Happy New Year, my friends

I keep meaning to blog and it doesn’t happen, and now here it is the last day of the year and I feel overwhelmed at the prospect of catching up. End of month, end of year …

We’ve had a good year this year. I wasn’t sure, the beginning was crap. But somehow we’ve pulled it together and had just a great year (although I know so many people who want to kick 2013 in the seat of its pants on the way out).

I don’t have time for the usual survey but here’s what I can remember of the questions: I’m fatter, slightly richer, and happier. My uncle Gene died, my cousin Grant’s wife had a baby.

I can’t remember if I gave myself goals last year, I’m sure I didn’t meet them. But I think overall it’s just the way things are.

This coming year I’d like to work on my health – I’ve gained about half the weight back that I lost in 2011 and I’m not happy with how I look or feel. I know I can do it; I just need to lay off the sugar and concentrate on the exercise. I have a goal weight but it’s not important. The baby steps are important. Just like before, I’m not cutting anything out. I thoroughly believe that moderation is the key (although I’m going to try for 30 days of no added sugar, because I have a pretty serious sugar addiction and sugar makes my tummy hurt – it’s a vicious and tasty cycle) and I also should cut down on my cheese intake.

 My other goals are related to my family – I’d like to commit to 12 dates with my husband because we don’t get that many, and six of them including movies because he loves the movies. I’d like to have three kid dates with each kid – some time alone mano-y-mano. I want to stop taking work home in my head (and on my phone). I want to go to bed at 10pm at the latest through the week so I feel more rested, and turn off the tv earlier so I wind down easier. I’d like to work on my temper and my yelling and my patience. I think every parent feels they are not 100% for their kids, and there’s no way we can hold ourselves up to the standards in our head. I’d like to just be a little more present. Play with them more. Not yell so much. Explain myself when things get annoying and I want to snap.

So this is for the look ahead, and for the glance behind. Let’s make 2014 brilliant, yes?

Full Disclosure

The other day Spencer was going to the bathroom while I was getting ready for work. This happens a lot because once he sits down he likes to ruminate a bit before he deigns to move on (men, seriously). I went to say goodbye (still on toilet) and noticed that his lips were chapped. I grabbed one of my chapsticks and slathered it on, and he said “Maybe I’ll have my own chapstick. Oh! I need to put it on my Christmas list!”

I said, “Sure, maybe Santa will bring you some!”

And then he said (still on toilet, mind you), “Yeah, Santa can always see and hear us.”

Spencer’s been in trouble at school the past couple days. Not huge things, but certainly things that need to be addressed. He’s a follower and has a need to be liked by his peers. So a little girl tells him to do something they think is funny and soon he’s cutting the erasers off the pencils. The first day he got a stern talking to, we took away a television show. We didn’t expect it to happen again the very next day. I’m at a loss as to how to handle it – we talked to him about doing what is right and not what his friends tell him to do. We told him the importance of respecting your teacher and other people’s property. I have never, ever threatened my children with Santa/lack of presents, but I said this:

You know Christmas is coming, right? Maybe you should try to be good.

We took away the evening’s Advent activities (hot chocolate and a Christmas movie) and tv, and wouldn’t let him watch daddy play video games (gasp). Instead he settled down with the collected works of Curious George.

I hope it works. Sometimes this whole parenting is a floundering-in-the-dark sort of feeling. 

Sometimes I think I'm just delirious when I write these things.

I've not been getting to bed at a reasonable time for the past week or so, and I fear it's showing. In my eyes, always, but currently in my mood and reasoning.

Sometimes you just have to deal with what’s in your fridge for breakfast, which is why I threw half an apple and a Danimals smoothie in my bag. That’s better than what I had yesterday, which was nothing (although my Thanksgiving leftovers lunch tasted that much better).

I suppose this means I need to do some grocery shopping, which, except for Thanksgiving specific, I haven’t done in two? Three weeks? Henry’s gone banana obsessed this week so yep, I should probably get to the grocery store. C and I grilled a frozen pizza last night. It was delightful!

Okay, seriously, that smoothie thing was gross – how do kids eat/drink that crap?

I went to buy Rockapella holiday concert tickets yesterday at the box office to save myself $26.50 in convenience fees, at the guy ahead of me was around 70 years old. He was picking up tickets for Julio Iglesias and for Vince Gill. It made me chuckle, and I think the box office guy found it amusing too, because he got far too much amusement out of trilling Julio as much as possible.

Okay, I’m throwing away this Danimals thing. It’s liquid sugar. I don’t mind sugar but I’d prefer it to be in the form of chocolate and candy. The container says “Strawberry Explosion!” . Yep, exploding in my garbage can (“contains no juice”, in case you thought it might.)

I didn’t have time to take a shower this morning and my hair is icky, so I’m officially going to work out at lunch today and then take a shower in the gym. I brought all my morning routine stuff, and I’m set. (ps – I don’t smell, my hair is just icky.) My colleague thinks this is hilarious – “your motivation for exercise is a shower?” yes. I need a shower anyhow, I may as well get sweaty and stinky at lunch. Right?

This post has no point, but you expected that, I expect. Toodles for Tuesday!

Losing and Winning and Holiday decorating

Well, after I missed last Sunday, the rest of the week kinda went to pot on the posting, yes? Sufficed to say I did not completed NaNoBloMo, but as I said a few times, the point was to get myself typing in this little space more and at that I succeeded. Of the 100 posts this year, more than a quarter of them were November. That makes me a little sad.

BUT! I wanted to say that I had a lovely Thanksgiving with a lot of family, and it was all lovely and all of that. The food was delicious although I didn't overeat, and I did drink a lot of wine .... here's a story. So when we got to my in-laws, we were taking out the alcohol (there's always a good amount of alcohol at a family gathering here) and my MIL pulls out three 1/2 bottles. "Do you think these are still good?"

No, dear God. The bottles were from EASTER.

EASTER.

I advised her to pour them out ASAP, so toward the end of the night I started drinking the ends of all the current bottles of wine - don't want them to sit there till Christmas! (It was ... a lot. But a delicious a lot.) I left a 1/3 bottle of Riesling, which is the only thing my MIL drinks. "Ann," I said. "Drink this tomorrow night. Do not let it sit until Christmas."

And she probably did drink it Friday night as I'm sure she needed it - Thanksgiving night we left my lovely children at her house and LEFT. We had to expectation of doing Black Friday shopping, but we had no plan and nothing we really cared about. C wanted a new TV but he ended up ordering it online Thursday morning to be delivered next week, and we had wants but nothing specific. We drove by target on the way home but they had a line stretching the length of the strip mall waiting for the fire code enforcer to let in so we went to a few places, bought nothing, and then dropped in an hour later on the way home. We ended up getting a few DVDs and a half gallon of milk - really working hard on helping out those Thanksgiving sales, right? (please no comments about spending time with family on Thanksgiving and not shopping. Both my brother and C's cousin worked that night. I'm sure they were happy for the paycheck and irritated by having to work, and the world still turns).

Friday we "slept in" which meant waking up at 6:53am. We went out for a leisurely breakfast and then hit Toys R Us, the mall and a few electronic stores. We bought some things that were on sale, I got a couple things that I needed that weren't on sale but bought them anyhow. Got some good deals, etc. After rescuing my MIL/picking up our children, we also stopped at JoAnn's to get fabric to make an advent calendar but then I found one I liked anyhow so I got that instead. So here are out decorations:

 Henry said "I like this man! Take a picture of me with him!"

 

The new advent calendar, with notes in each date of things to do.

 

Our new tree topped, which looks exactly like our old topped except it LIGHTS UP.

Not gorgeous and inventive like other bloggers, but we like our mantle.

New Christmas pillow with bonus Santa-hatted child.

The perfect tree

My mom's trees, every year, stood short and stout and were overloaded with ornaments of every size and shape and color. It was okay because it was the family tree, but I expected that when I moved out and had a tree of my own, it would be *the perfect tree*. Only specific colors, no colored lights (mom loved the colored lights) and only "pretty" ornaments.

I moved out in 1999, but I don't think I had my own tree until 2001. It was perfect. Red and gold ornaments only, ball garland, white lights. It was a thing of beauty.

I kept that up until 2005-ish. My future mother in law me bought an egg Christmas ornament that, while gorgeous, was not in my color scheme. I couldn't exactly turn it down, but I put it toward the back. No harm.

2008 brought children, and 2010 brought more children. Children brought ornaments that they picked out, ornaments that they made, ornaments of their pictures. 2010 I gave up on the perfect live fir tree and ordered a nine foot
prelit Christmas tree.

 

The year Henry was born - New baby and big brother ornaments

Spencer decorates his own 

 Last year my mom brought me a box of ornaments from her tree, ornaments of mine through the year. This lollypop was made in 1991. When she gave them to me, I wasn't exactly excited to put them on my tree. Who needs a bunch of old ornaments? Me. I need a bunch of old ornaments. It was lovely putting part of my past up on my own tree.

(this is a photo ornament of Spencer the year he was born, and behind it is a star I made in pre-k. PRESCHOOL. 1984.

 Salt dough ornaments from last year's advent activities.

There are ornaments given to us by family and friends, and ornaments that remind me of old friends.

And now, now my tree is absolutely perfect.

If only I could really have Liam Hemsworth as a babysitter for reals

I did not blog yesterday, and therefore I suppose that means that technically I failed NaNoBloMo. However, since my goal this month was blogging Mo’, like, More, I think I’m still on track. This is post 24! In 25 days! My last 25 posts took me … 2.5 months. So there.

Anyhow, This weekend was so busy that when the alarm went off this morning I really thought it was Sunday. Where did my weekend go? We are normally busy but somehow. Yeah. I want more weekend. It also didn’t help that when the alarm sounded this morning I was in the middle of a dream where my twitter friends and myself were interviewing babysitters and Liam Hemsworth was a candidate. It was a good dream.

Saturday we went to a birthday party at 9am (yes, that’s right) and that’s where the dock/fishing photos on Saturday’s blog were from. The boys enjoyed fishing a lot (except for having no patience for actually leaving a line in the water for more than half a second) and my dad messaged me on Sunday to let me know that he had picked up fishing poles for the boys last month for Christmas, so that’s funny. Hopefully he’ll take the kids fishing too, because I’m not a fan.

I got my tree up Saturday afternoon too – that lone wolfing thing that was supposed to happen Friday night didn’t happen, which I should be happy about but I really wanted to get things done that C didn’t want to deal with quite yet, so instead I had to request from a grumpy C to get the tree from the attic. I made up for it by letting him spend *four* hours cleaning and waxing his car. He was a happy camper. And I got to listen to Christmas music in an otherwise quiet house, so I think it was a win-win. Henry’s asked approximately 1,871 times where the star is, so I guess I need to decorate it today (I put on this year’s Disney ornaments and it’s a pre-lit but an otherwise naked tree).

Saturday night C and I got a date night, and celebrated it at Mitchell’s Fish Market for dinner (I had the Seafood Americana, which is not exactly something I would normally order in case it was spicy (description: Georges Bank sea scallops, Cajun shrimp, spinach and mushrooms sautéed in a shellfish butter sauce and served over roasted redskin potatoes) but good Lord that was a good dinner. My two cocktails were fabulous too. We then went to see Catching Fire, which was also amazing – I’d say it was a pretty successful date night. (Catching Fire also made me excited about my reading goals for next year, which I can’t remember if I’ve blogged about yet. Will check back and then do so if the answer is no. But I want to re-read. Must. Re-read.)

Sunday we decided to see if there were any pre-Thanksgiving deals at the outlet mall (a resounding NO) and we got some warm clothes in proper sizes so the boys don’t have to wear all their small long-sleeves from last year. I assume it’s probably silly to wear long sleeves that aren’t exactly Long Sleeves anymore. I got some good deals at the Loft Outlet, which made me happy (yay new clothes!) I’m going to have to ignore the size I just bought new pants in though. We spent a few hours at Disney, but it was swamped and cold and we opted out of staying too long.

TODAY I have to do my Thanksgiving food shopping because I forgot this weekend and goodness, I should probably stale that bread, yes? And the boys are getting their flu shots so I hope for no adverse reactions to that. And I’m going to locate the ornaments in the attic (this sounds like our attic is huge instead of a glorified crawlspace, yes?) and listen to Christmas music while I decorate and happy holiday season!!

How was your weekend?

Just a minute

Tonight my mom watched the boys so C and i were able to do a date night. We went to Mitchell's Fish House (delish) and saw Catching Fire (amazing). If live to have something fun and witty to say, but it's 14 minutes before midnight and Henry won't sleep, so I have but a minute and all I can do is post some pictures from today's instagram feed (that you've probably already seen):