Preschool Christmas Program

Last week was Reagan’s Preschool Christmas Program. She has been looking forward to it for several weeks. She’s been singing and dancing at home and was very particular on what she wore and looked like. But when we got there, she wouldn’t enter the school. Typical Reagan!

I was almost in tears when she finally decided she would go.  Here she is (on the right) with her classmates. This is both AM and PM classes. I was scared she would run to me at any second.

She relaxed a bit and got into the program. She sang and danced and melted my heart!

The kids sang so well, that Santa heard them and made a special stop (or so he said). Their faces were priceless!

Everyone received a surprise out of his bag. I asked Reagan to show me what she got….

It wasn’t until after we took this picture that I noticed the signs that said “please stay off the stage”. Opps! I feel really bad now. Everyone probably thought I was totally rude. Not to mention HUGE! Do I always look this ginormous? I have got to lay off the ice cream, seriously.

We ate some holiday treats, then stood in line to visit Santa. Grant refused to stand in line with us. “This is your chance to tell Santa what you want,” I told him. “He knows when I’ve been good or bad, and he already know what I want!” Grant said. Okay, I can’t argue with that.

Here is Reagan telling Santa what she wants. “Toys, I just want toys.” I guess Santa didn’t like that request, so he asked her, “what kind of toys? what about some Barbie’s or a Pony?”  To which Reagan said, “yes, I want a pony.” A PONY?

Nice, real nice Santa. I wish you would have just left it at “TOYS”

Holiday Essentials

Christmas is overwhelming for me. For everyone… I believe…. right? Or am I the only one?

There are gifts to buy or make, and timelines to get things to the post office, cutting down the Christmas tree, decorating the tree, wrapping the gifts, filling the advent calendar, watching a million Christmas movies, reading a million Christmas books, writing letters to Santa, setting up the Nativity, baking/decorating cookies, viewing neighborhood Christmas Lights, the gingerbread house, making gifts for neighbors, taking a family photo and sending out Christmas cards, baking, baking, and baking, visiting Santa, Christmas parties, teacher gifts before school gets out, oh, and making more gifts.

And this all must get done this month! within only a few weeks actually. and….. ready…… GO……..

Some years I feel on top of things, others not so much. This is a ‘Not-so-much’ year. We are just sticking to the essentials.

Our tree is up and glowing. You would never know from this picture that 2 rows of lights are out. My Dad was here for Thanksgiving and helped us pick this guy out. Our living room is smaller than earlier years so we wanted to get a smaller tree. We ended up getting our biggest tree yet!

The kids wrote their letters to Santa. I think Jefferson has better handwriting than I do.

Santa won’t have any problem fulfilling Reagan’s wishes. Don’t even question the artwork…. I have no idea.

We set up our Nativities. Thank goodness we have 3 sets! Everyone has their own particular idea of how it should be set up.

They did a pretty good job, although Grant might need a little reminder of the Nativity Story.

And we made our Gingerbread (graham cracker) house.

Good thing Shawn was there to scientifically size a cut the crackers to fit the box perfectly.

Honey, your skills are unmatched! Here it is ready to decorate.

And they’re off………

Jefferson was a wild icer. He did a great job. His creative touch was adding a dollop of animal poop behind every animal cracker. nice.

Reagan just like squirting icing everywhere

This was Grant’s contribution….

This is what we were aiming for….

And this is what ours looks like. Better if you ask me. I mean, look at those curtains in the windows… they’re so realistic looking. And ours has a pond filled with huge Swedish Fish in it.

And 2 days later, our Gingerbread house looks like this…. even the animal poop is gone! My kids have no self-control.

Hopefully I’ve redeemed myself from not carving a pumpkin this year.

There’s still a lot more to do (like get Shawn a gift… boy is he hard to shop for) but we certainly won’t be able to do it all this year.  What we have done has been fun, and everyone around here is getting more and more excited for the big day.

Lemon?

I know.

I haven't posted in a million years!

I have had nothing note worthy to talk about. And I haven't taken any pictures since our Disneyland trip.

Not even a single picture of Thanksgiving, or picking out/decorating our Christmas tree... criminal! Oh well.

This would be an upbeat update of the past few weeks.

Except I am in the worst mood ever!

Just minutes ago my sewing maching broke........... AGAIN........ For the billionth time since I got it 3 years ago.

And after almost a month of silence, this is all I can think to post about. Because this is infuriating!!
I'm sick thinking of how much money I have spent repairing this thing!

This isn't some junky machine I found at Goodwill. It was new and really nice! (or so I thought) What is the deal?

The sewing machine is my life-line. I might die without it. In fact, I'm already feeling a shortness of breath.

and does anyone have any idea what this means for Christmas this year???

I rely on this thing for gifts. I have projects up the wazoo ready to be finished.

THAT WON'T BE!!!

I

AM

SO

FRUSTRATED

and mad. I want to chuck the thing out the window! Instead I'm just going to cry. And I don't even have chocolate in the house to calm me down.

Hopefully our next visit shows a happier side of me, and not so disfunctional. But I guess that all depends on whether my machine gets fixed.

Our Disneyland trip in pictures…. 63 to be exact!

Well, I went from 580 pictures down to 159, wow! Do you want to see ‘em all? I knew you wouldn’t. So, I have spent the entire day going through and choosing my favorites to share (it was torture… they’re all my favorite). There are A LOT of pictures. So, I would check out now if I were you. Or stick around if you want to re-live the magic!!

That’s exactly what it was… MAGIC! It’s no surprise, the entire place is perfect…. really really perfect. There is not a single flaw in the place. Nice job Walt! He is my new hero. I have eaten my words for dinner every single night since getting home a week ago. I can’t believe I actually uttered, “I never want to go to Disneyland.” I know why I said it though.… I was imagining getting trampled in crowds of people and dying before I even got to see my grandchildren! I’m so glad I changed my mind. I’m so glad we numbed our butts and went without sleep for 5 days… to experience the Happiest Place on Earth.

Our family saved coins (with the help of my Dad, thank you) for the past 3 years for a vacation. It was to be our “happy graduation” vacation (we obviously took it a little early). I never got a picture of all the coins, but I will say it took us 2.5 hrs one afternoon to count them (yes, I know there are machines that do that). The moral of the story is, save those little coins… they sure add up!

Okay, okay, on with the pictures!!!

 

Oh, and here’s a picture of my mom in the crowds we had to get through… shocking! We walked RIGHT ON to almost every ride. Some had a 5 minute wait (wowzers). Our longest wait was 20 minutes, for Peter Pan!

There’s so much to share, I don’t know where to begin. Well, lets talk about everyone’s favorite rides for starters.

My mom’s favorite ride is Thunder Mountain! This was our first ride of the trip. Shawn and I told the boys “lets go on a train ride,” we didn’t say anything else. Grant was freaked out! Jefferson loved it.

Grant’s favorite ride is Star Tours. Once was enough to make Shawn and I want to puke, but he kept going.

Shawn’s favorite ride is Splash Mountain. This was our second ride, and after the Thunder Mountain scare I was worried that Grant wouldn’t go on it… so we lied to him, again. I told him it wasn’t scary at all. “There might be one part you don’t like, but it’s really short,” It was for his own good…. sometimes you’ve got to just do things to find out if you like  it or not. HE DOES NOT! This picture will forever make me laugh. I don’t think he’s ever been so scared in his life! I’m not as cruel as I sound. And to my defense… he chose to go on it a second time. We went on it several times, and got sopping wet. But it was pouring rain that day, so we couldn’t tell.

My favorite ride is Finding Nemo. It was a nice break from standing and walking all day, plus it was warm and out of the rain. But that’s not the only reason I liked it.… it was charming (I know, every ride at Disneyland is charming. This was the Charmingest!!) It made me smile the entire time. And seeing Reagan’s excitement when she saw Nemo swimming underwater made my heart melt.

Jefferson’s favorite ride was California Screamin’ from California Adventures. I think he went on it 3 times… in a row. I had to beg him not to go on it again.

The boys agreed that the Matterhorn was their favorite ride to go on together!

And Reagan’s favorite ride is Dumbo. “Dumbo, Dumbo Dumbo… I want to go on Dumbo again” We indulged her…. she got her fill of Dumbo! She is so excited to be on the ride she can’t sit still. And I’m thinking I must be the only crazy mom who would take her child on this ride in the pouring rain!

Shawn and Reagan on Dumbo…. on a sunny day. She would only ride in a pink elephant. Spoiled?

There were a couple not-so-fun rides….

The first one was the Haunted Mansion. I don’t remember it being that scary. They’ve changed some things, I swear. I was freaked out and I wasn’t 5.

The roller coaster in Toon Town (I don’t remember the name) was fun for everyone, except Reagan. Look at that face… complete TERROR! The really weird thing is that after getting off the ride, crying, she wanted to go on it again. She did, and was just as scared. She wanted to go again… we said no!

We made a point to see as many characters as we could. The must-sees were: Darth Vader for Jefferson. He was pretty intimidating and refused to sign our autograph book. But he behaved nicer than Darth Maul who threw the book on the ground. Way to freak out my kids!

Lightning McQueen for Grant, who was very disappointed that they didn’t have arms to sign our autograph book.

Rapunzel for Reagan. We waited in line for 30 minutes to see her. Reagan was too excited for words (see, totally excited)… but then totally froze when we entered her house.

And Goofy for my mom… because this is the character she identifies with most.

Our other favorites…. Which reminds me of something that’s been bothering me. Where is Mulan? She is not represented anywhere. I saw every other female Disney character somewhere or somehow. But I didn’t see a single thing Mulan-ish. What is going on?

Every moment was the “best moment”, but there were a couple that took the cake.

Mickey’s Parade was fabulous! And we loved every float, but when the Princess float went by, we all looked at Reagan. Watching her reaction was more exciting. She waved to the princesses like they were best friends. Rapunzel blew Reagan a kiss, and Reagan blew one back. And I captured Cinderella waving at Reagan. She died! I would have paid the entry fee to Disneyland for her to experience that alone!

During a band performance, Pluto ran over to Jefferson. He gave him a hard time because he couldn’t hear Jefferson singing “it’s a small world.” The poor guy didn’t know the words and disappointed a legend. He got a little emotional.

World of Colors was a pretty cool show. Jefferson fell asleep waiting for it to begin. And, I don’t know how it’s possible, but Reagan fell asleep watching it.

 

Shawn walked back to the hotel carrying her on his back.

Well, I don’t know what else to say, I think the pictures are more fun to look at anyways….. so I’ll let the rest of them explain themselves. Here they are, in a totally random order…..

     

         

        

         

  

   

     

3 days was not enough to do everything. Well, we did do everything… but we wanted to do it all twice! (except for the Haunted Mansion, of course)

The kids have already started putting coins into our jar again for our next trip. At the rate it took us to save up for this one, we won’t be seeing Disneyland for at least another 4 years. We’ll sure you miss you!