabelle moved or even touched one of his parked cars. YIKES! He plays so good with his sister or anyone else except when it comes to the cars. He can literally play with the cars for hours if he is undisturbed. For now, I will keep the car situtation under control by keeping them seperate from all of the other toys.

Tuesday, Dec 30 - We got a new wagon. This wagon is similar to the other red wagon, except it came with a red cover. After a quick and fairly painless assembly, we of course had to break-in the wagon. Which reminds me I need to get some pics.
Wednesday, Dec 31 - Another trip to Lufkin. We dropped dad off for an appointment and went to a donut shop for breakfast. I wish I had the camera because the kids were soooo cute eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles. It was too cold to go to the park as originally planned. I settled in on a little retail therapy instead. After the appointment we went to Sam’s and stocked up on bulk items. The temperature was cool enough to keep the perishables safe while we ate lunch at Casa Ole. Our New Year’s Eve will be pretty low key. The kids were asleep at their normal time. I mostly watched tv and worked on photos. I am such a Lifetime addict so I will be up watching movies most of the night. Happy New Year!!!

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

The day has finally come! Joshua woke up before me, as he does daily, but instead of coming into the room and waking me, he invited him self into the living room and poked through everyone’s stockings until he found his. He emptied it out on the couch and opened up two suckers. He boasted proudly that he got two suckers all by himself when he came into the room and woke me. Oops! Why can’t I have suckers for breakfast he wondered. Isabelle was up next and so our day began. I made pancakes for breakfast, not that anyone was interested in eating. After a cup of java, I had enough of the cobwebs shook from my head to start my day. I had stashed back a few gifts knowing that Joshua and Isabelle would enjoy getting to open gifts again. I hit the nail on the head with that assumption. They were both elated!

More excitement came after lunch, when they both received gifts from Uncle Adam. Two new hot wheels race track sets sent Joshua into orbit. Isabelle was having too much fun with her new bouncing Tigger toy to even notice the boys setting up the tracks. At least we have some new indoor entertainment, b/c I don’t think the sun is ever going to shine again. It is overcast and misting rain, and just down right yucky around here.

Merry Christmas Cory and Jennifer. We miss you! We are thinking of you today! These pics make me giggle b/c I remember how much fun we had when we did the photo shoot.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a dishwasher to tend to, and then it is lights out!

AKA - Christmas Eve

Even though we have already celebrated our Christmas, mostly, Joshua still knows that the real Christmas is coming. Today was another rainy day. Uncle J brought a load of lime in a spreader truck (similar to a dump truck) and dumped it out in the garden areas. Liming is vital for farming, as it replenishes the nutrients in the soil. Josh was fascinated while watching what he referred to as the garbage truck. What a surprise that a hard rain set in while everyone was outside watching all the excitement.

Na-Na Sue came by the house and brought gifts for the kids. They really have the hang of this gift getting gig. They both shredded through the paper without hesitation.

AB&C stopped in for another visit. We entertained the kids and talked recipes and scrapbooking. All my favorite things!

The rest of the day was much of the same. Lunch. Dinner. Baths. Brushing teeth. Vitamins. Watter/Milk. Goodnights. Bed!

**A recap of events from Tuesday, December 23, 2008**

The kids slept in a little - YAY me! The first thing out of Joshua’s mouth was, “Did Santa come here last night?”. I told him we would have to investigate. Joshua made it as far as the kitchen table and was dead set on finishing the remnant of cookie left by Santa. Once he was licking the crumbs from his fingers he asked about Santa again. First we went through the stockings. All Josh had asked Santa to bring for Christmas was - CANDY. He was not disappointed to find gobs of suckers and a Lightening McQueen tin box full of candy. He also squealed when he found the diecast version of Lightening. Isabelle was just as thrilled with the goodies in her stocking. She couldn’t quite get past the overwhelming number of suckers in front of her. She wanted to eat them all at once. Wrappers were flying. I finally had to put away their stockings in order to proceed with the gift exchange. It did not take Josh very long to rip through all of his gifts. Isabelle needed assistance every step of the way. She was very impatient when it came to removing the item from the package. She has less patience than we (grown-ups) have for the little twisty ties and the hard plastic packaging.

Once we cleaned the wrapping paper mess and the kids were busy with their new treasures, it was time to kill myself in the kitchen. Not literally, but it was sure to be a good licking. I whipped up two pumpkin pies and put them in the oven to bake while I worked on other things. Dad made the giblet gravy. I warmed up the sausage balls and simmered little link sausages in bbq and set those out on a platter for noshing. I discovered that the pie crusts were burning, and called on Great Nana B’s cooking wisdom for help. It has been great visiting with her while I have been busy scurrying around the kitchen. One catastrophe averted.

AB&C arrived and soon after that UPS delivered the kitchen set for Belle and the tool bench for Josh. AB were volunteered for the job of assembly. I wish I had the time to take pics. It was a sight to see. The kitchen set was literally in thousands of pieces. Most of which were still attached to the molding frames (similar to that of model cars). Some assembly required my foot! The tool bench was not nearly as involved, but still took some time to complete. I was still busy in the kitchen dropping the dumplings. I had also put the ham in the oven to warm, as well as the green beans, and a sweet potato casserole. Lastly, I browned and served the brown and serve rolls. Dinner was served. I had planned to eat at 2:00pm, and the line started forming along the bar at 2:12pm. Not too shabby!
GNB left soon after we ate b/c she was worried about being away from home in case the weather got worse. It had been raining nearly the entire time she was visiting. Now that we were all full from the feast, it was time to open gifts… again. This set of gifts were some mom and Aunt C brought by the house a few weeks back. Josh and Belle were excited all over again. It has been a wonderful day, but I am truly glad that all the hub bub is over. Shew! Funny thing is… Joshua knows that it’s almost KISSMUS time. He has been reminding us all day, even though we have already opened gifts. I do have a few tricks up my sleeve. I managed to put back a few gifts for all of us to open on Christmas Day. In my best Bugs Bunny impersonation… “Ain’t I a stinker?”.

A gallery of photos from the past few days.

A recap of Monday, Dec 22, 2008

A very busy day and it’s FREEZING cold! It’s time to prep for our Christmas Feast!

Sunday night, I made two huge pans of cornbread for the cornbread dressing and thought that would help free up the oven for some of today’s prep! I also made two pans of the mini brownie bites. YUM! There may not be any left by the time we have the FEAST. After lunch I wrapped the green bean bundles in bacon. Then I took the kids with me to run some errands. Every single store was PACKED! We went to Walgreens, Family Dollar, then Wally. I felt rushed once we got home, b/c the day was sneaking by and not much was already done. And OOPS, I forgot to get soy sauce! I hard cooked two dozen eggs while the kids ate dinner. I chopped then sautéed the onions, bell pepper, and the celery. Bedtime for the kids drew near. I slapped together a sugar cookie dough, rolled and flattened ten cookies onto a cookie sheet and jammed them into the oven while I gave the kids their baths.

We did things a little backwards tonight, but it’s all good. Here I am letting my sparkling clean kids decorate and eat sugar cookies at bedtime. What was I thinking? I slapped some white icing on several cookies and let the kids fill them up with sprinkles. Once the cookie mess was mostly cleaned up and the kids were put to bed, it was time for me to make another trip to the store. First, I put the chicken in the pressure cooker. I dropped by a fav Mexican restaurant and picked up GC for T-S. Then I stopped in at 190TS to bum some soy sauce. No luck! I did grab a refill since I had my jug in tow, and could not believe that I hit DP on the fountain out of habit. YUCK! Next, I went to the post office - more Christmas cards. Then another stop at Wally for some random things, but mainly for the soy sauce and some milk. Once I got home I really started creating a mess. I made the sauce for the green bean bundles. The chicken was deboned, thankfully not by me. A special thanks to dad! I cut the eggs in half lengthwise and made deviled eggs. I created and baked two hugs pans of cornbread dressing. I partially cooked the green bean bundles so that they could be drained. I let the dishwasher do most of the kitchen clean-up, the rest of the cooking will have to wait until tomorrow.

It was getting pretty late early. Now past midnight, and there were still several gifts to wrap. Then the stockings were filled. WHEW! Bedtime finally arrived after 2am.

We were watching the Disney channel and after an episode of Handy Manny, Cooking with Zefronk came on and Joshua surprised me by laughing at the little french dog on the screen that was busy cooking. He said, “That dog is standing up and cooking dinner. That’s so funny!”.

While watching TV late tonight, I saw a commercial for Rita Rocks. Rita said to DH, “I want to have another baby”. DH popped back by saying, “At lunch today, I thought about cutting off my hand. We shouldn’t do either of those things”. hahahaha

Both kids were awake at 5am. Geez! I insisted that they go back to sleep and after a bit of a struggle, I conquered. I decided to shake the cobwebs out of my eyes around 9am and started doing laundry. I also finished putting out the decorations.
Mom and Aunt C came by for a visit and to drop off gobs of gifts. Granny could not resist letting Josh and Isabelle open at least one gift. Little does she know that 5 minutes after their departure Josh ripped open one of Uncle Brian’s gifts. OOPS!
Aunt C insisted that I open one of the gifts from her and it was a handmade recipe book with many of our family recipes. I LOVE IT! Mom gave me gobs of scrapbooking stuff which of course had me drooling!
After a quick trip to the pharmacy to pick up meds, the kids enjoyed some outside time in the warm weather while I slapped dinner together. After our evening bedtime ritual I went over the massive shopping list and drove to Wally to pick up the goods. Two hours at Wally equals 200+ dollars. WOW!

What an interesting day. Granny B came by to visit the great grandbabies. Later, both of my brothers came by for a visit. We are still trying to iron out the holiday schedule. During a quick trip to the pharmacy to drop off a new prescription, I bumped into Renee’. We caught each other up to speed with the latest.

My boy is three years old today. Joshua is so very exicted to celebrate his birthday again. He insisted that we sing the Happy Birthday song several times.