A Little Christmas Cheer

It's amazing how quickly a mood can be turned around. Especially when you're as lucky as I am and your life is filled with such wonderful people.

I walked out of my front door yesterday and found this little bit of Christmas cheer...I mean, deer waiting for me. He was anonymously left as a gift by one of our neighbors.



I'm almost positive it is the work of the retired Navy man who lives on our cul-de-sac and loves woodworking. He's such a sweet guy.

I love my little deer. These kinds of small acts of generosity touch me more than I can ever say.

Today I got all of my Christmas chores done. The kids and I baked cookies all day. This was the first year where their "help" actually helped me. We had fun and I got twenty dozen cookies baked and packaged to send to our friends and family.

I hope that people accept our cookies as a sweet gift from our hearts. But what our cookies really say is, "We can't afford real presents this year so please accept these cookies which my kids may or may not have coughed all over."

(Just kidding. I was on serious germ patrol.)

We also spent a couple of hours cleaning the house and finally hanging our stockings by the chimney with care, in hopes that St Nicholas would soon be schlepping his or her big butt back and forth to the gift hiding place to drag out and wrap presents until he or she can barely see straight.

At least this year Santa will have help and she won't have to wrap it all up all alone.

And that makes me the happiest of all.

Happy Birthday to the Boy

Yesterday was my son's 7th birthday. That is so, so hard to believe.

Saying my kids are 7 and 9 makes me sound like an old mom. Or at least a mom who should know more and handle things better.

Instead of a party this year, we took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge. For the childless among you, it is a hotel with an indoor water park. It was a huge hit with the kids and we had a great time.

One thing I love about my kids is how much they appreciate the little things. They were thrilled to play miniature golf in the winter and they loved the lame trolley ride around the property. When I looked around the water park and saw hundreds of kids pouting and crying, I have to say that I was extremely thankful for my little family.

My son was happy with three gifts and a cupcake in our hotel room for his birthday.

My youngest is seven-years-old now and I am excited about it. I have no regrets about the first nine and a half years of my parenting life (except for choosing their current school) and I am looking forward to the next few years before the teens set in.

Besides, my son is just such a great kid. He's uber polite and very happy. He chooses good friends and smiles through life. He's so smart that it would be easy for him to be serious and alone, but he's always reaching out to people.

People always say that he's just like me and that is about the best compliment someone can give me.

Happy, happy birthday, baby boy! You are so loved.

Life Under Rocks

I found two cupcakes on top of my refrigerator.

Jackpot! Right?

But I didn't know if my husband had hid them up there for us or if he was saving them for the kids. So I was going to text him.

"I can haz cupcake?"

But I knew he wouldn't get it and I'd get a big ole' "What?" back.

Why wouldn't he get it? Because he lives under a rock.

I've always known this about him. I put up with it. But sometimes it's flabbergasting.

Just the other day I was telling him a creepy story I heard about Tom Cruise buying an engagement ring for Katie Holmes after their first date.

And my husband responded, "So, what? Tom Cruise is married now?"

What the heck? Seriously? Seriously? How could he not know about TomKat? Katie even lived in our former town while filming Mad Money and took little Suri to our Target.

My husband says that he has no reason to pay attention to anything not related to war or hockey. But how could you have ears and eyes and not know about Tom Cruise?

I wonder if he's warm and cozy living under his rock. Or is he cold and alone being the only person in the world to be buried that deep.

Left Behind

This morning I am baking, oh, about a thousand more cookies. This time for the my husband's division.

So I was preheating the oven just a bit ago and it started to smell like Thanksgiving in the house. I figured some turkey juices had dripped on the bottom of the oven, so I opened the door to check.

Nope.

Not turkey juices.

There was a whole casserole dish full of uncooked stuffing in the oven!

Sure we had the stuffing that actually fit in the bird, but I could have sworn we were missing the rest of it. But I was sick on Thanksgiving day and my mother and husband insisted that we were not, so I went with it.

I was denied a whole week's worth of stuffing leftovers!

Stuffing makes me happier than just about anything in the world! Someone is going to pay!

Do you think I'd get salmonella if I cooked it up and ate it now?

My Future Civil Engineer

I spent my afternoon in my son's first grade classroom helping him make his own personal little gingerbread estate. Although truth be told, I did very little helping. My boy is one independent kid.

I had fun. It is a really sweet little tradition. Seeing what the different kids came up with was amazing.

Before he took a little tour around the class and saw what his classmates had done, my son's house was pristine. Every little bit had a story like there was a bear family watching for Santa and a sled to carry presents.

But the other kids' houses were basically huge mounds of candy with arches and steeples. In a last ditch "Oh, I could have done that!" moment he dumped a bunch of candy on his plate.

The whole thing didn't even make it home before he was asking if he could eat it.