It's a new year

In our house New Years is also the husband's birthday. So we started the day taking the husband out to breakfast. We did a little shopping, mainly for me although we did manage to get a few things for my husband too.

The evening was quiet at home just us. I made a lasagna and cheesecake in honor of the husband's birthday.

I typically have a dinner party at my house but a neighbor decided she wanted to have one at her house this year. Her invitation was for 7:30 for dinner and drinks. Tee's bedtime is no later than 7:30. I feel like sleep is really important and keeping Tee up way past his bedtime is not worth it in my book. Had the party been here he would have been put to sleep at his usual time. So we spent the night as a family.

After Tee went to sleep we played a few games. Rummikub is one that we have been playing a lot lately. It is definitely a thinking game and the boys are slowly getting it. The husband and I have been playing a fun card game, Five Crowns. Ok, he did beat me badly but I am not giving up. I am going to get him soon.

The start of the new year always makes me want to get organized. I have been working hard on my office. The office has been disastrous for some time and I need to work on keeping it all together. We did manage to sort through some games/toys. We weeded out a little and put away new games.

As far as a new years resolution....the only one I am making is to not make one.

I can tell you that many people made the resolution to get back to the gym. My kick boxing class was jam packed this morning. Barely enough room to move around. I can't wait until February when those resolutions are thrown out by the wayside and the class size is smaller.

We are hoping for a blessed and healthy new year for us and those around us.

Christmas and beyond

It came and went in the blink of an eye. I really felt discombobulated this Christmas. I am normally organized and have all the gifts in one place with a list of everything we have. Well, I had stuff all over the house but in the end it all got done. I was able to send cookies home to my parents although not as many as I typically send and all gifts were mailed on time.

We attended service on Christmas eve and had a nice Christmas dinner. It was an early evening for us so that Santa could work his magic.

The tree with Santa gifts and the gifts from families and friends under the tree.


Santa does not wrap gifts for the boys.

The typical morning picture of the boys on the steps before going out for a peek. In my family, my parents would make us come out one at a time. They wanted to see each of our reactions to the gifts we received. I am the last of 5.....so I would be waiting in the hall dying to be the next one out. We let the boys see their gifts at the same time.

We always have to get a goofy picture for every nice picture.

Jay went straight for the Itouch he received.

E wanted to check out his stocking first.

Tee was excited about his cars!

Opening presents

Lots of presents.

The ping pong table has been a big hit. We all have played a lot.

Christmas day was a lazy sort of day. I think we stayed in our pjs all day and played with toys. We enjoyed a little white stuff in the morning but nothing stuck. What a great day!

Gotcha

Someone in our house has an impending 40th birthday. Yah....not me, I am not that old yet. I have often complained about how difficult it is to have a birthday on New Year's. Not just for me wanting to plan a special day but for my husband who has to share his day with the New Year's celebration. I know it is not the worst thing that can happen in life. But think of his Mother who was going to have a party on New Year's and went into labor. And yes his Dad is an accountant and loved the tax write-off.

I was very stumped as to what to do. Do I wait until after Christmas or try to plan something before Christmas? I wanted to surprise him with something but wasn't sure what. I went through a lot of possibilities before deciding on having a party at a restaurant with some of his friends.

The harder part was finding a restaurant. I inquired from one of our favorite restaurants which seemed ok until I heard what the minimums were for their private areas. Yikes! I thought about an Italian restaurant that I have been too with some friends. I inquired and determined they had a private room on the 3rd floor that I could have with no minimums. I didn't even have to do a fixed menu. I decided that a Sunday evening would work best. It is the holiday season and a busy time for most.

Now how to get him there. I schemed with my neighbor. The plan was that she would call me on Saturday with a story of how their plans fell through for Sunday, they had a sitter and wondered if we would like to go out to dinner. I casually asked the husband and he said ok. Part one down. On Sunday, my neighbor called me to tell me that her sitter got sick, no she never had a sitter lined up. We had planned on my niece watching all the kids.

The husband and I discussed where we would like to go, he suggested Italian (after he suggested our favorite steakhouse). So I suggested going to this Italian Restaurant. It was close and it was after all a school night.

What I failed to plan was what to say when we got there. So my friend and I went up to the hostess and didn't know what to say. They were going to take us to table 251. I said no we would like to go to the third floor. The hostess said they had a private party and luckily my friend said we are the party. So what does the hostess do, she yells out take them to the third floor. At that point my husband knew something was going on. Yes, he was surprised!

He ended up putting things together. Like the text I received from one of the people saying they could now make it and was it ok as I quickly got out of the message. The babysitter story.

Dinner was really good. We had 8 other couples celebrate with us. One couple could not make it.

Then comes the cake. I picked up the cake on Friday. As I went to put the cake in my car I dropped it. So I quickly picked up the box to get the cake to go back into the correct spot but ended up messing the side of the cake also. And just for the record the cake tasted great.

I brought my camera and forgot about it....so I didn't get one picture. I am very bummed. Happy 40th birthday....early. I love you and hope you had a great celebration!

It can't be December 12th

Wow, hard to believe that Christmas is 13 days away. I am in no way ready and I am not sure where the first 12 days of December went. Well, actually I do know what we have been doing but just seems like it is going too fast.

Basketball season has started. The boys have one practice and one game a week. The games are held on Saturday morning. The boys are playing on a 7/8 league so they are the older and much taller boys on the team. This past Saturday both E and Jay made most of the baskets. They have played very well this year.

We did manage to get our tree and decorate for Christmas this first weekend of the month. We got a beautiful tree around 9 ft tall for a really good price. Pictures will follow. I think it would be fun to go to a farm to cut our own tree but we just didn't have time this year and the weather may have played a little part in our decision.

The weather here has been so incredibly cold. It is actually the wind that is so brutal. And it has been windy here.

Every year our church holds a walk to Bethlehem and this is the first year we attended. We have been to something like this before but it in no way compares. The event was really nice and walked us through the story of the birth of Jesus. It was amazing and really cold since part of it was outside.

That evening we went out to dinner with some friends. I met the Mom a few times at different places before I actually put it all together. I met her at the elementary school right before school started at a function. I then met her again at the preschool. So she has a boy in 3rd grade and a girl in preschool with Tee and she also has an older daughter. They are such a nice family and we hope to be able to hang out with them more often.

I am finally done with one of the fundraisers and I am still working on wrapping up another. I will be glad to have all of this behind me.

I am gearing up for yet another busy week!

Thanksgiving Week

Thanksgiving week started much like it did last year. Our friends from Georgia stopped by for a night on their way to Connecticut. It is always such a nice visit but way too short. It is always an awkward few minutes before the kids interact. Once it is over it is like they have been friends forever.


The kids had a nice time playing.

It was nice having the husband home for the week. On Wednesday, he took the boys out to lunch and then to a movie. The boys enjoyed a day out with Dad and I enjoyed the time at home alone. I was able to get most of my baking/cooking done for Thanksgiving.

We have not traveled at Thanksgiving for a very long time. In the past, my husband has not taken off of work and typically had to work on the Friday after. So we have celebrated Thanksgiving on our own or with friends for a very long time.

Last year, we were thrilled that the husband's Mom was able to join us. This year we were joined by some of my family. My brother, his wife, his youngest son and his oldest daughter and her family joined us. We had a lovely day.


I am not sure what Tee was doing in the front!

We have made it our annual tradition to go to a Festival in our area. Our first stop was to visit Santa in the big children's room.

Here is Santa!

Here is Santa asking if the boys have behaved. The first response was yes. Santa said, let me ask this again, have you behaved. Then the boys came clean. He told them to make sure they were nice to each other and that they helped Mom around the house. I had a good laugh.

The boys enjoy watching the trains that are set up in one of the rooms. They get to sit here and I get to walk around a bit to look at the craft booths.

On Thanksgiving day, the boys started a puzzle we had. We all worked on the puzzle during a 4 day period. The puzzle was finally finished on Sunday evening.

In which she rambles

It seems like all the boys are getting invited to party after party. Tee has had 2 invitations within the last few weeks. One of them was this past weekend. He had a great time at this gymnastics place. I am thinking of having his party there. They do it all. I may just book it so that it is taken care of. I ended up declining an invite for Jay. He isn't friends with the boys and I just had to draw the line. Lots of present purchasing.

The husband is on vacation this week. It has been nice having him home. He gets to work on house projects. He installed a new closet organizer in Tee's room on Sunday. This would be the 3rd one he has done. Last year he put in nice organizers in the other boys' rooms. The closets just had a shelf above the bar to hang clothes, just not practical for our needs. There is still more to do.

We had conferences with the boys' teachers yesterday. The boys did great on their report cards. We are very proud of them. The teachers had such wonderful things to say about our boys. I have to admit it is great hearing such nice comments from others who have interactions with your children.

The school would like to test Jay for the gifted and talented program early next year. I haven't researched it in great detail but I believe he will do 2 years of math in 1 year. He currently is doing 4th grade math.

E is on grade level, which is where he is supposed to be, in both math and language arts. He is actually above grade level in spelling. He needs to work on a few areas and he could be classified as above grade level.

E has a great love of reading. I purchased a few books for him at the school book fair, ok more than just a few....it was 6 split between both boys. E has read all 6 between yesterday afternoon and tonight. It is crazy. I guess we will need to hit the library tomorrow or I think I may end up with more books than Scholastics.

A funny thing happened this week. I volunteered at the school book fair on Monday so the husband was responsible for getting Tee from preschool. As soon as he left the classroom, the teacher called me to make sure it was ok that Dad picked him up. In all fairness, he typically stays for lunch. She needed to check with me because she didn't know what to do. But even funnier was that he had already left with Tee. Even though E and Jay do not have school tomorrow Tee still does. I will make sure that she knows Dad will be there once again to pick him up.

Tee's preschool did a thankful tree. The children were asked what they were thankful for and it was put on a hand. I finally found Tee's hand. He is thankful for the pool. Yep....we have lots to help him understand.

What would you do?

I found out recently that one of my gym instructor's (I will call her Jill) husband was convicted of embezzling money from his company. I googled his name and found out the specifics of the charges and noticed he had been sentenced to 1 year in prison. I wondered where he had gone as he used to do the class many Mondays.

I know someone who is an acquaintance of Jill's and Jill almost broke down to her today. She didn't give her specifics but more about what is happening today. Apparently, he had a terrible gambling problem. She had no idea and I assume he was in trouble which is why he stole the money. He is now in town and is at a half way house. My guess is that he got his prison time reduced for time in the half way house. He has a job waiting for him once he is freed, which is surprising to me.

I feel bad for Jill, she is such a nice person. She has two young children and it seems like it all is wearing them down.

I told my husband about the situation. Jill seems to be standing by her man. I told him that I don't know that I could do the same. I think I would resent him terribly for turning our world upside down for a very stupid act. Everything would change. I would have to go back to work to support the family and our living status would change drastically.

My husband called me shallow. He could not believe I would not stand by him. He asked me if I would leave him if he cheated and my answer was probably. He could not understand why I would definitely leave if he stole but would "probably" leave if he cheated.

He couldn't leave it at that. What if he made a mistake at work, got fired and caused him to be unmarketable. I don't think they are comparable.

The answer is very simple, just don't mess up!

A funeral, a date and some other stuff

What to start with. Well, I guess I will start with the other stuff. Saturday evening we decided to have takeout from a well know chain. We got the kids meals set up first. I ordered a salad as did my husband. I opened my salad and saw a bug crawling on the lid of my dressing. My husband got rid of the bug as I sit there wondering what to do. He sits down and opens his salad. What does he find? A hair in his salad. Definitely not our night and no we did not pay for any of our meal.

We had to make up for our bad meal on Saturday so the husband and I had a date night on Sunday. We had a fabulous meal at PF Changs. We had not been there in a very long time. It is nice to be able to go out and not have to get a child's menu.

We get home and gave E a hard time for leaving his bedroom light on. He has a very bad habit of leaving lights on. The penalty, sentence writing. I have gotten very tired of repeating myself, so instead I give sentences to write. The bathroom light was on also and we decided it was Tee that left it on. So I told Tee that he was getting 10 sentences. He looks at me and says "Mom do I look like I am 8". You just never know what is going to come out of his mouth.

I guess I end with a sad story. My neighbor's father passed away on Friday. He had gotten a kidney transplant last year and seemed to do well for a while until he was diagnosed with cancer. The last few weeks have been really difficult for him. My neighbors are Indian. My friend and I next door decided to attend the funeral. We thought we would make an appearance. That is not how things are done.

As we entered the funeral home we stood in a line that we found out was to sign the guest book. As we approached the entrance we noticed that there were so many people there. We ended up tucking ourselves into a corner on the other side and had to stand. And there we stood for one and a half hours. The first part was ceremonious. Then our neighbor and his sister gave a eulogy. Then there were about 7 or 8 others who went up to speak about him. Interesting that the family of the person giving the eulogy stood up at the podium also.

Once the eulogy was done it was time to pay your respect to the dead by placing a rose bud in the casket and then walking around the casket. We decided we were going to make our way out of there and pay our respects to the family. Definitely an interesting experience.

Space Derby

The husband and the boys, well mainly the husband, have been working on rockets for the scouts space derby. It was held this past Friday. We have had so many busy weekends prior to this past Friday that he had to start early.

The husband shaped the rockets and the boys painted them. Prior to Friday, I tried to get as much information as I could regarding the specifics. I ended up panicking a little and telling my husband that he still had work to do to complete. Yes, I doubted him and he assured me he had it all taken care of like usual.

We spent a lot of time getting the rockets ready to go and ended up being very disappointed in the event. I didn't even get any pictures of the rockets or the rockets being raced. The guts ended up being taken out of the rockets. We did not get to wind our rockets, someone else did. Some rockets were wound more than others, so some went fast and furious and others at a turtle's pace. There was only one race for each rocket. Very unfair to the children.

The kids were shuttled from one area to another until it was their time to race.


The boys received a few advancement badges earned, a few belt loops and their whittling chip.


We were asked to bring in items for the kids to put together bags to send to the men and women overseas who protect our country.

There is a Pinewood Derby held in January and we are hoping they rethink how to arrange the schedule so that it is a little more organized. But the kids had fun.