Merry Christmas

I wish all you family and friends could have been here for the most exciting Christmas. I'll try to talk you through it.
First Santa came. Look at all these presents! He stuffed our stockings too!

The boys woke up this morning. Not super early, pretty normal time. They had candy canes and rolls for breakfast.

When Nana and Gram came we pulled all the presents out from under the tree and put them in the living room. (The office/craft room is too small to open in but we put the tree there so it shows through the front window, also kids can't get in there without adults so that helps curious todlers stay away from presents. Can you BELIEVE all these presents? Me either.

Ethan opening his shopping cart. He loves it.

Me opening one of my MANY "thrift finds" presents from my mom. It's a vintage sewing kit box FULL of sewing notions. And I SERIOUSLY needed this box. I was using this cookie tin, but the lid doesn't go on right and it's too small. I needed a vintage turquiose sewing box stuffed full of notions.

Marcia opening her Swedish Fish. The boys enjoy these as a treat with their Grammy (my mom) and wanted Marcia to enjoy them too. So they used their own cute little money (which they got from the magician) to buy these.

Brian's aunt makes the boys stuff every year. This year it was adorable quilts. Ethan, he loves this little moose she tucked in best though! haha.

Santa got this. The story here is when we did letters to Santa, Ethan said, "I want that yellow truck Stephen wants to give to Stephen" That's one of only a very few things Ethan asked for this year. So he got it of course! And Stephen is so happy! Ethan loves it too, this toy got the most play time today. Santa also got some extra cars for it to eat but it DOES eat normal matchbox cars, so we are thrilled.

This giant Brian grin is because I found him this T-Shirt that says, "I fart in your general direction" you Monte Python fans will get it. Everyone else just move along.

One of Brian's messge board friends Tod got Stephen this transformer years ago. We saved it until he would be old enough to do it. It was a huge hit.

More transformer joy.

Here he is teaching Ethan how to do the transformer.

Look at this suprised joy face!

Brian drew this picture of his grandmother back when he was in high school art class. He planned to give it to her then but felt it wasn't "good enough". This year he found it again, decided it was indeed good enough. I bought it a frame and we gave it to her this year. She loved it.

Apparently Marcia had never seen it. She was impressed too.

Another big gift this year was this quilt I made Brian's Gram. She had bought the white and blue fabric decades ago in hopes of making it. She bought it precut. She never made it. When I took up sewing again this year she gave it to me, to do "whatever" with. Well of course I made it into a quilt for Gram. I added the yellow sashing and such and there you have it. She loved it. :)

And the boys got... CUBS!

Cubs are super realistic stuffed animal/robots. They do all sorts of baby animal stuff. Stephen's is a polar bear so it does polar bear stuff, like pant and make little cute bear noises. He is letting us call it "Cubbie" but he said it has a name but won't tell us the name. (I guess it's a name of power?) They were from Gramma Sue and "Gramma Sue's Grampa"

I know it looks like Ethan is about to beat his cub with a pillow, but he's not. Ethan is a bit afraid of his cub. So he's getting it a pillow to let it sleep on, so it will stop talking to him. He loves the cub sleeping, is nervous of it awake. He will fall in love soon though, Ethan is pretty brave.

And there you have it. HOURS of present opening draws to a close and Ethan flops out on the floor.

After all this I made food. We had spiral ham, greenbean casserole, sweet potato casserole, corn, mashed potatoes, olives, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin pie, apple pie, cream for pies, egg nog. I cooked all. Marcia and Gram did dishes. It's my favorite Christmas treat, a day without dishes! and there are TONS of Christmas dishes too. I should have taken a photo of our Christmas table, I thought it was going to buckle under all that food. Oh and I went overboard, the ham was 12lbs. For four adults and two toddlers. Although turns out my kids will put away some ham!

After food I took a nap. I missed watching Wall-E which the boys got. I actually missed the pie too, but no worries I had some just before typing all this. I have to figure out where to put all my Christmas presnts now. Another thing I missed while napping was putting up presents. I thought if I slept long enough they'd do mine, but alas, no.

I've had a cold all week, but I felt great today. Other than getting really tired early and having to take that nap I mean.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Brian's Work Christmas Party

I am just not blogging this and I'm sure no one will read it until it's already Christmas, but last Friday we went to Brian's work Christmas Party. This party is my kid's favorite party of the entire year and this is why:

**SNOW**

Oh yes, some fake snow blown from a machine is the HIGHLIGHT of my children's Holiday Season. I hear more about this goofy fake snow than I do about presents. We are also fans of Santa of course. And he was at the party too.
The Magician made Ethan a penguin made out of balloons, it's about the cutest thing I've ever seen. Stephen in the background with his candy cane one. He is obsessed with candy canes this year.

There was a train for the kids to ride too.

I have video of the magician with Stephen on stage, he took Stephen's dollar and changed it to a two dollar bill. Also of the snowball fight. But I can't get them to load to here or to youtube. If I can I'll come back and add them.

New Camera

We got a new camera. I think I like it. I'm not sure how to use it really, it has all these tons of manual settings. It has "cheater" settings too. Anyhow I need to learn more. Here are some shots with it: One of the cutest people in the world.

This is a super close up of Brian's gram.

And me. See that tiny red dot over my right eye on my forehead? It's a HUGE painful zit now.

In other news I'm down ten pounds. That's huge. Now here's to not gaining ANY and loosing more. Honestly I'd be thrilled with just one or two pounds a week if I'd never gain them back. I'm in no rush. I bought those weird walking sticks, they look like ski poles. Anyhow they are amazing. They turned my brisk walk into a panting sweaty full body workout. Also, they are pink. I like pink. I got THESE on Amazon. Although I see when I left my feedback that some of the feedback was negative, I didn't feel like they were cheap or anything. So whatever. I love them.

Glasses or contacts

It's time to update my glasses perscription. I am considering going back to contacts with my current glasses as a backup.

So I'm looking my best today. (yeah, this is pretty much as good as it gets) And I'd like your advice.

Glasses:

Or no glasses:

With the contacts I'd have the option of either, which is appealing.

Oh and yes! I've lost some weight. Thanks for noticing. About 5lbs. Woohoo!

Progress

This pic is about a month old. But I know yall like to have photos. I love this pic of me. So I've been run/walking in the mornings and watching what I eat for a week now. I've lost...

FIVE POUNDS.

Hurray for me! I don't really expect to loose five pounds a week forever, but it's a GREAT start.

Super Heroes.

Saving the world, one sidewalk at a time.

Pants, as always, are optional.

STAND UP

Ok, I'm a nut. We all know.

When my kid are in the tub and I need them to stand up so I can wash them I go, "Boom boom boom boom STAND UP" from this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd_8m241vYg

So I played it for them today. They loved it. My kids love some hip hop. Anyhow at the end Ethan turns to me and says:

I love that brown guy!

SHEESH.

So to Ludacris from me, I know you are identified by more than your brown skin. I'll make sure my son knows it too.

haha!

I did run today. Well sorta... stephen insisted on coming with me and that kid is slow.

Random today pics.

This photo of Ethan is called, "I got a plane and I've not put it down once."

This photo of Stephen is called, "mine foot is being a hand and mine hand is being a foot" *and his underwear is on backwards, he really prefers it that way* The photo of me is called, "I got new makeup yesterday, can you see it?" *and I need a new camera, and I have pretty great hair*

Working out offends me.

I did get up and run again. It sucked again. This time worse because my shoes are horrible for running and my feet got blisters yesterday, those blisters broke today and I ran in blood. I didn't run the whole mile today either. I did walk really fast, long strides and pumped my arms a lot. Tried to keep my heart rate up. That feeling of my sock ripping away from my bloody heel over and over was too much for me to run during. Nice visual isn't it? So anyhow looks like I'm on the search for good shoes to run in. I don't mind getting up, I sorta like the heart screaming, sweat part, but the bloody feet I can't cope with. Oh it's fall here. I mean it's winter, but it looks like fall. I see several red trees on my morning jog.

The photo is old, from Ethan's birthday, I just wanted something for you to look at and not my bloody feet. Maybe I'll share those tomorrow.

Vacation

We just got back from a vacation to my parent's houses for Thanksgiving.

My mom has this sweet new cat: Her name is Sneaky Pie Brown. (I named her) We also went to an Orlando Magic Game.

Right after that we forgot to take any more pictures.
Dad took this one on his crackberry though.

We did have a great time. :)

I got up this morning and ran. I hated it. Hated every second. I could only run half a mile, then had to walk the second half. I felt like a poser and a failure. I cried. But now that I'm clean and showered I feel proud that I got up and did it. Even if I didn't run the whole thing I did GO the whole mile. So I'm going to try to do it every day, I think in a few weeks it won't make me cry, then in a month or two it should get like a habit. That is the plan at least. I refuse to continue to be fat. REFUSE!!!

Air Show

The Navy here does an Air Show every year. We like to go when it's at the Naval Base. So we did. Yesterday.
The boys thought this bomb robot looked a little like Wall-E How cute is this mini-plane?

Doesn't he look like he's shooting something?

I got to dress up in a bomb squad suit.

Next we went in a coast gaurd plane. Stephen was in LOVE with it. There was a pilot next to him who told him how to fly the plane. Stephen thought we should take off right then. The guy asked him where we would go, without hesitation Stephen says, "Costco" "Why Costco? What would we get there" "White cheese, we are low on white cheese" So the guy says, "that sounds fun" But we didn't really fly his plane to Costco. Stephen was offended by that. haha.

This is on the same plane it was super busy and Stephen made a Bee Line for the cockpit so me and Stephen didn't get to see this back part. Apparently Ethan liked it though.

Here's Ethan flying a Helicopter.

And Stephen doing the same.

There was all the usual Air Show stuff, planes flying and stuff. The sky was bad, it was misty and low clouds all day. Apparently there were lots more tricks and stuff we didn't get to see. We ate there too, the Italian sausage at the Jax Navy Air Show are really good. Seriously good. Mmmmmm. The Pizza was ok too, some Red Barron company I'd never heard of.

Ethan LOVED the show. He had super freak out joy for the planes flying over. Stephen didn't care as much about those, but loved the planes you could go up to and such. So all in all it was fun.

After that we spent an entire HOUR getting out of the parking lot. It was crazy. Then we went to Toys R Us in Orange Park, Brian got some new action figure sports dolls he collects. Ethan got a Hot Wheels car (we are very into those now). Stephen made a suprise decision. He didn't find a convertable yellow hot wheels car so he WAITED! We have a new Toys R Us opening up in a few days so he wanted to wait and see if the new store has just the very car he wants. I'm pretty proud of that atitude.

Then to BJ's warehouse store. We went to visit the cubs. Do you know about cubs? HERE you go. The boys are OBSESSED with them. They ARE wicked adorable, make super cute noises. Stephen wants the polar bear and Ethan wants the white tiger. I want the panda. (just kidding I don't want one) Anyhow they LOVE LOVE LOVE them. Unfortunately for my children they were born to cheap parents. Although they are adorable and robotic (Wow Wee seems to make really COOL robot toys) we just can't pay $40 for a stuffed animal. That's EACH because you KNOW they would both want one. Sigh. So no Cubs for my boys, although we do love to visit them at the BJ's. We did get a giant thing of play doh that is for Halloween, but I'm gonna just use for my own kids. And some meat. Then we ate dinner there because all that took way longer than we planned and it was past dinner time.

We got home at like 8. It was two super fun days in a row.

Today is Sunday, we did Church. It was good, church usually is. I FINALLY brought this baby quilt I made a girl at church and she did love it, so that's good. :) Then we had Bar B Q chicken on the grill. I'm thinking about taking a nap and Brian and the boys are going to watch some Mr Bean movie. (shudder)