Christmas Shopping Done!

Well it’s time for another update. I can officially say I’m DONE Christmas shopping. I finished yesterday. The last person that I had to shop for was my niece and got her all done! The kids were able to shop for each other and that was a lot of fun. I took each kid one by one to get their Christmas gifts and that was fun seeing what they wanted to get for one another. Lehna and Maya were both great on their individual shopping trips. I took each child to their own store to pick their gifts out; I did this to allow them different options. It was good because as they were shopping for each other, they were also shopping for themselves so I was able to see what they were interested in. Maya already knew what she was getting her brother as she tried to get it for him a few weeks ago when we saw it in the store. The girls were actually easier than I thought they would be. Nikolai was kind of a challenge not b/c he doesn’t have interests but finding what he wanted at the stores we went to was more difficult. Nikolai on his shopping trip was horrible. I had to stop at Hallmark to get the ornaments for the kids and Nikolai was AWFUL. He has hit his terrible twos and he’s not even two yet. He ran away from me and kept reaching for very breakable things. When we went to Marshal’s to get something for Lehna I had to let him carry around a train to get him to sit still in the cart. Insanity he’s not even two yet! Maybe this means since he’s getting into it early he’ll be out of the stage quickly, I hope!


So I love snow during Christmas time. I am ready for it to snow anytime. I love having snow during the winter time. It doesn’t even bother me if it’s before or after Christmas. I just love snow for Christmas. I like being a snuggly warm in my sweater and enjoying watching the snow fall on Christmas. It just makes it so much more Christmassy. I love the snow during December and January verses March or April. I don’t even mind snow in February as long as it’s EARLY in the month and not late.

So we are all set and ready for Christmas. I still have all my wrapping to do, but at least my Christmas treasures are bought. It’s hard to believe that Christmas is only 15 days away. We still haven’t decided what we are going to do as far as going to Indiana for Christmas, we might go before Christmas, but I kind of feel like if we do that why don’t we just go another time. I mean what’s the difference if we aren’t going on Christmas any way. So we’ll figure it out.

The girls had a friend stay over on Friday night and let me tell you that was crazy times. Our neighbor came over as well so we had 4 little girls running around with a little boy trying to tag along as best as he could. It was LOUD to say the least. I swear my kids are part deaf the way the yell and have the level of the TV. I understand that they talk so LOUD so they have to turn up the TV to hear it it’s all a cycle… but mercy it was loud. We kept kicking them down stairs to the toy room but that would only last for a few short minutes and they would be back up. We turned on Brave for them and I went down to offer to paint nails, which were an interesting activity. Mila (Lehna’s friend) insisted that red and bright pink was not for “little girls” b/c her mom told her that “it just doesn’t look good on kids.” Probably a way of having her kids stay out of her nail polish I would imagine. Then my girls insisted that there wasn’t anything WRONG with it… so I had to ref that discussion. I need to teach them to be more tolerant of people and for them to just ignore the other person’s differences. This seems to come up a lot for some reason. Maybe it’s just a kid thing, I don’t know, maybe most kids are like this.

So work has been pretty busy. It seems like there are lots of teenagers getting into trouble right now. We were kind of slow with new petitions (new charges against teenagers) but right now things are really busy. We are learning new things in our office. We are progressing to “scanning” you would think this is brand new stuff. I mean seriously this technology is NOT new. But I work with a bunch of women that this is just REALLY new to them and let’s just say it’s kind of scary for them. So I’m kind of leading the charge as to getting everyone trained and making everyone comfortable. I keep trying to down play it as “it’s really not as difficult as you think it will be, you’ll see”. They don’t trust me, yet. So it’s been kind of fun doing new things. I am still working on getting my manual together because ultimately I’m learning the role of this position to train someone new. Kind of dumb I don’t know why they just don’t keep the responsibilities to me, but it’s a split position and the other department wants to hire the person like yesterday and well let’s just say that my department wants to go a little slower, especially since we are not through learning everything yet. So it’s again transition.

I have to tell you I have starting to become a crock pot queen. I have found some really good recipes via the crock pot and some really bad ones too. I’m looking for any other crock pot recipes. I really enjoy coming home and just eating rather than having to cook. It’s wonderful starting it in the morning than leaving. So if anyone has any ideas let me know  Tait and I have been doing really well with menu planning and the more options that I have the better. It helps us not have to live out of a box all the time. I have been on Crockin Girls which they have a few things that have been good, but some really bad things too. So even websites I’m willing to check out. I have been working on getting a book of all of our favorite things and that has been really nice coming up with new things and remembering them when we are going a blank when we create our menus for the week. So I’m open to suggestions. Well that’s all I have for now. Enjoy!