My totally unexpected present

From my super-incredible husband:

The bow wouldn't stick in the rain.

Christmas approaches!

The final days leading up to Christmas are just as exciting to me now as they were when I was a kid.... Just for different reasons now. I hope I can pass that on to my own kids. In the meantime - the house is decorated and the lights haven't burned out yet despite all the rain and wind gusts.

The tree is up and decorated now as well. I am quite proud of myself as I allowed the kids to hang the ornaments by themselves this year. Yeah - I know.. I'm one of those terrible perfectionist types who wants ornaments organized by size and color and such. I really didn't interfere this time though aside from the occasional shout of "Don't forget - dangly ornaments on the short branches....."

I don't think I'll ever have the strength to give up the light-stringing part of this tradition.
We'll see.

Mental note: Next year don't put the Advent wreath directly under the A/C vent.

Happy Birthday, William!

Happy 11th birthday to William - wow, time flies. Weren't you just a baby recently?

For William's birthday we rounded up our kids and a few children from the neighborhood and put them in a large cage. Okay... Not really.

Instead - Dave rented this absolutely enormous bouncy thing from a local hardware store. Dave tells me they put it in the Suburban with a forklift. Uhm.. Dave didn't have a forklift to get it out -- just me. It was great though - the kids love this stuff... And an 18-foot inflatable thing with a whale on top makes much more of an impact than a couple balloons and party hats you know. Getting this thing deflated, rolled up to Suburban size and loaded back into the car was a feat which deserves its own blog post -- but you wouldn't believe me without pictures. Pictures that I couldn't take because we were accomplishing this amazing feat around midnight in the middle of the road in front of our house. No one was permanently injured or arrested.

Yvonne.

George.

William likes guns.

Scranton's @ downtown Pascagoula is already decked out for Christmas.

Taking pictures of Christmas lights at night from a moving vehicle is difficult.

The purpose of our excursion: to take the girls out in the freezing cold night so that they could mail their letters to Santa Claus. :)