I Love Christmas...Wrapping it up

The last week did not turn out as planned in many ways. We had several plans and many did not happen due to the SECOND blizzard of 2009 and other things happened that weren’t planned. I thought it was a good holiday and the kids kept repeating that it was “the best Christmas ever”, so in my book, it makes it a good one.

To start, last Monday afternoon I went to a work party to find the “Top Gun” of the Environmental Engineering section. I had no plans whatsoever of winning, as stated before, but guess what…you’re reading a blog from the Environmental Engineering Top Gun of 2010! WooHoo! Of course I have to thank my team mates, but in the end I was the winner..haha! Of course as soon as it was decided, the air team tried to claim me since I do “odor” work.

Unfortunately that night I also came home with a UTI. A little bit of history, during my early 20s I had some serious UTI/kidney problems. My worst was when I was hospitalized while 6 months pregnant with LMS. After that they went away for a few years and I was SO glad. Last year they started flaring up again. I even had some kidney and bladder scans done to see if there were any other factors for it. They couldn’t find anything after all the tests and scans, so they decided that putting me on a daily antibiotic would help. It did, at least until my refills ran out. This summer I got one on our honeymoon and had no pills – lucky we were in Mexico with a plethora of over the counter drugs. So when I came home Monday night with another UTI, Mr. S talked me into getting back on the daily pills (he didn’t have to push too much – I was in pain). Luckily I finally got to sleep after drinking a whole pitcher of Cranberry juice and about a gallon of water to “flush” the infection out. The next day I called my doctor and without even seeing me, she called a prescription in for the next six months (I love my doctor).

Tuesday I took off work to get ready for the school party and finally have the house to myself to wrap the kids presents and hide them downstairs. I spent the morning (3 hours!) wrapping their stocking gifts and Santa gifts while getting a healthy dose of Jon and Kate Plus 8 and Wife Swap.

Check out my little “nest” for the morning.

I went to LMS’s class Christmas party in the afternoon (I lose mommy points for forgetting the camera). They had fun playing board games and my “snowball” relay race. They also made a cute little craft with pipe cleaners and beads to make an ornament. They had a TON of snacks and I think they all had a really good time.

After the party and school, the girls and I made one last stop at the store before the big storm hit (I know, how am I going to survive without shopping for 4 days?). I stocked up on a bunch of baking items so that the kids and I could do some Christmas baking and I bought the ingredients to make Mr. S tacos for dinner (he loves my Mexican food).

Wednesday morning, Mr. S went to work and ran some errands and the girls and I snuggled into the couch and watched several episodes of Veronica Mars (I <3 Kristen Bell). The weather was so yucky, our storm had started coming in and it started with rain/freezing rain. In the afternoon I “tried” baking. I was frustrated that nothing came out the way I wanted it to though. The banana bread got a little over baked, the pumpkin chocolate chip bread took FOREVER to bake all the way, and the chocolate cookies took THREE times in the oven to finally come out done! It was very frustrating. Wednesday evening, Mr. S picked up the boys for his holiday time and we made yummy Chicken Florentine Soup.

Thursday it started snowing and since I wasn’t in the best of moods from the weather and because I was still disappointed in my baking skills from the day before, I decided to bake/cook some more. Mr. S kept asking what was wrong and whether I was pregnant, um, no, but in the end, let me be in the kitchen. I made a chocolate and peppermint cake with cool whip frosting and a cherry, jello and pudding dessert. They turned out good. I went to pull out the sugar cookie mix that I made the day before though and it was all crumbly, not doughy at all. Grr… instead of water to make it “gel” again, I decided to add applesauce to make it gooey and I’m kind of glad I did, they taste so much yummier and moist. The kids had fun cutting them out and then decorating. After a quick lunch, I started on my dishes for our Christmas Eve dinner at the farm. I took veggies, so I made a red potatoes and peas dish and cheesy broccoli dish. In the end, Mr. S also made me take the jello dish too since he thought we had too much food in the house. I don’t know what he was talking about; I was hibernating and storing up for the winter.

Red Potatoes and peas in sauce

Cheesy Broccoli

Cherry Jello and Pudding

Because the weather was getting bad, Mr. S’s aunt decided that we’d start our Christmas Eve celebration in the afternoon so everyone could get home early. We went over about 3 and started with dessert – the kids loved that.

Right as we were starting the present opening – the power went out. So, we opened presents by candle/flash light. That was interesting. 

Mr. S's Aunt and Uncle

Mr. S's grandparents

(You can’t really tell in my pictures that the power is out – my flash is SUPER bright)

See how close he had to get to see what was actually in there?

After the presents, we went to get dinner out.  The pheasant wasn’t done yet (the oven shut off in the power outage), but everything else was yummy. We had quite the ambiance eating by candle and flash light.

As soon as dinner was done, we decided it was time to go – snow was coming down hard and blowing really bad. We followed Mr. S’s grandparents to make sure they got home okay. The roads weren’t too bad, only hit drifts when we went behind hills; it was more the blinding snow that made us go so slow. When we got home, the power was on at our house so we let the kids open the gifts under the tree. They were very excited about all of their neat new toys and clothes and gift cards.

After they went to bed with sugarplums dancing in their heads…I played Santa and got their presents out for the morning. At some point in the night our power went out too, I was so cold my nose was numb. At least it was back on by morning though.

Friday morning I got up and made a cinnamon pull-apart cake for breakfast. While that baked, the kids got to open their presents. LMS was so funny about her bow and arrow that Mr. S bought her, she loves it (ah, what happened to my girlie girl?). The twins were so funny about their gloves and socks that I picked out for their stockings, they actually liked them and now I’m apparently in charge of buying that stuff now according to Mr. S.

The kids ate breakfast and then the boys had to get ready to leave with their mom. She’s so retarded. Instead of pulling into our driveway, or in front of it if she was so worried about getting stuck, she drove PAST our house to turn around on the hill and got stuck in a snow drift. Then her really retarded husband tried pushing the SUV UP the hill and she just sat there with her wheels spinning. Geez, they’re so dumb. She finally got out and came up to our door to get the boys and made them ask their dad to help her. Um, what is her dumb husband good for that MY husband has to help her? Anyway, he pulled the truck out and then towed her out of the drift where she then turned herself around in our driveway – stupid, should have done that the first time (Later she was stupid enough to ask if she could keep the boys an extra day since her Christmas might not happen – too bad – so sad – Mr. S took “vacation days” and we weren’t letting her keep them. The next day we found out she actually just wanted them an extra day – they went straight from our house to her parent’s house – WTF?).

After the boys left, I got started on our Christmas lunch: Turkey, ham stuffing, and green bean casserole. Mr. S’s grandparents decided not to come up to our house, with the weather they decided to just stay home. So, it was just the four of us for the day. I set up the girls’ ipods and watched movies all day with Mr. S. It was a pretty lazy day. For dinner we just ate desserts – the girls loved it.

Saturday morning, Mr. S got up early to start snow blowing. He finally got enough moved to get his truck out and to go and pick up the boys for the week. After they got back, he spent the next FIVE hours snow blowing our drive and his grandparent’s drive. Jr.Mr.S and Jr.Ms.S also did some shoveling, they were not happy about it, but Mr. S treated them with sodas.

(The weather guys said that this is the most snow in 61 years for a December – it’s going to be a long three months)

(We’re pretty lucky since we live in an open area, all the wind blew a lot of our snow away – many people had drifts as high as their doors!)

After all that, he decided it was time to get out of the house and offered to take us all to a movie and dinner. We decided to go to the small theater in the town near us and see Avatar, unfortunately they didn’t have it in 3D. It was a GREAT movie though – you must see it in the theater. However, do not give your five children sodas to drink, or there will be at least one kid going to the bathroom every twenty minutes. We were so annoying in the theater with the constant parade. Oh well.

After the movie, Mr.S took us to a Mexican restaurant. The Jr Snowflakes both tackled adult plates – I couldn’t believe they finished all that food! The service kind of sucked since a lot of people were trying to get out of their houses and workers were probably using the excuse of the storm to stay home. Oh well, we watched football and the kids colored and it was a nice dinner overall.

Sunday was pretty laid back. The wrestling tournament was postponed to an undetermined date, so we had no plans. If it didn’t cost almost $400 to go skiing near our house, we probably would have done that (we’ll save the money for real Colorado skiing rather than just skiing down a large hill). So, instead I caught up on Lost (gotta get ready for the new/final season!) and we puttered around the house. The kids went out a few times, tried their bows and arrows, and TS1 fell into a huge snowdrift in the backyard. He was so upset, it was cute. He kept claiming he fell in a fox hole and he had to dig himself out. We laughed, but then checked it out and yep, it was a BIG drift (not a fox hole). Otherwise, the day was pretty uneventful.

So, we survived the blizzard and power outages, enjoyed our family celebrations and generous gifts, and did a lot of relaxing this last week. It was probably the most different Christmas in a long time, but it was good.

What did you do for the holidays?