Christmas 2007

We spent Monday cooking and watching movies. We watched Elf and Christmas Vacation. We went to a candlelight service at 6:00 p.m. I had a spiral ham warming while we were at the service. Once home, we had a late dinner. We had been tracking Santa all day at norad.com. Loree decided it was getting too close for comfort, so "we'd better head to bed!" Darren and I did some more cooking and wrapped the rest of the presents.

Christmas morning I woke up at about 6:00 a.m. to start cooking the breakfast casserole.(I used some of the ham from last night and it was yummy!) Grandma Carole and Papa Bill were due to arrive around 8:00 a.m., so we let the kids get their Santa "stuff" and then they ate a little breakfast while we waited for the G.P.'s. Here is Grandma Carole and Ashlie...

Breakfast included:

Ham and cheese breakfast casserole(yum!)
deviled eggs
cantelope
orange juice
coffee


Santa brought everyone tennis raquets and balls for our YMCA homeschool P.E. class. (Tennis balls, that is...) They also received new toothbrushes, socks, gloves and other odds and ends in their stockings.



There were lots of ohhs...



And a plethora of ahhhs...


( I learned the word plethora from the 1986 film classic "Three Amigos". )

Although not all my kids express emotional exclamations, you can tell that deep inside, these kids are stoked!

yay.


And these pics were taken from a strictly photo journalistic perspective. No posing was used for these photos. I repeat... no posing was used!

On the lunch menu:

Turkey with gravy

broccoli, cheese and rice casserole

dressing

jellied cranberry sauce

rolls

iced tea

And here we are talking about dinner while we eat lunch. It's a tradition in my family passed down from many Swedish generations. As is beige gravy on just about everything.

If you look closely...you can see the limelight being stolen from Loree... Hello, Chelsey!

Foood...mfbl...lmflbm...klblmfl...pmpherfl

We're just introducing utensils to Aaron...

One of our Christmas traditions is to go see a movie and then have dinner at Ihop. We saw National Treasure 2. I highly recommend it. Great flick!

It was one of the best Christmases yet! I hope yours was, as well!

I hate to toot my own horn...

but someone here is a genius...

Actually, horn tooting is my favorite.

Super Skills

We had a visitor on our last day of school for the year. It's always nice when super heroes stop by to brush up on their math skills. Funny, though...Aaron was nowhere to be found. Come to think of it, you never see them together in the same room. Odd.

Um...Yeah...it's Saturday...I know.

So, I opened my big mouth on Tuesday and announced to the world to check back Friday for "after" pics of my messy school room. Well, the desk is still fairly tidy, but what have I gotten done since? Squat. Nada. Zilch. Diddly-squat. Zip. Zot. Zero. Are you getting the picture here, people? I jinxed myself. And I didn't enjoy it.

Here's the deal. I hurt my back carrying a ginormous load of laundry down the stairs. I felt better until I made the mistake of sleeping funny Tuesday night. No, I didn't sleep with a clown. Clown night is Thursday, silly. So, as you might have gotten from the paragraph above, I failed to meet my deadline. I am complaining and abusing vicodin sticking closely to my treatment plan of drinking whiskey and snorting Tylenol frequent stretching and alternating ice packs and the heating pad on my lower back area.

So bend over correctly

And lift with your knees!
I guess DH and I won't be doing this again for a while.

Ahhh...Progress

“I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position. Attitude keeps me going or cripples my progress. It alone fuels my fire or assaults my hope. When my attitudes are right, there is no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, no challenge too great for me.” -Charles R. Swindoll

Dude, I didn't know the top of my desk was wood...