Every year at Christmas, especially when we are up very late on Christmas Eve we hope that our children will let us sleep in a bit on Christmas morning.
This, however, has rarely been the case.
For example, the year when Brielle was 5. I woke up Christmas morning around 4:45 because the light from the living room was shining down the hall into our bedroom. Knowing that we had most definitely turned the light off, I got up to see Brielle dancing around the living room in her new pink bathrobe, with all of her other Christmas gifts scattered around the living room.....
She had obviously been awake for quite a while.
This year, however, was different. My husband woke me up at 7:00 to tell me that the kids were ready to see their Christmas gifts. Fortunately, he was awake when the kids came upstairs, and made them sit in the family room until I got up. I was very surprised that we needed to wake up Max also, because he had been so excited the night before, and had even gone to bed really early so that Santa could come to our house without fear of being caught by him.
As the kids were opening their gifts, I thanked them for letting us sleep past 5:00 and Brielle told me this story.
"Mom, I actually woke up really early this morning, around 4:00. I layed in bed, trying to go back to sleep until about 4:30, when I decided that I really needed to go to the bathroom, so I got up and opened my bedroom door, and I heard what sounded like a really big dog panting loudly in the hallway, so I hurried and slammed my door, jumped back in my bed, pulled the blankets over my head and stayed there until 7:00."
We don't nor have we ever had a dog, so I was trying to think of what could have been making this noise when CJ said "Really? I heard that same noise several years ago on Christmas morning when I was about to get up really early!"
So there you have it. It seems that we have some sort of ghost dog that shows up early Christmas morning, to scare our children back into their beds so that we can get a little sleep.
Now the question, why?
My older kids have a theory that the previous owners had a dog that died on Christmas, and he comes back every year at this time.
Max thinks that Santa was still in the house.
What do you think it could be?
Friday, December 31, 2010
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
My obligatory after Christmas post
Yes, Christmas is over in the house of whine.
I'll just give you a recap of the last few weeks.
We had a late start on decorating this year, due to the amount of work that I had, combined with school concerts, parties and three days spent at the middle school helping the Career Technology Education teacher try and teach four classes of 7th graders how to sew.......
I think my favorite kid was the one who screamed from across the classroom "I KILLED IT! I KILLED THE SEWING MACHINE! I REALLY DID! I KILLED IT!"
I went over to investigate the potential death of one of the rather new sewing machines, only to find that the thread was tangled into the bobbin case.
"You didn't kill it," I explained to the frantic kid "the thread is just tangled, I can fix it in no time."
"I didn't kill it?" he asked. (almost sounding disappointed)
"No" I said as I started clipping the thread. I soon discovered that the thread was knotted a bit more than it originally appeared. When frantic kid saw this, he slapped his forehead and started yelling again "SEE! I KNEW I KILLED IT! I REALLY KILLED IT! I KILLED THE SEWING MACHINE!"
He continued yelling this even after I fixed it. I have a sneaky suspicion that he didn't really want to learn how to sew.
The kids were making fleece hats. It was a very simple pattern and many of them finished their project quickly (however, many more of them did NOT finish quickly, however, I'm leaving that subject alone)
I had just finished fixing tangled thread in one machine and was walking across the room to fix yet another tangled thread situation (seriously, I have never seen so much tangled thread in my life!) when I saw a kid struggling to pull a white hat on his head. He pulled it down past his chin, which was OK because he had cut eye holes to see through.
"Look! I made a ski mask!"
He had indeed made himself a ski mask. One with eye holes in the front to see out of, and also eye holes in the back.
I asked him if he had cut the other eye holes for the eyes in the back of his head. He quickly felt the back of his head and said "OH NO! I guess I probably should have only cut holes in one side of the hat.
Then he caught sight of his reflection in the window. He gasped.
He was wearing what looked like a pointed white hood with eyeholes.
"Wow, I probably shouldn't have made this hat white." he said.
I agreed.
Then he took it off and threw it away.
I did survive the week of sewing education, and some kids even learned a few things :0)
And I learned that no matter how many times I reminded the kids to put the presser foot down before sewing, they still would still forget and I would end up fixing yet another tangled mess of thread........
We managed to get all of our house festively decorated a good 6 days before Christmas!
The shopping, however, was a different story.
I still had some things to buy on Christmas Eve, and headed to the store to purchase them, however, when I saw the parking lot at the grocery store, I had second thoughts. I noticed that the parking lot at Walgreens was much less crowded, and thought to myself that surely, Walgreens would have that last item that I needed, so I foolishly went for the easy parking.
No, Walgreens didn't have the item that I was looking for, I did, however, still manage to spend $23.82 on a bunch of stuff that I didn't go there to buy.
All day on Christmas Eve, Max was really struggling to contain his emotions. The excitement of the day was just too much for him, and he fought with his siblings multiple times. We had to remind him that Santa was still watching him, and even threatened to send Santa an email.
CJ finally pulled up the NORAD website so that Max could see that Santa was on his way, so he better straighten up.
It worked, mostly because Max spent the rest of the day in front of the computer, watching the updates from Santa's sleigh.
Max was ready to unwrap his new pajamas and go to bed at 6:00, however, being the meanie that I am, I insisted that he eat dinner with the family first. He did refuse dessert, and got in his jammies and went to bed early.
I guess he can't misbehave if he's asleep.
Christmas morning came, and Santa brought Max a Fisher Price camcorder (which he asked for) and a wooden train set. He played with the train set for 3 solid hours.
He used the tracks to build an amazingly accurate model of his favorite freeway interchange.
This year, we chipped in with Grandma and Grandpa and bought the kids a Wii.
Apparently, according to one of our children, we are now officially a part of the human race, due to the fact that up until Christmas morning we were the only family in our children's group of friends who did not have a Wii.
The kids played on the Wii for the majority of the day.
Sunday, none of them could move their right arms.
As it turns out, Max is really quite good at the Wii games. He has skunked his siblings multiple times. In bowling he gets mostly strikes and spares, and he is dominant in the sword fighting.
It's a good thing that Max seems to excel at the games, because as we are discovering, he is not very good at losing.
I'll just give you a recap of the last few weeks.
We had a late start on decorating this year, due to the amount of work that I had, combined with school concerts, parties and three days spent at the middle school helping the Career Technology Education teacher try and teach four classes of 7th graders how to sew.......
I think my favorite kid was the one who screamed from across the classroom "I KILLED IT! I KILLED THE SEWING MACHINE! I REALLY DID! I KILLED IT!"
I went over to investigate the potential death of one of the rather new sewing machines, only to find that the thread was tangled into the bobbin case.
"You didn't kill it," I explained to the frantic kid "the thread is just tangled, I can fix it in no time."
"I didn't kill it?" he asked. (almost sounding disappointed)
"No" I said as I started clipping the thread. I soon discovered that the thread was knotted a bit more than it originally appeared. When frantic kid saw this, he slapped his forehead and started yelling again "SEE! I KNEW I KILLED IT! I REALLY KILLED IT! I KILLED THE SEWING MACHINE!"
He continued yelling this even after I fixed it. I have a sneaky suspicion that he didn't really want to learn how to sew.
The kids were making fleece hats. It was a very simple pattern and many of them finished their project quickly (however, many more of them did NOT finish quickly, however, I'm leaving that subject alone)
I had just finished fixing tangled thread in one machine and was walking across the room to fix yet another tangled thread situation (seriously, I have never seen so much tangled thread in my life!) when I saw a kid struggling to pull a white hat on his head. He pulled it down past his chin, which was OK because he had cut eye holes to see through.
"Look! I made a ski mask!"
He had indeed made himself a ski mask. One with eye holes in the front to see out of, and also eye holes in the back.
I asked him if he had cut the other eye holes for the eyes in the back of his head. He quickly felt the back of his head and said "OH NO! I guess I probably should have only cut holes in one side of the hat.
Then he caught sight of his reflection in the window. He gasped.
He was wearing what looked like a pointed white hood with eyeholes.
"Wow, I probably shouldn't have made this hat white." he said.
I agreed.
Then he took it off and threw it away.
I did survive the week of sewing education, and some kids even learned a few things :0)
And I learned that no matter how many times I reminded the kids to put the presser foot down before sewing, they still would still forget and I would end up fixing yet another tangled mess of thread........
We managed to get all of our house festively decorated a good 6 days before Christmas!
The shopping, however, was a different story.
I still had some things to buy on Christmas Eve, and headed to the store to purchase them, however, when I saw the parking lot at the grocery store, I had second thoughts. I noticed that the parking lot at Walgreens was much less crowded, and thought to myself that surely, Walgreens would have that last item that I needed, so I foolishly went for the easy parking.
No, Walgreens didn't have the item that I was looking for, I did, however, still manage to spend $23.82 on a bunch of stuff that I didn't go there to buy.
All day on Christmas Eve, Max was really struggling to contain his emotions. The excitement of the day was just too much for him, and he fought with his siblings multiple times. We had to remind him that Santa was still watching him, and even threatened to send Santa an email.
CJ finally pulled up the NORAD website so that Max could see that Santa was on his way, so he better straighten up.
It worked, mostly because Max spent the rest of the day in front of the computer, watching the updates from Santa's sleigh.
Max was ready to unwrap his new pajamas and go to bed at 6:00, however, being the meanie that I am, I insisted that he eat dinner with the family first. He did refuse dessert, and got in his jammies and went to bed early.
I guess he can't misbehave if he's asleep.
Christmas morning came, and Santa brought Max a Fisher Price camcorder (which he asked for) and a wooden train set. He played with the train set for 3 solid hours.
He used the tracks to build an amazingly accurate model of his favorite freeway interchange.
This year, we chipped in with Grandma and Grandpa and bought the kids a Wii.
Apparently, according to one of our children, we are now officially a part of the human race, due to the fact that up until Christmas morning we were the only family in our children's group of friends who did not have a Wii.
The kids played on the Wii for the majority of the day.
Sunday, none of them could move their right arms.
As it turns out, Max is really quite good at the Wii games. He has skunked his siblings multiple times. In bowling he gets mostly strikes and spares, and he is dominant in the sword fighting.
It's a good thing that Max seems to excel at the games, because as we are discovering, he is not very good at losing.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Too cool for drool?
Today I scooped up Max, gave him a great big sloppy wet kiss on his cheek then sat him down.
"NO MOM!!" he complained as he wiped off his cheek "You can't kiss my cheeks, you can only kiss cheeks on NOT cool people and I am a COOL PEOPLE!!"
"NO MOM!!" he complained as he wiped off his cheek "You can't kiss my cheeks, you can only kiss cheeks on NOT cool people and I am a COOL PEOPLE!!"
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Do you want to see a real live video of Max???
Remember my friend who is trying to get this really awesome blogging job?
She made it to the final round of voting, and today is the last day to vote!
I am asking you to click on the cute little link below and vote for her (it's a total of two clicks, how hard can that be?) (I'm quite sure that I've done way more clicking than that just in shopping online for the last few days, and voting for Debbie won't cost you any $$$ or run up any charges on your credit card)
"Cute little link"
"What's in it for you?" you ask?
Well, I'll tell you what's in it for you. If Debbie wins this whole shebang, I will post actual video of Max singing and doing an interpretive dance.
At the same time!
SERIOUSLY, HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT BE????
This is video yet to be filmed, so song requests may be made, however, yesterday I did find out that he knows the words to "Poker Face" and "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga.
I blame Brielle for Max learning these lyrics, however, I have a sneaky suspicion that if I ask her if she's the one responsible that she will just blame the whole thing on Naughty Bird or Naughty Reindeer. (both of whom would be appearing in the video along with Max)
Vote, then come back to tell me you voted, (which I guess would technically be a third click) then give me your song suggestions for Max's online video debut when Debbie wins.
(This may cost me dearly in the bribery department because Max is now 5 and will no longer do anything for nothing)
She made it to the final round of voting, and today is the last day to vote!
I am asking you to click on the cute little link below and vote for her (it's a total of two clicks, how hard can that be?) (I'm quite sure that I've done way more clicking than that just in shopping online for the last few days, and voting for Debbie won't cost you any $$$ or run up any charges on your credit card)
"Cute little link"
"What's in it for you?" you ask?
Well, I'll tell you what's in it for you. If Debbie wins this whole shebang, I will post actual video of Max singing and doing an interpretive dance.
At the same time!
SERIOUSLY, HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT BE????
This is video yet to be filmed, so song requests may be made, however, yesterday I did find out that he knows the words to "Poker Face" and "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga.
I blame Brielle for Max learning these lyrics, however, I have a sneaky suspicion that if I ask her if she's the one responsible that she will just blame the whole thing on Naughty Bird or Naughty Reindeer. (both of whom would be appearing in the video along with Max)
Vote, then come back to tell me you voted, (which I guess would technically be a third click) then give me your song suggestions for Max's online video debut when Debbie wins.
(This may cost me dearly in the bribery department because Max is now 5 and will no longer do anything for nothing)
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