Our Christmas Tree

I love Christmas. I love Christmas trees. I love live Christmas trees. However, Thomas and I have been talking about getting an artificial tree for a few years, and we finally did so yesterday. The only kind of artificial tree I would accept is a white tree that was not pre-lit. I have no issues with pre-lit trees, however all of the white trees I have seen come with white lights. I CANNOT stand white lights on a Christmas tree, well maybe in Church, but that is the only exception.

Why do I dislike white lights you ask? There is no heart and no life behind them. They are just white, and not really white, they are clear! I like happy multi-colored lights.

I also love our tree! It is a very happy, cheerful tree. We have a variety of ornaments and we bought them because they are pretty, or have some special meaning, or were gifts. We don't have a "theme" tree, I dislke "theme" trees even more than I dislike white lights. Theme trees belong in Macy's or Dillard's or any of a variety of department stores. They do not belong in homes!

Our tree has a first Christmas ornament for Sam, Olivia, and Sofia; Olivia's and Sofia's are personalized. I don't know if I ever got on for Drew or not. We have ornaments Drew made in school. We have our 2000 First Christmas Together ornament. We have the hand painted ornaments that my mom got for us in 2000, Thomas' with a guitar and musical notes and mine with a nurse's hat and stethoscope. I have ornaments that Drew and I bought with the Rugrats on them, we have Disney ornaments, angels, colored balls, Ricky & Lucy Ricardo, Star Wars, Eyeore, , ducks, snow men, and others. We have a Christmas ornament I got as a child, a Cabbage Patch ornament from when Cabbage Patch Kids first came out. I named her Madeline, one of my favorite names. And then there is my Angel on top. I bought her the first year I was a nurse and had my own apartment and own Christmas tree, she has sat atop my tree every year since! I think she is beautiful.

I really think trees should reflect the people who live in the home, and should have a great variety of personalities represented! Well, I definitely hope I haven't offended anyone with my opinions, but I do feel strongly about this topic. Please leave theme trees at the stores where they belong and make your tree a reflection of those living in the home.

Recycled Black Friday Post

Okay, so this post was recycled from last year, so prices and item examples are a little out of date. However, the post still exemplifies how I feel about Black Friday! I hope if any of my readers braved the sales, they were kind to everyone shopping around them. Most of my readers are religious (Christian, Muslim, etc.) so I hope they exemplified the graciousness of the chosen religion while shopping today.


My post from yesterday and the reply I have gotten has made me think about my biggest pet peeve/complaint about the holiday season and that is Black Friday. I find it very offensive that retailers would make their employees get up and get to work for a store to open at 5:00 AM. What daycare opens at that time? Hopefully none of the employees are single parents who rely on daycare.

But beyond that, for me personally, I find it offensive that a retailer would have a sale start at 5:00 AM and end it six hours later. Why must I get up at that time in order to find the items I want at these great prices? I am not a Wal-Mart fan at all, the company could go out of business and I wouldn't miss them, but they had computers at $398 for six hours on Friday morning. If I was in the market for a new desktop or laptop PC, these were GREAT models especially for the price. However, if I didn't get to Wal-Mart at least an hour before it opened to wait in line, I wouldn't have a chance at getting one of these computers. Hear what happened to the guy who cut in line in Florida?

That brings me to my next point. People who are perfectly sane every other day of the year become absolutely insane the day after Thanksgiving. People fight each other for parking spaces, for the last Tickle Me Elmo (or whatever the toy of the year is,) for spots in the check-out line, etc. What happens to these normal people that they become horrible, terrible people on this one day? Actually, this is the worst day of the shopping season for people to act so terribly, but it continues on through the holiday season. What material item in the world is worth turning into a raving lunatic over? Are we really so materialistic?

The individual who replied to me state she/he saved over $160 on one item. That is wonderful, but I didn't even spend the amount she saved on each of my children. They probably will have around $100-$150 spent on each of them (except the baby, she is getting one item under the tree and one item in her stocking.) This is what we are spending on them, they will have more spent on them by grandparents and others, but not by us. It is not that we are cheap, it isn't even because I went out of work early and money is much tighter.

We buy our children things they want throughout the year, not great big items, but toys or movies or CD's or whatever, that they may want. We have found that they so hugely appreciate things when the get them in small doses, they become massively overwhelmed when they have tons of presents showered on them at one time. I know as they get older presents become more expensive, which is the challenge I have with Drew, but since we don't allow video games that does seeem to help control costs. I about had a fit when I saw the new X-Box was $400, who the heck spends that kind of money on ONE item for a child?

Okay, to get back on topic of Black Friday. I can only vaguely remember going shopping on that day once, and that was with my mom when I was a teenager. I have never gone on my own and cannot imagine a deal so good that I would go at any point in the future. I bought a newspaper on Thanksgiving and looked through all the sale ads and, I must say, there really weren't any sales that tempted me to get out of my bed that early on a Friday morning. I don't like to be used, and that is what the retailers do when they offer these sales for such a short period of time. I like to be treated with respect as a consumer, so when retailers stop trying to "lure" me into their stores at unreasonable times of the day, I will be more apt to spend my money there.

So Excited

Since I bought my very first PC when I was in nursing school, I have wanted a Mac. Macs have better hardware, the software is much more stable and the operating system is known for not crashing. Thomas could tell you I have talked about owning a Mac since we were dating! When we lived in CA, we visited the Apple store numerous times, of course we couldn't afford to buy one, but I went and drooled over them.

Well, yesterday afternoon, the FedEx guy brought my iMac to my front door! I am so excited I can't even stand it. I still haven't figured it all out, as it is very different, but I am enjoying the challenge. So, let me figure out what I am doing and I will blog more. At least getting around online is the same as my favorite browser, Firefox, is Mac compatible.

Help The Drunk Get Home

This is one of those funny web games that looks easy but isn't really. My friend Lisa emailed it to me and I thought I would share it on here. Let me know your high score.


Help The Funny Drunk Get Home

Sam and Sofia

Thomas blogged about this as well, but I thought it was pretty neat so I want to write about it as well. On Thursday while I was sleeping to go to work that night, Thomas took the girls outside to play. Sofia loves her "Zoom Zoom," which is the name that we gave the push toy when we bought it for Sam. Sam didn't walk without some sort of help until he was 17 months old, so he was probably around that age in this picture. Sofia is eleven months old now.

As Thomas mentioned the similarity of the outfits is coincidental but the shoes are the same (white Keds type shoes are great for boys and girls.) Of course the toy is the same, but the kids are different. One boy, one girl born 3 1/2 years apart. Sam was in our backyard in St. Louis and Olivia is in our driveway here in Austell.

Happy Halloween

We went Trick-or-Treating on Halloween night. All three of our children dressed up and had a blast. Sweet Sofia dressed up as a chicken. Her nickname is Chicken because when she was tiny, she never really cried, she just squawked like a chicken. We were very excited when we found a chicken costume at Target.


Olivia is a cat, just ask her. She swears she isn't a little girl, she is a cat. She will crawl around on the floor and meow, and her meow is very authentic as it has brought Vinnie running on multiple occasions. For Olivia, she was bound and determined to be a cat. That was the only costume she had talked about for quite a while. The problem came when we went costume shopping. We couldn't find a cat...anywhere. I found an absolutely adorable cat costume on Gymboree.com, but her size was sold out. The Gymboree shop at the mall didn't have her size either, I was told the costume was sold out almost immediately. As for Target, Wal-Mart, etc, neither place had a cat. They had every other animal imaginable, but no cat...and Olivia wouldn't entertain any other costume. So, our friends lent us theirs from last year and it worked well.


Sam decided early this summer he wanted to be Dash from "The Incredibles." Again, he wasn't to be budged on this idea. We found his costume on the same day we got Sofia's. Now, don't tell him, but his costume is NOT Dash, but Mr. Incredible. I am not sure why the only choice was of Mr. Incredible, but it was. Of course, since Then Incredibles all wear the same costume, it wasn't too big a deal. He was just a VERY muscular Dash. Now, he hated the mask that came with it, he kept grabbing it off of his face, so Daddy used some face makeup that I had bought for our "cat" and painted him a mask.

Drew didn't dress up this year, but he was an awesome helper during trick-or-treating. We went to our friend's neighborhood to trick-or-treat. The babies stayed in their strollers during the evening. Drew took four other kids up to each door and helped them ring doorbells and such. He did a great job and was very much appreciated by all the little kids.