Things we learned this Christmas. . .

In no particular order, here are a few bits of wisdom we will remember for future years Christmas.

• Santa shouldn't have the same wrapping paper that Mom & Dad have on their presents at home.  Paige noticed this and commented, "Santa has the same paper that we have at home!"  Mental note that he needs his own role of paper next year.
• Elf on the Shelf costs $29.99 and is worth WAY more than that in behavior modification around the holidays.  He disappeared until next year and managed to move each night.
• Separate the children when sleeping at Gramma's house on Christmas Eve--that way when Paige has to blind us with the bathroom light; she won't wake up Cooper at the crack of dawn--or 6:30am
• Get Christmas cards mailed out before Christmas so I don't have to cross out Christmas and put Happy New Years on them like the last dozen I just did tonight!  We ran out of cards and had to make some more.
• Make sure the Wii remotes are charged; as that sucker will be on every night after Christmas since Cowboy feels the urge to master the new games he got.
• Everyone in the world is on the internet on Christmas morning; and Skyping didn't work as well as we hoped.
• Next year--start the prep earlier so this tired out Mom isn't as frazzled as she was this year!  Everything went very well and we had a great time seeing our families; but there was a lot of last minute things going on that I can definitely avoid in the future.  I think I'll aim to have my shopping done by Thanksgiving!

Merry Christmas, and here is hoping by New Year's that the presents, food, etc. all clean themselves up and find a home.

Christmas

 Cooper Christmas morning with his rocking bull.

 Cooper & Daddy opening up some presents at Gramma Shelly's

 Christmas morning--very early!!!!

Christmas Eve playing with a few toys before bed.

Christmas is a 'coming

So Christmas is a week away and the to do list is pretty big yet.  I am a procrastinator for some reason with the 'tasks' of the season.  So we devoted today to holiday baking and making a HUGE mess in teh kitchen.  Cooper helped for a while.  Paige worked on the ornaments we were swirling paint in and decorating.  I forgot to get glaze; so they are one solid color since the silver didn't work.  But a 5 year old's creativity with stickers made up for it.  We have one excited household anxiously counting down the days and one Mom wishing there were more hours in the day!

Our Elf

We finally got our elf.  Thanks to Jackie and Noel for helping us get our new elf, Chester, in time to enjoy him for a few days before Christmas.  I figured getting him for a few days was better than no elf at all.  Paige is at the perfect age for such things; and was SO excited to see him.  We jointly came up with his name and she wrote it in the book he came with.  She spent that first night talking to him and worrying about how he would get out of the box.  Cooper just poked at him behind the plastic sleeve.  Paige had me untie his neck--there was a twist tie holding him in the box.  I convinced her he could until the one around his waist by himself; sort of like a seatbelt.  She found him immediately the next morning on the coat hooks.  He's made it to a different spot each night; but I have heard that sometime there are storms at the north pole and he may be in the same spot.
Cooper was testing us the other night by sort of swatting at the tree ornaments; and Paige just wheeled around and looked at him with huge eyes and scolded, "Cooper--the elf is watching!"  I love the power of the elf.  If only he could stay all year round.

Pictures with Santa

It took me 4 years to get Paige back on Santa's lap; and what a great picture we got.  She went voluntarily and is full of questions about Christmas this year.  I am trying to hunt down an Elf on the Shelf so we can get our own elf.  The drugstore hopefully will have one on Tuesday.  We watched the show on TV about them; and she had huge eyes at the thought of an elf in our house.  We are off this afternoon to get some shopping down and hopefully the rest of our decorations up this weekend.

Inventions

Item 367 I would invent if I had time to create, patent, market, etc.--a self decorating Christmas tree. Or a robot elf that you could buy to just decorate it all for you :)

I am feeling a little grinch-like as I have the fall decorations all down and packed away; and the tree is up and fluffed--and since its prelit--it looks good all by itself with no ornaments. I am not wanting to go drag up a zillion boxes and make the huge mess.

Big day tomorrow--pictures with Santa!

Cramming

So I have been out of college for . . .8 years now.  Wow, I must be a grown up now.  So its been a while since I have had to study for much of anything.  Occasionally for things at work; but its not really a test situation--just new methods, rules, etc.  There was an exception last week as I found out I would be getting some insurance licensing in a hurry.  There was a miscommunication with some outside people; and they thought everyone attending this meeting/starting this new area was already insured.  So I needed to study about 500 pages of material and pass 2 standardized tests at a test center in Bismarck so I would be able to proceed.  My superior told his boss how this wasn't terribly fair and he responded that I would do just fine, he was sure of it.  So the pressure was on, gulp.  So starting with the evening of Thankgiving I started cramming.  I went through 2 highlighters, one stack of index cards that I made notes on, and hours spent at the computer doing practice tests.  I had to take the tests on Tuesday; and on Monday I had yet to really pass a practice test.  Wasn't looking too good.  Plus I had been ignoring my family all weekend, and my job duties as I holed up to cram.  Poor Paige just wanted to put up the tree, and told me "Mom, we still have turkeys up, can't we get the Christmas tree up?"  I felt like a bad mom, but told her we were getting a new one when Mommy was gone most of this week up in Bismarck.  Tuesday morning came, and at 6am I was on the road trying not to let my test anxiety get to me.  I arrived with time to cram for about an hour and a half.  I don't know if it helped; but I passed both tests! Yay.  Pressure gone.  I learned two major things (other than all the insurance jargon).  1.  I don't know how people have children in college and manage to be students and parents--major kudos to those people.  2.  I can still fall asleep on textbooks after a mere 5 minutes of reading ;)