The Post-Game Show

Our Christmas morning was a hit.  When it comes to kids and Christmas, when is it not? 

I'm especially proud of the job Santa did filling the stockings.  Our stocking holders are not strong enough to hold a filled stocking.  That garland you see there is reinforced with nails keeping the stocking holders in place.  But just to be safe, and to keep a mid-night noise catastrophe from happening, I got up a little early to actually hang them.  Then I went back to bed and waited for BG to wake up.

FYI- the cards filled the entire wall and a few more were stuffed in the garland by New Year's Day.

The first thing the girls saw coming down the stairs was the Christmas Tree full of gifts from Mom and Dad.

There were books and puzzles, farm animals and bouncy balls, and an electronic miter saw with laser guide and a carbide blade.  That last one was for me.

Some gifts were a bit more exciting then others.

Our Christmas Day was a ton of fun.  We had gifts, dinner with the grandparents and uncles and aunt, and more gifts.  What more could a kid ask for?

The Making of a Christmas Card

I think that I did a good job of regularly publishing posts before Christmas, but it seems to be a bust in the New Year.  So, I'm just going to post these two remaining holiday posts and then we can get to the new stuff that has been going on.  

If you missed out on a Christmas Card from us this year, I posted our card picture on Christmas Day.  With all the cards I sent out this year, I think I missed out more.  I've never counted how many cards we received, but there were a few that I look for in the mail that I never got.

Don't worry, I got on Facebook and pestered them (still am if you count this sentence).  Turns out there are people busier than me and they never had time to put a card together.

Oh heck, I'm going to talk enough about it that I'll show you the picture again.  It's not like my kids are ugly or anything. 

Our adventure started when we went shopping at the mall.  Half of sending out a picture card is shopping for the perfect outfits to wear.  I found these cute sweaters at Gap on sale for 50% off.  The total price for both sweaters was $33 give or take a few cents.  I also like that I found sweaters that are matching, but not identical.  

The mall always includes a visit to Santa Claus.  LG does not like Santa Clause.  BG on the other hand was happy to be on her best behavior when asking for a remote control helicopter and set of walkie-talkies.

Now that the shopping was done, we needed to get our holiday photo taken.

It is very difficult to get a picture of the two of them together without one of them doing one of the following actions:

 Not Looking at the Camera

Screaming at the Other One
 Not Smiling

 Not Staying in the Picture Frame

The final picture was the third of ten pictures taken over the time period of one hour.  That includes walking to the lagoon/golf course and goofing off time.

My first attempts of getting a photo were down by the lagoon.  It's a nice background even if I can't get as close to the water as I would like to.  We found a bench that the girls sat backwards on and I snapped a few photos.

Not looking at the camera...

Mid-scream at BG...

Then we headed over to the golf course.  They have a great little duck pond with a waterfall.  These photos fall under the "It Could Work in Theory" category.  To be honest I would of had great pictures, if I could levitate over water.   LG spent the entire time 6 inches from the water's edge looking at the ducks and was as happy as ever feeding them Goldfish crackers for 20 minutes.

Photos here included:

Not in the frame...

Not Smiling...

In the end I still got a photo uploaded to Costco and we had a really fun adventure.

In fact, it's such a nice day out today that I think we might do it all over again, but with no camera and a bag of bread crumbs.

Dead Check

This is my two week check in so that you know that I'm not dead.

Or has it been three weeks.  Oops.

When I was young, independent and not living anywhere near my family I used to call them every two weeks so that they would know I wasn't dead.  Those were the days that if I were ever going to be reported as missing, it would of been my work filing the report.  Then the cops would of been questioning my parents as to why they had such poor communication with me.  Then my parents would call all of my siblings to prove to the cops that none of us ever answered our phones.  And still don't.

It's nice to know that my life is so filled now that if I disappear for a day people start looking for me.

Part of having a life that is so full is that it is also very busy.  I don't really blog during the holidays vacations.  I could if I got up on Monday and wrote out three posts before everyone was up.  That's what I did the first week of vacation.

I like my vacations filled with playing with the girls, completely Lego Harry Potter with BG on the Wii, reading books, going to the zoo and being lazy.  And DH normally gets the computer when he's home with me kicking him off only if I NEED to do something.  Blogging doesn't always get done.

I did try.  I wrote most of two posts on the Monday between Christmas and New Year's.  Since they didn't get finished, they didn't get published.

So I guess that brings me to a question:

Is it kosher of me to finish and publish the two half written posts I have done?  They are about Christmas and it's almost Martin Luther King, Jr Day for goodness sakes.

Oh, and as for why I haven't posted since school started up again... 

The cookies have taken over my life.  The Girl Scout Cookies that is.

School started with our regular monthly meeting that I had to get ready for and lead on Friday.  Then there was the 3-hour cookie training meeting, the lunch with my cookie mom, the parents freaking out about cookie sales, the meeting I'm prepping for to talk to parents about cookie rules.

Did I mention that cookies sales don't even start until January 30th?

I can't wait.  BG is going to be awesome.  We are setting our goals and though I don't think she'll sell the 2011 boxes it takes to get a helicopter ride at the Operation Thin Mint Kick-off, how cool is it that some girls do?  Really they do.

There you have it.  My excuse for why I haven't blogged and had to do a dead check.  Because in the blogging world, you can't hold a mirror up to my nostrils.