So our Christmas Tree is up and there are 6ish more sleeps till Santa visits us. The kids were aware that Christmas was coming soon, but putting up the tree and decorations around the house, I think, has really brought it home to them that Christmas isn't just coming, it's almost here!

Micah and I went into the city last night to do some Christmas Shopping, figuring we would get a bit done while his mom had the boys. We freaking finished it!

OK, not quite. We wanted to pick up a movie for Parker, one he saw on TV but apparently you can't buy it, so we still have to pick something up for him, and the store we wanted to go to to get my dad a gift card was closed - who on earth closes their store early on a Saturday- four weeks before Christmas???

The stupid store was open til nine Monday to Friday but closed at five on Saturdays. DUDE. People shop on Saturdays. Seriously.

Speaking of Odd things. I need to know, and I am thinking of having a more formal poll on BPR if y'all aren't definitive in the comments:

To me, Christmas stockings are filled by Santa, they contain things like a candy cane, orange, some wee small chocolates, undies socks, maybe a small toy, nothing big,but it is definitely a Santa thing.

To hubs, he grew up with his parents filling his stockings, he grew up thinking that Santa had nothing at all to do with stockings.

Who is weird, me or Micah?

(I won't say "Who is Wrong" because I refuse to knock another persons tradition)

I would love to find a free web directory filled with answers to this shit, maybe something that listed Christmas traditions around the world.

Guess what! I was lucky enough to be offered an opportunity by Collectibles Today to review this beautiful crystal holiday tree. Not only did I get to review it, I got to keep it!

Just look at it!





I was very impressed with the packaging of my tree, the UPS man passed the box - which was heavy, to my husband while I signed for it, and Micah didn't have a good grip and dropped the box. I could have cried! I thought for sure it was broken.

However, Collectibles Today thought ahead to the shoddy grips husbands have, and packaged the tree, securely in Styrofoam. The packaging is downstairs in my storage room so that after Christmas I will have a safe, dust free place to put my new treasure away.



The Thomas Kinkade Christmas Collectibles tree is 13.5 inches high and has a very sturdy base. I was a little disappointed that the lights were so dim in the wee village windows, but the fine detail on the snowmen, people and houses more than makes up for it.



As well as lighting up, this tree has a wee little train riding on the base, and plays several different Christmas songs. There is an on/off button so that you can turn off the music and still have the lights work and the train move, or you can dial down the volume on the tree to have it quiet or louder.




I took this video to show how the train moves, and so that you could listen to the music, but watch my boys, they are absolutely in LOVE with the tree! We are putting up our Christmas Tree tomorrow and all of the plugins we have will be busy with the Christmas lights on the tree BUT - what rocks my monkey socks, is that the tree can run either with its cord (which is removable) or by batteries placed in the underside of the tree, so I can display my new Collectibles Today tree right alongside my six foot Christmas Tree!



This review is a result of a feedback campaign by Collectibles Today. I was asked to give an honest opinion about the product I received. Good reviews are not incentivized and poor reviews will not be censored for the opinion of the product.

This year is the first in ten years that I will not be mailing Christmas Cards. Normally I send cards out to friends and family, I put the latest pictures of the boys in them, and to closer family members, like my grandpa, I also write a letter and insert that in the card.

This year, due to Micahs job situation - last paycheck he had 54.7 hours instead of 80, which is a lot of lost hours to miss out on when he is the only one in our family with a job. I simply can't afford to buy the cards, - postage last year to send out cards was close to 40$. And, in my opinion, there is not point in sending out christmas cards if I don't put pictures in them, but even if I take my own photos, it still costs a mint to print them all. So. Yeah. No Christmas cards this year, and it makes me sad, but paying my mortgage, putting food into the mouths of my children, it's more important to me that sending cards that everyone will put up for a few days then toss in the trash!

:o(

I'm trying to think happy thoughts here. I just found out that during Christmas Break, Micah's company is adding three extra days to the holidays. Sounds good, but they are unpaid days, which means we lose just over 500 dollars in income.

Oh and also? In April, the company is going to be having a TWO WEEK shut down - also unpaid.

Holy shit balls. I'm freaking out.

No. No I'm not. I'm OK, or at least, pretending to be OK.

Anyway, lets think HAPPY thoughts. Happy happy Happy not freaking out thoughts.

Like the dark grey wool, double breasted coat I got (waist length) for 17$. Seventeen dollars - regular price? $69.99

Wanna know why it was so cheap? One button was loose, just hanging there by an inch of thread. For two minutes of work and its fixed, good as freaking new, I saved over 50 dollars.

Happy thoughts people.

I also picked up a package of 200 straws for .97cents, two hats ($1.00 each) and a pair of lined, fleece gloves for Parker for $1.25.

Happy shiny, sparkly thoughts!

Uhm. What else? hrm. I'm happy that in just over two weeks Logan finally gets into see the ENT doctor so we can figure out if its all OK up there. AND becuase I live in Canada I don't need to deal with looking into any health plans like bcbsnc.

And. Hmm. It's almost Christmas time and that means I get to make pumpkin pies. (making pumpkin pies means you also get to eat it.)

Annnd. I'm happy that - No. I'm not.I'm not happy. I have no idea what we are going to do. I can only hope that I can get some work in between now and then that will help to cover the missing money.

Fingers must be crossed, and stay crossed, immediately. NOW.

When we moved into our house the living room carpet was gross. It was supposed to be a whitey creamy color, but was dotted nearly BLACK in places. So we did the only thing we could, we ripped it all out, except for the three bedrooms, the master bedroom, Logan;s room and the "dogs" room.

This afternoon, while trying to convert people over to Team Sock, I was also telling Logan to clean his bedroom. Every so often I would go to his room to check up on him and I began to notice something strange. He was cleaning his room, but in one spot he had carefully spread out a tee shirt, another spit had a sock spread over it and another spot, he had taken a towel and smoothed it open on the carpet.

I got curious and moved the tee shirt and found neon pink hi-lighter on the carpet. The same was under the towel and the sock.

Add the pink hi-lighter to the neon yellow goo spillage of last month and his carpet is looking pretty damn bad.

I'm going to rent a steam cleaner this weekend, to see if that will help, but I am betting that we will end up having to replace the carpet in his room, and if we do that, we might as well do my room too, there is a rather large coffee stain near my closet that won;t come clean!

The last thing I need is to fork over money to replace the carpets, so I will be crossing my fingers that the pink comes out!

I wasn't planning on going to New Moon any time soon. I figured that at most, it would be something we rent. Then my stepmother's niece posted on facebook that she had an extra ticket to the advanced screening of New Moon and I figured What the heck, and went.

I loved the books, but I hated Twilight the movie. I feel that bar none, it is the worst movie ever made. The acting was horrible, Kristen Stewart was wooden and spoke only in monotone, and OMG the vampires make up? SO BAD.

I had very VERY low expectations of New Moon.

I got to the theater a full two and half hours before the show was to start and the line up was out the freaking door. I've never seen such a line up in my LIFE. They let us into the theater an hour before the movie, instead of the normal 15 or 20 minutes and I was stuck, with no wi-fi, sitting between my stepmothers Niece and her friend who were very chatty. I found out that at B's(the niece) birthday, she got equestrian apparel from her boyfriend! Apparently, though, saddle blankets are her type of thing, be cause she was in no way upset about that!

I played a few games of mahjong on my iTouch and spent a lot of the hour we waited people watching. I saw Team Edward, Team Jacob and even one team Alice tee shirts. I should have worn a team Edward shirt LOLz!

Now here is the thing. I enjoyed New Moon. I'm not sure if Kristen Stewart turned into a better actress or if I just got used to hearing and seeing her in my head as I read the twilight books. Because, yes, I've read them several times. They did a much better job on the color of contacts for the vampires, they were a nice topazy color, not the nasty neon yellow they were in Twilight. I still have a problem with how freaking pale the vampires were. I mean, come on! In the books they are pale, but they were not so pale that they were unable to fit in with all of the other inhabitants of Forks. The movie had the vamps so damn pale that there is no way that anyone who had eyes - working or not- in their heads, would EVER believe that these were humans.

In some scenes it honestly looked like the vamps had that white pancake make up from Halloween on their faces. NOT GOOD.

The phasing for the werewolves was better then I expected, but still kind of jerky, kind of fake looking. Which I guess, seeing as they are mythical creatures, it stands to reason they look fake.

Over all, the acting was better, the make up was a BIT better (A TINY BIT), and the director followed the book much better this go around. In some places I could say the lines along with the actors becuase the lines were copied right out of the book, and that's always nice to see.

I would give it a 3/5 stars. Unless I was limited to rating the movie based on Jacobs abs, in which case, I would score it a 109758913561879632541872/5.

Wait. Is he legal yet? AM I even allowed to think thoughts like that? Should I expect cops to burst through my door the minute I hit publish?

A few weeks back when Micah and I attended the paretn teacher interviews I was a little shocked and a lot upset to find out that the school does not teach the children their multiplication tables. They teach them HOW to multiply, but there is ZERO class time reserved for repetition so the children memorize the tables.

To make that worse, Parker had to know his multiplication tables - as in have them memorized, within two weeks as the class was starting long division and you cannot divide without knowing your tables. At least not quickly.

So, at home we started teaching Parker the tables and it is going OK - ish. by the time he gets home from school, does his homework, it is supper time.This left him with very little play time. Which, fuck you, is important to a kid.

NOW.

I just got off the phone with Logans kindergarten teacher. Apparently he knows the ABC song, and can tell you what sound all of the letters make, but he does not know the names of the letters - he scored a 6 out of 26. The kicker? They do not teach the kids to recognize the letters in kindergarten. At all. They teach them the sounds the letters make BUT it is up to the parents to teach the kids the names.

WTF?

I play a lot of games on facebook, and tonight I noticed that trying to lead them is taking forever. I did a quick scan of my laptop and found some troubling results. After cleaning them up, I decided to check out some new antivirus software.

I found Vipre, which is both an antivirus AND an antispyware program! But best of all, Vipre doesn't slow down your computer like most antivirus software dose! Vipre has an advanced anti-rootkit technology, which sounds pretty cool, even though I have no idea what it is!

Vipre offers a free 30 day trial, so you can try it and see if its the right program for you!

Because I spend so much time online, I really need to have a program on my laptop that I can trust to keep me safe, so many new threats come out every day - heck - every hour! You never know if the next link you click on is going to be the link that infects your system...unless of course, you have the right protection!

A little less than a quarter of the Halloween candy is still waiting to be consumed. I froze a bunch of mini chocolate bars to bring out at a later date, and send a big bagful to my mother in law's house.

Unfortunately, my will power was at an all time low this year and I am most definitely in the market for a diet pill that works. Preferably one that tastes like chocolate!

Tomorrow I will be at school with the children for most of the day, and Tuesday, Logan is home with me all day, so I plan on going through the last of the candy and tossing out most of the rest of it. After all, what hasn't been eaten by now is just the crappy candy, anyway, and no one is going to miss it!

With Christmas fast approaching, my "Christmas Closet" is still looking rather empty with a grand total of three gifts in it.

But that's OK, becuase this year, we are preparing for Christmas with a little green shopping - also known as shopping in my pajamas, or shopping without having to do my hair or brush my teeth, another term for it is shopping online.

I am expecting quite a few packages in my mailbox in the very near future and in reality, when you take into account the gifts I have already bought and the gifts I have coming to me VIA snail mail, I am at least 75% done!

In fact, I kind of figure that I am so close to being done, that I might as well put up the Christmas tree tonight!

Right Honey?

RIGHT??!