why...

Why do I get annoyed when people try to be nice? Why do I just want to be left alone sometimes? Is that really even normal?

The Best Christmas Ever!

Whew! We made it through Christmas and it was the best Christmas ever according to my kids. Hopefully it will erase last year's Christmas which was the worst Christmas ever. Boy, was it a long day. Jeffrey Michael could not stay asleep. He fell asleep around 10pm but then woke up every 15-20 mins from 11pm to 4 am. We finally resorted to a small shot of Nyquil. Yes, I know. Child Youth Services will be at the door before I finish typing this sentence. But it was necessary for his life. I think I would have taken it if I didn't get at least an hour of sleep. Paige and he woke up at 6 am and really had a blast. My husband went back to sleep after all the presents were opened. I had all the gifts put away and the living room cleaned up by 9 am.

Jeff woke up around 10 or 10:30 am and while he made breakfast I wrapped the few gifts that were left over for cousins. We relaxed for a little bit before heading over to my mother in law's house. Jeffrey Michael was so tired from not sleeping. By 8:30pm he was ready to go home and get in bed. The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and trying to organize some key spots around the house.

Tonight, Jeff and I are suppose to prime the bedroom walls. The kids are going over their friends house for the night to do their gift exchange. I'd just like to crawl under the covers and sleep. I don't think I've recovered from Christmas eve. New Year's Day I just want to sleep in bed all day. Not sure my family would let that happen.

Have any of you made any New Year's Resolutions? I never do. Though this year I was thinking of trying but I'm not too sure how successful becoming filthy rich and being waited on hand and foot is!!

Holiday Wishes

I'm sending out early holiday wishes to everyone as the next couple days are going to be beyond busy! Hope everyone has a wonderful time with family and friends!

Why do I torture myself?

This weekend we decided to begin work on our bedroom. Why? Because I don't have enough to do right before Christmas. Seriously. We had a Christmas party with our friends on Saturday in which I needed to put together some dishes to bring. Paige had a birthday party and Jeff had to go to the dentist to have an emergency extraction. Plus we had a nice blast of snow fall.

Yesterday we had our friend come over to move cable wires. Didn't end up happening. My husband's drill wasn't charged and our friend forgot the brackets. Today will be take two. The worst part of all is that I had to empty out my closet and my son's closet so they could drill the holes for the wires. I left everything out last night and this morning I went to our closets 10 times forgetting they were empty! Ah the power of habits!!

The kids and I did start making cookies. As usual, the kids fought. And thinking back to their comments, I'm not to sure I should let anyone eat the cookies. From -"don't put your finger in the batter, you pick your nose all the time" to my favorite "i think my eyelash just fell into the butter." Hmmm tasty! I knew I shouldn't have tried to bake. The kitchen was dirty from dinner and I cannot stand to do anything with a dirty kitchen. But hopefully the kids had fun. They didn't make too much of a mess and I was able to get the kitchen cleaned up as they were mixing. My sugar dough didn't harden as quickly as I had hoped and so we left it in the frig for tonight. I have to run to the store to get storage containers. My lids disappeared!

Right now I'm listening to "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year." Obviously sung by a man who had nothing to do during Christmas but show up and eat!

If I don't get .........it'll be the worse Christmas EVER!

Every day Jeff and I wait to hear what the next "if I don't get this _______ for Christmas it'll be the worse Christmas EVER" every day from my son. I don't even know where he comes up with some of these items. Now, Paige is chiming in her own. Although hers goes back to last Christmas when Santa brought them a lot of clothes in addition to all the electronic items they asked for. She cried non stop as she opened each box of clothes and even when we saved the nintendo ds and games for last she was still crying. They both received all the things they asked for, it's just that we also bought them each a lot of much needed clothes.

So now Paige is very adamant about getting only a few - THREE and she means THREE - boxes of clothes. This means that I am going to have to find extra large sized clothes boxes so that I can keep her happy and fit all the clothes and new jacket that she's getting. Last night she also added that she would like boxing gloves and bag. She started going to boxing on Monday and that's all she thinks about. They work on conditioning and stretching and if they want to spar they can, but they have to be matched with someone their size and of the same sex. She won't be sparring forever as she's the littlest one there! Thank goodness for that. I don't mind her going there and exercising but even with all the head gear and gloves, I don't want her to spar. Unfortunately, she's not getting gloves and sparring bag. Hopefully her Christmas won't be ruined.

Last night I went to pick the kids up from church and while waiting in the parking lot I was able to watch Paige in her classroom. It was really fun. She is a very private little girl and it was fun to see her having fun with the other kids. I just wish that I could have heard what they were talking about. She's becoming such a beautiful young lady. I want to just freeze time.

Only a week left till Christmas. My kids are looking forward to midnight Mass. They love coming outside and seeing the luminaries all over the church grounds. Plus they are so tired they are usually asleep by the time we drive home!

Somebody please make it stop!

The shopping that is! Last night in less than a half an hour I purchased more clothes for Paige and some wrestling items for Jeff. WE ARE SUPPOSE TO BE DONE! Take the computer away from me and hide all credit cards or paypal accounts. Though I have to say, I scored some extra savings from Toysrus by paying with Paypal and using their Bill Me Later plan. In two separate transactions I received $20 purchase using paypal and $25 off using Bill Me Later through paypal. These were unexpected but hey, if they are going to reduce my bill- why not. I used Bill Me Later two Christmases ago when I bought a ton of toys from etoys.com. They offered 90 days same as cash and I just saved the money I was going to spend and paid it within 60 days.

Jeff and I did a little shopping by ourselves on Saturday. That was suppose to be the end of buying for Paige and Jeff, but when I saw the deals at Aeropostale.com for Paige I couldn't help it. They had long sleeve shirts for $8!!

Almost all my items sold on ebay. I made $176. If only I could sell like that every week. It's almost what I make at work!! Haha!

Hopefully, we will get to start wrapping this week. I need to find wrapping paper for them first. Then we have to sort out and make sure there is an even amount of gifts to unwrap. They don't add up the number of gifts just the number of gifts they open up. So I can even it up by putting things together or separating things ie clothes.

A little breezy outside

The storm front has been slowing moving through the area and with it high winds. Right now the sun is shining as the snow is blowing in all directions. Crazy!

Last night was my son's Holiday concert. It was really cute. He had a line to say and boy was he mad! I told him he should tell the teacher that he didn't want to do it, but he said no. His line was "I heard the bells on Christmas Day" and boy did he say it in a monotone. No expression whatsoever! He asked how he did and we told him he was terrific! Usually he refuses to say anything at programs so maybe if he thinks he did good he will try to do more. On the other hand, Paige jumps at the chance to do anything she can at her programs!

My ebay sales are doing great - I've sold $82 worth of items with some items still going. I forgot how much I love to put things on Ebay. There are a couple things of Paige's that I would really like to list- but she won't part with them even though they are just gathering dust on her desk. I even offered to give her the money. I'll try again tonight to change her mind.

Jeff and I are hopefully going to get back on our debt repayment plan. He just sold 2 of his rental properties and as long as things remain the same, he won't have to worry about rents. The past several months were really hard for him as the two properties with mortgages were empty so he was paying out 3 mortgages a month. Now that he sold them, we can work on the few bills we have. He has one charge card with about 3k on it and we still have to pay off the suv about 8k. Then all that's left are student loans and our mortgage. We can probably get them both knocked out in a year and a half. The cc can be knocked out within 6 mos but the car may take a little longer. We've followed Dave Ramsey and Crown Money Management with a few alterations and it has really helped out. Next month we are going to start again. If I can keep selling on eBay
it would help put some extra cash toward bills, but usually I don't see this kind of quick sales only at Christmas time. Still anything helps!!

Keep warm - I know I'm trying to!

Oh- found this from Money Saving Mom - a how-to to make your own bows. I think Paige and I will try this out. Paige is always upset when I don't have a bow for present. This might solve that!!

My young lady

This past weekend my daughterer decided that she wanted to learn how to do laundry. You all know my issues with laundry from this post. So after I gave her the disclaimer about how I am very particular about doing laundry she ok'd starting off with the easy loads. She really did good making sure that she listened for the rinse cycle and folded and delivered all the laundry to each person's room. I had to laugh though as several pairs of my husbands underwear ended up in my son's room. When I showed them to her she laughed too. Guess you would have to see how tiny my son's butt is. I swear it's the same size as when he was a baby! I was really proud of her and told her so many times I think she was gagging in the bathroom.

Last night when I got home the washing machine was running. At first I was a little worried but she assured me she didn't touch the special piles that I had set aside. I told my husband that she is becoming the young lady I have been waiting for. OK, let's rephrase that. The young lady that I was expecting when she was only 2. No not me. I don't have high expectations. I don't want people to act the way I think they should.

She's really matured lately and it's nice to see. She still has outbursts with her brother and they still drive me crazy, but this little lady is a keeper.


ps - the young man that was arrested for child pornography- they were pictures his 16 yr old girlfriend sent to him over the internet. Charges are probably going to be dropped due to the fact that she admitted sending them. Pheww!!

Ebay and I are back together!

Oh what joy it is to have a camera again! Saturday morning I listed a ton of things that have been sitting around my house for months. The greatest was that several of them sold within a few hours!! It just always amazes me how so many people can be interested in the things I list. I am definitely not complaining because they will be out of my house soon. I'm like a kid in a candy store.

Jeff and I sat down yesterday during the debacle of a Steelers game and compared what we had bought for Paige and Jeff. This year Jeff is definitely ahead of the game by tons!! We tried to find out if there was anything else we could get her but we struck out! We scored a laptop for her. Nothing fancy just a basic model that she can write papers and go on the internet. If we keep it in her room we are looking into parental controls. Anyone have those? It's just so hard this year to find things for her. She doesn't want toys and though we got her everything on her list, it's still not much.

Well, I'm off to check on my listings and get some work done!

Brr!

It's cold! This morning I woke up to the sound of the garbage can banging around down our street. It was really windy and Jeff forgot to put the can away so I got up and retrieved it. I'm guessing my neighbors were thanking me as well.

It's so hard to be motivated in the mornings when it's so cold and dreary outside. This is the kind of weather that makes me want to stay in bed with the dog and sleep. Is it strange to be jealous of your dog?

Tomorrow they are calling for snow. My kids are excited. They think there will be no school. Haha! Usually this time of year brings wet snow/rain and it makes for a cold day. I am looking forward to school delays though. My husband still has to get to school at the regular time and me and the kids hang out in the morning. There's no rush and we chill out.

I've been reading my blogs and so many of you do batch cooking. I think I may try it out. Hey I even got my new camera and can put up pictures. If I wasn't so embarrassed by the state of my bedroom I would post the progress of our remodelling. But anyway, I am thinking of trying to cook up some things to have on hand. My only problem is my freezer is horrible to organize. It's just a regular old top/bottom freezer fridge. It has the one shelf and door shelf and it just seems impossible to keep things neat and organized. I had put large plastic containers without their lids and stored like items in each. Unfortunately my husband did not like that idea and dumped everything out of them. I used to have a side by side frig/freezer and could organize and store so much more on all the shelves.

For those of you with a top/bottom fridge- how do organize your items? Or don't you?

Bittersweet Weekend

Today is my first day back to work since last Wednesday. I did get some things accomplished- all of the wallpaper is off the walls!! Yah! Though at one point I wanted to give up and quit. It wasn't hard to remove just boring and monotonous. Jeff did all the high areas and I did the lower stuff. I had the easier task because I could sit on the floor when I got low enough.

We also got rid of 2 large wall mirrors that we had taken down a couple years ago when we remodelled. I had put them in our free bulletin flyer before but no one called for them. So I tried again and luckily someone came on Friday and they are now off my porch.

Of course there were a lot of things that I didn't get done, but mostly because I try to cram too much into a day. Yesterday I did nothing but a couple loads of clothes to keep ahead of that. We had a birthday party in the evening and then we watched wrestling till 10pm. I don't like the kids staying up that late but they had gotten into the habit of staying up late and so it was actually an early evening for them.

Last night I did get some disturbing news. Paige's friends older brother was arrested at his college for having child pornography. My husband and I are beside ourselves wondering if at any time when she was over there if he approached her. Jeff asked her some questions to feel her out and he is confident that nothing happened to her. The police said that they identified the youths involved but we aren't sure what their ages are. The boy is only 19 and it could well be that he had put pictures of his girlfriend who is only 16 on the Internet. Or my husband thought maybe he is gay and they are of boys. We aren't really sure at this time and my brother in law who is with the state police is going to contact the investigating officer to find out more information. The sad part is that they are a good family. The mother is a teacher with my husband and has been my friend for years. Her husband coaches the girls basketball team and was a counselor with high risk youths. The son was a straight A student in high school and is pre med. I hate to think the worse -that he is a sick pedophile - but Paige is not going to be allowed over until we know for sure what all the facts are. He uploaded pictures onto a site called Limewire and downloaded pictures from there as well. Because he is only 19 it may well be pictures of teenage girls and not young girls. Regardless, it's wrong and stupid on both the boy and the girls who let him photo them. But it is hard not to judge when you know your 11 year old daughter has spent a lot of time over there- swimming and spending the night. I'm hoping that even if he would have approached Paige that we've taught her well enough to know what to do. It just sickens me to think that anyone would look at my little girl in that manner. We yanked her off youtube for that very reason.

Well, because I was not told about this till late last night, I did not sleep very well at all and am very irritable and sad today.