Christmas and New Years

So, the whole losing my car thing has died down over the past few days. Boy, did people have fun with THAT one!! The very next night I went shopping with Chia and when we parked the van she looked at me totally deadpan and said, "Don’t forget where you parked the van." Then she burst into hysterical laughter. Thank you. No really, I love being mocked by a first grader.

At church (2 days after the "incident") everyone was having a rip roarin’ time recanting the story to each other. I was talking to one of the other pastor’s wives when her husband suddenly rushed over to us and yelled, "HONEY!! I can’t find our daughter – she’s been STOLEN! Oh wait, there she is over there on the O-T-H-E-R  S-I-D-E!"

Several people just walked by me and went "Heh."

I’ll be handing out autographed keyrings later…

When I finally went to leave church, I opened the door to the parking lot and my van was nowhere to be found. I found my husband in HIS van across the parking lot snickering.

"You’re not funny. Where’s my van?!"

To which he said, "I did NOT touch your van."

""I am not crazy, I know where I parked it." *ahem – this time* "Gimmie back my van!"

"I SWEAR I didn’t touch your van."

I glared at him for a moment, "Ok, then WHO did you give a key to?!?!"

To which he broke down HYSTERICALLY laughing.

"So-and-so asked me for the keys…but…snicker…he wasn’t the only one…HA-HA-HA-HA…!!!" And he trailed back off into hysterics.

"I hope you pee your pants – where’s my van?!!"

He had no idea where the saboteur had moved it, so we drove around in his van until we found it in a parking lot on the other side of a busy street.

Dude, he’s so going down.

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Christmas was fun but exhausting. On Christmas Eve day, my mom, sisters and family came over. We had a great (predictably chaotic with our combined 8 children) time. After my family left, we let the kids open their traditional ONE Christmas Eve present. They ALWAYS hope that it is some cool toy and isn’t pajamas. It is ALWAYS matching Christmas pajamas.

Our church does a late night candlelight communion on Christmas Eve and this was the first year I decided to come with all kids in tow. I made the kids wear their pajamas and slippers, to which The Captain had a fit over.

The service was a sweet time, well – except when I realized that The Colonel is lacking in candle safety skills:

"DUDE! The candle! WATCH the candle!!"

I swear he almost went up in flames several times.

We left the church at 11:51pm. I remember this clearly because Bellie yelled out the current time in one minute increments the ENTIRE ride home:

"ELEVEN FIFTY ONE!! NINE MINUTES TILL CHRISTMAS!!!"

~one minute later~

"ELEVEN FIFTY TWO!! EIGHT MINUTES TILL CHRISTMAS!!!"

Between each announcement, the other 3 kids would sort of get that I’m-up-4-hours-past-my-bedtime glazed over look, only to be sharply jolted back into the space time continuum by the town crier…

"ELEVEN FIFTY THREE!! SEVEN MINUTES TILL CHRISTMAS!!!"

I would have stopped her but I was laughing too hard!

When we got home, I set all of the kids’ clocks back by an hour hoping that would buy us some extra sleep. It sort of worked, they didn’t get out of bed till 8:30am (7:30am by their clocks!)

Here are the little darlings on Christmas morning:

Too bad you can’t see The Colonel’s matching pj’s, oh wait – here’s one:

Here is one of Chia when she opened her scooter:

"Hallelujah!!"

I got all of the kids razor scooters on Black Friday for $18 each. Can I just say that I am SO looking forward to packing those in the car when we go to the park and not FOUR BIKES?!?! (We have NO bike racks!)

I bought Hubby a ZUNE (Microsoft’s IPOD-like MP3 player) because I found it for half price. He had NO IDEA that he was getting it and I even went so far as to buy him a pair of jeans and put it in the pocket of those and wrap the jeans up as his Christmas present. He didn’t look too thrilled at getting a pair of jeans for Christmas till I said, "Oh yeah – there’s a little something in the pocket of those jeans…"

He was QUITE happy!

I am now a ZUNE widow.

I did find out that if you yank the headphones out of the headphone jack – the ZUNE automatically pauses whatever you were watching (movie/video) thus releasing its victim from their trance-like state! Good to know!

A sisters picture. I LOVE sisters photos!! *speaking of: "Hey sis!! Where is that pic you took of us on Christmas Eve that was so cute?! Email it to me!!!"*

A before picture of the living room:

Aaaaaaaaaand after:

Hubby gave me the pots and pans that I wanted and he surprised me with a point and shoot camera to replace

my dead one so that I can have a smaller portable camera in addition to my SLR beast. Unfortunately, although it has some REALLY cool features, the image quality is terrible unless you use it in bright outdoor light or with a flash and it only has a 3x optical zoom which is pretty much like having NO zoom. Bummer. (We are sending it back, and I’m currently researching cameras for one that is at least 6x optical zoom – preferably 8x-10x, super-great in low light, and under $200. So far – it may not exist!)

So, the ironic thing is that it actually snowed here on Christmas Day and I never even got a photo of it! It was the first time in 17 years that it had snowed on Christmas Day here and I DIDN’t get a photo. *kicks self*

My dad and his girlfriend came over in the early afternoon that day and stayed till the snow really started to stick and then some friends came over in the evening for a few hours.

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On New Year’s Eve we had 3 families over (8 adults / 11 kids. We are ALWAYS outnumbered!!) We hung out and chatted and played our new board game "Apples to Apples" *thank you sis* while we rung in the new year. It was fairly low-key but a very fun night. I realized afterwards that I didn’t take a single photo.

I actually made resolutions this year and I’m -right now at his minute- breaking my "in bed by 11:30pm and asleep by Midnight" one! Which in turn will greatly affect my "up by 7am" one. Which will set off the domino affect of making it very difficult to achieve my "read my bible and have prayer time" one BEFORE the kids get up!

Okay – to keep me accountable to accomplishing at least SOME them – here are my 2008 resolutions:

TOP 12 – 2008 New Year’s Resolutions
*It was supposed to be my top 10, but I came up with 12*

1.  Floss 1 time a day (We’ll start with once & see if I can work up to two!)
2.  Do kids favorite homeschool history curriculum 2x a week (Lots of prep work  but they love it)
3.  Exercise 3x a week (Going from zero to three! But a friend is making me join her gym for 90 days!)
4.  Create a 4 week dinner menu plan (To make life easier and hopefully cheaper!)
5.  Read bible daily with goal of reading through the whole bible in one year (Couldn’t find a way to tie in the number 5 on this one!)
6.  Revamp family chore charts for the 6 of us & implement (I’m halfway there! Hopefully this will keep our house on track!)
7.  Out of bed by 7am (*chants self pep talk: "7am is NOT the middle-of-the-night…"*
8. Drink 8 glasses of water a day (That would be instead of 3 cups of coffee & ONE glass of water daily!)
9. Stick to food budget of $90 per week (Meal plan and resist impulse buys!!!!!)
10. Spend 10 minutes in uninterrupted prayer: morning, afternoon and evening (AKA: LOCKING the bathroom door!!)
11.  In bed by 11:30pm (asleep by 12am) (No more late nights…after tonight…)
12. Stick to a monthly budget for 12 months (The year of "NOT". Not justifying purchases that aren’t in the budget!)