Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Christmas Break, part one

Let me start with some good news! Memmie went to the ENT yesterday and found out that her infection is being caused by a tooth. The ENT wants her to have some teeth pulled and he feels like that will take care of the situation. Hallelujah! Hopefully, pulling the teeth will take care of the pain and the infection will then be able to clear up. Mary and Ron are at her house now, so they are taking care of her and making sure that things get taken care of.

We've enjoyed our Christmas break so far and it's only Tuesday night! After Caleb's program and party on Friday, we went to dinner and then drove around to look at Christmas lights. Caleb keeps asking us why we don't have lights on our house. Ugh - I hate to even think about it!

On Saturday, we went over to see Grandma and Ken for a while since she was released from the hospital on Friday. She's doing really well and getting stronger every day. After visiting with them for a while, we made a quick trip through the grocery store to stock our shelves. When we got home, I made some chocolate "puppy chow" and then a chicken pot pie. After dinner, it was time to embark on my adventure of baking with a preschooler. Here's the recipe I decided to use (copied from my Facebook status):

Mix 1 cup of patience, 1 cup of insanity & 1 cup of making memories. Pour half of the bowl on the floor and countertops, pick eggshells out of dough, put the rest in the oven and hope for the best.

It turned out to be a fun time. We did break & bake cookies first, because I figured that would be all the patience and attention span I'd get from Caleb. He surprised me, though. He hung in there for the peanut butter kiss cookies too. I measured the ingredients and he helped me pour them in the bowl, then we did some hand-over-hand mixing. The hardest part was trying to keep him from eating the dough. He did break some pieces of eggshell into the dough, but I think I got them all out. He loved helping to put the kisses on top of the cookies and of course, eating them too.

On Sunday, we went to Ft. Smith to meet the family of Jan's fiance, Bill. Todd & Tammy and their kids and Chris were supposed to be there too, but their flights all got messed up by a huge winter storm on the east coast. Rudy, Caleb and I enjoyed meeting the Beaty family and visiting with them. Later that afternoon, we went over to Spiro to see Grandma and Grandpa Morris. They gave Caleb 2 of the loudest imaginable cars for Christmas and he loves them! I have designated them as playroom-only toys. We stayed at their house for a couple of hours, then stopped at Jan's on our way back to get her car. We drove her car and ours back home so that Chris would have a car to drive on Monday. Rudy picked him up at the airport at 11:00 Sunday night and he slept on our couch.

We got up on Monday morning and hit the ground running. While Rudy went to the dentist, I took Caleb to get a haircut and his follow-up H1N1 shot. When we were finished with those errands, I dropped Caleb off at daycare and picked up Stacy for lunch. After lunch, we went to Hobby Lobby to look for some accessories for Nola's nursery. I hit the jackpot, since almost everything I wanted was on sale 50% off! I dropped Stacy off at home and came home myself to get started on the ultimate to-do list. I worked on Nola's room and several other projects while Rudy cooked beans and cornbread for supper. Ken, Kathy and Grandma came over for dinner and we enjoyed our time with them. Caleb was on his best behavior, which made the evening just that much better!

This morning, Rudy took Caleb to daycare and came home to tackle that stubborn to-do list again. We managed to finish Nola's nursery and I did laundry (including lots of baby stuff). Rudy got all of the baby gear out of the attic so I can start sorting through it and cleaning it up the rest of the break. I also managed to rearrange and clean out a bunch of stuff in my closet to make room for the scrapbook stuff that I had been storing in Nola's closet. Rudy made a run to Goodwill to donate some of the stuff that we could live without. Tonight, we had leftovers for dinner and continued to chisel the to-do list. Caleb was excited about all of the baby stuff and wanted to help me put away all of the tiny little clothes and blankets. He was so sweet!

Wow - all of that and we've only been off work 2 days! Tomorrow is busy again. Rudy is cooking a turkey for the church Christmas dinner and I'm helping decorate. After that, I have to go to Sam's to get the stuff that I'm supposed to take for Christmas Eve dinner. I think we'll take Caleb for the annual Santa picture tomorrow since it's our last chance. Hopefully, he'll stay relatively clean at school so we can go right from there. If not, we'll go tomorrow evening. Then, it's actually Christmas EVE! Yay!!!

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