Christmas was great. We had the proper amount of chaos with two little boys, 3 dogs, 1 cat, and a grandma running around. Christmas is always slow in making an appearance here. It's no secret that it's not my favorite time of year. I love December for Ben's birthday and I pretty much refuse to acknowledge Christmas until after the 17th, so that doesn't leave us lots of time to plan. At any rate, thanks to Grandma Rita's visit, mom and dad got a chance to go out together and play Santa Claus. Spending quality time with my husband spoiling our kids - THAT is fun and reason enough to get into the holiday spirit.
We put off getting a tree until just a few days before Santa's visit. When we finally did head out to get a tree, Lowe's was cleaned out, not even a stray needle left around. The sales clerks were kind enough to suggest we try the local nursery. Yeah, at a sale price of "$what the heck are you smoking" we opted to cruise on over to the grocery store for a tree. Score, great tree for a pittance. Perhaps we shall make it a tradition - grab a mystery tree (they are all wrapped up so you just don't know what they will look like) from the grocery store at the last minute. Anyway, the tree went up, Grandma made a pile of cookies, presents were wrapped and we finally got to bid farewell to that d*** elf on the shelf. All in all we had zero to do except play Santa Christmas Eve, first time ever I think! We watched the traditional "Bad Santa", said goodnight and were off to bed.
The boys, well, they slept in until 7:30! What???!!! Presents and then breakfast, lots of playing, baked some bread for Christmas dinner and off we headed for round two with Aunt Stephanie & Uncle Michael. More presents, more food, games, fun day all around.
Oh yeah, and we wished our sweet little Arthur pup a happy first birthday. Apparently he's a Christmas babe!
Now for the tiling. Long story short, our shower needed to be recaulked. As most home improvement projects go, one thing led to another and next thing you know we are tiling around the shower. Alex, dear boy, spent over an hour picking out tile with his ol' ma. Quite a boring project for an 8 year old kid, but he was a trooper. It's always a little disconcerting starting something new. Fingers crossed that I actually knew what I was doing. Tile went up on the wall, we shut the door and went to bed. Morning comes, happily it's all still on the wall. More goes up, more drying, grout goes in, and that's where we are. Today I caulk, and what we set out to do 4 days ago will finally get done. It only took 4 trips to Lowe's, 4 days longer, and cost 4 times as much as originally planned. But it looks great, and apparently I did it right, because it hasn't fallen off the wall yet.
