Wii wish you a merry Christmas

Hubs' big family surprise was a wii. He also got me a wii fit (because nothing says I love you like exercise equipment!). After the kids were in bed, the big kids got to play. I REALLY wanted to set up the wii fit people.

I was uploading Christmas pictures, so I let the boys go first. If you've never done wii fit, you have a mii (wii person) that you can make look like you. They all start out about the same size. Apparently, after you step on the wii fit board, they become more "your size." Hubs was the first one up. The scale shot up and Hubs' mii plumped up like the nutty professor a la Eddie Murphy. It then gave him a ridiculous goal weight. Even after Hubs ate mexican sushi on our honeymoon and spent 5 romantic nights in the bathroom (and could flick his wrist and lose his wedding band), he didn't weigh that little. So I began to feel a little nervous.

Then, UP stepped on the scale. His mii also plumped and it gave HIM a crazy number to shoot for. Now I'm feeling really apprehensive. But, it was my big idea to do this, so I step on the scale/board and watch my mii go. The weight bracket stops in Normal and my mii shrinks. It then tells me my goal weight would be to GAIN four pounds. Hubs then mutters, "I should have given you this stupid thing when you were fat," and I fall off the board laughing hysterically.

Wii Fit. The gift that keeps on giving. Oh, and here we are! Mommychick, Hubs and UP:

Merry Christmas!

Today was Christmas, and in the words of Strip, it was the best Christmas ever. And honestly? It was. Because of our families' food allergies I had given up on trying to do something big. Our normal menu was thrown out the window and I decided to do an herb roasted chicken with gravy, broccoli, sweet potato casserole and a wine herb rice. I also decided that I had no desire to get up at 4 am to start a meal and didn't want to cut Christmas short to slave away in the kitchen. So, Hubs got to work on his famous Christmas eve cinnamon rolls.

Christmas morning, we locked the kids in our room and all the adults gathered in the kitchen for coffee and cinnamon rolls

Yum!

Then, we set up the camera and were ready for the kids to come downstairs. Strip caught sight of her doll house, and it was all over. Sweet Nugget? He came running down the stairs calling roll. "Mommy!! Daddy!! Papa!!! Ma!!! Uncle P!!!!' then ran to Hubs for a Hug. Next? He made a mad dash to the hot pink doll house. Oh well. The kids took their sweet time opening all of their gifts. The one thing Strip wanted was a Nutcracker (I'm sure so she could pretend she's Clara). I was super sneaky at Strip's ballet company's performance of the Nutcracker and swiped the LAST glitz covered Nutcracker, smiled to myself as I wrapped it in Santa's paper and waited for the moment her Christmas dream came true.

After going through her stocking, she started to unwrap it. Paper removed, I asked, "Ohhh! I wonder what it is!!" to which she replied, "It looks like the box that shiny nutcracker came in!" Seriously?! HOW would she know that?! They weren't even in the box!! Could she be the youngest child ever to give up on Santa?! Ugh. She's too smart for her own good.

After all the presents were unwrapped, Hubs fired up the grill for some yummy bacon wrapped shrimp and I made the kids Christmas shaped peanut butter sandwiches while they watched the Nutcracker on ice. Nugget went down for a nap and I started making "lunch." We are normally rushing and don't eat before two, but this year, we took it easy, snacked, drank coffee (out of our new Keurig coffee maker! Love it!) and ate when it was ready at 5:00

We all sat down after kids were in bed, dishes were cleared and wrapping paper was stuffed outside. I looked at the cable box and it said "726." I was convinced that it was the channel, but upon closer investigation, it was actually only 7:26 pm and we were all pooped! Now the only question that remains is where are we going to put all of this stuff?!

Joyful Noise

Strip is in the church's cherub choir. Although there are a couple of kids who are Nugget's age that "sing," I think he's too young and am waiting until next year to let him really be a part of the group.

One Wednesday night, they had a little Christmas music-a-thon where the Cherub choir performed. It was very low key, and when they asked the kids to come up, Nugget looked at me and said, "I in Cherub Choir," got up from the table and followed Strip up on stage.

Before I could stop him, they were belting out, "Go tell it on the Mountain," and Nugget was right in the middle of the group. They were on an elevated platform, so I guess Strip was nervous, so she kept a death grip on him the entire time:

If Hubs would have been with us, I would have yanked him off stage, but he was working late, so I figured, what the heck. And honestly, he was the most well-behaved and still I've ever seen! Maybe I have TWO little divas on my hands!

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words? Well...

**Photo taken from Zazzle.com's hilarious Christmas Card section. Not my image***

While perfecting the art of the perfect Christmas card (yeah, I did it, and no, I'm not telling you how...yet), I received my parents Christmas card in the mail. I was not surprised because I took the pictures, designed and ordered the picture card part of it, but was scared/excited to read the card part.

Ma sends out a ton of cards, and writes an update letter including a snippet from all of ourlives. She's also known to share medical info (although I'm pretty sure Hub's vasectomy did NOT get a mention --- It's never too late, Ma!), so I was prepped for that being my snippet. I literally laughed out loud when I read part of my part. I've already jumped to my own conclusion, but I want others opinions on it. Here's the section, then you can vote:

Mommychick's food allergy issues returned with vengeance in late January. She is allergic to almost everything!! Eggs, Wheat, soy, corn, all beans, peas, almonds and cotton seed among other more obscure things. She looks marvelous! She dropped 20+ pounds (luckily she was healthy enough to handle it), but has leveled off now that her body has adjusted and she's figured out how to get decent meals.

The part in bold wasn't really in bold, but I think that was the irked part. SO, vote. Is it just me, or did my mom totally just call me fat, via Christmas card in front of/to everyone we know?!

Please vote to the right, and Mom, you can only vote once, so no skewing the results!

Kids + Christmas plays=awesome

This week was the kids' Christmas productions at school. Each class has it's own, intimate telling of the Christmas story. Nugget, being in the 2's class, had more of an interactive telling of the Christmas story where parents and kids explored the Christmas story together. It was nice, because Strip was in school that day, so I could focus my attention (and camera) 100% on Nugget.

On Strip's day, not the case. Last year's Walk was interesting because the director talked about how an angel came to Mary and asked if anyone had ever seen an angel. My creepy adorable child's hand shot up as she said, "YES!! I have!" and the director, like any rational adult, made a comment about how most of us have angels in our house at Christmas. Strip started to argue, but they moved on to music. Sixth Sense Strip had an angel for a good year plus who I am convinced is my dead grandmother whom I've never actually met. She doesn't talk about her much any more, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was. This year, she didn't talk about dead relatives, but Nugget was out of the stroller and way too comfortable in his surroundings.

I was able to keep him pretty well wrangled and was trying to get a sweet picture of Strip looking like a sweet angel praying. Instead, I got this:

Nugget hops up in the frame and LOUDLY blows his nose. He then says, "EWWWW BOOGERS!!" both loudly and very well enunciated. For a kid who doesn't say much, he sure says it at all the right times. Luckily, most of the parents realized they were there for a preschool Christmas program, NOT Dickens' Christmas Carol, so I only got the stink eye from a few parents. Maybe next year will be better...oh wait! She'll be in kindergarten next year.....I'm not going to think about next year.

How to NEVER get invited back, in 7 easy step (kids edition).

My advance apologizes for those attempting to avoid getting out of parties if you don't have kids--this won't work without them (or a VERY willing spouse).

Let me just say that we did NOT go into this evening looking to shed friends, but that just may be what the end result was. How could things go so wrong, so fast? Let me break it down in 7 simple steps:

Step 1: Hubs. Hubs announces FRIDAY MORNING, "Oh yeah, we have a party a Friend's house tomorrow night, can you call the sitter?" Umm hey there late notice. Well, the sitters don't get out of the bus until around four, so I'm not going to be able to let you know until later.

Step 2: Can't get a sitter, but don't think it's an issue because you KNOW of 2 other couples who will be going to the party with their kids, so tell Hubs to suck it up.

Step 3: Show up at the party right.on.time. UGH. I hate being the first one at the party, especially when I've un-grown my entire wardrobe and LITERALLY have nothing to wear.

Step 4: Be the ONLY ones with kids there. Yeah, everyone else had a sitter. Even the family with four under 6. Yeah. They got a sitter. So who were the schmucks with kids? Yeah. That's us, party of 4.

Step 5: Let the kids play it cool. Show the party what awesome kids you have, building false pretense. Let the eat, drink out of big kid cups, go to the bathroom, go ahead, feel proud that your kids are hanging with the big kids. Celebrate by putting a movie in for the kids so you can enjoy a little adult conversation.

Step 6: See Hubs give the "wrap it up" signal, showing it's time to gather the shoes and head on home.

Step 7: EAT YOUR WORDS. Good Lord, this is when it hits the fan. I was chatting it up with three other moms and 2 kidless ladies when I uttered the craziest words ever: "Yeah, I LOVE having my two, but in my heart, I just feel like we should have had 4-6 kids."

Open up gateway to crazy, because we have a one-way ticket. No sooner had I uttered those words, Strip turns around (from innocently looking a a nativity scene with Hubs), and a friend says, "What's on her face? Is that chocolate?" Nope. That's blood. Not dripping from her nose, POURING from her nose. Bless her heart, a fountain of blood is now pouring out of one of her little nostrils, and she is FREAKING out. I scoot her into the bathroom, joking, "It's a good thing you wore your red dress," and try to get her cleaned up, and the bloodbath turned off. I'm chatting with her, making sure she didn't bump her nose, and asking her what happened, and she tells me, "I felt like my nose was running, but when I looked down, there was red on the dvd case." CRAPPER. I open the door and yell to Hubs (who has a bottle of Resolve and a roll of paper towels) to check the Snow White dvd for blood. He's on it.

FINALLY, the bloodshed ends, and I emerge from the bathroom victorious, only to be met with many sets of shifty eyes. Someone mentions, "I think you have another problem...." and I look at Nugget. Poop. Literally IN his big boy pants. Bless the kids heart, we must have been so involved with Strips clot-less nose, that no one noticed him crouch behind a chair and poop (and he must have been too scared from the blood trail into the bathroom to even ask). So I clean him up and give Hubs the less-subtle version of the lets go sign, apologize profusely to everyone involved, and we load in the car.

THEN I bust out into a full on asthma attack on the way home. And where is my emergency inhaler? In the coat closet. Awesome. We make it home, I get a couple of puffs, hose of the kids and put them to bed. I'm planning on writing a very nice note to the Friend Fam and making Hubs take a tin of his yummy homemade fudge to work on Monday.

So the above scenario mixed with the 48 Hours special about fake adoptions, makes me think we were destined to be a family of 4 plus dog, and REALLY makes me hope our friends can look past all the blood and poop and still want to hang out with us. Ugh, who am I kidding!

She's onto you, Santa.

It is FREEZING today. Right now, I'm looking at a snow storm with 27* temp, not taking into account the wind chill. Unfortunately for Nugget, I needed to shop today. After Story Hour at the book store, we headed to out little outdoor shopping center, where (what do you know) there was a front row parking spot at the Loft. It was like I was meant to shop. So we went in (sans stroller) and Nugget did really well. I needed black pants and a black top for a concert I'm singing in, so I ended up trying on EVERYthing black in the store. Sweaters were BOGO FREE (go now! That's a great deal!), so I grabbed one not in my size and planned to swap it at the other Loft later.

Nugget was so good, I told him I'd make hot chocolate for him and Strip, so I scooted home, put the hot chocolate in to-go cups and we crawled through the snow to pick up Strip from school. I didn't want them spilling h.c. all over the car, so I told them they could drink it when we got to the mall. Well, when we pulled onto the mall road, there was a homeless guy with just a shirt, carhartt overalls, scarf, thin hat and boots on. Definitely not prepped for the cold day. Heck, I had my seat warmer on HIGH and I was still chilly. So before the light turned green, I rolled down the window and offered him one of the cups of h.c. which he was beyond grateful for. The kids? Not so much.

"Whose was that?! Was that mine?! I want my hot chocolate! AHHHHHH!!!"

So I reminded Strip about how we needed to decorate our hearts for Christmas and giving something to others who didn't have anything was a great way to do that (and my little Mother Teresa went into a bible story about Jesus and the fish and loaves), and I told Nugget how proud I was that he gave his hot chocolate to someone who needed it more than we did, promising to get more.

Their little hearts warm with Christmas love, we strolled into the mall and made it to the Loft where the Christmas spirit soon expired. The hot chocolate that Strip was sharing with Nugget soon ran out and she started to lose it. In an attempt to distract her, I promised we'd go to the Disney store if I could just try these two sweaters on, but she was still whiney.

So I went on to the old stand-by. Santa.

Me: Hey, do you know who I saw on the way in the mall?

Strip: No. Who?

Me: Santa!

Strip: I didn't see him.

Me: Well, on our way to the Disney Store, we can look for him together.

Leave the Loft and head over to Santa Land

Me: OooooOOooHHhhhH! Look! Who is thaaaaatttt??

Strip: ::Blank stare::

Me: Look! Over there! Dressed all in red...sitting in the chair... wearing the hat?

Strip: blink blink

Me: It's Santa!!!

Strip: Hmmm. I don't think that's really Santa. Santa has a white beard, and that guy's beard is kinda greyish. I think that's just a guy dressed up like Santa.

Umm. Ok. Regardless, it was a good thing that wasn't the real Santa, because after leaving the Disney Store and getting in the car, Strip pointed out that she put a tinkerbell phone in the bottom of the stroller. Oops. I don't think Santa's a fan of stealers. Looks like I'll be making a trip back to the Disney Store tomorrow....

When a Jeopardy champ gives you advice, take it.

A few weeks ago, my Facebook status read something like this:

is thinking of building an outdoor kitchen solely for the purpose of frying bacon.

One of my replies suggested cooking it on a George Forman Grill. I thought this was a FANTASTIC idea, and I could even stick our panini grill on the back porch so NO bacon-y smell would enter the house. What a great idea!

So did I listen? No. And that was not the only mistake I made earlier this week.

Mistakes:

1. Taking two kids grocery shopping with me

2. Grocery shopping at Super Target where I RARELY grocery shop

3. Taking two kids grocery shopping with me

I realize these are mistakes as it's happening, but it doesn't really hit me until I'm making Arroz con Pollo for dinner, and step one is "Fry 4 strips of bacon in a dutch oven." Forgetting Aunt B.'s Jeopardy champ words of wisdom, I start heating up my big old pot on the stove. As soon as the first strip of bacon hits the pain, I realize mistake #4.

When making a mexican dish, do NOT use maple smoked bacon.

Too late to turn back now, and too late to take both kids back to the grocery store, I carry on, and about 45 minutes later, when the sweet savory smell of maple hits the cumin, oregano, cilantro and cayenne pepper, my house smells like a mexican house of pancakes. And the beautiful thing about bacon is the smell permeates EVERYthing in your home. So even after a good vinegar wash down, I still smell IHOP meets Taco Bell whenever I walk in the door.

Sorry, Aunt B. From now on, I will NEVER ignore your advice!

He's baaaaaaaack!

Returning home from Thanksgiving Travels, the kids were delighted to see Felix. Felix is our elf on the shelf. He appears with his book (and a little gift for the kids) and keeps an eye on the kids while they are awake. Then at night, he goes back to the North Pole to report back to Santa on how the kids were doing. Three days into Felix's arrival was also three days into the grandparent detox, so honestly, note even Jesus himself could have improved my kids' behavior. They were tired, nutty and insane.

Strip is at the age where she "gets" Felix, but I was thinking Nugget was too young. Then, one night over dinner, everyone was talking at once, and Nugget announced, "ShhHHHHH!! Daddy! Felix is watching," while cutting his eyes to the left and pointing to Felix perched on his John Deere tractor.

So now I know he "gets" Felix, but really couldn't care less. Unfortunately, the next day, we forgot to move Felix. So when we stumbled downstairs and the first thing Strip announces is, "OH! Felix is in the same spot!" my response was, "That tricky elf! He hid in the same place thinking you wouldn't look there!" Hubs' response? "Guess he couldn't go back and face Santa after you two were misbehaving so much." Should we be saving for college or therapy?!

Boys!

Nugget is now 2.5. Traveling has slowed down a bit and I thought it was time to really start potty training. I told him we were not wearing diapers and he's been doing surprisingly well.

Strip was pretty easy to train, especially since she's a girl, and I'm a girl, I kind of felt like I knew what I was doing. But boys?! Stand up? Sit down? What do you do?! I figured it would be easier to just teach him to pee standing up than to have him sit, then learn to stand later. So with a case of clorox wipes in hand, the potty training began.

One day, I was cleaning the kids' bathroom and Strip came in and asked if she could use it. I told her sure, but to make sure she checked the seat.

Strip: Why do I need to check the seat?

Me: Well, you know, boys pee standing up, so they lift the seat up.

Strip: Yeah.

Me: And I'm still working with Nugget, so he sometimes forgets to put the seat down.

Strip: Ok...

Me: And if you sit down with the seat up, you're going to fall in the potty.

Strip: Ok!

A week or so later, I'm in the kitchen when Strip runs up from the basement making a dash for the bathroom. A few seconds later, I hear the distinct sound of a four-year-old falling into the toilet. Then I hear Strip muttering...

"UGH! Boys! They just don't think!"

So young, yet so wise.