Holiday Brain Dump

We've made it thru the holidays! Whew!

Highlights are that the kids had a great Christmas. Nicky received three new Nintendo games and a fort building set from Santa. The girls received a tent of their own, puppy backpacks (that are also harnesses for Mom and Dad's sake) and ladybug nightlights.

That was just from Santa. They received a bunch of other wonderful things from our extended family out there. Thank you everyone! I have the best of intentions to send thank you cards, but realistically I'm just darn thrilled I managed to get the christmas cards out this year, BEFORE Christmas day AND with photos in them! WooHOO! One step at a time.

I figure if we keep this up we'll end up back on folks' card list. We missed out on a lot of cards this year because we moved without telling everyone where we went. So be sure to update your address books with the new address when you get those cards!

This was hopefully our last lean Christmas now that I have a much better paying job. Thank goodness for gift cards! Nearly everything we bought was paid for with gift cards I'd been hoarding over the last year or two. Even though it was lean, it was still wonderful and the kids really enjoyed themselves. Nicky and I played Santa for Tom. We got him a DVD he'd wanted and an awesome drill bit that sharpens pencils. Because honestly, why use a pencil sharpener when you can use your drill??

Tom played Santa for me and brought me a lovely sparkly that caught my eye while we were out having a shopping date on Christmas Eve Eve at Kohl's. Hey, Santa got a deal! It was only $20 marked down from $80!

For Christmas dinner we were in a bit of a pickle for funds as we discovered on Christmas Eve Eve that we had no $ and 7 people to feed for a week. But we managed to pull together what food we had in the house and a list of cheap and yummy meals and spent 50$ on the Walmart card to feed everyone. We had Turkey Tetrazzini for Christmas dinner made with leftover turkey we'd frozen from Thanksgiving (thank you 30lb turkey!). We had a big pot of awesome spaghetti with homemade meat sauce, hot dogs, tuna casserole, black beans and rice and frittata rounded out the meal plan for the week. No one went hungry and we all had lots to eat.

Nana and Kris had a great visit with us and really enjoyed the kids. It worked out well to have them staying downstairs and having the girls upstairs with Tom and I. Nicky was going to stay upstairs, but he ended up spending most nights with Nana. It actually got us rethinking the room arrangement while they were here. And we decided to move Nicky downstairs to the room Tom and I had been sharing and have the second floor set up as a master suite with the two rooms and bath up there.

We moved around furniture Monday after Nana and Kris left Sunday. Not quite all settled in yet, but the girls are back in their room along with the twin bed, Nicky is actually going to have to sleep either in the twin with the girls (his preference) or in the queen bed in his new downstairs room for a while because Tom and I spent one night back in the queen bed and then decided we'd rather be squeezed into the double bed with the comfy mattress than on the queen with back aches! So we're keeping the double bed hostage upstairs until we have the $ for a new bed.

This will actually work out well as we have more company coming in less than two weeks. Aunt Liz, Aunt Jessie and Grammie are coming to visit! Liz and Jessie will only be here for about two nights, but Grammie will stay for a week and then we'll fly her home. This visit is courtesy of Aunt Liz's move to North Carolina later this week. My mom is driving with Liz and her fiance Michael up to NC, then Jessie's coming over to NC and the three of them will drive mom up here. This is great because it's been so long since Jessie and my mom have seen the kids, and we're so far away right now it seemed like it might be even longer before they could visit. So with the new bedroom arrangement we'll have a room for Grammie to stay in and Nicky can sleep in with the girls.

So how's that for a post? Sorry for the brain dump, but until I get my blogging act back together I figure this is better than nothing! Next mission, try to upload the Sept and Oct videos and photos from my phone! Then maybe even December!