Just because...

I forgot but thought it fascinating... this is how we spent the day after Thanksgiving... you know the day we were going to go cut down our tree and start the holly jolly celebrating... Amazingly, it only hit these two - and it was NOT food poisoning (My cooking has improved vastly since I married Craig.)

The lights

Of course the entire reason I'm going Christmas crazy this year is because one of Craig's parting concerns was that I would be the Scrooge that I usually am and the kids would suffer terribly. In fact he made me promise I would at least get some sort of tree this year. So now I'm out to prove him wrong! Lol. Next attempt at holiday jolly was the lights. I got really ambitious one afternoon and decided nothing was gonna stop me! Craig always does a wonderful job putting up lights and decorating our house each year and while I knew it wouldn't be as good, I was out to be a little competitive! So after opening 2 huge boxes of lights, timers, clips and other paraphernalia and 3 hours I was not only laughing so hard at my feeble attempt but also somewhat proud... Of course my neighbors did this...

So I came up with...

remember this was an entire 3 hours worth of concentrated effort with no kids for distraction!

Then Anna wanted in on the action and we got this...

I was really impressed with how much Anna did and how good it looked!

When Anna wasn't satisfied she offered to pay our neighbor (the same one who rescued our tree) to put lights on the roof. '5 bucks'. When he said he would only do it for free or $50. She looked him square in the eye and said, 'nope. You'll do it for $5'. I know she tried to pay up... But I'm not sure who won!

In the end we settled with...

Wednesday

Bass Pro! Who doesn't enjoy all that Bass Pro offers at Christmas time... except the long wait to see Santa.

When Santa asked each of the kids what they wanted for Christmas, here were the replies:

Anna - Shrug... Santa, 'If you don't tell me what you want I'll have to bring you boys underwear.' Anna - simply avoid eye contact and pretend he doesn't exist. (Tho she did tell me later she really wanted a pink red Ryder BB gun)

Kaid - Shrug... Santa, 'well I have some Barbie dolls left over from last year I could bring.' A little giggle and Kaid quickly replied with, 'that video game.'

Quinn - with a sigh and the attitude of I've already written this down and told you 17 times before, 'a metal detector.'

Lexsie - 'a big girl bike with a horn that goes honk.'

The schedule - Tuesday

A yearly Christmas tradition - Gingerbread houses with Gramma Barb

(and deep cleaning the living room and dining room - again my favorite part!)

Anna's artistically appealing to the eye tree... she has a natural way with presentation.

Kaid with the very straight and symmetrical house.... interesting (is he a closet perfectionist- possibley like his dad...)

Quinn's house threw up candy... and he's the smart one...

Lex with her interesting lighting rods....

Monday

We got very adventurous and set up a tent in our living room and had a sleep over. The movie picks for the night were Mr. Poppers Penguins, followed by a strategic drive to look at Christmas lights - where the two little ones fell asleep, and then 17 miracles. Interestingly, Kaids favorite movie was 17 miracles. And this is the one day I forgot to get my picture. :(

OCD vs. Free Spirit

Because my OCD tendancies are out weighing my free spirit tendencies this year I made a very structured calendar of events for this holiday vacation time. While everyone may laugh, I love having a schedule of work, fun and meals, and getting to cross off each item completed is a little a thrill. And my sister is great at following my schedule and making sure everything gets done... in fact several of the neighbors have offered her various nanny jobs (she can't be bought so easily tho...) Stay tuned for the follow up posts of my lovely, wonderful, completed list!

The tree

The sequence of our tree...

Freshly cut! (craig has always made cutting a tree down look SO easy). Not so much - Bekah and I finally just started pushing it back and forth until we broke it off.

Then we brought it home and put it up- which didn't work so well... It became the leaning tree of pissa. I couldn't figure out why so I just decided we were having a crooked tree this year. So late one night my neighbor and his wife snuck over when we were gone to fix it. But I foiled their plans! Every door to the house was locked (which in and of itself is hilarious because I am notorious for not locking or even shutting my doors). But because my crooked tree was indeed driving my sweet friend crazy.... I let her husband in and he found that the trunk was so soft it was just slicing through the little screws... But he fixed it and we had a beautiful tree! Until... I forgot to water it and it died. Another thing craig takes care of so effortlessly. So we are just taking the approach of not touching it until we are ready to move it out for the garbage men. It was a beautiful tree!

Each child had a very important job...

Quinn held on to the tree so it wouldn't fall off the trailer.

Bekah used her muscles to help cut the tree down.

Kaid led the way, a perfect boy scout and never let us get lost.

Lexsie yelled, 'timber!'

And, Anna made sure we all followed all the rules!

Ho Ho Ho

Quinn's class was able to see Santa at school yesterday. So I was asking him about it. I asked him what Santa said. Quinn replied with a 'duh mom' tone', he speaks English. He came from Ohio and they speak English there. And he made a beard form Lambs. And he drove in a car cause he speaks in English and english people drive cars. AND Santa got me a bell.' Straight from a 4 year old.

Shopping...

So I ended up at Kohl's with 3 of the kids looking for a pair of pants to buy and the kids started picking things to show me... so I gave them some guidance - I didn't want grandma pants (which started the trip out right cause they laughed entire time) so after deciding if each pair looked like pants a grandma would wear or not we ended up with 2 pair to take to the dressing room... through lots of giggles and lots of suggestions for tops... I mean we had $80 shirts (no I need stuff on sale), shirts in the XS (we all know that's not my size) and the XXXXL (which I'm thankfully not either) we finally got to the pair I was favoring.... I put them on and there was dead silence (I thought they looked pretty good) then Anna pipes up, "well, those pants make your toes look small." Well.. of course if they make my toes look small they must be good!

Bekah's Sense of Humor

I opened my fridge door to this... yes, those are cans of Mt. Dew.

Anna's Birthday

Another year, another party, and Anna's is another year older... 9. Oh my. But the party was a smashing success!

10 seconds

I took pity on the cul-d-sac and served up juice boxes, 2 bags of popcorn, a bag of animal crackers, and a bag of teddy grahams. It took 10 seconds to consume the entire lot! Lol.

For Craig

The kids started singing this on the way home from school, I have never heard the song but the little ones have the same music teacher and so they learned the same one at school.

WE ROCK!

So one of the things we are doing with this deployment is we made a chain... 179 days long (well in theory it will be 179 days - in reality we got 70 chains on) and on each chain Craig wrote a message to us. Of course the first day was an awesome assignment... play rock band! And boy did we rock it! LOL Watch out Jackson 5 - Here come the Randall 5!

Acclimation

Well I guess you could say we've acclimated to Texas... We busted out the big coats and the thermometer read 56 degrees. How is it where it's actually cold? Still wearing shorts?

Pathetic or hilarious

I very carefully vacuumed all around this cup so I wouldn't have to bend over and pick it up.

Halloween 2011

Emotions are running high, we are saying our final goodbyes to each other, trying to help the kids understand that Craig will be gone for 6 months and exactly how long that is... Quinn gets all teary eyed and gives Criag a big hug, then leans back and says in total astonishment, 'I won't be able to play on your phone for six months!' Totally broke the tension!

Craig was taking Lexsie on her special date the other day... which was to my all time favorite place (can you hear the sarcasm) Chuck-E-Cheese. Anyway, it was their date so what do I care, except for the fact that after they got in the car Lexsie started chanting, 'Daddy says, yes. Mommy says, no. Daddy says yes. Mommy says, no.' And from what I hear she didn't stop for the entire ride! Oh to have that piece of wisdom already under her belt...

One of the cute things Lexsie does is look at the clouds and claim, 'the clouds are holding hands!' I love the sweet innocence!

Catch of the Day!

Today we went fishing and by fishing I mean I sat in a chair reading my book and observing as Craig ran from child to child re-hooking worms... But the biggest catch of the day was by Anna who caught this big one! The best thing is that she had given up on catching anything and was using her fishing pole to draw pictures in the water, when a fish jumped onto her hook. Of course Quinn kept shoving his pole at Craig and demanding, 'teach me how to catch a fish!' he was wanting to be taught the magic secret. Kaid was by far the most patient- but still no success. Lex did her part and made sure her pole landed in the water so we had grandpa perform a water rescue. Bekah was the most entertaining and taught the little ones how to play red light green light. Good day!

Quinn. Just a little note about the boy. I was looking at his pictures and wondering why he looks a little MR in them (you know Mentally retarded)... then at school a few days ago he was standing in the middle of the sidewalk as class got out sticking his hand out to all the big kids saying, 'give me 5 - man.' but in a way that he came across as MR. Personally, I was laughing my butt off but only because it's Quinn. He can get away with this stuff that other kids would never dream of doing and the fact that he may possibly border on genius adds to the humor. Proof is in the outfit. He insisted on buttoning his church shirt this way AND wearing the shorts backward. Quinn, I wish I could capture your little personality and put it in a bottle. You are a force!

My mother of the year moment... made a fancy smanchy breakfast with name tags! (the only time this year anything like this will happen)

Anna - 3rd grader

Kaid - 1st grader

Quinn Pre - K

not a good picture but you get the attitude.

Lex Preschooler

Lexsie girl was so tired after the first day she went straight up to her room and put herself to bed. She was too tired to even unfold her blankies and cover herself up.