No Peeking!

Gift:
something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone, honor an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance; present.

Yay! We have presents under our tree. None of which will be opened here. All those pretty bows are going to get squashed in transit, I know it. Oh well, it was fun tying them!

A Close Call

While sitting here working on my last post, I almost had a very scary situation on my hands.
This ornament fell off the Christmas Tree.
No, it's not our favorite ornament. It's not even fragile.

I thought it was a bird.

I thought we had a bird in our apartment. In our Christmas Tree.
That ornament took a whole 3 seconds to fall through the tree. This is what ran through my head while it was falling.
ohmygosh its a bird in the tree dave's not here i shouldn't have left the porch door open while i was out there for 30 seconds getting some thyme STUPID there's a bird i can't run for the door the tree is in the way it's an ornament

Bet you didn't know that I'm scared of birds.

Neither did I.

Java

I wasn't feeling well today so I took the afternoon off. I know, you think I'm here frantically knitting away on more hats. But I'm taking the afternoon off from that too. I'm.....reading. Obviously I'm taking a break from that right now as well.

Right now I'm having an afternoon coffee break. If I were British I suppose I would be having "Tea" (And by the capital "T" I mean to convey the whole deal, not just the drink) I LOVE afternoon coffee break. It always reminds me of Mom. I remember her afternoon coffee breaks as a time to sit, relax, read a magazine, talk. She would probably say it wasn't that glamourous, just gathering some strength to make dinner and finish the day. Well, my dinner is simmering on the stove (chicken soup) and I don't really have any more responsibilities today, but I'm still enjoying my "break." :)


Today's blog is brought to you by the letter "C." Special thanks to Sara HuYoung for the Peppermint coffee and to Mom for my favorite mug.

Sugar Plums

Here are some pictures of our weekend. The poor wrapped reindeer was a white elephant gift - lovingly won by a 5 year old girl. She named it Rudolpha, and hugged it so much it started to shed - good thing it wasn't our carpet....

The Dickens Christmas was fun, but there wasn't as much "Dickens" as we were hoping for. We saw Scrooge, Fagen, Oliver, and Dodger, but none of the ghosts of Christmas. We tried roasted chestnuts (which oddly enough tasted like overcooked dry beans [but I liked them]) and sugar plums, which were delicious! Oh, and of course Dave had a huge smoked turkey leg!

We decided to forego the children's musical this evening. We're just a little bit tired after all our fun. We're staying home to eat leftover cheese ball (which is even better the second day!) and hopefully find a Christmas movie to watch on TV. I'm hoping for White Christmas, but Dave, who's really just a big kid, and is eating dry Cinnamon Life cereal and playing video games right now, is hoping for Home Alone 2. I guess we'll see....

Christmas is coming.....

After a long, long week, it's finally the weekend! Last night we had a great time with our friends Ben and Rebekah. They came over for dessert and games, and general holiday festivities. Also, we wanted to show off our tree :) I even showed Rebekah how to cast on for knitting (since she only crochets) so we had fun with that while the guys played some video games. Then we had spiced cider and played card games til way past my bed time. Sounds pretty lame, I know, but after a week of playing hide n' seek and go fish, adult interaction was desperately needed.

I've got another exciting day planned today: knit. crochet. repeat. If only it were that simple....We have a Christmas party to go to tonight, so I'm making my mom's most excellent cheese ball recipe; it's going to be so hard not to dig into it before this evening. We also have to come up with two $2 white elephant gifts. Looks like we'll be making a trip to our friendly neighborhood goodwill store.

Tomorrow we are going to "A Dickens of a Christmas" in a nearby town after church. There will be costumed Dickens characters running around (even the on-duty cops will be in costume!) and Victorian goodies to eat. (What is plum pudding?) Candlelight caroling begins at 5 pm.

Tomorrow night we're going to our church's children's Christmas musical. You gotta love watching little kids dance around on stage while forgetting their lines.....

Yep, Christmas is definitely upon us.

Thanks, Rachel

Okay, appearently it's hard to leave comments on here if you're not a member. Rachel K., however, knows all about this blog stuff. She says the best way is to leave a comment as "anonymous" (you shoudn't have to log in) and just leave your name in the body of the comment -so I know who left it.

Obviously, I'm new to this blogging thing, so thanks for the help, Rachel!

PS - If you live in northern Illinois (and you know who you are) send me pictures of snow!! We're going through withdrawal down here.....

Typical

My days are so crazy. If I didn't have everything written down, there's no way I would know where I'm supposed to be at any given time. I probably checked my calendar 3 times today to make sure I was going to the right place.
Cause of confusion: I'm a part time nanny (for 2 families), childcare worker (at church), house cleaner, and what I'm calling "mother's helper" (for at least 3 familes, but I'd have to check my calendar to be sure.) Here's what today (a pretty normal day) looked like

7Am -Up, Coffee, out the door at 8.
8:30-12:30 Job 1 . Clean a 5000 sq. ft house
1-3 Job 2. Mother's helper. Fold and put away laundry, make school lunches (8 ham sandwiches, 10 baggies grapes, 10 baggies pretzels, 5 baggies goldfish)
3:30-6:30 Job 3. Mother's helper. Hang out with kids (14,12,9) Make cookies with kids, start homework. Clean kitchen.
7:15 Home. Relax.


This does not leave me nearly enough time to work on my Christmas projects! So far I have 5 (and one on the needles) of these hats made for the little kiddies I watch. That only leaves me about 6 or 8 more :P If I promised you a hand made Christmas gift this year, I'm sorry. It might not be done until next year....

Christmas Tree

We got our first Christmas tree today! Even though this is our third Christmas together, this is the first time we've decorated. This year we will actually be spending enough of December in our own home to justify the trouble. We got a great deal on the tree at Home Depot - only $20 for a 7 ft Douglas fir. The smell is amazing. Real trees seem so much more festive than fake. Dave was great at getting it to stand up straight in the stand; I seem to have the VanGilder curse of crooked trees.


Decorating the tree was definitely interesting. Out came our Christmas decorations that we had been accumulating and storing for 2.5 years. Turns out we had 1 strand of colored lights, one of white lights, 8 mini glass balls (thanks, mom!) with no hangers, a box of assorted glass ornaments (some without hangers) and a few ceramic snowmen of unknown origin. It took us a while, but we think we made it all work :)

To those I should email more often, but don't:

This is for you.
I know I'm bad at keeping in touch and sending those nice, newsy emails that we all love to receive. So I'm trying something new. I'll try to keep this blog updated and full of pictures, news, stories, musings, etc. That way all of you will be able to access it, and hopefully we can stay in touch (without you having to wait for me to send an email.)
Hope this works!