New Years

It is New Years Eve and I am going to be out running errands most of the day today so I wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and SAFE New Year.

If you are going to be out tonight and drinking, please do yourself and everyone else a favor and do not drive. There are taxi services all over the country that arrange to take people home tonight free of charge, use them. Do not trust that your friend "isn't drunk" or is "okay to drive" or even "I drive like this all the time." It's still stupid. And even if you are "okay to drive" it is still illegal and you could go to jail if caught. Also keep in mind that there are going to be 100s of other people out tonight that think they are "okay to drive." Use a designated driver if you can and I salute those that have the will power to not drink tonight. I never have, and that is why I do not go out to party on New Years Eve. I know my limits.

Tonight when the clock strikes 12 and we say goodbye to what has been an interesting year to say the least, I will be at home bringing in the New Year like we spent much of the old year, at home, with my family. My oldest is going to a party, and while she is 17, she has been banned from driving or even riding with her friends tonight. We'll be sober, so we'll pick her up and do our best to keep her safe from all the morons out there.

So to all of you out there (the 3 people that read my blog hahaha) Happy New Year! I pray that it is a safe and prosperous 2009 for all of you. I'll check in sometime in the next day or two with my reflections on 2008 and goals for 2009.

Toodles.

I burned my popcorn =(

The Elves' final gift

The time has come for the girls' elves to go home to the North Pole. The girls were very sad to have them leave. I have a cousin whose little girl loved her elf so much that they decided to let her stay all year long, but her "spirit" just leaves on Christmas Eve so she doesn't do anything until next year. I thought about allowing the girls' elves to stay also, but decided that would lessen the magic of them arriving. My girls are already on a countdown to when they can see their elf again. One of them emailed her elf this morning. So they are gone until Thanksgiving 2009.

Before they left, they left the girls one big final gift. As you can see from the pictures, the elves "wrapped" up my living room! They wrapped shut both entrances to the living room as you can see by the pictures.

They also left the girls a very sweet letter addressed and written specifically to them with a six month Club Penguin card inside. They also left the girls the adorable "I heart my puffle" shirts seen below. If you don't know, Puffle's are penguin's pets on Club Penguin.








I hope the elves enjoyed their visit with us. We sure enjoyed having them. They helped two adults and one teenager remember how much fun it is to be a kid and enjoy the magic of Christmas!

More Elf Mischief

We got up one morning to this mess. The elves, the sweet little things, decided to make the girls some cookies one night. Looks like they thought the flour looked like snow and proceeded to make snow angels. The girls loved the cookies and even cleaned up the mess themselves.

My Granny

My Granny was an amazing person. She was born and raised in the hills of Tennessee. She had, I think, 8 brothers and sisters and her parents were mean, abusive alcoholics that were known as moonshiners. She married my grandfather but I don't think that married life was meant for her. She eventually got a divorce and left her three children with their dad. She liked to drink and have a good time. That's what she was raised with, that's what she knew so that's what she did. According to my mother, Aunt and Uncle, she wasn't a very good mother when she was around anyway. I just don't think she knew how. She didn't have much to go on herself.

Granny finally cleaned up her life and found Jesus. She loved church and reading the bible. And boy she loved gospel music. She loved all music I think but gospel was her favorite. She was forever playing Jimmy Swaggard, Elvis gospel and many others. I don't remember the mean woman, the bad mother, the hateful alcoholic. I remember the loving, mostly kind woman who loved Jesus and loved to sing. I remember a woman who loved me. She didn't care much for children but she never made me feel like I wasn't wanted. I wish I could say that for everyone that was in my life as a child. She was patient with me. She taught me about God and Jesus, she took me to church, she taught me to cook and to clean. She showed me charity to others. She wasn't your babysitting, cookie baking Granny, but she did the best she could. I like to think I was her favorite. I at least was the one that was around her the most, that knew her the best. And for sure, loved her the most.

Christmas at Granny's house as some of my best childhood memories. She would put her tree up and decorate the day after Thanksgiving. As I grew up, she would let me help decorate and taught me how to wrap presents. It was always funny to unwrap her gifts because she often got the wrong names on the boxes so you never knew what you were going to get that wasn't yours. She would start cooking days before Christmas and every Christmas Eve my entire family, aunts, uncles, cousins and oftentimes random people that had no where else to go, would pile up in her tiny apartment and celebrate Christmas. Food overflowed from the tables and the noise often reached critical mass. There was music playing and laughter and joy every where. I always ended up at the kids table, no matter how old I got. And one cousin and I always crawled under the tree to pull out the presents and pass them out. Granny never gave expensive presents, she couldn't, she was on a low fixed income. But you knew that what she gave you was from her heart. She got a lot of joy out of giving gifts. Whenever she could, she gave to charities and the "poor children." We were poor children too, but I learned from Granny that there was always someone worse off than we were. If she heard of a family in the neighborhood that was not going to have a good Christmas she would buy presents and convince everyone else to give to the family too. If you were bad, she'd threaten to give your gifts to the "poor children."

I remember my Granny being an overall happy person. She took what life gave her and survived it.

She died almost 3 years ago after a long fight with Alzheimer's Disease. The disease stole my Granny from us long before her body gave out. First her body failed her and she was unable to do the things she used to. She couldn't host Christmas anymore, it was too much for her so we moved Christmas Eve events to my Aunt's house, which was bigger anyway. Granny stopped coming after a couple years because she couldn't get up and down the stairs very well. It stole her light, her smile, her joy, her laughter, her heart, her memories. It was so painful to visit her in the nursing home and her not know who you were. Even though she didn't know us, she always welcomed us in to visit with her. She was always kind to my children. She always tried to help the "old people" that lived there. Towards the end, she saw people in the corners of her room that weren't there and talked of going home. I stood by her bedside with family when she died and saw that she found her peace. She is at home with Jesus now and I know that she is watching over us all.

Christmas brings her into my mind more so than any other time of the year. I walked through the lobby of my building a couple weeks ago and smelled sage, it made me think of her cooking dressing for Thanksgiving and Christmas. When I hear Elivs Christmas songs, it brings a tear to my eyes and breaks my heart from missing her so much.

Merry Christmas Granny. Tell Jesus happy birthday for me and I pray that I'll see you again when it is my time to come home. The girls remember and love you every day.

Dorothy Mae Orton - January 1924 - January 2006. RIP

Santa Clause

This morning I was discussing with a co-worker what our little elves have been up to this week. She could not believe that my little girls at almost 10 years old absolutely believe in Santa Clause and the elves. She has no children and finds it hard to believe that they can be so gullible.

Well another co-worker jumps in a this point and says that she HAD to tell her 11 year old this year that Santa isn't real. I asked why she had to and she said she didn't want her getting made fun of for believing in Santa and she's just too old to believe in Santa.

This concept is completely foreign to me. I have a 17 year old. She will be 18 in March and I have NEVER felt the need to tell her that Santa was not real. She knows the truth obviously but I have never TOLD it to her. If I ask her today if she believes, she will say yes. Granted it's because she says if she doesn't believe then Santa doesn't bring stuff and Santa brings the good stuff, but that's not the point. I see her at Christmas time, part of her still believes in the magic. I have never felt the need to break that illusion, rid her world of the magic, tell her I lied to her. She also never asked if he was real or not.

I'm 34 years old. I always have a hard time going to sleep on Christmas Eve. I am just too excited. And then Christmas Morning, I ALWAYS am up before anyone else in the house. Last year I had to force myself to stay in the bed until the kids came to wake me up. Years before I would wake them up and get made fun of for being more excited than the kids. When I get in there Christmas morning, I always have a little something in the back of my head that says look around, maybe Santa left you something too. Even though I "know".

Anyway, my little ones absolutely believe in Santa, they believe their elves come to life when they're not looking, they believe in the tooth fairy, they believe in the Easter Bunny, they believe in fairies and dragons. They will fight and argue with you if you try to tell them otherwise. They believe in God, they believe in Jesus, and really aren't the others about in the same league? Not physically real, but real enough if you believe.

What's so wrong with believing in a little magic? Is that what is wrong with the world today? Nobody believes in anything anymore? Is that why we're all so mean, grouchy and too busy to pay attention to something that we can't explain?

If my kids want to believe in Santa, who am I to take that magic away from them? That is not my right, it is nobody's right. And frankly, I will do everything within my power to foster and nurture that belief in magic. If it means playing "elf" at night or having my step-dad pretend to be Santa on the phone every year, so be it.

After all, I believe in Santa Clause.

Neglected Elves

We tried to tell her, but the teen insisted that she did not need to interact with her elf. She went to a party one night and came home to find that her elf had gotten bored so she decided to have some fun. Never leave your elf unattended.

Santa's Early Visit

Santa made an early visit to our house this year. Thanksgiving morning the girls woke up to find elves had joined them in their beds. These aren't just any elves, these are Santa's elves. They wanted to come and visit for a while. They will hitch a ride back to the North Pole with Santa on Christmas Eve.

The thing about elves is, they sometimes get into mischief. We woke up on Black Friday to find our living room beautifully decorated with paper snowflakes!

What a surprise that was. The girls LOVED it. That whole weekend they had a hard time sleeping because they wanted to get up and see what the elves had done. We had to make them not feed the elves during the week so the elves wouldn't come to life and the girls could sleep for school.

This is when it is FUN being a parent.

I'm so Proud of Myself

This is my daughter's prom dress from last year. I turned it into ....





















This beautiful number for the Senior Winter Formal dance last weekend. She was quite impressed with my uber elite sewing skills. Hell I was impressed with myself! Next on the agenda, prom 2009 dress!

Sick Sick Sick

So the school calls me at work on Tuesday. One of the girls is sick and having a hard time breathing. So of course I take off and go get her, head to the doctor, load up on prescriptions for walking pneumonia and asthma flare up and head back to work. Wednesday, obviously she needs to stay home from school so it is decided that I will stay home with her.

Well twin sister is looking rather flush so we decide she needs to stay home too though she really doesn't feel bad. I went and took a little nap, I can only stand so much Disney channel in the mornings, wake up and this twin is running about 102 temp. YAY me, now I am at home with 2 sick girls!

I worked on cleaning up my house some during the day but by afternoon, I was starting to feel rather ikky myself.

Thursday morning, woke up and bam, 2 sick kids and one very sick mommy! I'm so lucky.

Here it is Friday and I cannot breathe out my nose, my chest is congested and I feel overall like shit. The girls feel better and they went to school today. So of course, I had to go into work, where I felt like shit all day long.

I love my girls, but I do wish they would keep their cooties to themselves.

Ice Cream

Today has been a bit of a stressful day. One of my girls is sick. She has walking pneumonia which has of course flared her asthma up. The poor kid cannot stop coughing. So the day started by getting a call from the school at 8:30 to pick her up and off to the doctors. By the time I got back to work it was noon.

I've had a difficult time this evening getting her into bed and the poor kid is going to break a rib coughing. But now she is finally asleep and I will be heading there myself soon. I just wanted to get this out.

As I sat on the couch with my darling hacking girl watching the Biggest Loser, I was struck by the desire/craving for some ice cream. I was not hungry in the least. I was bored, I was tired, I was stressed and I had indigestion and I wanted some ice cream. I knew it was wrong, that I did not "need" ice cream so I just sat there, trying to think it out, hard to think with all that coughing. And I finally determined, I wanted that ice cream because of the tired, bored, stressed, worried, not because of hunger or even a real desire to eat anything.

And see, I know, without a doubt that if I say "hey honey will you go get me some ice cream" he will do it. Even if I don't need it. He has a hard time telling me no LOL. But I did not say anything. I bit my tongue, drank some water and took some Tums for the indigestion.

It's 11:00 and I think I'll go to bed now before the ice cream monster gets me again.

Good Night

Holidays

It's the Holiday time of year again. Time to run around in a frenzie trying to buy gifts for your loved ones that end up in the bottom of a closet somewhere never to be seen again. Work is busy trying to close out the books and wrap up loose ends before the New Year. And you end up so tired, you really forget what it is supposed to be like this time of year.

That's me. I have bought exactly one gift. Not because I can't, but mostly because I haven't had the desire to go shopping. My tree is up, and my Christmas village is up but nothing else is. My lights outside aren't even up and usually our house is lit up like a airport. But this year, our porch light serves as our decorations.

The kids are excited. We got them elves to come visit and that's fun but I'm not enjoying it as much as I should. I miss my mother. I miss my friends. I'm lonely. Everyone talks about getting together with friends and family and I have neither.

I've lost my Christmas spirit and don't know where to look to find it. I know for sure it's not in a store and I can't buy it.