Whewww!! It's been a while!

Sorry I've taken such a long break from my blog, but I feel like I've been running a marathon. I have so much to catch everyone up on. Here goes...

You've all likely read about some of this in Erica's blog, but I'm going to add my 2 cents as well. (And my pictures) We had a great family party at my house on Saturday, Dec. 22. My whole family was there, cousins, aunts, nieces and nephews (23 people, to be exact). We had a great time catching up, eating, and watching some old home videos I recently found of all of us from Christmas 1988 and the holidays thru Christmas 1989. Yes, that's almost 20 years ago! I was fun to see how everyone has changed (and aged!). The picture is of the "kids table". It was really surreal watching myself at age 13 and 14 and then looking over at my kids sitting there watching too. How can I be old enough to be their mother? Weird. At the very beginning of the party I had an accident with the huge crock pot of queso and wound up spilling it all over my freshly mopped kitchen floor. We cleaned it up- mostly with towels and everything went on from there without a hitch. (more on that later)

Sunday evening we went to Taylor to see the lights there in the square by the courthouse. They are great and there's hardly a soul around. The kids had fun even though it was really cold again this year. (I know, not the best picture-you try posing 4 kids at once! Also, Erica already used the 1 cute pic I got that night!)

Sunday morning I got up and went in the laundry room to find a horrible smell from the cheese on the towels, so I decided to do a load and as long as I was washing that nasty stuff I may as well throw in some poopy panties, right? I added a little bleach for good measure. Well, when I went back in later to change it around, it was still full of water- dirty water- and it wouldn't do a thing. I tried over and over, every setting and the thing would not work!! So I called my Dad to see what I should do. The wonderful soul that he is came up the next day to look at it for me. (Keep in mind that we just had to replace our fridge about 3 months ago after having spent $400 in January to have it fixed!) So we took it all apart and determined that it was a goner (it was about 12 years old). This was Christmas eve, so the next day we were going to Houston which meant that I needed to wash clothes for the trip and that it would be several days before I could shop for a new washer! Aaarghhh! Luckily my lovely sister, Erica, let me come over and do a couple of loads of laundry to get me thru the hump.

On Christmas Eve we went to the 4:30 service at church and then spent like half an hour trying to find a place to eat dinner (yes, I'm an idiot that didn't realize everything closes at 6pm on Christmas eve) and finally found a Chinese restaurant open. We got home, gave the kids a quick bath, sprinkled Reindeer food out on the lawn and set out cookies for Santa. I read the Night before Christmas to the kids and finally they were asleep! We did all the Christmas present stuff and tried to pack for the trip the next day, but didn't quite get everything done before we decided to call it a night. Then we woke up on Christmas morning (I should say, we woke the kids up, if you can believe that) and opened our presents quickly to get ready to go to Houston. Stu's family gets together on Christmas day every year and they eat at about 1 pm, so we had to hustle to get there in time to drop off Frank (our lovely basset hound) at his mom's house before we went to his grandparents. Oh, I almost forgot, Logan got a fever overnight! Merry Christmas to us! Needless to say, that was an exhausting day. But it was nice to see everyone. The kids had already opened presents at my family's party, then again on Christmas morning, then at Stu's family's party, then at his Mom's house and yet again at his Dad's the next day. It's hard not to feel like you're kids are a bit spoiled when this is what they've come to expect from Christmas every year! We spent Tue, Wed., and Thurs., nights in Houston and came back Friday afternoon. Thank goodness Logan's illness only lasted about 2 days and we didn't have to make a trip to a doctor while in Houston! On the way back we stopped at Southside Market bar-be-que in Elgin. It was pretty good and the kids loved the animals all over the dining room.

After we got home I kept smelling something awful- It was the nasty water left in the washer that we couldn't get out. Lovely. So I poured in some bleach and went shopping for a new one right then. I went to Conns, Lowes, Best Buy, Home Depot and finally Sears. I already knew I wanted a Whirlpool or Kenmore (made by Whirlpool) because my Dad's friend had recently bought a washer and had done lots of research about which brands were better. Amazingly this whole process- going to all the stores and actually purchasing one- only took about 1 1/2 hours! This is what I got. It's a Kenmore HE 2t or something like that. I think I was more excited about getting this washer than my kids were about Christmas (maybe that's exaggerating a bit). They delivered it on Sunday and Saturday night I was giddy! I couldn't wait to try it out! And, it is awesome.

Stu's Dad and his wife, Marilyn, got the kids Build-a-Bear gift certificates for Christmas. Logan has been wanting to go there forever, so on Thursday we took them there. It was a mad house. The traffic in Houston is horrendous and the mall was bad too. There was a lot of waiting in line there, but we got thru it. Here's what $107 buys you at Build-a-Bear. (If you can't tell, Logan's is a monkey and the extra outfit is a little fisherman suit with a fishing pole. Ellie's bunny has on a wedding dress with ruby slippers, a silver purse and hello kitty slippers.)

This morning I made waffles with my new waffle iron- courtesy of Stu's sister, Becky. After we ate, the water was shut off. No, I didn't forget to pay the bill, they were fixing something down the street so we couldn't get ready in time to go to Gattiland like we had planned. I decided to take the kids to a movie- by myself! (Stu had to shower since he had ridden the exercise bike this morning and since there was no water, he couldn't go. He didn't want to see Enchanted anyway.) I had 2 free tickets to see it and so I thought I'd take a chance and go. It turned out to be a great time. They both sat thru the entire movie without getting up once! That's a first for Ellie. It's a wonderful movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

And tonight we lit some sparklers on the back porch as our tribute to the end of 2007 and the beginning of a new year.

See what I mean. It's been nuts. I know this was huge, but I had a lot to catch you all up on and a lot of pics to share. ******************************************

Happy New Year Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!