The beginning of catch up!

So Christmas came and went... and so did New Years and of course the first few weeks of January! haha. So here I am, again, behind the times, writing about "what" has happened! Goodness me!



For starters, Jordan and Jeramis were off of school/work from 17 December. Needless to say that kept me much busier than usual as there is double (almost triple) the work around the house when everyone is home. We also planned several family trips to keep us going during the break. (details to come)

We had a touch of winter weather with temp's dipping into the high 20's overnight. HAHa, I know, pitiful! I feel for all you who actually have snow to hear me say we have "overnight 20's!" I did manage to capture a bit of the 'cold' expressing itself on our grass blades one morning. But in all honesty I hardly feel like we're in the middle of winter here. We spent most of December and even up until now in T's and jeans... with occasional days of long sleeves but rarely a sweater during the day. While I like the mild weather it only makes me wonder how horrid this summer might be! heh. We did have a splendid Christmas day with temps in the mid 70's. The weather was so nice that I almost forgot it was December! The children and Jeramis loved it.



We decided to have a live tree this year since for the past 8 years we've had artificial trees. The kids and I went out and picked one that we liked and brought it home and set it up. Unfortunately... live trees and desert = bad combination. Despite tons of watering and the 'longer life' powder... our tree was pretty much dead by Christmas day. We still managed to leave it up until after my birthday but it was quite brittle... so we didn't use the lights much at all by that point! hah. Despite it drying out it had such a great smell. The scent was strong even when we took it to the recycling center. I loved that aspect of the tree. The needles, that was more of a love-hate relationship!

Christmas was a great holiday for us. The children were very spoiled this year (thank you so much Grandparents, family and friends!) They were also spoiled by a generous Santa. Not only were the children spoiled but Jeramis and I also enjoyed a very nice Christmas and we are still enjoying many of the things we were given. (Thanks again!) On top of all the hoopla, we enjoyed a lovely Christmas Dinner with Brett and Anna and some of their friends here in town. That was a nice end to our Christmas celebrations.

The week before Christmas we spent one day over at an amusement area here.

Jordan loved being able to ride all the rides. He was big enough and so he adventured quite a bit with his 'brave' attempts to ride everything... He loved being able to ride on the 'big' kid rides as well as rides with Jade. He convinced both me and Jeramis to ride on the "splash moutain" ride that left me very soaked and Jeramis, somehow, ended up very dry... how does that work! Jordan and I also rode on the rollercoaster with the 'loop-ty-loops" Jordan didn't want to ride on it... he was a bit scared at the whole idea of loops and twists. I convinced him to go on it and I must say I felt pretty bad when he started crying... he was very scared! But after about 20 minutes of walking around and doing other stuff he started talking about how cool the ride was and that he had been so brave to ride on it. Then he said, "maybe I can do a ride like that again sometime... when i'm bigger." I still think he was a bit scared but all in all he survived it. I thought that was very interesting! Poor kid. Aside from that he won a lot of really cool stuffed animal toys and he was able to play a few games and ride a ton of rides. He is STILL talking about it.




Jade loved the rides. Except the 'pirate ship' that swings back and forth... we almost had a puke attack on that one. She told us a few minutes into the ride.. "I'm going to throw up." Then she proceeded to stick her head into my chest. I made her look forward and told her she was going to be okay and to keep breathing... she turned a bit yellow but thankfully the ride ended before she was able to expel her breakfast and lunch. Her highlights of the day were the 'hot air balloon' Ferris wheel, the carousel and having her face painted like a kitty cat.


The week after Christmas we went to see a local Shark display, celebrated my birthday and New Years and started putting the house back together. I'll write more about these events in another post. I need to download the pictures still!

So come back soon!