Our Christmas Photo

I was determined to get our Christmas card photo cards ordered this past weekend. I normally just send out one of the kids but I thought it would be nice to have the whole family this year. We had lots of opportunity this weekend for other people to snap a picture of all four of us, but either we kept forgetting or the pictures were just awful. I am not being fussy. My only requirement was that all four of our faces be visible and somewhat forward facing for our Christmas card photo. I know better than to ask for simultaneous smiles at this point.
But here it was Sunday evening, almost sunset time, and we had not even one decent photo. So we got the kids dressed in a combination of their Sunday best and their beloved red Mickey Crocs and dragged the wagon out under the orange tree. I sort of like that taunting element, like ha! we live in Florida! it's hot and green out and we have oranges! (like I ever really eat any of them). Anna insisted on wearing her red Christmas dress and not her green one that matched her Bubba's sweater, and she also demanded that she be able to hold a dirty beach bucket as a prop. Jonathan's hair is crazier than ever and I just don't have the energy to fight it down very much anymore. I had just woken up from a nap (A NAP!!!!) and I had no makeup, no bra, and my hair was all slapped and pinned back and up. I was not wearing my green sweater that matched Jon's (and would have matched Anna's dress perfectly). I was NOT camera ready! But Dave suggested he could prop the camera up on the hood of the Taurus and set the timer. And we wound up getting some good pictures of the kids because our cat Sabrina jumped up and sat right by the camera. So they got the giggles, saying that the cat was actually taking the picture. For the last and best picture, Dave swapped the dirty beach bucket for the cat and we pretended that the bucket was taking the picture. The cat made Anna happy, the timer went off, and there you go! One picture of the Dooligans 4 looking slightly undone and not very color coordinated. But we all look happy, and we are together, and I got to take advantage of Winkflash's awesome special. 100 cards, with envelopes, plus the cost of shipping them to us, for only 30 bucks! And that actually makes me happier than if I had been photographed with makeup, a bra, a matching green sweater and a nicer hairdo.
Jamie

A Simple Kindness

I woke up late for an appointment and we just did not have time to eat breakfast. I found an apple in the car (a known apple that I had left in there just a few days prior). I gave it to Jon because Anna can't eat an apple with the peel on it. Twenty minutes later, I heard him pass it to Anna and say, "Here you go!" I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Anna take the apple from Jon.
"Here you go Anna. I got it all peeled for you. I got it all peeled with my teeth. I couldn't peel it with my fingernails."
He hadn't eaten any of the apple but had spent all of that time chiseling away at the peel with his teeth. He is such a sweet big brother to do something so unselfish without anyone asking him to. And I am sure that was very tedious work! It was a really large apple.

Tori Amos Concert

Dave and I went to a Tori Amos concert with my brother and sister-in-law. We had a really rough weekend and I did not even want to go but it seemed like a good distraction. Dave had never really listened to any of her music and I have not in years. Little Earthquakes was my favorite CD for some time as a teen, and it was my favorite thing to listen to as I shredded Kleenex wet with tears and snot. I think I cried more in one year as a teenager than I have in the past ten. So needless to say, I am not really in That Place anymore emotionally. But I still think she has a really beautiful voice and I had heard her concerts were entertaining.
Little did I know that I would spend most of it laughing hysterically. I honestly thought I was going to pee myself. By the end of the night, my whole throat and head hurt from trying so hard to laugh silently. What was so funny?
Tori Amos kept doing this ridiculous dances. She would stand up before a song and turn her back to the audience in these wierd Spacesuit jumper outfits and start shaking her booty. Only thing, is that she could not shake her booty properly and the result was just sad. Then she would do this wierd bees are attacking me and I must karate chop them away dance. And every couple of seconds she would jerk her head towards the audience for exactly a second with this wierd grin on her face and then she would just throw her head back the other way. I can't really describe it. I am not sure if she was trying to be artsy or absurd or if she really was aiming for sexy and just falling miserably short. I felt sort of embarassed for her. She plays one grand piano and one keyboard at the same time, but she places them opposite each other so she is forced to straddle this stool and keep her legs spread wide open. It is just the most ridiculous and slutty piano playing ever. It is the only concert I have ever been to where I enjoyed the opening act more than the main performance, and where I was super irritated when the audience cheered for an encore. It was like, enough already! Oh, and then there was the ridiculous light show: there were these crazy strobing spotlights that were shone relentlessly in our eyes. I finally just had to shut my eyes because I could not see anything at all. I think they were meant to distract us from the terrible performance. The music was very good, but I think I would have prefered to just hear it and not see anything on the stage. Which is sort of like just staying home and listening to a CD.
Another thing that made us laugh so hard was the strange assortment of people in the audience. There were some ancient and feeble elderly there. I am thinking maybe they are season ticket holders that just show up everytime the doors open? I bet they did not know what they were getting into. I certainly did not.
Then there was the couple in front of us. This man had an absolute OBSESSION with his date's hair. For three hours he twisted it, pulled it, gathered it into buns, ran it through his hands like a rope, petted it.... Now we were in very close quarters so doing this meant he had to have his elbows slung over the back of his chair and pretty much in Dave's lap. His date just stared straight ahead at the stage. But he, he just focused, with his head completely turned and stared right at her face. Like so much that his face was practically blocking her view. Every five minutes or so he would suddenly jerk his head and look over his shoulder at the monitor, which was behind him and meant that he would have to throw his head back in Dave's lap. Not once, not one time, did his date recipricate and show him affection back. I mean, buddy, if you have to try THAT hard, maybe she's just not feeling it....
Would I go again? Absolutely not. But I think it provided some odd but much needed comic relief. It was sort of that inappropriate funeral laughter. It's not really funny at all, but this just makes you laugh more...

What happens when Mommy keeps the Sabbath...

After the sermon this Sunday on finding balance in your life, I went home determined to take Pastor's Bruce's advice: Whatever work you usually do, don't do it on Sunday. If you are a housewife, don't do any housework on Sunday (he said a lot more than just this and I am just paraphrasing, of course). I normally work harder on Sunday than any other day, just trying to get life in order for the next week. So other than taking care of the kids, giving them baths, and cooking supper, I did not lift a finger. David, however, did: he picked up the living room twice at some point during this day.

I woke up on Monday morning to my house looking like no one had done anything for a week. It kind of makes me wonder what it would look like if I did go on strike for a week. No, in writing this I am not looking for appreciation from Dave. He is VERY helpful and very appreciative of everything I do. I just thought it was interesting! Like would you be able to walk without tripping? Would you have to do the Toy Shuffle?

I sort of have a theory that Anna would just start picking it all up by herself. She is very neat and tidy and has an incredible amount of focus for a toddler when it comes to putting stuff away and organizing toys.

My conclusion to all this is that I think I want to start eliminating some of the stuff I do on Sundays. Like no more grocery shopping, no more detailed cleaning. But I don't think I will ever do this again! It made my Monday SO unpleasant! PS Did you note the roll of toilet paper on the end table? Lovely!

We can live with it, Daddy!

Last week, Dave broke our TV by dropping it face first on the new wood floor! Honestly, my first concern was the floor. The screen did not break, so we thought it was okay. After I finished painting, we went to move it back and plug it back in, and realized that now there are green and purple splotches in the top two corners of any shows we watch. Dave is pretty upset about it, probably because he was the one who dropped it, but I just did not see what the big deal was. I mean, don't we all pretty much focus on the center of the screen?
While I was at church today (Dave and the kids stayed home sick!), Dave was checking out some TVs on Ebay when Jonathan walked in. J:Whatcha doin' Daddy? D:Looking at new TVs, buddy. J:Why? D:Because our TV's broken. J:But we can live with it, Daddy!
I guess he must have overheard me reassuring Dave that we can live with it being broken.

Spaghetti

Jonathan and Anna love spaghetti just like their daddy. They always call it pasta. They both love showing off their new toys, even at dinner. They also made me banana bread that day. Luckily for me, my wife had done all of the measuring, but the kids did all of the mixing.

Dave

Our Annual Garage Sale

Every year, on the first November of the month, we hold a garage sale. Several families pool their junk at my Mom's house. It always winds up landing on Dave and I's wedding anniversary weekend(it is actually today!).
Every year, at the end of the day, my stepdad Ed and I have had the same conversation. I walk in, say thanks a lot for letting us have it here! And he says, was it worth it? And I say, no, of course not, remind me next year never to do this again. And then he says, to my Mom, next year, if you say you're going to have another garage sale, I'll shoot you.
But every year, I fall back into the same old trap! I seem to forget how much WORK it all is and how much DIRT it involves and how I actually have two small children, and it is LUNACY to expect them to make it from seven until four with no one actually being available to watch them. (the first year, Jonathan was literally days old. what was I thinking?)
My husband, who is unfailingly cheerful, said as we were leaving, well, I think that was a success! We brought three carloads over and are only leaving with one.
One thing I will never understand about garage sales is people who do the drive-by: they cruise by at 30 miles an hour and sort of gawk at your stuff, and somehow determine whether or not they want to stop. I always wonder, what is it they are looking for? What criteria do they have to decide whether to spend five minutes pawing through our junk versus, say the neighbor down the street?
Also, you have to understand the garage sale customer. I am talking about the out every Saturday morning-cut you off while driving-speedwalk up to the driveway-elbow you out of the way-fanny pack wearing type of person. If you put a bucket of items out marked FREE!, you would probably not get rid of that stuff. If you put fifty cents on something, you are telling them, hey, this really is not worth anything to me, so why should you want to take it home? No matter how low you price your items, they will always ask you to come down. The secret is to always slightly overprice everything, so that when they ask you to come down from a quarter to a dime, they walk away feeling like they have won somehow. But the real winner is me, because this is just one less piece of crap that I have to dust or trip over! The other interesting thing is that the items that you think will sell are normally the ones you wind up toting to Goodwill at the end of the day. But that bag of bleach stained bathtowels, you can bet someone will be willing to give two bucks for those! The brand new chino pants or polo shirt? No! Those used baby washcloths and burp pads? Yes!
The biggest problem this year for me, other than the fact that my entire family has bad colds, was that I made a pact (with myself) on November 1st that I was not going to make any unnecessary purchases for myself this month. No lipgloss, no shampoo, no hair products, no clothes, nothing! So when I spotted a Vera Bradley handbag in the Java Blue pattern (which I have been wanting!!!) I was presented with a dilemma. I mean, it was brand spankin' new, and these are very expensive(in my opinion!) little bags. Luckily, I was able to barter with the seller of this bag! I gave her one hour of tutoring her son in exchange for her bag. Phew!
PS Jessica if you read this I have a really cute baby Gap sweater vest for Thatcher! He looks so cute in sweater vests!