Happy Holidays!

So, I stayed home sick today from work. After a four hour sleep in and three pain pills, I was feeling quite a bit better. Enough to brave the cold and get those last two elusive gifts. Actually they were only elusive because every time hubby and I had time to go shopping, Jack Frost decided to snow on our parade! The stinker! Anyway, all of the christmas shopping is done for our family, I jsut have to make one Christmas gift for Grams and pick up two five dollar grab bags, but I don't count them yet, because they are for the weekend after Christmas, and its best to shop the post christmas sales for that!
I've been keeping up pretty well with the wrapping too! I'm excited that I'm staying a bit ahead of the game this year, but we'll see how things go this week. Hubby, Papa and Uncle Scott along with Uncle Larry added 2x8s to the ceiling of our bedrooms to get them up to code and then added a rail to the small steps leading out of our new sliding doors. Hopefully we can get them inspected this week and start adding the insulation. Its pretty cold with no insulation in those walls! Anyway, I have some laundry to fold before I go to bed. I hope everyone had a great weekend! Blog on!

I did it!

I'm so excited! I feel like I've just run a marathon! Not because I'm so tired, but because of the sense of accomplishment! I steam cleaned the carpet in my family room! How exciting! I guess it doesn't take much for me to get excited these days. I also finished wrapping the gifts that I had. All that's left is my mother and my mother's mother to do! (Do you like hearing that I saved the best for last Nana?) I'm pretty sure I know where to get them, its just finding the time to get there! Nana and Papa are coming down on Friday and Saturday this weekend. How exciting! Jeff, Uncle Scott and Papa are coming to help work on the house and Nana, Alaina and I will get to do girly stuff. Well, at least we'll get to play, eat and nap. We'll see about the rest.
Alaina got a gold star note in daycare. She was happy and all smiles all day yesterday. This morning however was a different story. She must have had a happiness hangover because she wasn't very happy to wake up and see daddy and me. She keeps waking up earlier and earlier this month. I can't decide if its because she's going to bed too early or too late.
Alaina's present that I ordered from Avon arrived today. I ordered her a book with a little light bright peg board attached at the top. It plays music and had stories about the Disney princesses in it. I'm excited to give it to her!

Fine!!!!

I'll have you know that I posted my picture of Alaina before I saw this Stacey! For those of you wanting to know what's going on, Stacey lets me use her photobucket account to get pics ready for my blog and today when I logged into the account I found this as the last loaded picture from her. I didn't see the personalized message until after I posted my pics. ppppppppplllllllllbbbbbbbbbbbtttt! :p

If you can't read it is says, "Everytime Katie doesn't post pics of Alaina, God kills a kitten. Please think of the kittens."
HA ha. Very funny sis.

Gift for me!

And here it is! The purse I bought with my Christmas money from Grams. This might be the first purse I've ever spent more than $20 dollars on! Its my cool mommy bag!

And check out my cool woven hay wall paper? I've finally decided that my wallpaper inspired the famous hay wall on Trading Spaces.

Christmas shopping!

With the snow yesterday,Jeff decided his car wouldn't get him to work, so he stayed home with Alaina and I. This of couse meant Christmas shopping! Yay! We went to the mall until Alaina got too tired to function politely, and then Mommy got to come back and finish the job! I'm so excited to be close to done this early in the year! All that is left are my parents and the grandmothers! This is going to be great! If I get myself in gear, I'll even get the presents wrapped tonight! Jeff is incharge of getting a few things for his Dad yet and the Dangler grab bag gift. I think I'll wait for the day after Christmas sales to see what I can get for mine. Yay!
I have to ask the Mommies a question, how much do you spend on your kid when they are under the age of three at Christmas? Alaina will probably understand a little better what is going on this year (no tears hopefully). But honestly, how much does one shell out for gifts? Its tough for me to decide, because I always remember getting what seemed like a lot of gifts when I was little, Of course I can only barely remember Christmas when I was three, so only Nana and Papa can tell me for sure what I got.
p.s. regarding pictures, I'll try to get that pic of Alaina feeding bear up tonight, but no promises Nana!

Happy Hanukkah!

I don't celebrate Hanukkah, but I thought it would be a good idea to wish everyone a good one! I don't know why I like to wait until the last minute to do things. Actually, yes I do, I am the queen procrastinator. I need to work on my prep times and organization next year. I keep saying what ifs and whens to get me through the day and it has to stop. I'm getting better, but with us still being ousted from our bedrooms due to construction and Alain being sick, things only seem to be getting worse. She sleeps right below the living room and beside the laundry room. She doesn't always wake up when the floor creeks and when I run the washer, but it seems to always happen that way when she's sick. She's so tired these days. I hope she gets to feeling better soon. Meanwhile, the laundry is piling up and I really want to steam the carpets in the Living room! Oh well, maybe after the holidays.
I have a speech to deliver tomorrow. . .that I haven't written. I console myself with the fact that its only 5-7 minutes and I'm talking about how people should lose their fear of Shakespeare. I could write the speech in my sleep, the delivery on the other hand is the problem.
Then there's the workouts. Jeff and I signed up at the beginning of the year for a gym membership. both of us get paid back by work, but he gets a lump sum, I get paid per quarter, provided that I workout 25 times a quarter. I missed last quarter and waited too long this time, so now I have 20 workouts to do before the end of the month. take out the 4 days that I'll be home for the holidays and I'm pretty much stuck working out everyday til the new year. Wish me luck!
Anyway, I'm getting busy shopping for the holidays, collecting lists and getting gifts. I wanted to start wrapping presents early this year, but with a kitty and kid attrached to bright shiny things, maybe not such a good idea. I've started a daily ring around the tree tradition. I circle the tree looking for fallen ornaments and try to find their missing hooks on the floor or on the tree. Be the end of the year, I should be able to win a needle in a haystack competition! Post on ladies!

Opa!

Jeff and I could have been an add for My big fat greek christmas this weekend. Well, not really, but we went all out with the weather being bad and I got all of the holiday decor up in the house, except the kitchen. Does anyone else have that room in the house that seems to swallow up the holiday decor? And by that I mean, no matter how much holiday decor I put in the kitchen, I still can't see it! That icky goose wallpaper is just too loud! I mentioned to Jeff doing the sin of all sins and painting the wallpaper (GASP!) just so I don't have to look at ducks until we can afford to do the kitchen the right way!
The greek part of the weekend was courtesy of the Parthenon. We love the Parthenon restaurant and we decided to do curbside for lunch on Sat because I didn't want to cook, and then Jeff thought we should do it again on Sun, so we did! We got the same thing both times (We are creatures of habit) and I'm planning on trying to make the greek dips that I got for a friends party, we'll see how they turn out!
Anyway, the highlight for me was yesterday I got a call from the Chefs (for lack of better term of who they are and wanting to keep anonymity). A new vineyard was just opened on East Adams and 162nd street out in the country. It is called Deer Springs and they had an open house. The Chefs were going and invited me along! Jeff stayed behind to monitor Alaina's naptime, Thanks Honey! They had free snacks, free wine tastings and mulled wine. It was all good! Most of their wines are dry, and dry wines tend to go to my head quickly, so I had to stop drinking the mulled wine or I wouldn't have made it through the day! I bought a bottle to bring to Christmas at my parents. Its called prarie sunset and has just the right amount of sweet/dry ratio that I think everyone will enjoy it!
Oh and a quick Alaina note. We danced to Christmas music and she had fun giving her bear sips of her milk! Pic to follow!