Category Archives: Holidays

With cooler weather comes….

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It has finally cooled down here! Can I get a HALELUJAH?

And with cooler weather comes thoughts of cooler times, like, say…. CHRISTMAS! I know I know, it is way too early to be thinking of Christmas already BUT I am super stressed out about a couple of things this year:

1. The Christmas tree! We (FINALLY) got new living room furniture back in March and I totally didnt take into consideration to leave some room in there for the tree. Oops! So, I have been thinking a LOT lately about how we will rearrange things in there to accomodate for the tree. Maybe we’ll just have a tree in the middle of the floor? Or the rocker recliner? Or or or?

2. Family Christmas At My House. SUPER stressed about this. My 2 cousins and myself are supposed to rotate whose house Christmas is at every year, so far I have lucked out on not having it at my house. I don’t MIND having people at my house. My problem is that my house is smaller than their houses and I don’t know how I will cram that many people into my tiny house for a Christmas celebration. Eek! This is my year and I have to do it. I am kind of stressed out about it. 4.5 months early.

And let me just add that this blogging app I am using on my phone (tiny desk) does not autocorrect anything. ANYTHING. Might be the first time ever that I am pissed off that there is no autocorrect. DAMN YOU, NO AUTOCORRECT.

UPDATE: NEVER USING THAT APP AGAIN. Piece of crap kept duplicating my entry a million times. Still searching for a good WordPress app!

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cookies for santa

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In an effort to bring forth copious amounts of Christmas spirit, I huddled the family into the car to go drive around town and look at Christmas lights and then we came home and made chocolate chip cookies for Santa. Gene and I got some ice cream and we drove around for over an hour looking at Christmas lights in neighborhoods. We stopped by an amazing “light show” house where the lights were all flashing and pretty amazing. We then stopped by another house that had their lights flashing to the tune of Christmas music. A sign on their lawn telling you what FM station to tune into and.. well.. I could have sat there for HOURS watching it! It was so delightful.

I measured the dry ingredients into a small bowl, like the instructions on the package stated and handed Zoey a small spoon and told her to stir it.

Before I got smart...

I realized that wasn’t the smartest idea when she began to try to transfer flour into the large bowl that was meant for the wet ingredients. Flour was spilling all over the oven and it was the stuff I had already measured. Mama got smart and gave her a separate bowl with flour to play with…

What is this stuff?

She had SO much fun and this kept her content for a very long time. She was spilling flour everywhere. It was pouring onto the floor and the chair she was standing on. Her little flour covered toes were oh so adorable.

Flour Toes

It didn’t take long for her to realize she could make a REAL mess with this stuff and went at it!

And the mess...

After I had the cookie dough made, I moved her over to the counter so I could turn the oven on to heat up and start baking. I didn’t want her near the hot oven while I was doing that.

She has no idea who Santa is. Doesn’t get the concept at all. I didn’t take her to see Santa this year because she is currently having some major stranger phobia and I didn’t want to put her in a frightening situation like that. I’ve talked about Santa but there is no way she gets it at this age. But we had a LOT of fun. I put a few chocolate chips in her bowl of flour and she would take them out, put them in her mouth and say “mmmm”.. Totally adorable! At one point, Gene had put the camera way and got out the video camera and she lifted the spoon full of whole wheat flour up and shoved it into her mouth and all I can say is that I am SO thankful he had the video camera out for that because it was an absolute priceless reaction. Lots of “uhhhh” sounds and tongue sticking out and frantically looking for someone to help her lol! I got her some water and she chugged it.

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5 days until Christmas?

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I can’t believe it is already here! We decorated Christmas cookies at Grandma and Papa’s house on Saturday. Zoey is getting more and more interested in the presents under the tree and I think the temptation is getting more and more overbearing for her. She randomly started tearing into one the other day, which she knows not to do. I think she just couldn’t control the urge! I’m so excited about Christmas this year. Our last Christmas as a family of 3 and Zoey’s last Christmas as an only child. Merry Christmas to you all!

Christmas Cookies-0413

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Life. It sure comes at you fast.

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This month has flown by. I really cannot believe Christmas is on Friday. How does that happen?

This hasn’t been a very happy month. On Monday night our Carbon Monoxide detector went off around 2 AM or so. It was reading about 50. Gene would crack the door and the number would go down to zero. He’d close it and the heater would kick back on and it would go off and read 50. We cranked the heater way down so that it wouldn’t kick on and went back to bed. First thing Tuesday I began calling around to find someone to come look at our furnace. Someone came by to look at it, found some pretty bad cracks in the heat exchanger and gave me an estimate for around 4 mortgage payments to replace the furnace. We stayed the night at my parent’s house since the temps were going to dip down into the 20s that night. They came out the next morning at 10 AM and by 8 PM that night we had heat again. Spending that much money right now was not on our list of things to do, well, EVER honestly.. but what can you do? I am just thankful that we had a carbon monoxide detector and that we are ALIVE. Especially Zoey. A reading of 50 on a CM detector is HIGH for an infant :(

My mom’s dog (who is only 8) stopped eating a few weeks ago. He had been going to the vet to figure out what is going on. They thought it was a bad tooth and pulled 3 bad teeth and he still would not eat or get better. Finally took him to a specialty hospital where they did exploratory surgery and found a peach pit lodged in his intestines. They took it out, cut 4 inches of his intestines out and sewed him back up. He was doing well but needed a transfusion. Somehow over night last night he went down hill.. The infection spread into his stomach and blood stream and his entire body was septic. They put him down this morning. We got him as a little puppy back when I was still living at home. He was always a little sh*t dog.. but we loved him for that. He had personality and was a cuddle buddy to me when I lived there and to my sister after I moved out of the house. I don’t know what it is but whenever I think about him not being there any more, my heart feels heavy and my stomach drops. I am beyond sad about this and finding it hard to put my feelings into words :(

Things can only get better right? I mean, in the last 1 1/2 years my Grandma passed, my Grandpa passed and now my “brother dog” passed. Zoey has been our little ray of sunshine through all of the sadness we’ve experienced and we’re really hoping that things can only look up from here. Hopefully we can all laugh about all of the crazy things Toby used to do and remember what a sweet dog he was while still enjoying Christmas this year. It’s Zoey’s first, after all.

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Hello December, Already?

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I just wanted to write and say the same thing that everyone else is already saying: It’s ALREADY December??? Where in the world did October and November go??

Zoey loves to shimmy her way underneath the tree and then look up at all the lights and ornaments. She loves to play with garland and pull little strands of tinsel off the tree. She doesn’t try to eat it, she just likes to feel it between her fingers. She is such a sweetheart these days and the only time she ever really cries or fusses is when she is going down for a nap or bed and doesn’t feel like she is ready.

Christmas Diva

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My First Mother’s Day

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First of all, I hope all of the Mommies out there had a spectacular day today!

I had a wonderful day. We went to eat at Mimi’s Cafe for Mother’s Day lunch but the wait was 1 hour and 10 minutes! We saw there were hardly any cars in the parking lot at BJs so we went there instead. It was a wonderful lunch. We then went back to my parent’s house to hang around for a couple of hours until we met some out of town family for dessert. Zoey got to spend some much needed quality time with Grandpa and then we headed to Cracker Barrell to meet our family that was passing through town.

By time we got home it was easily 6:30 PM. We got Zoey fed and ended up taking a nap on the couch. By time we got up it was time for her to eat again and boy she was screaming. I think she was trying to poop, and then she did poop, and then her diaper was dirty… it was a succession of events that had her screaming at the very top of her lungs. She was doing that new baby cry where they are screaming so loud and so upset that eventually it is no longer screaming, just hollow from-the-throat cries and a VERY red face. It was awful! I finally got her calmed down enough with a pacifier that I could actually feed her after Gene changed her and she ate peacefully and went down very easily after that. Poor little girl wore herself out!

Today at Cracker Barrell, she made what we thought to be a really stinky diaper. Since I have The Best Husband Ever, Gene took her to the Men’s room and changed her diaper. He really is the best Daddy ever. I just wanted to document that this was the first time Zoey was changed in a public place by her Daddy.

Well, my thoughts are scattered and not very well put. I’m pretty tired. I’m going to get my shower in before Zoey wakes up again to eat. I’m hoping she will eat sometime around 12 or 1 and cross my fingers that she’ll go down easily and sleep for 3-4 hours. Last night she was super fussy and we ended up sleeping together on the papasan chair together because she just would not go down. However, at her 5:30 AM feeding, she went down pretty easily and slept until 9:30 AM. Gene is going in to work early tomorrow morning so it will be just us tomorrow.

Oh one more thing, Zoey got me the CUTEST card ever. Complete with backwards Es and everything ;) She also got me a set of 3 board books to read to her. I may have to read one to her this evening before she goes to bed. I love my husband so much! I am blessed to be a mother today. Feeling very fortunate.

Tomorrow is my due date!

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The E-Collar Saga

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I hope everyone has a great New Year’s Eve and I hope 2009 brings you lots of love and happiness. I plan to write my big “review” sometime in the next couple of weeks. I knew setting a deadline for January 1st would be a little ambitious so I’m gonna give myself a couple of weeks to settle down and write it up. A LOT happened for us in 2008, mostly good but some sad. It was definitely a busy year! And I see 2009 being just as busy with a new one arriving, though not quite in the same sense.

Tonight we are going to hang out at my house with my mom and just chit chat. I think Gene and I will get some quality Wii playing time in before the ball drops and eat lots of fattening, bad foods. I don’t like to set resolutions but one goal I do have for next year is to start taking my blood sugars more regularly and start eating a little more health consciously. If not for me, at least for the baby :) Oh and I guess another goal would be to decide on a name for the little one and maybe even get my nursery done BEFORE the baby arrives.

The last couple of days have been very emotional for me (and Gene, I’m sure). Astro has had this weird itching thing he does. He scratches the underside of his chin until its raw and scabby and he chews on one side of his rear end until it is raw and scabby as well. We got an e-collar (those dreaded cone shaped collars) for him from PetSmart last night and finally was able to get it on him, though it was a HUGE struggle. He is a big dog but he is scared of everything! He looked so pitiful and sad and miserable all evening and then for about 2 hours last night he whined non-stop in our bedroom. We tried to give him some water but he was so scared of the cone bumping into things he refused to drink. It was awful and I can’t even tell you how much I cried from the time we put it on him around 9 PM to 4 AM when I finally decided enough was enough. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night but I’m really hoping the adrenaline kicks in this evening so I don’t fall asleep before midnight.

Needless to say, as soon as we took the collar off he was back to his old self and didn’t seem to hate us too much. He really knows how to grab a hold of my heart and SQUEEZE it. I swear I thought my heart was breaking last night. I went through a WIDE range of emotions from being really pissed off that he wasn’t cooperating to feeling really guilty about what we had done. It was to the point where at one point I was questioning what kind of mother I am and how I could have done this.

Oh boy, is that the hormones talking or the real me? I can’t even tell. At one point I’m convincing Gene that the ecollar is the right thing and not to worry and the next I am sobbing about how we need to take it off of him because he is so miserable and sad.

All of this. Over a DOG. But man, if you could only SEE his sad face. I’m pretty sure it would make you cry, too.

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