hairbrained schemes

Christmas Eve Eve

The 23rd of December.

Festivus.

The holiday for the rest of us.

So raise the aluminum pole, ready your list of the Airing of Grievances (I have quite a few as you may imagine) and stay tuned for the Feats of Strength.

I think I have a shot at victory this year. 

Jason is out quadding, Lucas is sick and Jacob...well, you've seen the Gun Show.

There is a slight chance he could take me out with one of those elbows, but though I may look slow and sluggish, I think I could take him down first.

I am surprisingly ready for Christmas this year.

Don't get me wrong, I did leave everything until the last minute, as usual, but somehow I left it to exactly the right last minute, and every store, post office and coffee shop I happened through was not busy.

Which, sadly, encourages me to keep up my procrastinating ways.

I will leave you with a photo that I took of the boys the other day when we had our first big dump of snow.

They spent hours outside building a couple of forts which had complex names with words like "federation" and "colony" peppered throughout.  I glazed over after the first 15 minutes of explanation, but I did manage to get this cute picture of them without even having to threaten or cajole. 

Well, I might have cajoled a tad.

Professionalism at the workplace

So Dawn and I threw the Life Simplified staff Christmas party Friday night.

We treated the staff (us) and their spouses to dinner at the Blind Angler in Peachland (if you haven't been, go.)

The highlight of the evening was their signature carrot cake (which they sautee in butter and then drizzle - liberally, actually, drizzle might be the wrong word for it, let's go with dump - it with this lemony bit of heaven in a sauce).

The low point was trying to get a good picture of the staff spouses and getting this:

And this:

And this:

(this is where I believe they realized that no one else would be taking their tops off, so they had to make do. 

And I wonder why my kids can't behave when the camera comes out. 

It's all learned in the home.)

Next year we might just keep it to staff.

...like a sack of hammers...

I don't get why little boys can't understand that when the mom says something along the lines of...

"if you do this, then you will be allowed to do that"

(feel free to use the equation this=play outside with the dog/clean the litterbox/play with each other quietly for an hour, where that=get to play video games/computer/watch tv)

In this instance, the request was take the dog out without popping your cute little head in the door every 5 minutes to see if you can come in yet and you will get to play computer after.

Within 7 minutes, I hear screaming.

We have good windows in this house, if you were wondering what level of bloodcurdling of which I speak.

I follow through. 

I really do.

(see: gameboys confiscated in August and still being held in my custody)

So I can not fathom why they don't get this.

Long story short, both boys are now in the house NOT playing video games.

One is resigned and reading in his room.

The other weeping uncontrollably.

Which makes me want to ban video games/computer/tv for a month.

But I won't.

Because I learned a lesson myself, the hard way.

(see again: gameboys confiscated in August and still being held in my custody)

The Pitter Patter of Little Feet.

Up and down the hallway last night at 3 am.

Of course, now that breastfeeding is done, I (choose to) sleep through most of the extracurricular activities the boys might dream up. 

Last night it was the poops.

(I will refer to it as that because the word diarrhea makes Gorgeous George fake gag, shake his head and walk away from whatever conversation I decided turn down that road, even though the fact that I had to look up the correct spelling before I typed it makes me want to pepper it through this entire post).

Poor Lucas.

Then after the indignity of the poops, I had the gall to force him to stay home from school. 

I had to bribe him with lego.com and the story of Ellie, the little girl in my fourth grade class who peed her pants. 

The poor girl had that attached to her all through high school.

You can't take any chances with the poops.

Well, enough about diarrhea (sorry GG, but you know, you should have seen that one coming).

I just finished up a supercool assignment for Simple Scrapbooks' May/June issue.  I had a tough time with it for some reason, usually, the pages they do flow, but this time was a struggle.  It might have been all the holiday hoopla looming over me, I don't know, but it's done.

Here are a few things I made last month, when Christmas seemed to be forever away and when I was sure by this time I would be sitting back, packages wrapped, enjoying a hot toddy, instead of knee deep in wrapping paper ends, only 1/2 my shopping done and cleaning up vomit and diarrhea (I can't stop.  It's a sickness.)

Advent calendar:

Another advent calendar (with the numbers on)

...and off...

Tomorrow night, we are taking the staff (and the hubbies) out for our

Life Simplified Christmas staff party.

Gorgeous George said he wasn't sure if he wanted to go because he heard the parties got pretty wild and that one time one of the owners took her top off. 

He wishes.

I Survived.

Christmas Tree Hunt 2007 was an unmitigated success.

We all had agreed to meet up at the Extra Foods parking lot at 11:00 am.

Naturally, the 2 of us who complained that maybe we should be meeting at 10, because 11 was kind of late were the only tardy ones.

And then once we got there, we were also the two that insisted on running over to Starbucks for a road coffee.

While we were there filling up our tanks, a couple of guys smashed one of the windows at the Source and stole some stuff.

Long story short, Don decided to help catch one of the bad guys while we all watched on.

Here Don and the other good samaritan are wedgie-ing the bad guy towards the police. You can't see it but his feet are not actually touching the ground. 

We all enjoyed that immensely.

Here are Gorgeous George and Don's wife, Nicole, celebrating Don's heroism.

Some of my girls.  Aren't they cute in their snowclothes?

And aren't we all glad that the days of one piece snowmobile suits are by the wayside?

(I, for one, do not miss that zipper going from my ankle all the way up to right under my nose.  Ah, the horrors of having two older brothers with hand-me-downs).

Av and I stuffed ourselves into the one person or two kid seat on the back of Nicole's quad.

(although I guess from the picture you can't really see the stuffage and how my lower half is oozing out the sides, which is really a good thing).

Jen getting her first quad lesson. 

And while I love her cute helmet, I would like to take this opportunity to remind Gorgeous George, that I am not in favour of opening one of these on Christmas morning. 

Nicole warming up her baby.

(No, that isn't one of the sheep from the Bugs Bunny and Tweety Hour. It's a dog.  Really.)

Why lie down when you can stand?

(Clearly this child has none of my genes).

The requisite group shot.

The Gun Show

Skinny striped underpants?    Check

(referring to "ginch" as underpants is just one of the many ways I torment my children.  Sometimes you have to make your own perks in motherhood, sometimes I even like to throw out a "panties" to really get them going)

Long thermal camo socks pulled up to knees a la striped volleyball socks circa 1984?  Check

Perhaps the most skinny of bodies any of us has seen in a long long time?  Check

Jake bids you a Welcome to the Gun Show.

We actually call this the BB Gun Show.

Should I Stay or Should I go?

I thought I would post a quick note here before my family drags me out into what quite possibly could be the last of me.

We are going with friends to go Christmas tree hunting today and it is below zero. 

I try not to leave my house when it is below zero.  Or even my bed, really.

We already have our Christmas tree. So we're going for the "fun". 

(frostbite and hypothermia - wheeeeeeeeee!)

Which is kind of a funny story. 

Kind of funny now.  Not so funny last Saturday.

We have very few traditions.

This saddens me. 

Not enough to do too much about it, but there are a couple of things that I feel quite strongly about come the Yuletide season.

One:  not baking until the last minute and then binging after the family is in bed.

Two: Quesidillas for dinner on Christmas Eve followed by a viewing of "A Christmas Story".

Three: going to the Honey Hut tree farm to get our tree.

Last Saturday we were supposed to do the latter. 

I won't go into details about how my entire family whined and dragged their feet around resisting this lovely family tradition I was cruelly trying to impose on them.  But use your imagination. 

So instead, mommy threw a tantrum, cried (mature, huh?) and we ended up going to a nursery and buying our tree.

I recall something similar happening last year over a lack of enthusiasm for Christmas tree decorating fun...

Maybe I should add that to our list of traditions.

I've kind of been on the fence with this blog thing.

Obviously it's not a priority right now, but I'm not quite ready to shut it down.

So I will try to be more diligent and post here more than once every couple of months.

If I make it back alive.