One Better

Last week I posted my marvelous idea of using an extra pillowcase as a chair cover. Then my mother brought over these two giant pillow shams she had and made it that much better!


I guess they're king pillow shams and she doesn't use them. She brought over a couple of beige ones yesterday, and they're kind of padded! They slip on and off the chairs so easily and are far easier to clean than the chairs!
This is what I bought my poor husband at the store today:

We haven't been buying kleenex lately; we're just using toilet paper. However, when you have a cold, that gets pretty rough pretty fast. I really want to switch over to hankerchiefs but I haven't found/made any yet.

Joanna brought me this after rest time today:

Poor guy. She wants me to fix it. I'm hoping I can toss it and she won't miss it. :)

I probably won't be blogging much over the next week. (I say that!) My poor old computer died yesterday. Actually it's only mostly dead. But there's no miracle pill for it. I bought that thing in the fall of '05 I think. It could have been a little bit sooner. It has very little RAM and very little hard drive space. It even has serial ports in the back for a monitor and keyboard -- old school. It also does have usb ports though and a CD burner. From the fall of '09 to the fall of this year I primarily used my work computer from the church (which was a major work horse!), but of course I had to give it back when James was born and I stopped working. So lately we've only used this machine regularly for about 2 months. I could tell it was starting to suffer the strain -- very slow, the screen was taking a long time to come back on after it opened, etc., but I thought we could just live with the slowness for a while. It's hard to live with a dark screen though. Right now the computer itself seems to work fine but the screen will only show up for 5 seconds before darkening. Close, open, and another 5 seconds. Repeat. This allowed me to transfer anything new over to the external hard drive, but anything else was just not possible. Even though it felt a little selfish (the computer is after all a lifestyle thing: you can't eat it; I don't use it to make money, etc), we ordered a new one yesterday. I shopped around everywhere I could think of online and got the best deal for us. I probably should have visted a couple of brick and mortar stores, but that's just so hard with three kids in tow! I feel good about the deal we got and I should be able to pick it up Monday (or maybe sooner?). I know we'll just be amazed at the storage space and processing speed.

Right before the computer died I was planning on buying a Kindle! I've been wanting one forever, and they are really an affordable price right now. I got a little money for Christmas, plus a bonus I wasn't expecting, and an Amazon gift card. I decided to wait to get it though, (sniffle, sniffle) since we had to buy a computer. Matt really wants me to have one, so we'll likely go ahead and get it anyway soon. The computer money came out of the emergency fund, even though I'm not totally sure it was an emergency. :)

Even More Presents

The Christmas posts are coming to an end.  But alas (for you), they are not over yet.  :)  I think I have stopped for the evening though.  I can’t help it.  I’m terribly addicted to blogging absolutely everything we see and do.  It’s a sickness.  I really should be sleeping. :)

Look what Joanna made for us this year.  I LOVE getting handmade gifts!!

Natalie is studying her trains from Auntie Kathryn.  Choo choo!

I love this Joanna face!  It’s her super-excited “Aw!” face.

A lady bug pillow pet!

Natalie got a puppy dog!

Oh, they love them!  Thanks, Mamma and Pop!

The Kitchen

We were planning to save the big present from us, the new play kitchen, for last, but Joanna discovered the playroom door was locked a little early.

All on her own, she decided Santa had locked it. He’d also moved the old little kitchen out of the room.

Here’s her “Why did Santa lock the playroom door?” look.

So I unlocked it.

It took Natalie a little while to notice it. :)

But Joanna got excited right away!

Natalie got excited too, once she figured out it was there. :)

They LOVE cooking in their new kitchen! (from Santa, apparently!)

It’s amazing how much time they’ve spent in there the past couple of days – yay! And so far, Joanna is doing very well at picking up the kitchen toys now that there’s room to store them in the kitchen itself. We really like this one so far!

More Presents!

It’s Pinocchio.  And it’s a tape measure.  Isn’t that brilliant?  Thank you Dad and Renee.

James was getting pretty drowsy and I laid him down in his bouncer so I could get to his goodies.  He fell asleep in there!  If he’s been awake though, he would have told me this was his new favorite shirt: I love my mommy.

Such cute duds from Nana and Popo!

Joanna is in the background holding up things in front of the camera.  She is eternally entertaining.  :)

Showing off her pretty necklace that came with a book from Nana and Popo.  Natalie’s not really in to her necklace yet, but Joanna LOVES wearing hers!

And (even though I’m sure they meant to keep these noisy toys at their house) Nana and Popo sent the girls their own sets of handbells!

Oh the music that will be heard around here!

See Natalie snuggling James’ lovey?  He better watch out.

We got lots of great goodies from our “Oklahoma Santas!”  Thank you!!

More to come!  My children are so deprived, eh?

I Vacuumed on Christmas

And it was because I wanted to. :)

Wouldn’t you?

That’s what was in my big red box. 

Dad and Renee bought it at Home Depot here and had Matt’s mom and dad pick it up, wrap it, and deliver it to us.  Thanks guys!

I LOVE my Dyson!

Christmas Day: The stockings

Three (almost four) is the BEST AGE for Christmas!!

Digging in:

 

Later, she told me that Santa must have gone to McDonalds for this little bear (it is a Happy Meal toy.)  Man I love that kid.

 

Natalie needed some prompting to keep pulling stuff out of the stocking.  She’d have been happy to just eat Teddy Grahams and call it a day.

Our own Jean Imogene, modeling her new cloth diaper.  :)

Matt helped James with his stocking.  :)

He got a zebra lovey!

His loot: a teether (actually from Kimberly, but it seemed just perfect to add to his stocking!), a sippy cup, his lovey, and a copy of I’ll Love You Forever, which even I can’t believe I’ve never owned.  And as many times as I’ve read it, still makes me cry, especially now I have my son.

He really grabbed a hold of his lovey – I think it’s a keeper!

Look at Matt’s new fancy Man-Apron!

I got CHOCOLATE in my stocking.  Whoo hoo!

Presents!

This post is mostly about presents we gave or made, but there’s some other things snuck in as well.

I found this post and decided to make a question jar for my sister.

First I printed off the pages of questions (already done!) and cut them apart.

 

I rolled each strip on a pencil to make a nice curl.

 

I was going to use a mason jar, but with all the curlies, it was too small.  Luckily I had a big ol’ applesauce jar laying around.  Next time I will fold the strips instead of curling them.  I think they’ll fit into a quart jar then.

 

I prettied it up.  I also added a bow, but forgot to take a picture afterward.

The point of it is basically just to have questions laying around to answer.  If you’re bored or need a game or a journal prompt, pull out a question to pass around and answer!  I will make one for us too, I just haven’t yet.  I think it has the potential to be pretty fun!

On Black Friday I found a deal for an electric griddle, and I was able to use a gift card.

I don’t know how I survived without my griddle for so long!  I love baking up a double batch of pancakes and freezing them.  It took forever with my little skillet.  This is so much better!  And I can cook lots of bacon and lots of eggs and several grilled sandwiches – lovely!  And Merry early Christmas to me. :)

Tuesday night at enchilada night Grandma had gifts for the kiddos!

Joanna LOVES her guitar!

And Natalie loves her microphone!!

The girls have played and played with them this week!

I did very little wrapping this year, but most of what I did involved brown paper or paper sacks.

I love drawing on the ribbons and tags.  :)

Earlier in the week I gathered up and organized the kids’ stuff for their stockings.  Since I couldn’t very well take the stockings down, I used grocery bags to organize.

For posterity, here’s about what went into Joanna’s stocking:

Natalie’s was pretty much the same.  I ended up taking out the book since it didn’t fit.  I’ll save it for birthday or a road trip or something.  They LOVED the simplest stuff the best – chocolate milk and Teddy Grahams – whoo hoo!

This was the day a couple of weeks ago when the play kitchen came.  I couldn’t budge it off the porch!  I ended up just closing the window blinds inside so the girls couldn’t see out.  Another advantage of coming in the garage is that we miss anything on the porch!

More on the lives of these presents to come!