Random Photo Tuesday

Okay, I know it's not Tuesday but you'll get over it, right? In an effort to catch you up a bit on what's been going on with us while I was on the longest blogging break in history, I'm going to share some random photos. These are all from January. Next week I'll get to February. I know I've been gone a lot longer but neither one of us wants to go back that far, right? I'm hoping that flipping through these photos will remind me of what we were doing so I can fill you in on the details a bit too. (Above is Amanda with the camera that Santa brought for the girls. (water proof, freeze proof and shock proof. Yes, I'm trying to train the next generation to take pictures of every single thing.)

We were at Universal Studios the last week of Christmas vacation, so that's where we celebrated New Year's. They brought "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" to life and it was so much fun hanging out in Whoville! There was real snow to play in and there were "Whos" everywhere we turned. It really felt like we were walking around in the middle of the movie and I LOVED it. After Universal, I have to say that January is pretty light on cute kid pictures. That's because I was hugely focused on decluttering my house. It was sometime last year that I started watching all those hoarding shows. You know the ones that start by taking you on a tour of a house that is packed to the ceiling with a lifetime full of stuff? Those shows fascinate me... and scare me... a lot! I noticed that the people with hoarding problems all seemed to have similiar stories: "I was always kind of messy and I liked to save things but nothing too unusual. But then _____________ (fill in the blank with divorce/death of a loved one/children leaving home/random disaster) and things completely spiraled out of control..."

Most of the people I've talked to about those hoarding shows respond the same way, saying something along the lines of, "GROSS! I can't imagine how anyone could ever let that happen." But me, I totally empathized with them. I thought, "Uh oh! I am kind of messy and I like to save things! I could be just one major life tragedy away from becoming that crazy lady with stuff piled to the ceiling and 23 cats!"

So last year I started changing a lot of bad habits and I got rid of a ton of stuff. Okay I didn't actually weigh it or anything but I swear there had to be a ton. To be honest, I expected that getting rid of all that stuff meant my house would suddenly be clean. That it would practically clean itself and that it would stay clean all the time. Totally didn't happen. Not even close! I mean things improved quite a bit but not nearly as much as I'd hoped. Imagine my disappointment.

By this January I was feeling pretty defeated, especially after the major influx of STUFF from the holidays so I decided to get hardcore about it. I decided 2011 was going to be the year I turned it all around. By then, getting rid of my own stuff had become easy but I still struggled with letting go of the kids' stuff... and looking around it was pretty clear that their stuff was a major part of the problem. Their stuff took up A LOT of space. Their rooms were always a mess. And they dragged their stuff all over the house on a very regular basis because their rooms were too messy to play in! But they were attached to their stuff. Alyssa was far more attached than Amanda because Amanda liked to watch the hoarding shows with me. The phrase "crazy cat lady" was all I really needed to inspire Amanda to part with her overabundance of things. But ask Alyssa if she wants to turn into the crazy cat lady, and hulloooooooo does anything sound more fun than that? (Speaking of cats, below is our ONLY cat taking advantage of the fact I'm cleaning out a drawer. I bet the crazy cat lady's cats don't get to do this!)

I've realized that my attachment to things has very little to do with the actual things but everything to do with the memories those things evoke. So after the girls and I spent at least an hour playing I-spy with this photo (below) that I took several years ago of some of my Christmas ornaments, I realized that they already knew the stories behind many of the ornaments... Amanda would say, "This one full of sand and seashells represents my first trip to the beach." And Alyssa would say, "This is from the time that the Not-Real-Santa called me Booger Baby!" Even without the STUFF in front of them, the memories were still there.Okay, I'm a photo nut so of course I'd already thought about taking photos of all the stuff... but I'm also lazy and couldn't actually imagine taking photos of each and every THING, whatever it was, separately. We had a LOT of stuff after all. And what was I going to do with all those photos anyway? Become the crazy lady with a house crammed full of photos? You know who I'll be showing all those photos to? My 23 cats.

But the girls love I-spy books. If you've never heard of I-spy books, they're books that have these cool photos that are crammed full of all kinds of stuff and there are riddles that go with each photo and you have to find the answers in the photos. So what if I gathered up all the stuff I can't bear to get rid of into groups, snapped some pictures and turned those photos into an "I-spy" book. Then once we have the photos, BYE-BYE stuff!

So here are a couple of those photos. They include stuff from my childhood as well, recovering-could-have-been hoarder that I am. Can anyone spot Justin Bieber, who Alyssa plans to marry, in the top photo? Can anyone find Giraffe, who Amanda used to referred to as her husband, in the second one?

Alyssa also learned how to tie her shoes in January. When Amanda learned to tie her shoes she was actually a couple of years older than Alyssa. Mostly because she rarely wore shoes that needed to be tied. When I did finally teach her it took a while. A bit of practice and a bit of "I'll never be able to do this!" before she caught on. It was a much faster process with Alyssa.

Amanda taught Alyssa how to tie her shoes. She demonstrated for her ONCE and then watched as Alyssa tied them. And that was it. Alyssa's been tying her own shoes ever since. Leading Amanda to conclude that I am really, really LAME at the teaching thing. We also did a lot of painting in January. One of my most vivid memories of Kindergarten is from the day we put on smocks and got to finger paint. Just thinking about that day can still make me a teeny bit giddy. I only remember doing it once but I remember thinking it was the best thing on the planet earth. So I'm going back to my kindergarten roots and just PLAYING. My paintings are probably only slightly better than they were back then but I'm just as giddy... Yeah those are mine, not the girls... Scott took one look at the one of the house and said, "That is the worst designed roof I've ever seen. The rain is all gonna puddle up at the ends and it's gonna rot." I wonder if he was this practical in Kindergarten.

Happy Mother's Day!

So when my Mother’s Day plans came to a crashing halt, I was feeling rather cranky… and umm… sorry for myself. But then I stopped and thought, what do I really want to do on Mother’s Day anyway? I want to hang out with my kids, the ones who make me feel unbelievably grateful to be a mom… I want a new photo with the two of them because I’ve been avoiding the camera lately (see above) AND I want a bit of alone time to finally update my blog which I haven’t touched in oh, let’s see, over a year! I was thinking that I’d wax poetic about how grateful I am to be a mom... and I am... well most of the time....but then I decided that what I really want is to say thank you to all of the most important moms in my life.

Thank you to my mom, who after being told by the adoption agency that she and my dad were too old for a newborn and getting blessed with my delightful 6-month-old brother who drank cold milk straight from the fridge and slept through the night, she OOPS got blessed with me, a NEWBORN! She somehow managed, in her old age (38!), to carry me for 9 long months and survived all those sleepless nights of heating bottles and changing diapers. She kept me safe through my childhood, put up with me when I was way less than delightful... when I turned up my nose to the meals she prepared, used up all the hot water, when my room was so horribly messy that the police had to tell her it had been ransacked by burglars and my mother had to explain that, no, it’s always like that. She fed me, clothed me and always reminded me to take a jacket. She believes with complete certainty, as only a mother could, that if Oprah were to stumble across the blog I never update that I would be skyrocketed into fame and fortune as a bestselling author.

She’s the reason I thought it was perfectly logical to take up painting at 41. Actually she’s the reason I feel like I can take on pretty much any craft, hobby or home improvement project that strikes my fancy. Because she did. She can do ANYTHING. She can sew a wicked ball gown, build a Victorian dollhouse completely wired with electrical, trace the family history all the way back to Adam and Eve. The woman has had more hobbies than anyone on the planet and I only hope that I’ll have the nerve to take up golf lessons, bear making, genealogy, astrology, meditation, visiting haunted houses and cemeteries, belly dancing or giving birth while under hypnosis… no wait… not those last two. I’ll never learn to sew either. Probably because Mom never let me touch the good sewing scissors. However she’s probably responsible for my photo book making addiction because I spent a lifetime watching her make personal, heartfelt and usually very funny gifts for all the people she loved. She will be 80 this year and she’s still going strong and still taking on new hobbies… like gardening, fishing and collecting frogs. She’s the best mom in the whole world.

Thank you to my mother-in-law, Andrea. When I hear other women complain about their mother’s-in-law I always breathe a huge sigh of relief because I totally lucked out in the mother-in-law department. She appreciates photos and photo books more than the most expensive gifts which is a very good thing because I wouldn’t have a clue how to go about choosing the most expensive gifts. She never criticizes me or tells me how to do things. She never gives me grief about the areas I am lacking in… Even when the areas I’m lacking in are ones that a mother would find important in one marrying her son or raising her grandchildren. Cooking and cleaning? Eh. And if I could choose any grandma in the world for my kids, I would choose her. She adores them completely, lights up when they walk into the room, reads to them, gets down on the floor and plays with them endlessly, will spend hours talking to them on the phone even if they’re telling her the same story for the fifth time.

Thank you to my Grandma T* who I feel so fortunate to have. I had wonderful grandmas who I dearly miss but I really lucked out when I married Scott. I get to share his grandma and I love her as much as I loved my own. I love that my children have a great-grandmother to share stories and time with. We love going to her house where the girls head straight for the stacking dolls and the Rubik's cube. She's always so excited to see us and she always makes us feel so welcome and loved. It doesn't hurt that she feeds us well too!

Thank you to my oldest sister, Deni who gives the best and most practical advice. Turns out you shouldn’t attempt to cook a turkey in a 175 degree oven until it reaches an internal temperature of 325. Turns out there’s really not much you can cook in a 175 degree oven. Who knew, right? Deni did. And why do they let me set the oven to 175 then? Deni can tell you these things. And Deni won’t make fun of you until after the crisis passes. Then and only then will you two laugh about it until you cry. Deni is one of the few people on the planet who understands with frightening clarity how my brain operates. Because genetics blessed her with a very similar brain. So I don’t have to explain how or why I did the latest stupid thing I did because she just GETS it and can probably tell you a story about the time she did the same thing. Oh and if you have spent all day giggling with Deni via instant messenger over random stuff and suddenly remember at 5:14pm that you haven’t even thought about what to have for dinner… you can throw out any two ingredients you happen to have on hand and she can give you at least five ideas for what you can have on the table by 6. She’s AMAZING that way. She’s also always there when I need her and I couldn’t ask for anything more in a sister.

Thank you to my other sister, Darin, who served as kind of a second mom to me growing up… and I am still growing up. She didn't do it in a bossy know-it-all way but in a super cool older sister I-want-to- be- just-like-her- when-I- grow-up kind of way. Darin got me through the drama that was adolescence. She was the one I went to with the important questions about boobs, boys, zits and life. Darin taught me how to get out of cleaning my room so I could get back to reading. Darin taught me about hovering over public toilets and how to prepare for a job interview. Darin found me the PERFECT BRA (and yes, that one deserves capital letters). Darin is the one who, when you feel like your entire universe is falling to pieces, can somehow explain in two paragraphs how you can put it all back together again. And she’ll make you feel like you would have eventually come up with the solution yourself. Darin is like a cheerleader in my head telling me I can do anything. Darin is incredibly wise and wickedly funny. Darin is the one I wanted by my side when having both of my babies. And Darin is the one I hope to hang out with in the old folks home. Actually I sort of look forward to those days of adult diapers because Darin very frequently makes me laugh til I nearly wet my pants.

Thank you to my sister-in-law, Cara, the little sister I always wanted and finally got when I married Scott. What I didn’t expect was that I would spend so much time looking up to my little sister. I have always adored her and admired her abilities to pull off superhuman feats like cooking gourmet meals or entertaining a houseful of people as if it were nothing. She’s the only one I know who truly appreciates a great font as much as I do. She’s a brilliant proofreader AND she’s the one I have always been able to count on to give me a brutally honest opinion if I ask. She’s funny and smart and can tell me what to wear no matter what the occasion.

But she has gone through so much in the last few years while trying to become a mom. Some of the things she has faced I can only imagine might have sent me to bed for months, yet somehow she has faced it all with unbelievable self-assurance, grace and incredible strength. Sophia and Ava are lucky little girls to have her as a mom… and I am incredibly lucky to have her as my sister.

Thank you to my sister-in-law, Michelle, who is like the Kate Middleton of our family. Not only would she look super cute in a tiara but she has the kind of poise, elegance and grace that would have fit right into a royal family. Yet somehow she landed in ours. And she seems truly thrilled to be one of us. (Sucka!) She is unbelievably sweet, kind and lovely and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her get mad. If I were to tell her that my brother is incredibly lucky to have her I know… I KNOW… she would tell me that, in fact, SHE is the lucky one. She’s just like that… All head over heels in love with my brother… All sweetness and light. And we are so lucky to have her.

And lastly, thank you to all of my mom friends who keep me sane on a regular basis… The ones who, on the days when I’m feeling completely overwhelmed, because my house is never clean enough and the cat just threw up and and finding a pair of clean matching socks or my keys seems like an impossibility... they remind me that it’s not the end of the world, that we all have days like this and tomorrow will be better.

Thank you to Beth M. who will go to Target with me three times in one week and the only one on the planet who could laugh so hard with me in the container aisle while discussing Space Bags that the rest of the customers had to think we were drunk or crazy. The one who “attended” the Royal Wedding with me in tiaras, boas, a ton of plastic bling and sweatpants. The one who will trek from one end of Safeway to the other to help me track down a missing cart full of groceries and never lecture me for leaving it unattended. The one who can drop by unannounced and I don’t feel even the tiniest need to make excuses for what a disaster my house is or why it’s 1pm and I still haven’t showered. The one who is always a phone call away if I need someone to pick up Amanda from school, need to arrange a last minute playdate or if I just need a Starbucks break. The one who drops by for coffee and doesn’t mind watching me fold laundry. The one I can call in the middle of a recipe if I need to borrow a can of chiles or a teaspoon of a spice I’ve never heard of. She's also the one who will order a pizza for me if dinner can’t be saved. My mom used to talk about friends like her who lived around the corner and dropped by to chat over coffee and I thought, “Someday I hope I’ll have those kinds of friends” and now I do.

Thank you to Wendy, my SSFL, who arrived at precisely the moment when I really needed a friend. And who, if I were to have written a description for that friend I needed, would have exactly fulfilled that description in every single way. Wendy, who is so like me in so many ways that I had to call my mom to make sure I didn't have another sister she never mentioned. Wendy, who always takes the photos I forgot to take and usually emails them to me before I remember I forgot to take them. The one who would have gone to her deathbed with the story about the toilet seat cover stuck to my butt. The one who has shared room-mom duties with me for three years now even though every year we say we’ll never sign up again. Who is always just an instant message away when crisis strikes. Who cheers me up when I’m having a bad day after listening to me whine in horrifying endless detail about that bad day. Who always knows what homework is due and if today was a minimum day and which teacher we need to hope our kids get next year. Who is always smiling and makes me laugh like crazy. Wendy, who gets as excited as I do about all things crafty and who can usually remember which blog had that super cute idea about whatever it is I happen to need super cute ideas about. Wendy who encourages me endlessly and makes me feel like I can do anything.

Thank you to Beth B. who has known me since I was 12… the friend I don’t talk to daily but am able to pick up with as if we do whether it’s been 6 minutes or 6 months. The one who knows all of my secrets and never judges me, the one who taught me how to drive (yes, go THROUGH the stop sign) and who caught all the balls that happened to come my way in right field saving me from countless head injuries. She’s the one I shared my first apartment with. The one who has such a huge heart for giving that she not only will stop on the side of the road to help random strangers (Don’t get in the van, Beth. You’re in the van, Beth. Just don’t drive away, Beth. You’re driving away, Beth!) but who has also been a surrogate mom to four babies helping other parents get the children they desperately wanted. Beth is like Superwoman in my mind. Multi-tasking extraordinaire. Able to leap tall buildings while driving a van full of children, and putting on a fundraiser and a school play while baking 8 kinds of pies and she’ll swing by Starbucks to grab me a coffee on the way. The one who I have had countless sleepovers with, the one who loves a good tearjerker as much as I do, who. The one who, if it was suddenly determined that laughter can make me you lose weight, I would spend every last second with. She reminds me of who I am, how far I’ve come and how far I can go.

Thanks to all of you amazing moms who make my life better in so many different ways. I love you all. Happy Mother's Day!

(Yes I know this was posted in 2011, but when my mom requested a copy of my blog book she insisted that this post be a part of it and I wasn't about to say no. I love you, Mom!)

Tooth Fairy Duty

I was on tooth fairy duty last night, which means I didn't get much sleep. It was my fault because after quite the long battle, I finally bribed Alyssa with a movie at bedtime to get her to let me take her Band-Aid off so I could clean her icky stitches. (Yeah, I'll have to write a post about those. She stayed perfectly still and didn't make a peep when the doctor was stitching her up, but try to get a Band-Aid off of her and you would think I was trying to cut her toes off with a pair of scissors.) The thing is, I'd taken Benadryl, which totally knocks me out, to deal with the mysterious rash covering my entire body. (Between the ER rooms and Disneyland, it's a small world full of yucky germs. And yeah, I'll have to write a post about those too.)

So the plan was: take Benadryl, put the girls to bed, go to bed and sleeeeep. Instead it was: take Benadryl, do 14 other things I'd forgotten about, argue with Alyssa over a Band-Aid for probably half an hour while in a Benadryl haze, finally bribe her with a movie at bedtime, which was already way later than it should have been. Then have Amanda suddenly remember she had to write a note for the tooth fairy, then check every 10 minutes to see if Alyssa has fallen asleep yet, then wait 10 more minutes to make sure she's REALLY asleep so I can finally do tooth fairy duty because I know there's no way I will be remembering it in the middle of the night. Alyssa watched the whole darn movie of course, which is why I'm exhausted today.

I'm even more paranoid than usual because Amanda nearly caught the tooth fairy the last time she visited. It was about 2 AM when Scott got a phone call from work and I jumped half out of my skin because in my mind, 2am phone calls = a death in the family. I was annoyed at first (What? Nobody died?) knowing it would take forever to get back to sleep and then suddenly remembered: tooth fairy duty!!! That is why I have to do it before I go to bed. The whole I'll just lay down for a few minutes thing may not end well. So I did my TF thing and, of course, Amanda woke up, mid-visit. Turns out I think faster on my feet than I would have guessed. The tooth fairy got away before she was recognized.

Amanda's usual fairy leaves a lovely sprinkling of glittery fairy dust. Her very first fairy left fairy dust not just on her pillow but all over the entire backyard! I personally thought it resembled frost glittering in the sunlight but Amanda KNEW it was fairy dust and has been quietly disappointed in the laziness of the fairies she's gotten since then.

Hullooooo, she leaves a trail of dust and sometimes a certificate in beautiful, scrolly lettering. Excuse the hell out of her for not making the yard sparkle.

Some people think there is only one tooth fairy, like there's one Santa Claus or one Easter Bunny. I don't buy that. I mean Santa and the Bunny each have one day a year. And then a whole boatload of vacation time. But the tooth fairy, I can't imagine how ONE person, err fairy could handle that job, what with the zillions of children all over the world popping out teeth at such an alarming rate.

So yeah, I actually think there are a bunch of tooth fairies, and that they're all totally different, though all approximately three inches tall.

This explains why Brandon has a boy fairy, why Adam only gets cash, never a certificate or fairy dust. And why Luciana's fairies are soooo much better than ours 'cause the certificates she gets are much cooler AND Luciana gets to choose from a chart which fairy she wants (all better than ours, by the way) plus the fairy leaves money AND gifts.

I'm not sure we'll always get the same fairy every time either, 'cause fairies have lives too. They go on vacation, they work different shifts, they get sick and have personal issues. They might even take a long unexplained leave of absence and we might get stuck with a crappy temp or we might luck out and get some fab overachiever who typically works in another county.

Sometimes I like to imagine the fairies at performance review time. I like to think about the well-paying over-achievers who leave teeny tiny notes written in teeny tiny calligraphy stuffed into teeny tiny envelopes next to brand new ipods getting big raises and promotions, while the ones who toss a quarter in the general direction of the pillow and spend the rest of the night chain smoking cigarettes and watching porn getting fired or at least put on probation.

For the record I think our normal fairy is slightly above average, what with the glitter and the certificates. However she is a terrible procrastinator and has asked me NEVER to remind Amanda that it's time to leave the tooth for her. She likes her sleep okay?

Oh! Speaking of sleep, the best part of this story is that after torturing myself to stay awake last night, Amanda didn't even remember to check to see if the tooth fairy had visited! She left for school and never even checked. I didn't remind her to because I didn't want her going back into their room and waking Alyssa.

I do sort of hope that Amanda suddenly remembered after arriving at school and got to experience her own torture … the sweet agony of waiting, certain that by the time she gets home her little sister will have stolen her money and destroyed any fairy evidence. Is it wrong that that the thought of that makes me feel a little better? I can't help it. I'm mean when I don't get enough sleep.

posted from my iphone

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Stuck Inside

Rain. Tons of it. Endless amounts of rain. I actually LOVE rain. But it's starting to get just a tad bit old, even to me. So for your viewing pleasure, a few pictures of how we've been keeping ourselves entertained these last couple of weeks.

We've had playdates. Lots of them. We've played Barbies. We've danced.We've set up some tents in the dining room. (Thanks Aunt Jacque and Uncle Brad, we LOVE them! Scott says next time we visit he's going to bring them and set them up in your dining room so he can show you exactly how much he loves them!)We had our own version of American Idol/So You Think You Can Dance. By the way, Alyssa got a golden ticket! She's goin' to Hollywood. Pretend Hollywood, that is. We've done homework.
We've played some more Barbies. We've rough-housed a bit. We've played school.
We've made monsters.We've climbed the walls. We've danced some more.We 've baked cookies. We've pretended to sleep.We've made weird faces. We've cooked.We've laid down and been covered in clean laundry, straight out of the dryer. I swear these two will drop anything for the thrill of warm laundry. And when it stopped raining, we finally got to play outside!!!
By the way I wrote this post yesterday... We had actual SUNSHINE today! Woo hoo!!!

The Great Gingerbread Village Fiasco of 2009

I was watching two of my friends' kids for a couple of days, so I had a total of five kids ranging from three to eight. Two of them were boys who aren't nearly as impressed with our Barbie collection as the girls usually are. At some point they cried boredom and what did I do? A saner person would have put a movie in the DVD player and pushed PLAY but what did Dione do? She said, “Who wants to build a gingerbread village!?!?!”

The words just came flying out of my mouth before I'd considered the consequences. I thought it would be easy actually. I thought it would be FUN! I had a kit after all. Five adorable little houses for five adorable little kids. FUN!

Five happy little voices were saying, “YAAAAAY!!!” and for that first glorious moment, I was thinking, I ROCK!

And then the fight broke out over who was gonna get which house. No problem. We'd draw numbers to see who got which house. Perfect! This was going to be FUN! Except for the adorable kid who got the stupid house they didn't want. But then, in an incredible act of generosity, adorable kid #2 offered to trade with adorable kid #1... unfortunately kid #2 got stuck with a house with broken pieces... and it went on and on like this. Nobody wanted to put their own house together, so I had five freaking adorable little houses to put together and five adorable children saying, “Make mine first, make mine first!!!”

When one of my friends called to say she was almost home and to let her know when to come pick up her daughter, I said, “Here's what I want you to do. Pull up in front of my house with the engine running... I'll jump in and you FLOOR IT!”

I then explained my gingerbread house insanity. I said, “We haven't even gotten to the decorating part yet but I know how it's gonna go. These kits... the box always says Lots of Icing and Candy but there never is. They don't factor in all the eating that goes on while the frazzled grown-up tries to get four walls to stick together and somehow hold up a roof. Five times. Pretty soon I'm gonna have five adorable kids completely wired on sugar trying to decorate five stupid, stupid adorable little houses and fighting over 14 gumdrops, six red hots and a candy cane to do it. What was I thinking?"My friend said, “I'm in front of your house. Come out here, I have something for you.”

Really? Hmm...Help had arrived. I went skipping out to her car wondering what she could possibly have for me. She started fishing around in her purse as I said, “Whatcha got for me? Ya got valium? Ya got prozac?”

She started laughing. “No, no... it's here, somewhere...”

“Whatcha got for me? Ya got vodka? Ya got a pitcher full of margaritas?”

“No. It's candy.”

“Candy? Oh chocolate? Okay it's not prozac but chocolate can solve a lot.”

“No, no, not chocolate,” she said, and then right before my eyes, she started pulling sealed packages of candy out of her purse. Not just any candy either. This candy was green, red and white. Candy that was born to live on a gingerbread house.

I said, "I swear to you, I'm not judging... But you have gingerbread house candy in your purse, why?"

She explained that a couple of days before she and her daughter had been to a gingerbread house decorating party and this was some of the leftover candy. She said, “Hold on, I think I've got frosting in here."

“Yeah umm. Seriously? Frosting in your purse? I love you. This just another prime example of why we're friends.”

She never did find the frosting. I know. Only a friend of mine could lose frosting in her purse. And it only made what happened twenty minutes later even more funny. I went back into the house to show off all the new candy. “Oh. But it's only to look at, adorable children! No eating!”

So then I went back to building five tiny little stupid houses while five adorable children dipped themselves in sprinkles. When my friend Wendy showed up to pick up Brandon and Jaden, I told her all about my gingerbread village fiasco and then added that you'll never believe what Beth showed up with, "Candy! And not just any candy. The woman was pulling gingerbread-house-decorating-candy out of her purse. Seriously. She even thought she had frosting. Only my friends. Can you imagine?”Of course Wendy responded, “Oh... do you need frosting? Hold on a sec.”

She then went out to her car and popped open her trunk as I stood there, with a you have got to be freakin' kidding me look on my face and, I kid you not, the woman started pulling tubes of frosting out of her trunk. And not just frosting, but a vast assortment of Christmas themed decorative toppings...

“Really? You just happened to have this stuff in your trunk, Wendy?”

She explained that one of the activities at her office party that day had been sugar cookie decorating. They had a lot of stuff left over.

As I watched Wendy drive away, and waved good-bye to Brandon and Jaden, I stood there on my porch, admiring the twinkling lights decorating my neighbors' houses, basking in my own personal Christmas miracle moment. Thinking how lucky I am to have exactly the right friends and family for ME. Always there with exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment. I felt extremely blessed. Then I went back inside and smiled at the three adorable children who remained. Admired the lights on my tree which sat in the midst of my lovely house which looked as though it had been ransacked by angry monkeys.

I smiled at the glittering beauty of my dining room floor, which appeared to be covered with freshly fallen snow... sticky green & red snow, to be exact. I admired the hot pink frosting in my seven year-old's hair and I pried the gummy bears out of my four year old's sticky little hands. I remembered that my adorable husband would be home at any moment and that I had absolutely no clue what we were having for dinner.And I thought to myself that as incredibly lucky as I am to have the friends and family that I have, there's still an opening for a friend who carries a cleaning crew in her van... and one who delivers take-out. Plus I really wouldn't mind that vodka/prozac friend. Email me. PLEASE.

December 2009

Click here to view these pictures larger

Just sharing some pictures from December. As usual, it was a crazy, busy month. Tons of shopping, decorating, baking, parties and photo book making. Scott and I celebrated our tenth anniversary. We also had Amanda's school sing-a-long and her class party.

Somehow I managed to get ahead of schedule with many things, which is pretty unusual for me. Oh I hear you all snickering... Okay, being ahead of schedule is VERY unusual for me, but somehow I managed it. Most of the gifts were not only bought or made weeks before Christmas but also wrapped and under the tree. I labeled them with a secret code so the girls had no idea who was getting what. Unfortunately it was such a great code that when Christmas morning finally rolled around, even I had no idea who was getting what. Oh look, it's another mystery gift. How exciting!

The biggest thing I managed to check off my list early in the season: visiting Santa. I've mentioned my issues around taking the kids to see Santa before here and here. Love Santa. But I've blown up the going-to-see-Santa experience into something to be dreaded... procrastinated... avoided if humanly possible. I want the girls to see Santa. I want cute photos of them seeing Santa. I just don't want to stand in line with 5,000 impatient children waiting to see Santa. The very idea of it makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Every year I tell myself that we'll go see Santa right after Thanksgiving. Get in early to beat the crowds. But every year I put it off. Last year I put it off so long that we ended up at the mall on Christmas Eve. Mind you, Christmas Eve dinner is pretty much the only event I can be counted on to host at my house every year, so it was an act of total desperation/insanity that made me venture into the mall on Christmas eve afternoon and even consider a visit to Santa. One look at that line of 5,000 impatient children and crabby parents stretching around and around and around and I immediately bribed the girls into leaving. I told them I had gotten a good look at Santa (which I had) and it wasn't the real one anyway. All we had to do was check the online Santa Tracker to know that the REAL Santa was already delivering gifts to good little boys and girls all over the world.

This guy was just one of his helpers. To be more specific, (like I said, I got a good look at him) this was the very helper who had called Alyssa “Booger Baby” the year before. I wasn't waiting in line for that guy. I just wasn't. Well if they had cried or told me I was ruining Christmas I might have considered standing in that line, but luckily they didn't seem to mind much. Do you want to stand in this line for six hours or do you want mommy to buy you something pretty and completely useless? We'll text Santa just to be sure he remembers you...

Don't judge me, people. It had to be done. I had a messy house and company coming. So last year I completely blew it. For the first time in their short little lives they had no Santa visit. I couldn't afford to screw it up this time.

So in November, when my friend Wendy mentioned that there was a holiday open house in a quaint town near us and Santa was going to be there... I was all for it. Mind you that we hadn't even celebrated Thanksgiving yet. I didn't care. I've heard people say it's awful to see Santa so early. Even right after Thanksgiving is too early for them. They say it's like torturing the kids... making them wait so long. PUH-LEEZ... I'm gonna torture the kids anyway. Why not start off the torture with a fun trip to see the jolly old man in red?

You may notice that Amanda's jacket is wet in these photos. That's because right as we left for the event it started raining. Not sprinkling a little but POURING. We were not to be deterred though. So what if we had to wait outside in a little bit of rain? I was going to get to check “Santa visit” off of my list and it wasn't even December! Go me! Luckily the rain seemed to scare a lot of people off. The line we waited in was nowhere nearing 5,000. This year I'm hoping to schedule our visit with Santa before Valentine's Day. Easter at the latest.

With so many of my “must do” items checked off of my list early in the month, like I had always fantasized about.. what did I do? Did I sit back and bask in the joy of the season like I'd always pictured I would do? No. No, I couldn't stand being done. It just doesn't feel like Christmas if I'm not running myself ragged, you know? So I just started adding a bunch of random stuff to the list. Things to do. Parties and parades to attend. Cookies to bake. Crafts to make. My visits to the Martha Stewart website spiked dramatically. Because I had clearly lost it. If it called for popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, paint, glue, glitter or googly eyes, I added it to my list. We made cinnamon dough ornaments that we never got around to painting. We made button wreaths, popsicle stick reindeer, craft foam trees, two advent calendars. I attempted to make this:

See? Those are my cute little gingerbread guys before the tragic accident. Many of them were dismembered. It hurts too much to talk about it.

However the kids and I did successfully make about a zillion of these snowflake button ornaments. Cute huh? Unfortunately, I pretty much forgot to attach them to my gifts as planned. I'm creative but completely disorganized. It's a curse. Then there were the gingerbread houses. That story deserves its very own post.

Anyway it was a fun Christmas. I think we now have more Barbie dolls than ToysRus. That was the only thing Amanda asked Santa to bring her. She finally added a stuffed animal dog and a couple of candy canes to her wish list just so Santa would have options, but for her it was all about the Barbies and Santa came through. Alyssa just wanted a baby doll. She got one that sneezes and runs a fever. Next year maybe she'll specify she'd like a healthy baby doll. Luckily they haven't started dragging out the catalogs and making carefully itemized 6-page wish lists like my brother and I did.

The girls and I spent New Years in Anaheim with my friend Beth. It was an impulsive trip for me. I couldn't resist the idea of Disneyland at Christmastime. Except that we didn't end up going to Disneyland since the weather was horrible, rainy and windy, and we heard the parks were insanely crowded. Bad planning on my part. But we had a great time anyway and we'll be going back to Disneyland again soon. Because if we don't, my children will remind me of it for the rest of my life.

As it is, I'm fairly certain I'll be hearing about it anyway.

Hey Alyssa, remember that Christmas Mommy surprised us with a trip to Disneyland but instead she took us to IHOP and the Dollar Store?