Rules, Chaos, and Holidays.

Ahhh December. The beautiful snow. Holiday music. Family and friends hanging out. Christmas specials on TV. Annnnnnnnd two or three weeks of stress. I love this time of year!

It's not really all that bad. It does get stressful and I should have done better this year. I once again left everything to last minute and I am feeling the stress of it. I have ornaments to finish creating to send off for my family ornament exchange, I have Hanukkah gifts to buy for my kidlets. Hanukkah and Christmas menus to plan. Christmas pictures to get done ad cards finished and sent off. And decorating, putting up the tree and getting things done. Agggh!

Just kidding.

Sorta.

So today I bought the first of the gifts. I bought a really cute inflatable bouncy trampoline thing. Bug and Bean tend to love jumping on the guest bed and it drives me insane. Utterly insane. So I caved and bought this contraption that is small enough to fit in my dining room and yet big and bouncy enough to let them bounce their little hearts out. And gives them an option to let out all their energy while we hibernate in our house this winter. I thought it was perfect.

We are doing our holidays differently this year. Hanukkah and Christmas both. I'm pretty excited about it. And they will fall together which will be great. The kidlets get one big gift for Christmas plus a stocking full of small goodies, plus whatever else they get from family and friends, and then they get their one gift a night during Hanukkah. So no massive overload and yet no going without. Now hopefully I don't ruin the latkes and all will be grand : )
 In other news, I am unsure of what's going on in life right now. It's always great when God topsy turvys it and you have no idea what is going on. So we take it one day at a time. Life is pretty much the same except that Husband has decided to be done with the railroad. He has pride as does any man and I don't blame him but, sadly, I was very attached to the paychecks. So the hard part is compensating for less money which totally sucks. But is hopefully very temporary because husband is also wanting to go work on the oil rigs. Boy that would be nice.......
 I'm trying to keep an upbeat tone for this blog but I think my strength is waning. There is so much controversy in life that bugs me to pieces, I am afterall human, judge me if you must but you have flaws too ; )  But at the same time, being one of those blog authors who must be negative all the time or have to stir pots to increase readers is just not my thing. I also however don't want this to be a monotonous diary sounding blog. Dear diary today I washed dishes....blah blah blah. So I will be thinking of exactly what I want this to be but it will be very real. Very my opinion style. Nothing forced upon you. But very out there. And sometimes, kind of blunt and hard to take. I have had so many pieces that I wanted to write, inspired by a friend of mine who also writes a most excellent blog, but I have a lot of fear of coming out with certain posts. So I either keep them private or I erase and never post. Sometimes, I fear judgement from people and fear what they truly think more than i fear anything else in this world. People can be cruel and heartless and as long as they step on others to make themselves feel better, everything is ok. But, I got a wonderful message last night and I have reread it many times and the best part of it (well one of the best parts) is what is truly pushing me. "Courage is not the lack of fear, but rather it means being afraid and doing it anyway." So, I'm just going to write without a second thought of it. And I don't want to limit myself by applying rules such as how long a blog should be, that it should be of a few subjects or just one, what is PC and what isn't....blah blah blah. Just. Writing. Like I should be doing.  : )
 Ahhh. A little bit of a peaceful feeling now that I posted something after such a long silence. I need to go get Bug from school and clean up the house a little before work. I hope life isn't as chaotic for any of you out there and if it is, shrug it off and have some hot chocolate. And browse pinterest.com, lol!! Until next time,

Me Oh My

 Wowza! Two weeks has gone by since my last blog. I try not to let too much time pass by, and at the same time, I don't want to post too frequently, but dang! Two weeks...
Let's play catch up shall we?

Halloween. 

 It was really fun. Bug was a spider princess and Bean was a spider. They both looked super cute but very un-spiderish in the whole "I-hate-spiders-and-will-kill-every-one" sort of way. Definitely did not want to beat these ones with my shoe  ; ) They made out with a ton of candy. Literally. Well...Almost literally. I bought a big black plastic cauldron at Walmart a few years ago, all the candy they got fit into it perfectly. So, we won't be buying candy for a few years. I did however, learn something that weekend though, babies and toddlers make more of a haul then the older kidlets. And we did compare. Big cuteness factor when a little one can barely utter trick-or-treat and thank you I suppose. Oh well, more candy for me ; )

Hannah and I have been spending more time together at night doing all sorts of crafty activities. Her favorite one which is a nightly repeat is the whole cornstarch goop. You add cornstarch and water together to make a barely liquid but barely solid kind of goop. She loves it and I do too because it is so easy, cheap to make and yet so easy to clean up too. Got the idea off of www.pinterest.com don't know if anyone uses it, so just in case you don't...you should. It is amazing and I'm not telling you anything about it just so you will go see for yourself :P

 Husband has been home for over a month and a half now. It's a big long story of a mess but basically husband lost his job for being colorblind and now is back on but laid off. His union (who is headed by Jimmy Hoffa Jr thank goodness) and it's lawyers are now pursuing a class action case against the company for discriminating and violating the A.D.A. (American Disabilities Act) I'm upset and stressed out by it because Husband is an amazing employee. How many people do you know who have never been fired by the time they were 30? Well, besides me, I've never been fired either. But not very many people can say that. He has always done a good job, never even ran a switch or derailed a train (No, not every derailment causes an explosion or huge deal, sometimes only a few wheels pop off the track by an inch, not a big deal at all) so why this company treats him and other employees like crap is just unfair.

 My sister-in-law is moving at the end of the month. It makes me sad because she and my nephew are the only family we have in this town. We have a lot of fun together and it makes it nice to know you have someone to vent to about anything and it won't go very far. But I'm really happy about it because they get to move to Minneapolis. So it isn't but eight hours away and I always enjoy an excuse to go visit the cities  : D

 I picked up an extra job and a few extra shifts at work so my week is completely blown away as far as free time is concerned. I have to map out times to get my holiday stuff started now so I don't procrastinate with it too much and it gets late. I'm doing handmade gifts this year and am part of a family ornament exchange. Handmade may seem cheap to some people, which is not all fiction, but to me, they seem to make the best sense. People get too material around this time of year. That and I don't know very many people who can even bake a pie without going to the store and buying one in the box. My goal is to get more crafty, more DIY-ish, and create my food from scratch or as close to it that I can come.

 Today was one of my biggest accomplishments (even though we didn't get a thing!) First day hunting! Really exciting to go out but a big let down when we had to come home without anything in the truck. I'm a really awesome shot, and can't wait to down my first deer. And it puts enough meat in my freezer for at least a few months. I haven't had to buy store bought meat in over a year and that's exactly how I like it. I know where all my chicken, beef and deer meat came from. And it has zero pesticides, chemicals, hormones, or whatever in it. Plus, if you cook it right, deer tastes amazing!!

 Is it too early to put on Carol of The Bells and Let It Snow? I LOVE this time of year! Hot cocoa, snow (which started falling today), and Christmas songs and movies. I have to start figuring out holiday pictures that are going on our Christmas cards this year. And getting everything ready for Thanksgiving. I stock up early because I cook for us, but then I cook for the railroad guys too. Lots of them. LOTS. LoL.

 So that about catches us up on life so far. So much has been going on, it really seemed like longer than two weeks...I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend and don't forget about tomorrow and honoring our veterans!!