Christmas with the girls....et. al.

When we moved into this house I was stoked because it came with one of those fridges that has the slide out shelves. I remember telling Nick how cool that was, but after being here for 6 months I just realized that I have never once slid one of those shelves out to get something. I still move everything around to get to what I need in the back. That inevitably prompts me clean out the fridge. I ask myself now, "self, if you didn't have to move everything around to get to what you need, then would you ever clean out the fridge?" The answer is, "probably not." So I think GE needs to do everyone a favor and just do away with the sliding shelves, cause we all need cleaner fridges.

No seriously, folks. I haven't posted in awhile because the family has been here for two weeks. Yes, fourteen days of family living in my house. It wouldn't be so bad, I think, if we lived where they lived, but because we live in a different state that creates an obligation to go sight seeing. Hell, I haven't even gone sight seeing, but once they step foot here they've got their plans all laid out. Forget about schedules and routines for the kids, when they're here you gotta turn on the entertainment button in your brain and schedules go out the window. Now that they're gone I'm stuck with a 15 month old who feels that staying up til 11 pm is cool and sleeping til 9:30 is A-okay. I would love to sleep til 9:30 everyday, but since my oldest has to be on the bus at freakin' 6:30 in the morning, 9:30 is outta the question. In the meantime, I'm losing precious sleep and the patience that's required when dealing with tres ninos. I wish I had the button that makes the swirly symbol so I could put it above the second "n" in ninos, but for those that don't know, it's pronounced "neenyos." Ok, and the tres is "trace." Overall, we had a great Christmas though. The kids went temporarily insane on opening day and have since justified their constant inside playing with justifiable excuses that their toys are new and they wanna play with them bunches. Yesterday I had ten kids running amok in the house. Yes, ten. I only have three children. However, my kids apparently got some really cool toys cause every friggin' kid on our street decided it was time to visit the Hooes. Truthfully, it was kinda fun. There were actually little girls that came to play too! I have always dealt with boys. I say "dealt" on purpose cause that is what one does with boys. All this girl stuff is totally new to me, including the glass breaking soprano squeals that go along with it. The neighbor girls were here modeling in Olivia's dress-up trunk clothes, and my younger boy (with his two friends) were dressing up in his pirate gear and chasing the girls away with swords, snakes, dinosaurs and anything else that little girls apparently find terrifying. And then it was "do my hair time." Geez, what else have I forgotten from my childhood. I've lived with boys for so long that I worry I've forgotten how to be a princess. I want my girl to be a girl. I really don't want a tomboy. I want a little girl in dresses and bows, who finds great satisfaction in being able to do the splits and handsprings. My husband, on the other hand, thinks there's nothin' cuter than a little girl in hunting clothes toting a 12 gauge around. I guess we'll see how it turns out. I really can't wait to see... it's gonna be fun. Raising kids is like riding 'It's a Small World' at Disneyland, you never know what's gonna be around the next corner. Ok, so that's my update for tonight. It's 10:34 and I'm gonna try and reason my non-talking 15 month old into bed. Much love my sistas and brothas (lol that's funny) and good-night.

Grr...the holidays

Christmas, ahhh, Christmas. Being a military family our Christmas comes in phases. First there are the endless phone calls from family far and near about what to buy. What do we do? I always go to Wal-mart's online wishlist with my kids so they can shop and create a list of all the things they so desire. When I was a kid we'd get out the JCPenney catalog and just circle everything we wanted, not so anymore. Everything today is online and it's wonderful as far as I'm concerned. It saves me from having to go down the list and dividing up what each kid wants for each side of the family. So we email their lists from Wal-mart and it's all good. Then I let each side know what the other has gotten so there are no repeats. In the past we've always gone home for Christmas, but this year we moved to Texas and we told everyone WAY in advance that we would not be home for the holidays so they could plan for either shipping or traveling. Turns out that they all wanted to come to our house instead! Now, don't get me wrong, I love my family, but OH MY GOD they all are coming to our house. We have yet to find the perfect distance from our respective in-laws. When you live too close, they come all the time in short little bursts of misery. When you live too far they come for weeks at a time. We need to be in the middle somewhere so they come very little and stay very short. Close enough so that they can come and pick up the kids and take them to THEIR house if'n that be what they desire. Ok, well I gotta go cause my husband is lettin' me know that I need to go to bed cause family is arriving tomorrow for a week and there'll be no play for us for that long. What a man.