'Twas the Day After Christmas

"Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house tiny creatures were crawling, they're smaller than a mouse. After fighting for weeks to evict them from here we threw up our hands and said, "the end is near." The professionals came and took care of the ants and to our relief there were no more in our pants. (figuratively speaking).

With all the rain we have had ant problems and I finally got tired of dealing with the problem myself. So yesterday we signed up to have the ant guys come over every other month to take care of the problem. I am totally OK with that. The only downside was that we had to be out of our house for two hours. So we piled up the kids and took them out to lunch, to run errands and then to get a treat. Everyone enjoyed our family time together. (Pictures to follow. I can't find the cord to hook up my new camera to the computer.)

We had a great Christmas day. It was kind of an adventure. We opened presents, had breakfast and left for Damon's aunt's house. We have spent every Christmas there except the 2 we stayed in Oregon. It was nice to see all the family. We had to battle the weather the whole drive to Riverside as well as Noah getting car sick. After Aunt Sue's we went to Redlands to spend Christmas evening with my family. The kids enjoyed playing with their cousins. We ended the evening with some very loud rounds of PIT. It was fun to see my mom participate. She usually doesn't like to play games with her over competitive, cut throat family.

The nice thing about the ant man coming was it forced us to clean up all of our Christmas stuff. Our house looks like it did before the addition of 20 million new things. (again figuratively speaking)

We hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas too. Now, bring on that New Year!

'Twas the Night Before

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature under 10 was stirring in the house. All the adults were stirring. Some in the kitchen, some under the tree and another were still driving down to our house.

It was a fun and busy Christmas Eve. It started with a trip to the auto body shop because our car was having issues. Water is leaking into the back lift gate. This was caused by the accident. Hopefully everything is functioning properly now.

Damon's mom and I were in the kitchen baking for our family Christmas party tomorrow. She is a trooper. She worked all day in the kitchen. I hope we didn't wear her out. We had yummy clam chowder for dinner. Damon and I ran over to one of my piano student's houses so I could play a Christmas duet with her during her family's Christmas program.

After we came home we had our Christmas program. It was fun to do now that the kids are old enough. We sang songs, played the piano, did some readings, Nana and Papa shared stories from their Christmas's on the islands. It was really nice.

When it was bedtime, Lily, who was so exhausted by the end of the day, got a second wind and was so excited that Santa was coming. She was running around telling everyone to be good and quiet. She got the cookie plate out with the cookies on it. She set them by the fireplace and got into bed. She wouldn't settle down though so I had to stay with her until she fell asleep. It was funny to see her like that. The boys went to sleep right away. Damon and I were able to sneak a way for a nice long walk. Damon's sister, Dara, finally arrived from Salt Lake after 10pm.

Now everything is ready for a perfect Christmas morning. Hopefully Adam's cough won't be anything serious. He is sitting outside right now with Damon breathing in some cold night air. That usually calms down his inflamed throat.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Christmas Cheer!

Sunday the kids and I got to baking. We made banana bread and 3 types of cookies. We had lots of fun and made lots of messes. We didn't have to clean up. Damon did that. We assembled our plates of cookies and wrapped our banana bread. Last night we were able to go out and deliver them. The kids loved it. Isn't that what Christmas is all about?

The weather right now is very reminiscent of our Christmas's in Oregon. They are getting lots of snow right now, so I am happy with the rain, but wish I didn't have to be out in it. I thought I had to volunteer in the library at school so Lily and I got all bundled up and found the umbrella and went to school. We found out after we arrived that they kids aren't having library this week. The umbrella didn't do much good because the rain is coming in all directions and not just down. After we got home we had to change our clothes. I don't miss being out in the rain all the time.

Things I have to remember before the big storms start...

1. After wind storms empty gutters.

2. Hang up gutters before rain starts.

3. If you don't have to go out, don't.

4. Make sure all drains are unclogged.

5. Turn automatic sprinklers off or you end up with a swamp

6. Make sure your garage is clear so when the rain comes you don't have to park in the driveway. What a pain.

None of these are fun to do in the freezing, cold rain. I still don't know how I am going to get my kids home from school today. We don't have rain gear. At least it is not snow.

Here are some pics of the improved living room. Curtains will go up next weekend.

It's beginning to look a lot like...

CHRISTMAS!!!!!

(sorry the tree is sideways. I haven't figured out how to rotate pictures yet)

Finally. It took us a while to get there, but we had a busy and productive Saturday. Damon finished the fireplace and we had a beautiful fire in there this morning. We rearranged the furniture to make room for the new stuff. We cleaned. We picked up the tree yesterday and brought it in. Then we decorated. There were only 2 casualties this year. I broke one of my favorite bulbs by accidentally dropping another ornament on top of it. Then Noah knocked one off the tree and it shattered. After that we had a lesson on how to properly hang ornaments on the tree. I finally got a small tree for the hallway and bought some plastics bulbs for it. The kids call it their Christmas tree (and it is) and they got to decorate it however they wanted.

After we were done with the inside we headed outside to hang up lights and clean up the garage a little bit. The lights are up and working and look great. We have been dealing with a bit of a rat problem in our garage. We finally found where they have been hanging out. I had no idea that rats eat snails. We found a whole bunch of empty snail shells next to large quantities of rat pebbles. Lovely. So we cleaned that all up. Next comes out the snail poison closely followed by rat poison. I figure if we get rid of the snails the rats will go away. I also tried to convince Damon that this was the perfect time to get a cat, but he didn't buy that. So I asked my neighbor to start letting their cat back out to go hunting. Hopefully the problem will be taken care of soon.

The house is warm and cozy again. For a week it looked so stark after taking down all the fall decor. We are all excited to finally feel like Christmas is near.