Please DO NOT update your address book.

The Hubs and I purchased our house October 31 of 2009.  So this year marks the 4th anniversary of receiving Christmas cards from people who think David still lives at our address. We look forward to them each year and I refuse to correspond to tell these lovely people otherwise.

A classy picture card.  Very enjoyable! No idea who these people are.

Believe it or not...this is the "classiest" card we have ever got from them.  

You CAN'T make this stuff up!

Incase you can't see the card well it says:   Happy New Year to our BUDS, while holding cans of Bud Light.
Faces have been covered by opaque purple ovals to protect the absolutely ridiculous.

A Purple Crayon, A Purple Train and his Uncle

The day after Thanksgiving, I sat down with #1 mini and we drafted a letter to Santa.

He asked for the following things:

One purple crayon.  

One purple train  #Charlie

Family: aka his uncle

A purple crayon, a purple train, and his uncle (who lives across country.)  Fair enough little man. 

 I went to his hallway play space and found his purple crayon that he already owns.  I hid it until it made an appearance in the tree Christmas Day.  Done! 

A couple of weeks before Christmas we received a huuuuuuuge train table and buckets of trains and tracks from friends whose oldest mini-human is more a trash truck kinda guy.  These hand me downs did not include a purple train.  So I called Target and asked for the specific purple train.  On Sodor the purple train is called "Charlie" and of course Charlie the train talks (#kidcrack).  $10 for Charlie the purple talking train.  Done!

Luckily for us, his uncle had chosen to fly in for the holiday to meet #2 mini and spend the holiday week with the east coast family.  We told mini-human #1 that as long as he was playing nice and that his uncle was playing nice that there would be a chance that Santa would pick him up in his sleigh.

I love the leverage that we have when Santa has not yet come to town.

Christmas day arrived and we pulled up the driveway to my in-laws house. #1 mini-human burst out of the car and into their house to look for his uncle.  He ran through the front door furiously pumping his arms and calling for him.  He was there!  Then the moment he saw him, like any normally gregarious two year old, he suddenly became Mr. Shy Guy.  He buried his head into my husband's neck for a few minutes and whined in indecipherable mumbles.

As the day progressed, #1 mini talked to his uncle and opened presents with him and even ate his homemade pumpkin pie.  It was such a gift in itself to watch them interact and I felt happy just thinking about the memories that would be generated from this week of visits.

I think the only way the day could have been better (in #1 minis eyes) would have been if his uncle had dyed his hair purple. No pressure uncle.

Postage Due.

So, I was slow to send out Christmas cards this year.  After much procrastination, I finally got my act together I got them done in about one day.  In the era of cell phone photos and then one hour returns on cards it wasn't difficult .  Wally world and I worked together and they were done in about 1.5 hours.  I then sat up bleary eyed after the kids went to bed and addressed them all.  I found stamps and return labels and things were moving along quite nicely.

Then I ran out of stamps.

Side note.....(So the hubs is technically on staff at our church and he and I have been hired/nominated to bring the fun bus to the middle school program there.  So I send out postcards to the kids if they miss 4 consecutive weeks of church.  They say something like, "We miss you, come back, we are doing really fun things, etc etc." So I have stamps to send out the post cards for CHURCH.)

I looked at these CHURCH stamps with hesitation.  I just wanted to get this done.  I wondered if it was technically a sin to use these stamps provided by the CHURCH for my Christmas cards and then replace them the following week.

I decided that God would be ok with it.  'Tis the season, right?!  I slapped those CHURCH stamps on about half of our Christmas cards.  The next day Mini #2 and I drove to the post office and mailed them.

I exhaled, feeling a-mom-mazing that the cards were mailed before Christmas.  I drove about half a block away and then a massive wave of panic came over me.  I started to sweat. panic.  I had made a huge holiday blunder.

A forever stamp is 46 cents.  The CHURCH stamps were 33 cent postcard stamps!  This leaves 13 cents of postage due!  Merry Christmas friends and family.  You owe the post office 13 unlucky cents just to view our cheeseball family santa picture card.... ugh. Happy New Year?

Happy Birthday Jesus!

BEFORE - The Waiting Game. 

AFTER!
Happy Birthday Jesus!

Love.... is Actually....All Around.

Here are my top picks for a well rounded Christmas movie watching experience.  Please note these are not classics, but very well could be...someday. All are fairly current.  So no shooting your eye out or anything.

Elf:  Funny. Who couldn't love Will Ferrell, Bob Newhart and James Caan working out paternity issues between uptight business man, Santa Claus and gargantuan elf.  Besides, the bathroom singing by Zoey Deschanel is so killer.  Is it really her? ahh who cares.

Love Actually: Amazing.  Hands down..The.Best.Christmas.Movie.EVER. Excellent cast, great intertwining story lines.  Girls love it and guys secretly/and or not so secretly love it as well.  A true win! 

Holiday in Handcuffs: While a smidge Unconventional, Melissa Joan Hart explains it all, and well Mario Lopez, I love his dimples.  # TeamSlater.

Cooper's Christmas: A family tapes their Christmas holiday with a camcorder and shit gets craaaaaazy.  Recommended by my sister (aka Lil'Dudah).  Never have I ever watched a "Christmas" movie that is sooooo wrong/raunchy/dysfunctional/80s in my entire life.  

Serenity Now: Confessions of Sleep Regression

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (like the sleep habits of my #2 mini.)

                                                                      *   *   *   *   *

If time travel were possible, I would hop into a badass delaurian and return to 2011 and high five Mini-human #1 who started sleeping through the night (consistently) at 3.5 months.

I remember this fun fact because I read his baby journal last night at 2:30 am when I was awake with mini-human #2.  Now mini #2 is/was the "happiest baby on the block."  Like she watched those suggested DVDs with the S's while she was in utero. (Truth statement: never watched them.)

However, this week girlfriend went from the happiest baby I have ever seen... to girlfriend wants to cut a b*tch every 2-2.5 hours.  Curiously, I consulted google and as soon as I typed in 4 month...google predicted "sleep regression."  Shit.

Google tells me that mini #2 is growing, developing, about to do something a-baby-mazing. I am curious to see what she is using this "wakeful" period to achieve.  Balancing the budget?  Learning Mandarin?  At this point frankly, I would even settle for cutting teeth or rolling over.

Confession:  All I want for Christmas is sleep.  Perhaps 3 days in a row, 6 hour stretches.  Ok, I'll get greedy and qualify that this sleep should occur the three days before I return to work.  Hopefully, Santa will listen and grant me my Christmas wish because I have been mostly good this year.

24 Chocolate Days Until Christmas?

....More like 9 days of shameful binge eating and 15 days without chocolate.....