Every Friday night we have family movie night.  I make a pizza, we watch a kid-friendly movie and the little people are in bed by 7:30.  Perfect, right?

It’s honestly one of our favorite nights of the week- a night that we are all home together, snuggled on the couch, laughing over whatever it is we’re watching.  We’ve watched some great movies- Up, Surf’s Up (that one is the kids favorite), Babe, Spirit & all the Toy Stories. We’ve also seen some not so great ones- Marmaduke, G-Force, to name a few.  Tonight we watched Peter Pan– the original.

I never realized just how PC I’ve become. There were sword fights! Man-eating crocodiles! Some not so pleasant descriptions of women (wenches & shrews)! Stereotypical  Indians! Threats to kill little kids!  The Hubs and I kept looking at each other with wide eyes.

All that said, the kids loved it!  The crocodile made them laugh and Scorch thought the sword fights were the coolest thing ever.  So we all just enjoyed it- the lessons on political correctness will come tomorrow.

I’m a fixer.

It’s in my nature- I can’t help it.  You have a problem? I’ll have advice for you- whether you want it or not.  If I don’t know an answer, I’ll Google the hell out of your problem and I’ll come up with something. I have to remind myself that sometimes people just want to vent- they don’t want help.  I’m this way with everyone- strangers in the grocery store, friends & family.

Especially family.

Red and The Bearded One got some news about Baby Lala this week that they were hoping not to hear. She has three grade 1 or grade 2 brain bleeds. Brain bleeds (or IVH) are very common in preemies and range in severity from grade 1 (minor) to grade 4 (very severe).  Lala’s brain bleeds could (please, God) amount to a whole lot of nothing- just another note on a medical chart bigger then she is. Or it could lead to other issues that we won’t even entertain yet. We just don’t know- nor will we know until Lala gets older.

I can’t fix this. I can’t make this better for Red, TBO or most importantly, my sweet 2.5 lb niece.  All we can do is roll with this and see where the journey takes us. Baby Lala is loved like mad already- no new tests or discoveries will change that.

That said, I’m going to Google “crystal balls” just in case there is one out there that actually does tell the future!

I’ve been off from work for a full week now. Which is awesome- but, like most good things, it has gone by too fast. I got teary eyed in the car yesterday looking at the neighborhood Christmas lights with the kids knowing that they’ll be taken down soon. A sap? Why yes, I am!

I have no idea how to sum up such a fantastic Christmas! We celebrated Christmas 5 times this year with various family members from near and far. Some were fancy with big turkey dinners and others were more low key with pizza and wings. All of them were a lot of fun from start to finish. The kiddos were rock stars all through the holidays- a minor miracle when you consider the major meltdown both kids had on the 23rd because it wasn’t Christmas yet! Santa was very very good to us all in so many ways.

Here are a few random observations from the past week:

1) Beaner can eat her body weight in dinner rolls. Which is a good thing since it was the only thing she ate at 3 out of our 5 Christmas celebrations.

2) I shouldn’t have spent all the time stressing to ensure both kids had the same amount of gifts. Scorch opened all of his in 5 minutes and Bean got half way through and stopped because she wanted to play with what she had and couldn’t be bothered to keep going.

3) The gifts that I thought were going to be the biggest hits this year (dinosaur habitat for Scorch/Tinkbell doll for Bean) weren’t. Instead Scorch loves his $5 magnifying glass more then anything and Bean won’t take her new backpack off.

4) Getting a recording of the Story of Christmas read to the kids from their great-grandparents (one of whom is in poor health) made me cry.

5) Christmas without my sister and TBO is not right. I’ve only ever spent one other Christmas not with Red in my life, so it’s odd not having them around. Thankfully Baby L is still doing great and next Christmas with all 3 of them will be awesome!

6) Instead of starting the business we did 4 years ago, the Hubs & I should have opened a bounce house place. Those places make a killing (in large part to my kids).

7) I’m not a fan of Playdough. The Bean will play for hours every day- but the fun to work ratio (digging it out of carpets & her mouth) just isn’t worth it in my book.

8) I’m really, really, really going to miss hearing the Bean yell “Christmas- I yike Christmas!” each time she sees a tree or lights or a Santa.

360 more days and counting until we can do it all over again!

From our family to yours, a very Merry Christmas!  We hope your holiday is filled with everything it should be- family, friends, laughter, love and wonder.

The Good

The Hubs is feeling better and no one else has gotten sick yet.  I’m not declaring us disease free yet because, as my dear friend Karin (who is a nurse) informed me earlier, we’re not out of the woods yet. I should have coughed on her for being so darn practical about the matter.

The Bad

We took the kids to the store today so they could buy presents for each other. I took Beaner with me, The Hubs had Scorch.  2 minutes into our trip, the Bean (who was sitting in the shopping cart) took her boots and socks off.  Wonderful, I am that white-trash mom who lets her kids go barefoot in the store during winter. Awesome.  Then on the way out, Scorch threw an almighty fit because we didn’t get him anything on this trip other then a present he couldn’t even open yet.  The injustice was just too much for my 4 year old and he made sure the whole store knew it!

The Ugly
I have yet to start my wrapping.  I don’t like to wrap and quite frankly, I stink at it.  I would say it looks like a blind 4 year old wrapped my gifts, but that would be an insult to blind 4 year olds.  Let’s hope our friends & family open their presents so quickly they don’t notice, k?

You know how sometimes you live with someone so long that you stop noticing things about them? The gray hairs on your spouses head? The dogs weight gain? I’m like that with my kids- only in reverse. I notice that they are getting bigger all the time. This morning, for instance, I realized that I couldn’t take Scorch’s shirt off of him while I’m sitting on the ground any more because the kid is too damn tall.  I marvel daily at how the Bean is putting together crazy complex sentences.

What I forget daily is that my kids are still babies in a lot of ways. Today they both reminded me of that-

> Scorch is having a Harvest Party at school tomorrow and he keeps calling it his Hummus Party.

> The Bean pronounced the word Ghost as “goat” and is convinced that ghosts say “moo,” not “boo.”

I do love those little buggers!  I hope you all have a very happy Halloween!

I’ve really got nothing to say today. Shocking, I know.  I’m missing our beautiful fall weather- this rain has got to go!

I was never, ever going to live this close to home.

Growing up, all I could think about doing was getting out. Out of a place where you couldn’t go to the gas station without knowing someone. Out of the place where it snows 5-7 months a year. Out of the place where there was nothing to do and limited opportunities. Just OUT.

After graduating college, the Hubs and I moved to the DC area for his job. We loved it there- the shorter winters were a huge bonus. If we were ever bored, it was our fault for not finding something to do. We hit all the museums, drove to the beach on the weekends, went into the city for dinner, went to see the O’s play in Baltimore.

But it wasn’t home. People didn’t say hello or thank you for holding the door for them. They didn’t look you in the eye or make small talk. Nobody said “God Bless You” when you sneezed.  So when the Hubs job offered us a transfer back an hour from home, we jumped on it.

We’ve been back a little over 8 years now and I can’t imagine living anywhere else- especially this time of year.

So life in the Wickedly Crazy Awesome (WCA) house has been in turmoil the past 24 hours.

The Hubs job has a lot of pro’s to it, but the two biggest cons are (1) lack of planning and 2) lack of consideration for families) can make life a tad bit difficult. We know due to the Hub’s job we’re going to have to move- we were told we’d have to report to a new location in Aug 2011.  We could deal with that.  Scorch could have one more full year at his kick-ass school and start a new school for Kindergarten and the Bean could start preschool in our new city.  So, while still a crappy situation- that is the least crappy timing for us.

But…we were told yesterday, Surprise- you have to move in March.

Not. Good.

BUT then today we were essentially told “whoops- just screwing with you! We don’t know when you’re moving anymore!”

That sound you heard? It was my head exploding.