So it's over....

After all the stress about Christmas shopping it's all over now. We had a really nice Christmas. Jeremy got home on Christmas Eve EVE so the kids said. I made a pretty good meal if I do say so myself. The kids got more presents then they could ever need. Then we spent Christmas day driving to Amarillo because Jeremy had to be back to work that day. We saw parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. We have thrown a 10th anniversary in their (I'll post more about that when I can add the pictures of the crazy thing I did). We are staying in a hotel in Amarillo so that we can spend sometime with Jeremy before the kids have to be back to school on Jan. 9th. We even got to experience our first ice storm in almost 2 years. I'm not sure when we will be heading home but when we get their I have Christmas pictures to post too. I know your just dying from anticipation! Hope you all had a very nice holiday and have the very best New Year!

Whew

It's official! I am totally and completely finished with all of my Christmas shopping and baking! Well, we do have Christmas dinner to make and cookies for Santa but other then that I'm done. Maybe now I can finally start enjoying the holiday. Every year just seems to get a little more stressful and less magical. Of course, I don't think we have had one Christmas since I have been an adult without some issue to deal with. It's either that we don't have much money, we're dealing with the loss of a loved one, last year was a little bit of all of all that and, as you all know, much more. This year it's that for all intents and purpose I have been pretty much a single parent for the last 3.5 months. It so sucks! It's also made it that much harder to get into the Christmas spirit. It's much easier when you have someone to share your stress with at the end of the day. And sometimes the phone just doesn't cut it. I have so much more respect for my Mother now. Not because she ever had to be a single parent but because I now know what all she had to do to make my childhood so magical and special. Wouldn't it be nice to be a kid again just for a day or two? Just long enough to remember what it feels like to be innocent and stressfree and not feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Can I make that my Christmas wish?

And we baked...

Not very well but we did. We spent today making these http://http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/05/cocoa-tassies-with-peppermint-creme.html although we used brownie and ours were no where near as pretty because the icing never set. We also made these http://http://foodgoodness.blogspot.com/2005/11/buckeyes.html but they didn't turn out very pretty either. Could have been the four sets of extra hands. Then I also made some fudge. Since I did that alone it looks a little better. Then tomorrow we are making chocolate covered popcorn and chocolate dipped pretzel sticks for the kids teachers Christmas presents. Hopefully we can get them to look edible. :) The kids did enjoy helping and eating our near disasters though so I guess we can still count today a success.

ISO: Babysitter

Anyone game?! We now officially have less then 2 weeks till christmas. I can't even begin to finish my shopping until the 15th. Since my shooping to date has been minimual I still have a lot of shopping to do. Jeremy is hoping to make it home this weekend before they send him back to Amarillo Sunday evening. If only we had a babysitter we could get a huge majority of our christmas shopping done and I wouldn't have to do it alone! So who has a weekend free to come to good ole' Abilene to watch my kids? I'm sure I could throw in a nice meal or something. Just name your terms. :)

New hair

Sunday we took Chey and Dyl to get hair cuts.

We also got 3 Angel's off the Salvation Army Angel Tree so we ran all over town looking for coats and toys for these 3 less fortunate children. The kids are very excited about the idea of getting to be Santa for others.

Christmas picture

We took the kids to the Mall this weekend to have their picture taken with Santa so we can send them out with our christmas cards. Yes my children believe in Santa (except Chey she says she's too old) and yes we think it's a great thing that they do! SANTA ROCKS!!!!!

As an aside, can you tell that Alissa is about 2 feet in front of everyone else or that she was terrified of being that close to Santa?

House hunting

Really it's not all it's cracked up to be. We have been half-heartedly house hunting with the thought that in the near future we would like to purchase a home in our current area. We love the kids school and don't want to have to move them to a new one. We have seen a lot of nice houses but all of them have been 3 bedrooms. We really need at least a 4 bedroom because Dylan will no longer be able to share a room with Alissa soon and 3 girls in one room is just something I don't want to have to endure. Most of the houses in our area have 2 car garages so we entertained the idea of enclosing one side for a bedroom. But really when would we ever actually get that done. Last night we drove by a 2 story house that looked very nice on the outside. Jeremy called the realtor, yes it was 8pm because Jeremy had surprised us with an overnight visit. He agreed to meet us at the house since Jeremy had to leave again this morning. This house has 5 bedrooms and is only $100,000. A huge steal in this area. The upstairs is not so bad. It looks very newly remodeled. I absolutely LOVE the kitchen. Their is a deck of the kitchen with stairs, because it's the second story, that lead into the backyard which is huge and the kids loved. The living room was a bit small but workable. It has 3 bathrooms. The kicker there is that only one of them has a bathtub. The other 2 bathrooms only have a toilet and a sink. No way would that work for a family of 6. We would have to add a bathtub upstairs and a shower downstairs. The downstairs is partially underground so it's pretty much a finished basement. It has 2 bedrooms that I would want to re-carpet, a large laundry room that we would probably have to downsize to enlarge the bathroom and a huge den area. It would make a great media area. The problem there? It has old formica tiles that I would want covered with carpet or hardwood flooring. All in all it doesn't sound like a lot of work but with Jeremy being gone so much I don't know that I'm up to dealing with it. That is if we could afford to have the work done rather then do it ourselves. The then their the issue of getting financed and coming up with a down payment. We had decided we would get through Christmas and then start saving for a down payment on a house with the intention of buying this summer. The thing is it's hard to pass up a 5 bedroom house in this area! It's the first house we have seen with more then 3. Sometimes I hate being the adult! :)