Christmas

Christmas is my favorite time of the year. As I am posting this on Christmas morning the three little one are in my bedroom playing with new toys. Actually I think the girls are now playing with Zach’s new toys as he watches.

This morning was EARLY as usual what made it seem even earlier is that Kendall was up several times last night and Zach threw up again at 3am. We were all in front of the tree to open presents by 6:45am. We tried to let everyone open one present at a time. Lily was so excited by the Tangled playset, we were unsure if she was laughing and crying. Everyone seemed to enjoy their presents. Lily has spent a long time in her room playing with the Barbie doll clothes that she received. By 7:45am both the older girls had taken their stuff to their rooms. Haley has been playing with her camera as well as trying on the new clothes she got. Her favorite so far has been the skinny jeans. Amanda, of course, is back asleep until lunch or so. By 8:45, breakfast has been eaten and cleaned up. The plan for the rest of the day is to enjoy some quiet time, letting the kids play with the toys as much as they want, and starting to work on dinner for Sunday evening. I am slowly taking pictures all day and will hopefully post some starting later today.
Last night, was really neat. We headed over to my parents after nap. We ate open presents and spent the rest of the night playing Rook. It was a neat experience and I hope we do it again in the future :). Matt ended up bringing Zach home around 6 but the little ones and I stayed til 8pm. Amanda and Haley ended staying to 9:30pm then going to Steven and Tara’s church for candle light services.

The Christmas Sprit

I LOVE Christmas, everything about it except for wrapping of present but hey a girl has to have something to complain about. We are actually ready for Christmas this year. Our balance of work, family and life finally seems to be as close to normal as it ever will be. I set up my snow village prior to Thanksgiving and the tree was up the first week of December. Matt and I spent a whole day working on getting things decorated prior to Lily’s Birthday. The presents are all purchased and wrapped but to be honest I still don’t feel like it is so close to Christmas. I really want to enjoy the kids and everything Christmas related. I have been able to extend Christmas at least by a day so that we can have a huge meal on Sunday next week. No pressure to get the decorations down to quick. I even mentioned this to Matt on Friday and he suggested that our trip to Tanglewood for the lights might just make this seem more Christmas real. Let’s hope so! I know that Blogging will not occur very much next week but maybe some pictures will at least keep me on track for blogging more than last November. So here is the schedule for the week!
Monday-Large trip to Costco for groceries
Tuesday- Lights at Tanglewood
Wednesday- Christmas service at church
Thursday- nothing yet!
Friday-Christmas Eve, working then Dinner at my parents.

Catch Up and Awesome CVS trip

This week has been really busy. We have both Angel Food distribution and quizzing this Saturday. I have not been as prepared as I was last week and so have been working on preparing quizzes as well as getting back up to close to the hours I should be working. Today (Thursday) it was nasty outside with snow turning to rain around lunch. I was not scheduled at the hospital but did have to work the nursing home. I was able to spend the morning making junk (chex mix, muddy buddies and reindeer crack). One of the reason, I have stayed so busy is we are in the process of trying to restock our freezer and pantry.
On Monday, I was able to have a awesome CVS trip. I spent $17.92 and saved $76.01 or 94%. I used two rain checks I have been holding on too and spent 10ECB. I did have coupons for most items and did 3 separate transactions. For the basically eighteen bucks I purchased 3 ZHU ZHU pets, a rechargeable toothbrush and 3 bags of candy for Christmas, I also got 8 cans of Tomato soup, 2 tubes of toothpaste, a single serving Mac and cheese and 8 Advil tablets. I also snagged 4 free candy bars at Food Lion the same day. I definitely am getting back in the swing of things.

Michigan Adventure – The Last Day

It was not until on the way back to Farmington Hills on Friday that we actually decided the schedule for our return home. We decided that we would stay on Saturday, basically to give the kids a break from the car. So Saturday, we had a great breakfast downstairs came back to the room and decided to enjoy the pool. We actually ended up in the hot tub the entire time because it was much warmer and with the jets the kids enjoyed playing around in it. We were the only people in the pool area until the last five minutes. We spent over an hour in the water. I thought I saw a microwave in the room so I plan to feed the kids mac and cheese for lunch. Matt and I were going to eat the leftovers. But after getting back to the room we realized that the microwave did not exist. The kids laid down for a 2 plus hour nap. It was awesome. After the nap we had planned to head to both Costco and Trader Joes. We made it to Costco and it was as Matt described it, “The reason I moved out of Michigan.” Traffic was awful and people in Costco were rude. We ended up at Keith and Belinda’s were the kids watched Toy Story 3 and we enjoy conversation and laughed.

This is the part were the adventure begins. We ended up staying at Keith’s until around 8pm. When we opened our hotel room door, we realized that our room was located directly above the ballroom. A bar mitzh was taking place in the ballroom and we were able to identify the songs as they changed. I did call the front desk and was told there was nothing they could do about the noise. It was strongly suggested that I call the corporate office to. I did there was no resolution but I did receive our breakfast for free both morning and got a discount of half on the price of the room. Luckily, the kids were so tired they went right to sleep. Matt and I played name that tune until it stopped at 11pm.

I don’t regret waiting to start our trip home until Sunday at all. We had the car loaded up on Saturday night. Sunday morning we enjoyed a great breakfast and the ladies were nice enough to send us a to go box loaded with pastries and fruit. Travel was fairly smooth until around 4 pm getting on the West Virginia turnpike. Things went downhill from there. First the brakes on the car started to vibrate. We are coming up and down mountains and each time you try to slow down the whole car shakes. At one point we were literally sitting in traffic, moving at approximately 5 miles an hour. The reason…..traffic. As we were sitting in traffic, Lily suggested we pray so that we could start moving and get home. We did. From the point that we prayed we maintained a steady movement forward with only 1 other time when we came to a complete stop. It was amazing. We decided to pray again to thank God for letting us start moving. Around 15 minutes after our thanksgiving prayer, we came to another stop. Matt mentioned we might need to pray again and Kendall agreed. Lily was very clear with her statement “I already prayed and God gave us a miracle so I don’t have to pray again.” The faith of a child…boy do I have a lot to learn from that girl! Lily was right we did keep moving slowly but steady. Zach ended up car sick as we entered North Carolina so we had to stop and clean both him and the car seat up. Total travel time on Sunday was 14 hours. We ended up not even stopping for dinner because we just wanted to get home. We made it, the adventure is now complete!