Pour on the Gravy

Jake came home late from work this evening. The kids and I were already eating and when he came through the door, I got up to heat his dinner plate. We were eating Thanksgiving left-overs my mother-in-law sent home with us. I put gravy over his turkey, potatoes, and stuffing and popped his plate in the microwave. His salad bowl was already on the table so I told him he just needed to put dressing on. Then the microwave beeped. I pulled his plate out, grabbed a slice of bread and turned in time to see Jake spooning cold gravy over his salad.

"Uh-why are you putting gravy on your salad?" I asked him. He looked at me, looked at the jar in his hand and we both burst out laughing. He thought I had made some kind of special salad dressing.

He then proceeded to put 'real' salad dressing over the gravy and ate the whole thing. Bleck! I would have probably thrown it out. I suppose he could have just rinsed the salad and it would have been fine. Neither of us thought of it at the time.

A Little Christmas Crafting

Now that the holiday season is upon us, it's time to start crafting with the kids. Here is what we worked on today:



Aren't they cute? The ornaments are just cut out of scrapbook paper. We also made paper chains out of construction paper to count down the days until Christmas. If you need some inspiration & ideas, two of my favorite kid's craft sites are Crafty Crow and Make & Takes. However I have a ton of other awesome sites and blogs in my sidebar.

I just wanted to add that this was supposed to post yesterday (on the 29th). I wrote it ahead of time but messed up on the post options for the date so here it is on the 30th.

Real or Fake?

Christmas tree that is! So many people I know have started putting up their fake Christmas trees. I can't handle it! Especially not the ones that are pink, silver, or white. I love having a real tree. I know it is terrible for the environment but I love the smell and look of them. I can even deal with the pine needles all over the floor-it's only once a year.

Our tradition is to drive out to this great family owned Christmas tree farm a few towns over from us. We go with my parents & siblings and wander the property looking for the perfect tree. We usually find it after a few snowball wars and when we can't deal with the wind and cold anymore. Once it is tagged we head to the gift shop to pick out a wreath for our front door and enjoy some free popcorn and hot chocolate. And once we've paid and pet the family dogs (including one with only 3 legs) we load up our vehicles and head back to town for lunch. It's a great day of family fun. This year Olivia will be more aware of what is going on. I can't wait to see them both she and James out there.

Real Happy Family

These are photos from McDonald's today. This was a McDonald's built this past year in the same location where they tore down the previous one. The inside is super swanky with modern looking chairs, a fireplace, and everything in the restrooms are motion operated. Love that!

Anyhow-we did another marathon Christmas shopping trip where we try and hit a set number of stores before the kids completely melt down. We did pretty good today and have a big chunk of our shopping done. I can't believe how far ahead I am!

Happy Family?

I don't think so. This was in a pajama catalog I got in the mail today. Maybe I'm a weirdo but I find the image kind of disturbing. I don't know how to describe it. It's like I'm looking at a bunch of aliens standing around a christmas tree. What family does that? Who's that matchy-matchy?

You will never find Jake and I in matching butt-flap pajamas. I think I'd pee my pants laughing if I ever saw him in a pair.

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Now that the Holiday Season has Officially Begun

I read about this video in the newspaper:

Wordless Wednesday

I took this in January of this year. You can be wordless too.

Appreciation

A mom from the mom's group I belong to posted this and I thought I would share. It's really good.

Appreciation

One day a father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the firm purpose of showing his son how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"

"It was great, Dad."

"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.

"Oh yeah," said the son.

"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.

The son answered: "I saw that we have one dog and they had four.

We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.

We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.

Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.

We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.

We buy our food, but they grow theirs.

We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them."

The boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, "Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are."

Isn't perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have.

Appreciate every single thing you have, especially your friends!

Have You Seen These?

There is always one genius out there who is able to turn controversy into a money maker. Genius!

TSA-blocking briefs keep your privates private

Right Out of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation

We decided to take care of haircuts for Jake and James, errands, and some Christmas shopping today. We left the house at 11am, hit Great Clips, Target, ToysRUs, Home Depot, Sears, McDonalds, BJs, PetSmart, and Premier Liquor. We got home around 5 and Jake decided he wanted to string up the Christmas lights on the top story of our house because they are calling for snow at the end of the week.

So Jake is outside on the porch roof in the dark while I'm at our bedroom window feeding the lights out to him and the kids are playing in Jamie's room. Stringing up lights in the dark seems to be an annual tradition of ours. I think our neighbors would think we were nuts if we did it during the day time. This year we also replaced our icicle lights with LED because we've had problems the past two years with our old ones and lights going out.

As Jake is hanging onto the edge of the house, hooking the strand up to those little plastic clips, the lights inside the house flicker and go out. Whaaaat? I think, how could these LED lights knock out the power to our entire house? Then I look across the street and see the lights at all our neighbors houses are out too. We took out the neighborhood too? ha ha ha Jake is standing frozen on the roof while the kids are in the other room screaming as if they are being murdered. There is no gate at the top of the stairs anymore so I go running before one or both of them tumble down. James bursts into our room and I get out to the hallway and grab Olivia. The lights come back on but the kids continue to scream. I see a red ring around Olivia's mouth, she is bleeding. Upon inspection, it seems she split her top lip somehow.

The kids finally calmed down and hung out in our room reading books while Jake continued with the lights. Just when he was almost done, the power goes out again. It's about 6:30 and long story short, the power did not come back on until 9pm! Thank goodness for our generator. Jake fired it up at 7:30, while we played board games with the kids, we baked frozen pizza for dinner and just as we were about to put the kids to bed, it came back on. What a long day! I still have no idea why the power went out in the first place.