Yes, but do you like tinsel?

I've determined that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they like to decorate their tree.

The hubster is a colored lights kind of tree guy. I prefer white lights. If given his preference he would throw tinsel over the tree. Me, I think candy canes are a must.

So, we compromise. We have colored lights outside and on an artificial tree in the basement. Our main tree has white lights.

There isn't any tinsel anywhere.

Then there are the blinking light folks. I'm not sure about them!

Christmas

We finally got our tree yesterday. Actually, it doesn't seem that late but it seemed like we were a little behind the times.

We went to a big Christmas tree farms that had horse drawn wagons take you out to the fields.

Sounds pretty idyllic until you are in the moment. We had snow this week and it was about 40 degrees on Saturday so it all melted and left a lovely, muddy mess. It seemed to take a while to find a tree that interested us. Both kids chose the moment we were out in the field of trees to declare that they had to go to the bathroom. There were about a million people there....I guess we weren't the only ones to wait until this weekend to get our tree.

But, we found our tree and headed back to the "barn" for hot chocolate before heading home.

The most important aspect of all of this, the thing that saved our marriage and took all of the arguments out of Christmas? Last year we bought the tree stand with the spike up the middle. This year the farm shakes your tree out, bags it and drills a nice hole up the middle of the trunk for your stand.

We came home, carried the bagged tree inside, lined it up with the spike, and it was in!

There are still the lights to cause some arguments!

Snow Day!

We had our first snowfall of the season yesterday!

Only about 3 - 4 inches but it's is currently about 14 degrees Fahrenheit outside so everything looks beautiful.

The kids' schools are delayed today and that poses a problem. I have a feeling the boy's bus will arrive at our house at the same time that the girl has to be at school (a 15 minute drive away). Not to mention the fact that I am working in the 2 year old class today and need to be there 15 minutes before school starts.

But, we have snow!

The kids only had a little time to play in it yesterday before it got dark. The girl was done after about 15 minutes (too cold) but the boy could have stayed out all night I think!

On another note, this prevents us from putting up our Christmas lights. I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing!

Home again

We survived our trip and had a nice time. Hectic and a bit tiring but nice. The kiddos love, love, love the grandparents and it's nice to see them so happy. We made a trip into Chicago on Wednesday to see Christmas lights and have lunch. Everything took extra long but it was fun. The kids got to see Santa and we had lunch in the beautiful Walnut Room of Macy's (formerly Marshall Field's). At one point at lunch a "Princess" came up to us and asked the kids if they wanted to make a wish (I think she must have been a snow princess or some other Christmasy princess!) The Girl closed her eyes extremely tight and let the Princess sprinkle "fairy dust" on her head. She was so serious about making a wish. When we asked her what she wished for she said, "I wished for sparkles in my hair."

Turkey Day

We're leaving tomorrow to drive 11 hours to my parents for Thanksgiving. I am actually looking forward to it. The kids are pretty good in the car (thanks to numerous snacks and a built-in DVD player) and the Hubster drives most of the way.

There is a lot to do before we leave though and the kids' excitement level is already very high. They both have school tomorrow and the Girl has dance class. I have a feeling they are not going to get much out of the day tomorrow!

Life

I started this thinking I had lots to say. I wanted to have a place to record the kids' lives but also my thoughts. So far I seem at a loss for words. I think too much about what I should "post" about. So I don't end up posting at all.

So, I've decided I'm just going to write and see what develops. It doesn't have to be perfect. Hopefully it will evolve over time.

I have scrapbooks for each of the kiddos that I started when they were born. The boy's first few pages aren't as nice (in my opinion) as the girl's because I had more experience and practice by the time I started her book.

Hopefully this blog will be similar.

A Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst and Ray Cruz. It is one that my kids now enjoy as well.

I guess I liked the fact that this kid had a day that started off badly and continued that way until he went to bed. I remember days like that when I was a kid. I have days like that as an adult.

Yesterday was one of those days. It started off as any day I guess but by the time the Boy got home from school I was frazzled. Add to that the fact that the bus driver shared some recent antics of the Boy.

He has befriended a little girl who has some behavior problems. The difference is that this little girl doesn't really know any better. And the Boy does. So, he has taken to copying her and is getting into trouble.

I think he must have been upset that the bus driver shared is poor behavior with me because he was awful for the rest of the evening. I tried to help him with his "homework" and I was getting so frustrated I caught myself yelling at him. For doing his homework. He is in Kindergarten! But he was not paying attention and it was driving me insane.

Basically he just needed to go to bed but since the Hubster always puts him to bed and he wasn't home from work, that wasn't working.

The Girl was annoying me through all of this because she was trying to get involved and "help".

Once they were asleep I had an attack of the ever present guilt for having such a short fuse with them.

Let's hope today is a better day!