Another Christmas come and gone

It's been 4 days since Christmas. 4 noisy days. Our house has come alive with a multitude of sounds. It seems that Santa wasn't thinking...at all...and brought almost no quite toys. In fact, we now have a live band living here. Well maybe not a band so much as dueling guitars and LOTS of singing.




Adam flew in on Christmas morning which was great because there was no one on the freeway and we made it to LAX in record time! Then his flight left yesterday morning at 6am which meant we left for the airport at 3:45. I'm making a new rule that I will only pick people up and drop them off at LAX if they fly in on Christmas and out at the crack off dawn. I've never driven faster than 40 on the 405. It was lovely.

We had a pretty relaxed Christmas (most of the noise was still packaged-speaking of which, who decided to start securing toys to their packaging with screws?? Like the plastic twisty do-hickeys weren't bad enough). We spent most of the day visiting friends and then had a quite dinner at home.

I finished Carrie's quilt just barely (meaning I was working on it all Christmas eve night after church and in between Santa duties). I think she loves it so it was worth the work. I used black and white fabrics and added black and white pictures from 2007 with a baby blue fabric for the back to throw in a little color. Picking the pictures was a fun process because I sat and looked through all of my pictures from this year. That was so much more time consuming than the actual quilting!




It is supposed to rain next week so I think I might take the boys up to the mountains for a night so they can play in the snow. We need some sort of activity so I don't lose my mind.

2 weeks of Christmas vacation down. 1 to go. I hope I can make it with at least some of my sanity left.

I have issues

In true me fashion, I decided this morning to make my best friend a quilt for Christmas. Ya know, cause I didn't have enough to do to prepare for this holiday that's in TWO DAYS. wow.

Christmas stuff

I haven't posted in awhile. Partly because of the holidays and the fact the I've been super busy with everything, but mostly because even though I'm busy I never have anything interesting to say. How sad is that?

I read other people's blogs and it seems that they can turn even the most mundane happenings into enjoyable reading. Me, not so much. Here it is anyway.

I finally took the kids to the mall today to see Santa. Not the REAL Santa, as Gentry kept reminding me. "The real Santa is too busy to sit at the mall. This guy's just here for kids to take the picture."

I've been avoiding the mall, because I don't find it enjoyable during less busy times...and the Christmas shopping crowds do nothing to help. But it's been raining for a few days and the kids were going stir crazy so I figured we'd go. Thankfully we found a parking spot right away. But we found a sign when we got to Santa's spot that said "Santa is feeding his reindeer, he'll return at 2:00". It was only 1:15 but people were starting to line up. I decided we better join them but not till after we went to the San Francisco Cookie company and got some cookies to make the wait less painful :) I'm so glad we got in the line when we did. After about 10 more minutes 30 or more people were in it. By 2 it was ridiculous.
Anyway, the time passed rather quickly and the kids were well behaved and the icing on the cake was that this year the Santa actually looked like Santa.



Last year at our old mall the guy they had playing santa weighed maybe 160 lbs, was in his 30's and had black hair. And he was so not friendly! It was comical.
This Santa talked to the kids and asked them what they wanted and seemed to enjoy his job. The boys were happy. Their take on the whole thing is that the mall Santa knows the real Santa and will pass on the requests. Plus they sent letters to the north pole weeks ago. Hopefully they wont be too crushed when they get very little of what was on those outrageous lists! An Xbox 360? um, you're six. A Quad? not gonna happen. Drums? no no no no. I'm honestly not sure that they remember what they wrote anyway. Gentry wants EVERYTHING he sees advertised on tv.

My brother called yesterday to tell me that he bought himself a plane ticket to come out for Christmas. That was a nice surprise. I didn't think he was going to make it because he can only come for 3 days and the price of a ticket wasn't worth it. But he got a flight on Christmas morning for pretty cheap. Yay! The kids are soooo excited. They adore him. Hopefully he's not planning on seeing friends are going anywhere that kids can't go because I'm pretty sure they'll be glued to his side the whole time.

I hope it's not raining tomorrow. I have so much to do and I need the ol' "go outside and play" option!

irony

The sweatshirts turned out great (if I do say so myself) and the coaches both seemed to really like them. Phew.

One of the most expensive photographs every sold was taken inside of a 99 cents store. Oh the irony! I really don't see the appeal. At least not 2.48 million dollars worth, but thats what makes the world go round.

Wally World

Tomorrow is McKay's last soccer game, followed by a little party for his team at Chuck E. Cheese. I'm making sweatshirts for his coaches with pictures of the team on them as a thank you gift (even though one of the coaches sort of skipped out on the "coaching" part of being a coach about 3 games in and pretty much just sits on the sidelines...but that's beside the point. Kinda.) So of course I waited until the last minute to start this project and ended up running around all afternoon trying to find iron-on transfers for dark fabric.

Michaels was out.
Office Max was out.
Target was out.

So I ended up at Walmart. (Go ahead, judge me. I judge me too). I am typically not a fan of Walmart. I'm a Target girl. Yes Walmart is cheaper...but Target is just, well, it's just better. It's cleaner and less crowded and the quality of stuff they sell is better, plus the employees (and the customers) are, (how do I say this nicely?) more likely to have all of their teeth. Oh and there's the added bonus that both of the Targets nearby have Starbucks in them now. And I heart Starbucks.

I'm getting off the subject.

Walmart had the transfers that I needed. So I grabbed them and headed to the checkout and got into the line that looked the shortest. I should know by now that's never a good idea. Everything was going smoothly until the person in front of the person in front of me got ready to pay...and didn't have enough money. Which in and of itself is ok with me. That happens to everyone. But I was growing less and less patient with her circumstances when she took 10 minutes to decide what to put back. But still I'm thinking, ok I'm almost next in line. All of the other lines were busy so it didn't seem logical to get out of my line and try another. UNTIL it's time for the guy in front of me to get rung up and he starts disputing the price of half the stuff he was buying. And now is when the cashier does the dreaded flipping of the switch that makes the light above her register start flashing. And my heart sank. Are you kidding me?? really?? Sir, I'll give you the 86 cents that is the difference between whether or not you want that toothpaste. And I'll throw in the 30 cents that you think you are being overcharged for wrapping paper. Heck, I'll give you a whole 2bucks if we can just get the show on the road. We waited for a few minutes for someone to run and check the price of a few things and then come back and tell the guy that he was wrong. UGH!

Generally I try to have more patience then this but I was tired of shopping and I was hungry and those two things together will pretty much never equal patience for me.

These sweatshirts better turn out cute!

yes, that's right. It's after 10 and I haven't finished them. Whatever.

Sanitary Potato

This is story is like something from a far fetched movie. I can't even imagine how their sons must feel. Geez, people will do crazy things for money. Not me though, I'm just going to win the lottery. Sometime in January. Yup, that's my plan.

Apparently 2008 will be the International Year of the Potato. As well as the International Year of Sanitation. Oh and a leap year. How fun.

dear friend

Oh Ebay, my long lost friend. I have missed you. It's been awhile. But remember why we stopped hanging out? You were not good for me. Yes, you were fun to be around. but addicting. and costly. and time consuming. (But oh so much fun!) I want us to be friends again. The kind of friends that see each other every once in awhile. And I need you to be an accommodating friend...the kind that gives me what I want. I think that's fair. Now, what I need from you is that ridiculously cool old Polaroid camera. For a reasonable price. Please. Deal? ok, super. thanks.