Wonderful Christmas here.

and I hope you had one too,

My kids made out like bandits, lots of toys, very few that take batteries or make noise, so a plus for me, a few movies too! That is something we will all enjoy.

I got 4 different books, 3 from my kids and a knitting book (EZ’s Knitting Workshop) from my mom, do they know me or what? Hubster got me a bath set and a car charger for my netbook, which I had specifically asked for. I am pleased, nothing huge (but I got a new computer a few months ago, and it was agreed that i would be my big Christmas present)

We had  plenty of family here, my mom and uncle were here for Christmas morning, and opening presents, and then my in-laws came for dinner. I fixed Prime rib and a whole spread, it was really great.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas too.

Getting ready for Christmas.

I have all the shopping done, and it would remain that way if only Hubster would stop dreaming up things to give the kids… *sigh* men. I have the tree up, and have started wrapping things.. All of my Holiday knitting is done, and I have been working on some relaxing things, I finished my Lady Sweater, I need to take pictures of it still but I love it, it turned out great. I am working on yet another shawl too…

I am also hunting down things that I need to pack into the trailer for a trip to No. Cal for New Years. It is much colder there than here, so I am digging out winter coats and sweaters and such. We haven’t worn these things since we moved here 2 years ago, and can’t buy things for truly cold weather here, so the kids will probably get a bunch of new stuff once we are up there  (we have coats, but the kids have few warm clothes.)

I am also working on putting together our Christmas Dinner menu so that I can get that shopping done and all the prep for that taken care of.

Friday is the last day of school here, until Jan 11th, so the kids will spend the next 3 weeks driving me totally out of my mind.. We will be able to take some of their Christmas presents with us on the trip but definitely not all of them. It will still help with the boredom of a long car trip.

Wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday.

We ended up going out to my step-mother in law’s mom’s house  on Thursday evening, we spent the evening there, had a good time.

On Friday I cooked a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls and several other items. We ended up having a total of 12 people for Thanksgiving Dinner we had a blast. The kids played kickball outside, the adults found a movie to watch, much to my relief, and I didn’t have to listen to football at maximum volume.

Saturday I got up early and put a prime rib on the smoker, and then I went back to bed. I got up at a more normal time, and started my second big meal, scalloped potatoes, more sweet potatoes, grilled asparagus, more rolls. We ended up with 10 for that meal, and  I have to admit, it turned out even better than the Turkey.

The last of the guests left this morning and I have spent most of the day resting, after standing on my cement floors for the last 3 days, my feet, legs and lower back are hurting. Tomorrow the kids go back to school, and I will be thankful for the peace and quiet again.

3 means it’s over right?

I mean 3 appliances having issues right?

it all started with the DVD player / surround sound system , the DVD player part quit back in October, we took it in to be looked at, because it was under warranty, they repaired it for free.

Then my camera… BTW, they called on Monday, it can’t be repaired, apparently there is some so called Moisture damage that is unrepairable. they are shipping it back to me, it still works but the LCD screen doesn’t work. I just have to look through the eye piece to take pictures. *note to self, don’t let Hubster use my camera anymore.

Third… last night about 10:30 we hear water gushing in the kitchen, well, the dishwasher was running and we thought it was draining.. after it continued for several minutes, way to long to be draining we investigate, the kitchen is flooded. I turn off the water under the sink, clean up the water everywhere, remove the access panel from under the dishwasher and have Hubster turn the water back on while I watch under the dishwasher to see exactly what the problem is. The water supply hose has sprung a leak. I decided to leave it until morning, because I couldn’t fix it right them anyway.

So this morning I get he pliers, pull the hose off, take it in to Lowes and get a new hose. Come home and install it. Total cost. $10. 82

The longest part of the whole thing, other than waiting for the store to open was the drive to and from the store to get the part. So much faster and cheaper than calling a plumber.

my camera, my poor camera.. *sob*

I love it, I talked Hubster into it for Mother’s day last year, It takes the most wonderful pictures.  And then Hubster insisted that he needed to take it to Germany with him. He promised to be careful, blah blah blah… while he is in Germany he asks me when the LCD screen started cutting in and out.. my response WHEN YOU TOOK IT.  He swears he didn’t break it.. but it worked great for me, no troubles, he takes it and it breaks… do the math. Anyway, it only had a 1 year warranty,  so I look up what a repair is going to cost… they want $149 to fix it at the Canon shop. I only paid $314 for the camera to begin with.. it has probably gone down since… so I look it up, on Amazon, were I got it.. NOPE they now want $950 for the exact same model camera.

Needless to say I shipped it off to be repaired. It is now at the Cannon shop, they say they have a less than 10 day turn around, hopefully I will have it back before Thanksgiving, I miss my camera… it is my precious.

I have realized

that I will not be able to publish my book here.. unless I want the blog to be labeled for adult material, as the book I am in the middle of almost done writing is an erotic romance. But… what I CAN do is open another blog and mark it as containing adult content, and then link to it from here.

As of right now I have less than 3000 words to go!!

Is anyone actually interested in reading it? Should I go to the hassle of opening another blog?

NaNoWriMo update..

so, ok, I didn’t wait for the month to start before I did.. I got almost 2 weeks head start, but I still plan on limiting it to 30 days, so that makes it kind of valid right?

Anyway… update.. I have been working on my book for… um.. hang on, gotta do the the math. 17 days now, including today. There were several days that I ended up not working on it.. The day we were at the zoo, and Halloween there just wasn’t enough time to even think about working on it, much less actually finding the time to sit down and type..  Whoops, side tracked again… This morning when I got up, I do what I do every morning, I ran a word count. Now I try not to do word counts during the day because then I become obsessed with how many words I have done today, and how much more I need to do to reach my 2k a day goal. Anyway.. my word count this morning was 39081so, in my sleep drugged mind I decide to figure out how many words a day I have averaged, so, in16 days work I have managed to average 2442 and change words a day. Not to shabby..

The closer I get to being done with this book the more certain I am that I will post it here, a chapter a week, until the entire thing is posted. Granted, I am not done yet, but so far, I am very pleased.

Great Weekend.

We took our travel trailer on it’s first trip. We hauled it to Phoenix for my uncle’s graduation from college,  and we stayed in an RV park instead of a motel. There were a lot of things I totally loved about the experience.

Enough beds for everyone without having to rent a second space/room. With 3 kids often end up with at least one child who doesn’t want to sleep with the others, and with the girls getting older, even more so. Plus, my mom made the trip as well, and 3 adults plus 3 kids in one room just doesn’t work so well, so  that is another room and more money. The trailer will sleep 9-10 if we push it. but the 6 of us was very comfortable. I wouldn’t want to do it long term, but for a few days or even a week or two as we travel, it would be good.

No hauling of luggage. Yes, I had to pack the trailer before we left and unpack it when we got home, but there was no hauling of luggage in and out of motel rooms. For a single destination trip this isn’t so bad, but if you are on a long trip where you stop for one night on the way, get back in the vehicle and go more, then stop for another night, it gets tedious, especially with 3 kids.

Food and dishes. Let me state first off that I am not particularly fond of restaurant breakfasts, plus, eating every meal out gets old fast, and very expensive. I picked up cereal before we left, and baked a batch of oatmeal cookies, and we had breakfasts as each person was up and moving around and ready for it. On my own dishes, which yes, I did have to wash but still, better than drive through rubber eggs.

Bedding and beds. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t sleep all that great in a motel with unfamiliar beds, and strange bedding. In the trailer, I was able to have my own pillow, again without hauling it in and out of a motel room, I knew when the sheets had been washed last, and with what detergent. And it is my bed,   in time I will get used to it, and it will be more familiar to me.

Rooms. This was one of the best parts. Our trailer is a Bunkhouse model , it has a section that is bunk beds, then a door that closes that room off from the main living space. This was wonderful for putting the kids to bed and then playing games and talking.

Price. We did some shopping, and found an RV lot in a nice area  of town, with amenities that we wanted (pool, etc)  and for two nights we paid less than what one night in a  motel would have cost, for a single room, much less the two rooms that the 6 of us would have required.

 

I did discover several things that I had missed in packing up the trailer, I made a list and things will be making their way out there to fill the list. Yes, there is room for improvement, but it was still a far better experience than staying in a motel. 

Teh Happy…

It eludes me…

I think a big part of it is not enough sleep last night. Hubster got home from his weekend drill around 9:30, and after we talked for a few minutes, he settled on the couch and started watching his recorded NASCAR race (BORRRRIIINNG… what is entertaining about a bunch of men driving in circles for hours continues to baffle me.) So I disappeared into the bedroom to work on the story  I have been writing. I worked for about an hour and at 11:00 I let him know I was going to sleep, and turned out the light, knowing that sleep would be slow to come since I was working out plot details, but confident it wouldn’t take too long.

I was just drifting off to sleep (after only having popped back up once to jot some notes on the story) when I heard a child cry. *sigh* I got up and dealt with the cold, wet child, and his bed. and by the time I made it back to bed it was a quarter to midnight.

I start to fall asleep again… and again, just as I am –><- this close to being asleep, more noise… this time it is the herd of elephants that is my husband. Crash banging into the room, using the restroom, and getting into bed. I feign sleep, cause I really don’t want to be bothered, but while he is in the bathroom, I sneak a peek at the clock… 0:18, for those of you who don’t have their bedroom clock set on military time (it is a big help when setting the alarm, no more setting it for pm instead of am) that is 12:18. The Elephant climbs in bed, shuffle, wiggle, cough, squirm, cough, wiggle.  (I feel the need to state here that I don’t necessarily need quiet to go to sleep, but I do, however, need still, this was my biggest problem in adjusting to sleeping with another person in the bed, every little wiggle wakes me up again, at least until I reach a sound sleep.) at one point he got up, and I could hear him hunting for his glasses, then 37 seconds later he was back, climbing back in bed.  He did finally settle down and let me go to sleep, but it was after 1 by then.

Needless to say, being a good mommy and going to bed on time, knowing you have to get up at 6am, doesn’t always do what it is supposed to.

some recent realizations…

1. Putting kids to work yields iffy results.
2. I own a LOT of blankets.
3. Putting 2 kids on the same job is asking for fights and a bigger mess than you started with.
4. Windows Live Sync is a wonderful thing. Especially if you have more than one computer you use regularly.
5. Weekends, when all 3 kids are home during the day, mom gets no more than 37 seconds of quiet at a time, and absolutely no time to concentrate on anything.
6. A beard trimmer, with guides, will double as a set of clippers for giving a small boy a haircut.
7. If you say you will do something “over the weekend” this means that the kids start nagging for it to be done as soon as they get home from school on Friday, and continue until the promised event is done or until they annoy you to the point that you cancel said event.
8. I need a new copy of Office ‘07
9. I still enjoy cooking…
10. Google docs Rawks for so many things.
11. Temperatures over 100 in mid October is obscene.
12. Well.. I enjoy cooking when it is not obscenely hot…
13. Men who think they know more than you on a given subject will not accept that you might have learned something they don’t know… no, this isn’t a new revelation, but I feel the need to remind myself periodically.
14. When PMS strikes, it is entirely possible that nothing will sound good to eat, except dark chocolate, and baby carrots. No, not together, that is nasty…. and no, I am not pregnant.