Lazy

Lazy is the best word to describe how I've been behaving since Christmas ended. I woke up on Friday feeling like I just had no energy. I figured I had just overworked myself leading up to Christmas. So I decided to relax on Friday & clean & organize over the weekend. Did I do anything over the weekend? NO! I seriously sat around with Edward & Ava. We played, we watched movies, I read. I know that I need to seriously get ready for this baby who is coming in a month or two, but I can't find my motivation. I sure hope it comes today.

Since I've done pretty much nothing, I also still haven't uploaded most of our Christmas pictures. Here are a few from Christmas Eve service though. Everyone agreed that Ava was the cutest little girl at church!

Merry Christmas!

Let's face it, I am not the best blogger these days. Since I most likely won't have a chance to blog again before Christmas, here are a couple of pictures from this year's holiday card. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

My Amazing Family

My husband & daughter never cease to amaze me. Here's a couple of Edward & Ava stories that just made me chuckle...

Edward:

We've had our new washer & dryer for well over a year now. They are electronic so to turn on the washer you hit the big start button, then it all lights up, you put in your desired settings, then you press the big start button again. Very simple. Even Edward's dad could operate them.

Not Edward. At least not when he's apparently NEVER done laundry in them.

The other night he decided to help me out by washing a load of towels. Just before going to bed I figured I should switch them to the dryer. Except that the towels were still dry, just sitting there in the washing machine. He apparently pressed the start button once, saw it all light up & figured it would just start from there.

I'm more fascinated by the fact that it's been well over a year since my husband has had to do even one load of laundry. Just amazing!

Ava:

The other morning I was enjoying our new living room furniture by vegging on the sofa watching tv. Edward was reading the newspaper in the dining room. I thought Ava was in there with him. He thought Ava was in the living room with me. (Yes, we're great parents). I could hear her babbling & playing for awhile. But then it got quiet. When it gets quiet, she's up to no good. I shouted out to Edward, "What is Ava up to in there?" Before he could answer, his cell phone rang. He picked it up & said "Why are you calling me?" Since my cell was upstairs & I was downstairs, I said "I'm not calling you."

At that moment we both realized that somehow our amazing little child had gotten past the baby gate on the stairs, gone upstairs, found my cell phone & figured out how to call her daddy. Amazing.

Making Progress

Finally I'm getting some things done. All but about 8 of my Christmas cards are stuffed, addressed, stamped & ready to go. All but one package is sent out. My house is decorated for Christmas. I only have a few gifts left to buy and wrap. I finally feel in control of Christmas & I might possibly be able to enjoy the last week leading up to Christmas this year. Wouldn't that be nice!

I'm starting to get a little worried about not at all being ready for this new baby. I'm 30 weeks along now, which really means I don't have that much longer to prepare. We still need to move Ava to the new room, after we paint & recarpet in there. Then I need to go through all of Ava's old stuff & figure out what I need for the new baby. Oh, ya, and we kinda need to pick a name. Seriously, we are so stuck this time around!

Work has been pretty busy leading up to Christmas between getting tenant gifts out, decorating the buildings for the Holidays, planning a tenant Holiday party & all of the other year end paperwork. I spent most of yesterday in the office with Ava & I have a few work related errands to run today. I'm really looking forward to February when I can stop working for a bit & focus on poor Ava for awhile before new baby arrives.

Alright, off to do laundry & dishes & get Ava some breakfast. Maybe I'll even take a little bit of time for me this morning & catch up on some of the shows I've been missing all season. Thank goodness for online tv watching!

Santa

Last Christmas Ava wasn't even 5 months old yet so we didn't even attempt to go see Santa. I figured she was just too little then. Needless to say, I've been pretty excited to bring her this year.

Our mall is doing a promotion with one of the big picture sharing sites where for $32 you can get a flash drive of your pictures with Santa as well as a $25 credit to this site. I figured that was perfect becauase rather than pay $18 for 2 small pictures with santa, for the $8 difference we get to bring the drive home & do what we want with them. I figured I could order our Christmas cards from them.

So we planned an evening out with our friends yesterday. We met them at the mall for dinner. We got a late start because Edward couldn't get off to early yesterday, so it was already 6pm by the time we got to dinner. Since Ava usually goes to bed by 6:30pm, we were risking it. But she seemed fine. We had a wonderful dinner. Ava & her little friend Nora were playing & the girls had a blast walking through the mall together to get to Santa. Half way through the long line we could tell that she was tired, but not a crabby tired. She was just being more quiet than normal. She was actually quite an angel throughout the entire process. We had her dressed up in a beautiful Christmas dress that my MIL sent. All was great.

We get to the front of the line, she takes one look at Santa, and...

screams bloody murder.

She did not want anything to do with Santa. Poor guy! I'm sure he gets that a lot, but I really didn't expect it from Ava. She's scared of nothing. We didn't even attempt to take a picture because she wouldn't go near him, let alone sit in his lap. I'm hoping it was because she was tired. We may take one more shot at it during the day sometime, but it won't be in time to get the credit to use for our Christmas cards since I really need to order those today or tomorrow.

At least we tried.

Back Aches

Why am I always complaining? Seriously, I'm getting pretty tired of complaining as I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing me complain! Today's woes... I'm just feeling crappy. My back is killing me, which is probably a direct result of doing too much yesterday. I am coming down with a cold so my head just feels conjested. I'm really feeling so pregnant today. I feel like I'm just this big pregnant blimp who should be laying down on the sofa doing absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, I've got work to do & a 16 month old to take care of & a house to clean.

I baked 7 dozen cookies last night (thanks Mindy, they turned out great!). I love baking, but I guess I over did it. We also took our Christmas card picture yesterday, so now I just need to order the cards & get them out.

I'd like to say that I'll take it easy for the next few days, but the reality is that I can't. We're going to the mall tonight for pictures with Santa & dinner at Red Robin with our friends. Tomorrow is the cookie exchange. Friday I have to work & then we have Edward's company holiday party. I honestly don't know when I'll be able to relax. Ah, the joys of the holidays!

In a Much Calmer State of Mind

As of Saturday afternoon, FIL is no longer living in our house. There are still tons of his boxes in our guest room, which we're trying to decide what to do with. The boys don't want to lug them over to the new place only to have to move them again in 6 months once he (hopefully) gets into the Veteran's Home. I totally understand their point, but there is NO room in my house. Haven't I sacraficed enough these past 8 months? Can't I finally have my guest room back so that I can do what most normal mom to be's do & set up a nursery for my baby? Apparently not.

I've decided to let it go throughout December only because I need a staging area for all the Christmas stuff anyhow, so I'll use that room for that and start painting & tearing up carpet in January. But my husband had better have a plan to get all those boxes out of there within the month!

Despite my annoyance over that, I am truly in a much better frame of mind right now. I feel as if there are hundreds of things to do over the next few weeks, and I really need to do some deep cleaning around here, but being in the third trimester now, I know I have to take things easy. So I've made a nice long list of everything to do & I've broken them up into days. Obviously the biggest priorities right now are getting everything mopped today (seriously, it's been way too long since I've mopped my dining room!), finishing up the out of town Christmas shopping & shipping everything out, taking our annual Christmas card picture & getting the cards out. I feel pretty far behind on a lot of things right now.

My goal for the next two days is also to finally pull out all the Christmas decorations & get this house in a festive mood! Oh, and yes, my new living room sofa & chair arrived on Friday & it's beautiful!!! I love feeling like my house is slowly coming together, despite the ton of work it still needs.

So Tired

I realize it's been a full week since I've blogged. I just haven't been feeling it. December is always a busy month but I guess with Thanksgiving being a week late I'm really feeling the push this year, and it's only day 3 of December.

I've barely given a thought to my holiday cards yet. I'm tired of constantly complaining about my FIL & I just can't wait until Saturday when he moves out. We're still on track for moving him on Saturday morning, we hope. I should know more by tomorrow. We ordered new living room furniture on Black Friday & it arrives on Saturday as well.Isn't it beautiful? We ordered the matching chair. I've always wanted to buy a sofa with a chair and half & an ottoman. This isn't my dream, but after living with Edward's mom's leftover living room set from the 90's, I am thrilled! Needless to say, Saturday is looking to be a great day for me. I sure hope all goes as planned, because I could really use a break.

Once FIL has moved out & I have an entire extra room in the house, I intend to finally get organized for Christmas. I will finally pull out the Christmas decorations, which I usually do the weekend of Thanksgiving, but I figured it would be much easier to wait until FIL is out before attempting that. Then all the Christmas gifts that we've been buying that are piling up in my bedroom get to go into the guestroom so that I can organize & figure out what's left to buy. We're actually ahead on the shopping this year & I don't think that I have that much more to buy. I ordered a few things that are coming to my house by next week, so once those are in I can mail out the packages to out of town family.

After Christmas, I will have exactly one month to paint & pull out the carpet in the guest room. Our intention is to move Ava to that room. The computer is still in Ava's room so we need to move that down to the living room once & for all. We've seriously been planning on that since before Ava was born. Then Ava's room will become the new baby's room. Ava's new room is pretty big, so we'll put the futon up there & have it double as a guest room. I so cannot wait to get my house in order.

I also have a million events/parties/etc planned this month. Next week is the cookie exchange for my mom's group. I love to bake but I just realized that I've never really been into Christmas cookies, so I don't have a good recipe. I really need to come up with something asap so I can buy supplies & get the recipe cards printed out. Does anyone have any great Christmas cookie recipes to share?