It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere else but here....

Okay, I am a Thanksgiving lover. I cherish that holiday with all of my heart, all of the best points of a holiday...Food, friends, Food, family, no pressures other than FOOD! You get to sit around for hours, stuff yourselves, and enjoy great conversation. We always try to round up our friends who don't have family in the area and make sure they have a great meal and spend it with us. We set up a huge table, we cook all day, we listen to music, we watch football (not my choice), we just hang out. It is all of the good things of a holiday with very few expectations.

Christmas is great, don't get me wrong, but it is most definitely the holiday with the most preparation time, and the smallest amount of actual sit and enjoy it time...

As Thanksgiving holds such a special place in my heart, I refuse to let any ounce of Christmas into my home until after the fourth Thursday in November. I actually caved a little in my militant ways this year and started shopping early, to try and get a head start on the chaos. My goal was to be done by December 1st with all of the shopping, so I could sit back, relax, and sip some hot cocoa, wrapping presents by the fire, enjoying my new found freedom from stress at Christmas! HAHAHA, ah, my over-inflated expectation of myself cracks me up sometimes. Of course the hilarity usually hits me much later in the event than this year. Call it my own little Christmas miracle. For you see, it is December 10th, and I am sitting here typing a blog.

Is my tree up? Well about that....you see we had two dogs, we are down to one (more on that another day), but they loved to use my tree room as their own experimental Lake Urine, so until the carpet cleaner can get over here, there is no way I am putting the tree up.

Am I done shopping? YES!! (ahem....yesterday)

Are the lights up on the outside of the house? Ummmm, hubby is traveling...but I did call a place that hangs Christmas Lights. THEY WANTED $1200 to put up a few measly lights outside. But I am going to get to that, I swear....

Christmas Cookies baked? BWHAHAHAHAHAHA, okay I don't even do that one on a good year.

Are the presents wrapped? Nope! But I do have the most amazing color scheme of wrapping paper selected and just waiting for me to get started...

Soooo, what exactly have you been doing there Mrs. Erichson?!? Well, here's the thing...

• On the first day of December my busy life gave to me....one sick child home with strep throat.
• On the second day of December my busy life gave to me...make seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat.
• On the third day of December, my busy life gave to me...one third grade field trip, making seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat.
• On the fourth day of December, my busy life gave to me...one State Cheer leading competition, one third grade field trip, making seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat.
• On the fifth day of December, my busy life gave to me....DATE DAY WITH MY HUBBY (no complaints on this one), one State Cheer leading competition, one third grade field trip, making seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat.
• On the sixth day of December, my busy life gave to me...cleaning the garage, DATE DAY WITH MY HUBBY (no complaints on this one), one State Cheer leading competition, one third grade field trip, making seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat.
• On the seventh day of December, my busy life gave to me...One Blue Man Group, cleaning the garage, DATE DAY WITH MY HUBBY (no complaints on this one), one State Cheer leading competition, one third grade field trip, making seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat.
• On the eighth day of December, my busy life gave to me...hubby on a business trip, One Blue Man Group, cleaning the garage, DATE DAY WITH MY HUBBY (no complaints on this one), one State Cheer leading competition, one third grade field trip, making seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat. 
• On the ninth day of December, my busy life gave to me... making four signs for Poms, hubby on a business trip, One Blue Man Group, cleaning the garage, DATE DAY WITH MY HUBBY (no complaints on this one), one State Cheer leading competition, one third grade field trip, making seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat. 
• On the tenth day of December, my busy life gave to me...one Poms Team Dinner, making four signs for Poms, hubby on a business trip, One Blue Man Group, cleaning the garage, DATE DAY WITH MY HUBBY (no complaints on this one), one State Cheer leading competition, one third grade field trip, making seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat. 
• On the eleventh day of December, my busy life gave to me...one Poms State Competition, one Poms Team Dinner, making four signs for Poms, hubby on a business trip, One Blue Man Group, cleaning the garage, DATE DAY WITH MY HUBBY (no complaints on this one), one State Cheer leading competition, one third grade field trip, making seven blankets for Poms, and one child home with strep throat. 
• On the twelfth day of December, my busy life gave to me....(to be continued...)

Let's see what will make the song?!?
1. Helping the in the third grade class
2. Party in Preschool
3. Christmas Program at the Preschool
4. Hair Appointment
5. Family Portrait
6. Dance Class
7. Cheer Practice
8. Poms Practice

But you see, as I typed this wonderfully full list, I was struck with some perspective.
1. My children are healthy and able to attend school, dance, cheer, parties, take field trips, etc.
2. My husband is blessed enough to have a job that provides for my family.
3. My best friend (see #2) and I, despite five VERY busy children, take time to be together, alone. We are still madly in love, and enjoy every minute of our life together.
4. We have medical care for sick children, and the insurance to cover the costs.
5. We have food, friends, family, laughs and each other...
6. MY LIFE IS FULL, AND MY LIFE IS BLESSED

Now to hang the lights. Merry Christmas everyone!!

New at this, so here is an oldie but a goodie...

I am going to come up with some great words of wisdom, I swear, but for now, Enjoy!!

"The Real Punishment for Eve Eating the Apple"

Okay, so a few of you may remember me posting a picture a couple of weeks ago on Facebook. It was Glori climbing up the outside of the stair railing. My comment was “Why I never use the restroom unless someone else is home.”

Well, I think that I may have stumbled onto a new theory. Indulge me, if you will. I know that the Bible says in Genesis 3:16 “…You will bear children with intense pain and suffering…” due to Eve’s rather selfish choice to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I think that all of us can at least agree that childbirth is indeed painful. However, the subsequent raising of the children for the next 18 years is certainly a longer lasting effect than let’s say even 24 to 36 hours of labor.

One of my favorite sayings was always that women have to carry purses as part of the punishment for eating the apple. I’ve now changed my tune. Thanks to Eve’s wonderful preference for forbidden fruit, womankind is now sidled with the absolute inability to use the restroom without their children stumbling into some type of foolishness or another.

For example (I can back up this theory – I do have an example - actually two.) A couple of weeks ago, I was using the restroom. Now, let’s not get gross but let’s just say it wasn’t a 1 hour pit stop. I was just in there to take care of business. I walk out of the bathroom to discover that my daughter has decided to traverse the stairs. Now when I say traverse, I don’t mean the normal everyday ambling up and down the stairs, that so many of us mothers do: doing laundry, cleaning rooms, returning something to its owner’s room, running from room to figure out where the child has hidden, etc. I am talking nimbly tiptoeing on the 1½ inch overhang outside of the railing. Traversing like a professional rock climber up the outside of my staircase. (See attached picture.) I discovered all of this upon my exit from said restroom, and after snapping a shot for posterity, calmly (at least that’s how I remember it now) removed Glori from the railing and continued on with our busy day.

Now, onto second my thought – let me just share with you a little about my day today. Again, I find myself in the in the restroom - as all of us will admit, we are required to do a least once daily, I hear Glori telling the dog what a beautiful dog she is. And I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, how sweet. Finally these two – who have been like oil and water since the dog walked in the house - are bonding. They’re going to be like the cute little Norman Rockwell pictures; Glori walking by with Lisi faithfully at her side.” Little did I know that Glori was doing a full fledged Estee Lauder/Mary Kay/Pulling out all the stops/No holds barred/Full Body Makeover on the dog, complete with blue liquid eyeliner and pink staining lip gloss. Then continuing her wondrously artistic work, she then moved on from the dog to paint the hallway floor, the whole outside of the stair railing (apparently it needed some work, which she discovered during her previous scouting expedition), two of my chairs and underneath the Island.

Now let me pause at this moment, as I am sure some of you are thinking, “What in the world were you doing, leaving your makeup out where the baby could get it?” Well let me assure you – IT WASN'T MINE. One of my wonderfully helpful middle schoolers, (who gets to remain nameless –of which she is extremely grateful) while packing for her Youth Group Middle School Snow Retreat, decided that it would be fun for her to pack some makeup in her overnight bag. (By the way quit trying to guess who it was –I have three Middle Schoolers.) As we all know makeovers are quite popular with the Middle School set. Now, in her helpfulness to make sure that her friends were all just as beautiful as they could be, she left her makeup case on the kitchen island in full access of the three year old. So here I was, last night, dealing with the Three Year Old (yes it needed to be capitalized – it is a title in this case), don’t forget the seven year-old who was also attention deprived, a new puppy (house training and all that), a husband away on a business trip and all of the details of packing for three teenagers to go away for a weekend. I did not notice the bright red, enormous, tempting, big-sister cool, beautiful makeup case on our kitchen island. (You know the whole forest for the trees thing.) So yes, technically I can claim some (I did say some – not all) of the responsibility, for it being left there. Why is it that I always feel like a drill sergeant, yet the biggest messes are made from a simple little preventative thing being missed?!?! Had I noticed it last night, let alone today, I wouldn’t have meandered into the bathroom, leaving it on the counter where it temptingly granted full access to the curious little set of eyes that probably found it, the second she heard the bathroom door click shut.

Needless to say, I now have a Pablo Picasso worthy Weimeraner and a three year old who, believe it or not, has blue feet. Oh, and I failed to mention that even after a 45 minute bath with lots of warm water and rubbing and yelping and screeching and whining and crying, (that was all me) none of it came off. Apparently blue makeup is semi-permanent, (yes I am optimistically using the word semi) and staining lip gloss, does indeed stain. Well done, Maybelline, you took the high moral ground and gave us truth in advertising.

So the next time someone you know is expecting a baby, think happy thoughts for them. The pain and suffering that Eve so generously bestowed upon us mothers is very short lived. And in the light of holding their brand new bouncing bundle of joy, the memory of the pain fades so very quickly. Then they are left with nothing but a darling little angel - until they turn three. Then I would highly suggest learning to pee quickly or drinking as little liquid as possible until reinforcements arrive.

(Enjoy the pictures, I am sure I will in about 20 years.)