The 12 Days of Christmas

Well, since I have so many wonderful memories of this Christmas Season I have decided to make a "top 12" list. These are in no particular order.

#12- At 3:10 on Friday on Dec. 21st I was out of school! It was a glorious feeling to know that I didn't have to return until Jan. 7th! OHHH...What a feeling!

#11- Having my sister Leah and her family come to our house and stay for a whole week. The kids are FINALLY at an age where they just play and play so well. The big game of the year was "Tag" and so they raced around the basement in and out of the furniture. For the most part we didn't care, but...it was Bowl Season and when they stepped in front of the t.v. during a big game, oh boy, watch out! Jeff and Tony weren't happy.

#10- Going to visit my grandma, the kids great-grandma- on Christmas day. We go every year but for some reason this time was especially fun. We sang lots of songs and the other residents in the retirement home enjoyed listening to us sing Christmas songs. I think that the residents were probably ready for us to leave as the singing got a little rowdy. My grandma has never been bothered with lots of grandkids and great grandkids being chaotic and rowdy so she loves as the noise and action.

#9- Leah and Tony razzed Jeff so much because he said that all he wanted for Christmas was new underwear! (really!) So they were teasing him that he wanted ones with the days of the week on them. So Leah stitched little initials in them in bright colors for all the days. Jeff was quite surprised when he opened them on Christmas morning and saw his underwear! The kids thought it was quite funny! Now, whenever I fold his underwear I will think of my sister...that's a little weird!! :)

#8- Spending a whole day in our pj's because we had a major snow storm. Christmas Sunday and church was cancelled! Weird! But it was just wonderful for all of us to lounge around for 24 hrs. and have nothing to do. My parents actually braved the storm and came up to our house, but the roads were not good. The kids went out for quite awhile to play in the snow but just put their snowsuits right over their pj's!

#7- During that snow storm and when "travel was NOT advised" I got a "hunkering" for some popcorn. Not microwave "fake" stuff. But the "real" stuff. I had thrown away my popcorn popper a couple months ago b/c of old age and hadn't replaced it yet. Tony braved the roads and snow to go and find me a new popcorn popper! He had to go to several stores to find me one! What a guy! Thanks Tony!

#6- Staying up late and watching movies, and sleeping in.

#5- Having someone to drink coffee with. Jeff doesn't drink coffee in the morning. He drinks Pepsi. I have always thought this: Coffee tastes better when drinking it with a friend and it also tastes better when someone else makes it. Both happened over this break. Every morning I drank it with my sister, some mornings I made it or if my sister was up first, she made it. It was awesome!

#4- Christmas day at my parents!!!! It is always such a highlight of the year! We get to their house around 10:30 or so, and have a huge breakfast. That is our tradition. We then move to the living room and have the kids open presents. One by one. Slowly. It takes awhile as we get toys out and put them together and let the kids play for awhile before the next one opens a present. Then we went down to my grandma's (about 20 mins. away) and opened presents with her and visit for awhile. We kept teasing Jeff because for some reason or another (getting presents out of the trunk) he kept setting off the door alarm because he kept forgetting to hit the code. So several times a loud alarm went off. We just love to tease Jeff about anything and everything. The picture in the previouse collage is of him coming in the door and the alarm going off. We then went back to my parents for the adults to be able to open their presents. That takes quite awhile also. The best present of the year was given to my sister and I. My mom "sits" for elderly people in their home now, she is a retired nurse. So she has a lot of time on her hands. She made for my sister and I both a set of beautiful embroidered pillowcases. She herself would say she is not "crafty" so they are especially precious. She also said they ' have been "prayed over" for many hours as she was making them.

#3- Watching my sister constantly work on some embroidered tea towels. Every time she was sitting down she was busy with these towels (this is where she got the thread for Jeff's underwear). She would show them to me and I would ooohhh and awww over them every time. So Christmas afternoon when I opened my present from her there were those towels. She had been finishing the last 2 right under my nose!! I had a set of tea towels from my great aunt who is 98 now, as of yesterday. I used them so much I wore holes in them and had to throw them away. Leah remembers me lamenting over that fact, so she made me another set. These have the days of the week on them with Raggedy Ann. (Days of the week seems to be the theme of the year) She even used the hoop and the thread that my great aunt had used to do all her embroidery work. They are special. Embroidery seems to be the theme of the year also. Mom and Leah didn't know that the other was working on embroidery projects as gifts.


#2- Staying home for New Years Eve. We let the kids decide what special food they wanted for dinner. As long as it didn't involve me cooking. Mikayla was pushing for "Spaghetti with Mom's Special Sauce" but luckily Jeff deemed it a no cook night for me. We went to the Egg Roll House and ordered 12 Egg Rolls(Haley and Jenna's pick), went to the grocery store and bought strawberry smoothie ingredients, bananas for chocolate fondue,(our dessert picked by all of us) and jalapeno poppers for me. Then we were off to the video store where we rented Mr. Beans Holiday. (It was very funny) Then we went to Yang Chow Wok to pick up Sweet and Sour Chicken (Mikki's pick) and Crabmeat Rangoons (Jeff's pick). After collecting all that we went back home and ate to our heart's content while watching the movie. Then we played board games, had an air hockey tournament, (somehow Haley "beat" all of us and won the tournament)and sang karaoke. We sat in the hot tub and by that time it was time for the ball to drop in New York. We watched that drop, deemed it midnight for us too, and went off to bed. We started the evening by saying we were going to have "the best Christmas party ever!" The next morning we asked the girls if it was indeed the best party ever and Haley said that it definatley WAS NOT because in the middle of the party "daddy took the Christmas tree down and vaccumed up the floor and you don't do that during parties!!!!" Other than that it was the best party ever because I was at my own house in my pj's, safe, with my family!!! It doesn't get an better than that!(I talked to my parents and they didn't get home from their parties until 12:30 a.m. and here Jeff and I were in bed asleep by 11:10! What is wrong with that picture?!?!)

#1- Going to bed late, getting up late (ok- around 8 or 8:30) drinking coffee on couch in my pj's until 10 a.m. and then finally getting dressed for the day. Doing some laundry, cleaning the house a little and then heading back to bed for a nap. BUT that all comes to an end! I go back to work on Monday so I will get up at 5:30, get dressed and rush out the door quickly with the girls in tow, drinking my coffee on the way to work. No relaxing and no naps. All good things must come to an end!! But it is depressing!


Well- that is my top 12. By no means is this all of them, if I sat and thought I could come up with many more! Ohhh another highlight happened just today...
We went up to our new house!!! They are cruising! They have 3 walls up, the back and the 2 sides and they have framed out our bedroom, bathroom, laundry room, and closet. It was so fun to walk around and visualize how it will look. We had great weather the last few days and so they can work fast. We are supposed to have great weather for the next week so they will probably get the front wall up and it all framed out in the inside and then start putting the roof on.

My camera konked out! See this brings me to something I could have put on my list. We took to girls overnight last Sunday night to Wasserbaun, an indoor waterpark at a hotel about 20 mins. from here. My camera fell on the floor and now it won't work!!!! What am I going to do!!!!??? I will probably have a break down not being able to take pictures! I took some pictures of the house today on my cell phone I will have to try and get those down loaded so you can see them.

I have still not done my lesson plans for next week, nothing like waiting til the last minute. I am glad I did though, the last thing I wanted to do on my break was work! So tomorrow night, I will work on those as usual. I did go into my classroom for awhile today and organize a bit and take down Christmas decorations.

I then went to the church and did a bunch of work there for about an hour in the children's dept. It was a busy day.

Hey- Is there anyone new out there that is reading my blog for the first time this Christmas Season? If there is, let me know!!!! You can either leave a comment, or you can email me...amytack@mchsi.com I would love to hear from you.

Lanaya- I have lost your address!!! Your Christmas card is sitting on my counter, please send me you address! Thanks!