Christmas Program and Comcast

Well today there were 2 things in the advent box. 1 said go to kid's Christmas program and the other said there would be a gift here after co-op. So when they got home today I said you have 5 minutes to find your gift. They asked for clues and I said it is for the whole family and it's in the family room.

Well they found the Comcast box right away, but they didn't know what it meant.
I told them to turn on the TV.

They were so excited! Ashley kept saying over and over again, "Is this a dream?" In the attempt to find something cheaper I found a deal where we get a lot more channels, faster internet and home phones that can call long distance. For the first 2 years it is actually cheaper then the 3rd year it is about the same as we have been paying.
I'm tickled about how fast these pictures loaded on here.
I knew the kids would be excited so I told them it was an early Christmas present.

Then the kids had their Christmas ballet program tonight. It was so cute!

And here you can watch their little program:

Build a Bear and Zhu Zhu pets

December daily 7,8 &9

Tuesday- Rent a Redbox movie.

Wednesday- Early Christmas present go to Build A Bear. They were beyond thrilled- we had to get dressed and get out the door before I'm usually up in the morning.

Ashley got a tiger and named her Sarah. Then she got Safari clothes for her.
Mason actually bought this moose when it was $5 on black Friday. But since they didn't have it at the store I got it online and that day I bought him a horse. His horse's name is cupcake (not pictured) and his Moose is named Hal.

Aussie got this fennic fox and named him Keaton.

Yesterday was also an awesome deal day. At CVS Zhu Zhu pets are on sale buy one get one free. And I had a coupon buy 2 get one free. So I got 4 Zhu Zhu pets for the price of one. But even better than that, I went to pay, I gave him my coupons and my extra care bucks and brought the total down to $5. I handed him my credit card and then he pulls out his wallet and puts $5 in the drawer. I asked him if something was wrong and he said he pushed the wrong button and there was no charge for me. Thank you CVS manager for buying our Zhu Zhu pets. :)

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Today Thursday- Go to Christ Church and play at the indoor playground. During the morning we worked on cleaning the family room and trying to declutter some of their toys. They don't like to get rid of anything.
Then when we got home and the above mentioned Zhu Zhu pet...
Where it is clearly marked AND I mentioned to the kids 2 or 3 times...

got stuck in Ashley's hair. I tried to get it out without cutting. a big wad of hair just came out.

I've got lots of cleaning to do for tomorrow's early present. I better get off of here.

December Daily-Day 6 Panera

Today's activity in the Advent boxes said, "Go to Panera and get a treat."

So that's just what we did today.

Mason and I like the chocolate pastryAnd Ashley and Aussie like to get the big cinnamon roll.

The next few pictures are still in Panera, but first I want to tell you what one of the clerks in JoAnn's said to me. She was telling me about her children that are 14 and 16. And she said and they are just now getting to where they are not fighting all the time.

In which Mason excitedly said...

"Ahhhh we got 8 more years!"

Deck the Halls 2010

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care.

You may notice something that hasn't been seen in 7 years. I took down the board covering the fireplace. Greg's not too happy about that saying it will let in too much cold air, but he reluctantly agreed. So down it came. I suppose I'll put it back up after Christmas.The kids decorated this tree. I just helped a bit by putting some up on top where they couldn't reach.
Shaggy hair is in style and all the girls LOVE it. I don't mind it except I hate not seeing his eyes.

I decorated this one. It is my snowman tree- only snowmen and snowflakes. Last week the kids made these paper snowflakes and I sewed them together and hung them around the living room.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

It even snowed today- just a little flurry but still pretty.

Yuletide Saturday

Well Saturday proved to be a much better day. It certainly was a busy day.

Aussie had a class project due in Chinese school. So all of us went to the presentation. His is very impressive and I hope Greg will load it onto YouTube soon so that I can share it. He drew a comic book. I helped in the coloring of it. And Greg took all of Aussie's pictures and put them in an animated PowerPoint presentation. Then Aussie and Greg spoke the words in Chinese. It is really adorable.The first student was a Chinese chef for his project. He created 3 Chinese dishes and the two that I ate were VERY good. He did it all by himself, with a little help from his Mom. He also spoke Chinese very clearly. OK so I was about to say he spoke it very well, but quite frankly I have no idea whether he was saying things correctly or not, but he was confident and it sounded good. This sweet girl sang a Chinese song and her little brother joined in.
This little girl was very quiet and shy. She introduced her family members in Chinese. She just graduated to this level so she is a newbie.

This is Aussie's teacher Jennifer Bai. She is absolutely THE BEST teacher. So good that Greg and Sam's parent's decided to keep our kids in her class another year. She is teaching different things this year so it was fine to do so. She challenges the kids and is so encouraging.

This little boy has so much personality. He comes from a home where Cantonese is also spoken. He gave an example of the differences between Mandarin (Which is what the kids are learning here.) and Cantonese. There is a big difference.

This is Sam, Aussie's best friend.
He did a PowerPoint presentation that he put together all by himself. It was quite impressive.

This boy was as prepared as everyone thought he would be. He chose poems out of a book, that he read to the class. OK- not so bad except that they were songs that the class already learned and performed.
A funny thing or sad thing depending how you look at it, one child asked every kid how long it took them to prepare. One child said 2 weeks, Aussie said every bit of time that we had and this child said 15 minutes.

My afternoon was a bit of a wild goose chase. I got a tip that pillow pets were $5 at Toys R Us and although I was no where near Toys R Us I immediately set out to get there. The store was so extremely crowded. It was worse than Black Friday. When I got there pillow pets were not on sale. Maybe they were on sale the day before but they were not Saturday. Someone else told me they had them at Dollar General. Even though they were the same price as everywhere else I have seen them I had a $5 off coupon only to be used on Saturday for Dollar General. So I went to 3 DG stores before I finally found one and bought it.

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I got home with about 1 1/2 hours until the next event.

I finished up the aprons so that I could take them to my friend that evening. (I was cutting the loose strings all the way there.)

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In the evening we went to Mansker's Yuletide Fest.

Colonial garb is encouraged but not required.

Aussie's girlfriend dressed for the occasion.

She is such a pretty little girl.

It was to be a Girl Scout event but only three families came.

This is Melody (Kadence's sister). Near the end of the program, she got out her violin and played with the musicians. She was quite good.

It was cold. This is one of the more fun things that we did. It was a short ride but still nice. I couldn't get a picture of all of us on it, so this picture of strangers will have to do.

I enjoyed the caroling, but I'm the ONLY one in my family who enjoyed it. We sang 4 songs and then left that area.

The girls were trying to run away from my camera, but I caught them this time.

Now the very favorite part of the fest was the dancing at the end of the program. Aussie begged to stay the entire time. He pleaded, "When do I ever get the chance to dance with Kadence?" He had a blast and I enjoyed watching him have so much fun!

It was very cold outside.

December Daily- the first 3 days.

Well we are officially into the Advent Season. I created this cute advent calendar last Saturday while at a friend's house. Each box has an activity written in it. Some will be ultra fun things we will do, some will be planned activities and others will be service oriented.Day One- Write a letter to Santa. I got eyerolls on this one. Probably because I asked them to do it 2 or 3 times already and no one would do it. Ashley didn't want to do it because she says she can't spell well. So she drew pictures and I helped her some on the spelling. I did not help her on the letter reversals. Poor girl, she is getting better but the dyslexia is really hard on her. So when you see that she wants a rodot dog no leash, she means a robot dog on leash.
Mason wrote his out with no pictures. I've asked him to draw something on there. I haven't gotten it back yet. And I've asked Aussie to color his. So those two will be shown later.

Day 2- Go See Despicable Me at the $1.50 theatre

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Greg's car wouldn't start. His battery was completely dead. So he took my car to work. Both of us changed our plans around. He was able to come home early and work from home and we went to a later show. It was a hard day. Everybody was crying for one reason or another. I don't understand why Mason has been crying over his math lately. He is so good at it, but he just cries and cries saying it is too hard.

Day 3- Decorate!

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It's been another hard day!

Nothing seemed to go right. Everybody was picking on each other. New battery for Greg's car...Merry Christmas! Bah humbug!

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I went to Kroger and one of coupons was rejected and one of my e-coupons didn't even come off. I was to make $7 profit, but I only ended up with $3 profit. True not so bad, except that they don't just give you cash back the money goes towards other groceries. So I was stuck buying $8 worth of groceries when I only intended to spend $2. That was kinda stinky!

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Then I went to Walmart.

They did not have the two toys I went to get. I bought the kids How to Train A Dragon figures. There were 4 different kinds so I got one of each and thought I would split them up with Ashley getting 1 thing different and Aussie getting the other thing different. Turns out they all want the same dragon. Drats! I only had one, so I need to buy 2 more. They are only $3 but Walmart was sold out. I'll try a different Walmart another day.

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Then when I picked up the kids from co-op we came home anticipating a night of decorating.

The kids cleaned the area in which the tree would go. During that time everyone fought. No one would turn off the Wii because someone else turned it on. So the Wii was put in time out. There was much much crying.

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There was a big package on the porch.

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I took it directly upstairs to see what goodies came and the order was WRONG! I was so upset! I ordered Build-A-Bears unstuffed, because the stuffing part is what makes it so special and they all came stuffed. I waited on hold for 35+ minutes. They told me I could take them to the store to get them unstuffed. So trying to figure out WHEN I could do that without kids knowing or seeing was going to be a trick. I thought I would have to go tonight. But it turns out that I can go on Sunday.
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Greg is recording we need to be extra quiet. I ran out of Christmas lights. Greg needed something from Walmart. So I took the kids out with me to Walmart. I got some lights, and I treated the kids to ice cream at the McDonald's inside Walmart.

Got home close to 10 and told them all to go to bed.

So tonight I still have this:

Trying to salvage any part of the rest of this day I decided to work on a project I'm making for Ashley's girl scout troop. There are 6 girls and I have decided to make them aprons. One of the other ladies is going to embroider their names on them. I thought I had time, but I need to get them to her tomorrow. Rushed but still relaxing (well except for the few mistakes I made and had to do over.) So I have all 6 pretty much done. I need to add pockets to them, but I can do that tomorrow. Tomorrow is a pretty packed day. We are doing several special things. So praying that tomorrow is a much better day.

So far this advent I feel like I've bombed. {sigh}

It's nearly 3AM and I need to get up early.

Pray for me.

Pray for us.

Pray that tomorrow will be a good and successful happy day!