Poor Josh, Lucky Me!

I often ask for practical gifts. I usually don't want big fancy stuff...things for my home or daily life that are a bit "extra" special really tickle my fancy. Several years ago I wanted a vacuum...a GOOD vacuum...not just one for $50 that didn't suck up a thing. We had two cats and a dog and I wanted that hair to actually get picked up. This was just before the Dyson came out...so I'd had my eyeball on a pretty expensive Dirt Devil vacuum for quite a while. Sure enough, under the tree that year was a nice sized box, and I unwrapped exactly what I'd asked for...my vacuum!! But poor Josh, did he catch a TON of flack when peopel asked him "so what are you getting the wife for Christmas this year?" "You got her WHAT? Oooooh she's gonna be soooo upset!! You are dead meat! You should have gotten her jewelry, chocolates, etc etc." Nope, I was ecstatic!

So this year, under my tree was another nice sized box but it had me pretty baffled. Josh had just bought me a brand new home, I counted that as a very significant Christmas present, and I couldn't recall mentioning wanting much else besides this beautiful home (with a roof *wink*). Josh mentioned he'd been catching flack from people who'd asked "So what did you get the wife for Christmas this year?" and that had me laughing from previous experience but even more perplexed. Well, as you can probably now guess from the above picture, Josh got me a new sink for Christmas! And not just any old sink...he got me the exact black granite sink that I'd dreamed of and then gotten when we did our huge remodel in Idaho two years ago...and then I'd been so sad to leave when we unexpectedly moved the following year. It was another one of those practical but absolutely WANTED gifts and I was so excited!! So above is the picture of my new sink. Josh got it all installed today and it looks gorgeous!! Once I've had a chance to catch up on the after Christmas cleaning, I'll take a wider shot of the kitchen so you can see how beautiful it looks with our stainless and black appliances.

Thank you, honey, for knowing me so well!!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

It's tradition that Daddy reads to the monkeys each year before they go to bed on Christmas Eve. The big ones were very excited to sit down and listen...Carter not so much. Watch him in the background as the story progresses.

(You 'da man, Daddy!)

(Peek a boo!!)

(Are there any presents back here?!)

(Maybe this box is a good place to sleep?)

And then this pic was from yesterday. I came around the corner from being gone 30 seconds and found Carter here (he's up on a box that's probably 3 ft high...he's our climber). He wanted to get to the star up on top. And it's where he was heading tonight if I hadn't scooped him up to brush his teeth and head off to bed.

Christmas with a Capital "C"

Just wanted to share now that I've figured out the cool way to link it (thanks Alicia!!). Click on the pic!

Our Little Prince(ss)

This is what I walked in on when I went to check on the boys playing in their room this evening. I'd found this tiara in a box I unpacked today, and aparently Carter had asked Trev to help him wear the "hat." He's gonna love me pulling these pics out when he's somewhere around his adolescence or early adulthood LOL!!

Ohhhh I love a mess!

Can anyone tell me why Carter insists on picking up his plate and rubbing it on his head when he's done eating?? And yes, this would mean that any remaining food or sauce or whatever is smeared into his hair as a leave-in conditioning treatment. They make bibs for his shirt though I can't get him to wear those. Maybe I should see if he'll wear a rubber swim cap for meals. Ughhhhhh!!

Off to give him a bath and wash out the waffle syrup...

Let it snow!!

We got our first Oklahoma snow on Tuesday!! We miss Idaho so much, this was a welcome sight. All of our neighbors were horrified LOL and the cold and white seemed put everyone into a frenzy...but I just loved seeing the little flutters outside. We only got a dusting that "stuck" as you can see in the pictures (the top is the view from my front porch across the street and the bottom is my front door...you can see the eensy weensy accumulation we got). But hey some is more than none!!!!!

Just had to share two cute pics of Em and Carter from tonight. He's very recently VERY into Dora the Explorer (and Diego too) and we as a family are VERY grateful for the reprieve from Curious George...Curious George...Curious George. Emilee sat down to read him the only Dora book we have. Aparently he needed to climb into the toy box to listen LOL but he was quite the captive audience for about 20 minutes (knowing Carter this is no small feat to focus for that long).

Last pic I have time to share tonight...Joshua's Christmas light masterpiece! He decorated all of the roof lines with white-white-red C7 lights on clips (so they stand up pretty and straight and evenly spaced...he's never done that before and it looks NICE) and he *built* a Christmas tree out of lights on the front lawn. The tree was quite the project. When I've seen them in pictures or in neighbor's yards I never thought they were difficult or complicated...but they are LOL. Mom and Dad and my brother, David, were here for Thanksgiving and the guys all tackled the project and had alot of fun. When it was done, I was pretty impressed and we admittedly have the coolest light display on our block!

Carter says...

Wanted to share what's coming out of the mouth of our littlest monkey lately. He has taken a good six month off of really worrying about talking to us in English (except for "Daddy") because there are 4 of us constantly around and he's quickly trained us to his needs in baby talk and hand motions and grunting. And don't get me wrong, he's not silent, he constantly babbles and chatters, but we really haven't had much clue as to the context. Josh and I have joked that when he decided he was ready, he words would come out in paragraph form. So the last couple of weeks he's gotten back on the English bandwagon and most of it is in sentence form. Here's a few...

"that way"...this would be him pointing to the left, copying Daddy who has told the dog to get out of the kitchen while we eat and since there's three exits Josh says "that way"...so now Carter points at all sorts of things, including the dog, telling them which way to go

"I did it!"...we've been encouraging him with "you did it!" when he stacked blocks or took a bite with his fork...and now he's praising himself

"wow wow wow!"...this goes for all of the Christmas lights, Christmas trees and most preferably to the Christmas displays that move in some way

Now what??

So Thanksgiving was yummy and your fridge is now plumb full of all the leftovers...now what??

Make soup!

Not being much of a "from scratch without a recipe" kind of cook, I'm rather proud of myself that I have a pot of soup simmering away on the stove, "getting happy" as Emeril would put it, that will be tonight's dinner.

I sauteed some fresh carrots, celery, onion and garlic that we had extra from Josh's holiday cooking and added 10 cups of water and some chicken base. Then I pulled apart all of the "hard to get" meat (yanno, the meat on the bones...again I'm rather proud of myself as I was VERY tempted to use the nicely sliced white breast meat that is in there...it looked sooo easy to just dice that...but I was a good frugal girl) and added it to the pot of veggies and broth. Then salt, pepper, 1c of rice and 1 can of white beans jumped in to round out my leftover soup. Very basic soup, but for me it's a pretty marvelous feat!! And we have a bunch of salad and Josh's family recipe of cheese braid bread to round out the rest of dinner. Perfect cold winter day dinner if I do say so myself!!

I'm sure hoping it turns out tasting yummy cuz the house is smelling very homey...wonder if the big monkeys will be proud when they walk in the door here in a minute or two?

More on Thanksgiving and Christmas later, just had to share about my soup while I had a free minute!!