Back in the groove...

We're back home now and beginning to get back into our daily "routine", (I like to fool myself into believing that our madness has some type of order to it so that it deserves to be called a routine.) We got back home on Saturday night. Our trip back down here was uneventful, thanks to Benadryl! ;-) Emma did much better coming back home than she did going up to AR. On the way up there she cried probably 13 of the 16 hours we were in the car. It was pure misery! That is, until I remembered that I had packed a survival kit of all types of goodies...cough medicine, benadryl, tylenol, motrin, benadryl itch stick-cause LORD help us if one of them has an itch! ha! ~Donna, you and Laura know exactly what I'm talking about! Anyway, once I remembered that I had benadryl, I yelled to Nathan over the whining and crying to "Pull over!" When I told him that I had benadryl in her bag that I could give her to help her calm down and get to sleep, he almost stared a hole through me. He was a little perturbed that we'd had to endure hours of endless crying before I remembered. In my defense though, I'd had a REALLY LONG day that day (Taylor's Christmas program and party that morning, packing, packing, packing, loading the car, etc...)and I've developed a "sanity saving mechanism" since becoming a stay at home mom that allows me to tune out pretty much anything! It's quite nice! I knew she was not sick or in pain and there was nothing I could do to make her happy (she wanted OUT of her seat!) so I just tuned her out and stared out the window in deep thought and relaxation. After we pulled to a stop on the side of the road, we both quickly agreed that she seemed to have the sniffles and her "allergies" must be bothering her. (I have to do that to justify to myself giving her medicine.) So for the next 3 hours, we had some peace finally.
We all had a good time while we were there. The time always seems to fly by way too soon and we never get to see everyone that we wanted to see or do all of the things that we want to do while there. You really start to miss and appreciate things that you've had all your life once they're taken away. Things you didn't really know to appreciate in the first place. (...like hills and trees and cold weather, in my case.) We started off with our Christmas celebrations the day we arrived. We got to Mom and Dad's that morning around 4:30 am. (Praise God for Nanas that will get up and occupy the grandgirls at that hour and let the parents go to bed.) That night we had Christmas with my Dad's side of the family. They do "Dirty Santa" instead of drawing names. It was fun, for some of us-(I got a Lampe Berget and Nathan got a tool set!!) However, I don't think my Mamaw "gets" the game and every year she gets a gift that she "can't use" or "doesn't want". We've tried to explain that that happens when you play dirty santa...you don't always get something you necessarily want. It was quite an ordeal. Several of us suggested that next year she should not play the game with us, we'll all just bring her a separate gift. Maybe that'll work out better. She usually tells us, though, that she'll put our name on the gifts we give her so that we'll get it back when she dies. Ha! In fact each one of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have things in her house that have our names on them. I have an early 1990's model stereo system that is a combination record player/tape player. It stands about 4 ft. tall and has a pair of 4 ft. speakers that go with it. 15 years ago, I was excited when she told me that it would be mine when she died. ~however it felt a little morbid and weird. God love her! Taylor gets a little weirded out some times when she starts telling her things that she can have when she dies. She doesn't know whether to be happy or sad about it so she just kinda looks at her confused like and says "okay." One time a couple of years ago, when we were pulling out of her driveway, Taylor asked me when Mamaw Ford was going to go see Jesus. I said "I don't know. Why are you asking me that?" She said "because she told me that she's ready to go see him." That started a whole discussion that I was not prepared for! Okay, off this rabbit trail and back to the subject...

Monday we had Christmas with Nathans parents and then later with his Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Nathan and I got a Nintendo Wii game system from his parents. It is so much fun! He and Taylor and I have had the best time with that thing! Taylor and Emma got lots of fun stuff too. "Lots" is quite the understatement there! At Nathan's Mamaw's house we draw names. My sister-in-law had my name and she gave me a monogrammed apron that is SO cute and a new cookbook (do you think she read my last blog before getting my gift? ha!) The cookbook is really interesting. It's by Jerry Seinfeld's wife, Jessica Seinfeld. It's called Deceptively Delicious and in it she shows you ways to fool your kids into eating vegetables by pureeing them and hiding them in different foods. I read the whole book before we left to come back home and in the car on our way home, I planned out our menu for this week using several of her recipes. Monday I went to the grocery store and then all afternoon long, I was roasting, steaming and pureeing all kinds of vegetables! ha! I pureed spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potatoes and carrots. While I was in there pureeing the vegetables so that I could hide them in her recipes, my girls were coming in there grabbing the raw broccoli, cauliflower and carrots and eating them. Several times I asked myself "Why are you doing this when obviously you don't have a problem getting them to eat vegetables! They're eating them raw without even dipping them in ranch dip!" But, I figured it couldn't hurt to add in more veggies to our diets. That night, I made her meatball soup that had sweet potato puree in the soup and meatballs ~it was really good! We all really liked it. I also made her brownie recipe that, get this, has pureed spinach and carrots in it! You don't know how hard it was for me to stir that bright green stinky pureed spinach into my chocolate brownie mixture! I was sure I was completely ruining a great thing. I felt like I was committing a terrible sin doing that to perfectly good chocolate! They baked up nicely and smelled good, much to my surprise. In her recipe she says to let them cool completely before serving so that the spinach taste will disappear completely. Now tell me who can NOT eat a nice warm brownie right out of the oven?! I certainly don't possess that kind of willpower! I decided to try a hot one and OMG was it good!! I was so surprised and impressed that I had to try a few more just to make sure they really were that good! ;-) I took one to Nathan to let him try. He'd passed through the kitchen several times while I was in my pureeing frenzy. He would just look at me with wide eyes, thinking I'd lost my mind. He did ask me what in the world I was doing to those vegetables! ha! When I brought him the brownie, he looked it over, smelled it and then asked "What'd you put in this?!" I refused to tell him what was in it until he tried it. Cautiously he took a bite. Said "Mmmm" and took another bite. Once I was sure that he liked it, I told him what it had in it. Then of course he turned up his nose and just said "Why?" I told him that it made me feel better when I ate half the pan in one sitting to know that it was "healthy!" ha!
Okay, back to Christmas...That night we left Nathan's grandparents and went back to my parent's house. The next morning, we all got up to find that santa had come. The girls were opening and strowing toys from one side of the room to the other. It was so much fun! Tommy & Lesley were there too. My kids wake them up and they sit there on the couch wide eyed and drowsy watching my girls tear through their gifts. I think there are lots of times when my girls make them feel grateful that they don't have children yet! ha! After we opened all the gifts and enjoyed Dad's annual Christmas breakfast, we got the Wii out and we all played it all day long. We all stayed in our pajamas till late that afternoon. It was nice!
The day after Christmas, Nathan and I went to Branson for a couple of days for our anniversary which was on the 19th. We had fun. It snowed on us on the way up there! It was so pretty! We shopped the whole time. I'm blessed to have a husband who loves to shop at outlet malls! He was so good too...I was shopping in several different shoe stores and he was helping me by holding my purse and bringing me shoes to try on that he thought I'd like. He never once got impatient, even after I had tried on nearly 10 different pairs of tennis shoes and then decided not to buy any of them! ha! You can surely tell how I feel about my body right now based on what clothing I bought for myself. I bought two knit jogging suits and 4 pairs of pajamas! The pajamas were on sale and were a great price or I wouldn't have bought that many...maybe. I wanted to buy more of them, you know, one for each day of the week but I stopped at 4 after seeing Nathan's expression when he saw I was carrying that many. He couldn't believe I was using my Christmas money to buy pajamas. That just blew him away. I explained what a bargain they were and showed him how cute they were (you know he was really won over by that one! ha) and that they'd last me 10 years, as that's about how old my others are. (Don't even go there with that mental picture! Trust me!) Before we left town coming home I wanted to ask him to take me back to old navy where I could pick up another couple of pair of them but I decided I may have to do that when we get home, by myself. (hee hee!) We didn't go to any shows or anything. We'd planned to go to a movie one night since doing that is a rare thing for us but Nathan got a phone call from a friend as we were arriving at the theater telling him that a guy he used to be good friends with had drowned while fishing at lake DeGray. After that neither of us felt like doing anything. We were so shocked and so saddened by the news. Aside from having Christmas with my Mom's family, the rest of our holiday vacation was pretty emotional. We had Christmas with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Hope at my aunt Donna's house. It was a lot of fun, as always! Then on new years eve we attended the funeral. It was really sad. He had a wife, 4 year old daughter and 5 month old daughter. Nathan and I still can't believe that he's gone. He was so much fun to be around and was always joking and laughing. He'll truly be missed. That night we went out to eat with some friends and to a movie. We saw I Am Legend. If you've not seen it, DON'T GO! I HATE scary movies, for obvious reasons if you've been reading my blogs very long, and in this one, I had my jacket over my face and my ears plugged almost the entire time! It was awful!!! New years day we ate lunch at Nathan's parent's house with all of his family. We had all of the traditional foods that you have at new years. It was really good. Again, I ate way too much! The next day I was playing with the Wii and I figured out that it has a slot for you to put your sd card from your digital camera and it has a program that you can use to play around with and create slide shows with your pictures. Well, I was messin' with my camera and thought I was editing one picture and I deleted EVERY picture on my camera. It made me sick. I wanted to puke! I lost every picture from Taylor's Christmas program at school, all my Christmas pictures, Christmas morning, pictures from Branson and of the snow. Gone, all gone! I still can't think about it much or I just want to cry. Luckily Nathan's mom took some pictures of the girls opening presents at her house and then we have video of the girls waking up to their Santa presents. I am hoping that since it's a digital video camera, I can get some still pictures from it too. I'm not sure how to do it but I'm going to check my manual and see if it's possible.
We had one last Christmas celebration to do. It was with the Hartsells. Deana and I let our kids exchange gifts every year and then she and I do too. Remember those extra pajamas I wanted? Leave it to my best friend to come through for me! She got me the cutest pair of pajamas that came with pants AND shorts! -thinking of her FL friend there. Every year we get each other pajamas and a Christmas platter. We've done that since our first Christmas together. So in addition to my 5th pair of new pajamas, I got an adorable sectioned Christmas tray! It actually matches the tray she gave me last year perfectly! I could cater one heck of a Christmas party now with all my trays...and could do it in my pajamas too!

The girls have both started back to school. They were ready and excited to go back. Although my Christmas trees and decorations are still up, we're beginning to get things back to normal. I'm hoping to get my decorations down tomorrow. Maybe. I dread it. As much as I like decorating everything and putting my trees up, I detest taking it all down and packing it away again. Emma is still singing Christmas carols. She asks every time we get into the car for me to turn it to Christmas music. I tell her every time that the radio stations aren't playing it anymore because Christmas is over. Boy that makes her so mad when I say that. She yells, "No it isn't!! It's still cwistmas!" Today she was singing Silent Night. She's a lot like her daddy when it comes to singing the right lyrics. She just makes up words that sound like the right ones. Her version of Silent Night goes like this..."Siiii went ment night. Hoe wee ment night. Ahhh, Ahhh, Ahhh...Ahhh, Ahhh bwight. Hoe wee Isabel tenduh an my..." ha! It's hilarious to hear her sing it. I am going to try to get her to sing them on video and then I'll post them on you tube and put the link on here.

Well, I hope things in your life and home are returning to normal and your getting back into your "routine" now that the holidays are over. Good luck with your new year's resolutions, if you made any. Nathan and I joined a gym today. So we're taking the first step. Now if we can just stay motivated through the end of the month. That's usually about as long as it lasts! :)