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Morella in her pink snow suit outside in the first big snow. She’ll stay out there until she freezes. We have to do mandatory warm ups now.

My Dad’s nickname for me when I was a kid was Big Shoe. I think that maybe I could pass this onto Athena if she didn’t already have the awesome Neeners nickname.

Morella – age 3

Morella – one very sick little mess

Santa Claus – our special guest at the Eastside Playgroup holiday party.

Santa and Neeners … a great companion to this gem from last year….

Christmas Neeners

Gnome Neeners

Little House on the Neeners

Me and Neeners (and food on her face)

Falkor

Morella about 60% of the time

Christmas Eve dinner (we had honey glazed ham, christmas mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, scalloped corn, salad, bread, gravy, and meatballs) Appetizers included: ants on a log, crudites with dip, cherry cordials, christmas cookies, summer sausage, cheese and crackers, and pickles. Dessert was homemade apple crisp and cherry pie, and pumpkin pie from Perkins

Gaga Lori and Ginger

Neeners and the gift from Gaga Lori on Christmas Eve

Neeners standing on the gift. She likes to stand on everything — and her latest is to say “Ta da!” when she does it.

Christmas morning

Neeners in her new slippers on Christmas morning.

Tim playing with the girls at my Mom’s later on Christmas.

Mom holding Neeners the only time she’ll let anyone let her (aka when she is asleep) Here is the photo from last year in October…

Mom and Neeners in October 2009

Morella and Neeners fighting over who gets to hold the kitten.

Morella became an old pro at holding a kitten — clearly it was the highlight of the trip.

Ginger and Piper holding their Build a Bears (Gingers was still a work in progress).

My dress up girls last night.

Whew! How was that for a mega photo update? Sometimes posting photos seems to be best way to break a nonposting rut. I am relieved that Christmas Eve dinner, and Christmas Day went well. It was a very different experience being at Dad’s without Dad for Christmas. We have gotten into the habit of calling it Dega’s, but you know the first instinct is to think of it as Dad’s. I used to think of it as Gaga’s for years….and eventually that changed to just Dad. I wonder how long it will be before I just think of it at Dega Shane’s. It was … nice. In fact, Morella didn’t want to leave on Sunday and we stayed late. I didn’t want to leave. Though it was stressful and it manifested itself into a big headace on Saturday and a backache on Sunday, I didn’t think of Madison or my life back here at all. It was like a mind vacation. I can’t wait to go back and spend more time there with the girls, work on the house, explore outside and hang out with my brother.

BUT — I did it. Dinner was a success. Everyone got their wrapped presents. We got our holiday photo take and cards sent out to everyone. I made a crapload of cookies and gave them to friends and neighbors. We got our house decorated. Attended a couple holiday parties (a first in … well ever, where I get to say a “couple”). I visited Mom and had a good visit (though it could have been a little better had she not been exhausted cleaning the trailer and worrying and staying up for three days prior to the visit). I managed to uncover the living room, kitchen and Morella’s room in the past two days despite being extremely exhausted.

Last night I went to bed at 8:00 when Neeners when down. Today I had enormous amounts of coffee and STILL felt extremely tired and out of it. Ugh, I want it to go away so I can enjoy the rest of the holidays and tie up loose ends (like mail that package out to my friend Sarah). I wonder if I am low on iron again — I think I’ll take some extra iron supplements for the next couple of days and see if that doesn’t help matters. Or maybe it was just recovering from a massively busy, stress laden December. I can now see that there are days ahead of me, whereas last week I was convinced that the world ended on Saturday. I just couldn’t see beyond that…everything had to happen right then and perfectly. I guess I fell into the holiday trap. Next year will be better. I’ll be better prepared…and you know Christmas will be at the in-laws, which is a totally different feel than going to my family where I feel it’s a big responsibility of mine to make everything magic.

Friday we are going to Milwaukee to spend the day with cousins and in laws at a hotel to celebrate New Year’s. I am excited about this, though maybe not thrilled about digging up an old swimsuit. You know my swimsuit is 15 years old? Yeah. It’s that old. But the kids will love it because they will be with their cousins, we’ll play games, eat and hang out. It will be nice and relaxed and totally different from any other New Year’s. It’s good because New Year’s is my favorite holiday. The world is ready for a new beginning, a clean slate and everyone seems just a teeny bit optimistic.

Why do I do this to myself? Gah. I spent a good portion of my valuable free time tonight watching TV while working on projects. The deadline is here! I don’t have time to sit in front of the tube while leisurely working on things…ugh. I got some presents wrapped, drank some candy cane decaf green tea, worked on Morella’s stocking a bit and that was about it.

What do I have left to do? Well, I need to finish Morella’s stocking. I briefly entertained the idea of just using Tim and my stocking, but the problem with that is that Morella will remember. She will remember both her and Neeners for next year. So I can’t just do that. I have to at least finish hers and then put a boring stand in for Neeners until next year. I will work on her stocking after the holidays and leisurely watch movies…and really enjoy it. I imagine myself staying up into the wee hours of the night like on Little House on the Prairie when Ma stayed up to make them dresses. Except I hate the idea of how tired I would be tomorrow. A day of complete exhaustion is not worth it. Right? I say that now…I have four days.

I need to pack up the cookie boxes and write cards to go with them for the neighbors cookie boxes. Then we have to hand them out tomorrow.

I have to figure out a Christmas Eve menu — and make it the most magical night ever.

I have to figure out what to pack and how we are going too fit everything in the car…thank goodness for the mini mini van.

I have to pay the taxes – ugh we were short, so that is another bill. Add on the funeral leftover, and the insurance for the new car and wow, the bills really piled up this month. Thank god that Tim makes the big bucks (aka we have money saved) and I don’t have to worry about it too much. Just thinking of it as a loan for tax refund…

I have to call and get Falkor into the kennel and hope they aren’t full. I wonder if they would do a dog washing…probably not. It is the holidays after all.

I have to finish wrapping gifts. I have a box I need to send out too a friend…gotta find a box, and then package it, go to the post office and blah blah blah.

In other news, I took Athena and Morella out too play in the snow this evening. I say evening even though it was actually more like late afternoon. It was dark out. Morella loves it outside. She’ll stay outside until the cows come home or she gets really cold and then cries about how cold she is when she comes back in. We are going too have to set limits on how long she can stay outside now before having to come in and warm up for awhile. Neeners however, was appalled at having to be outside. Like toddler Morella before her, she hates being out in the cold and snow. She hated her boots and walking in them. I did think she was super adorable in the finnish snowsuit and her little red hat.

Oh I have pictures I need to upload. I was working on that this morning ….

It feels like I am in that commercial about depression where they talk about winding themselves up to do anything. I totally have to wind myself up to try and get that spark to do anything. The morning is spent in a fog until I get that coffee working, doing things on automatic like changing Neeners diaper and getting her dressed (it has to be done at the same time because she hates both the diaper and dressing aspect of it and fights like a pittbull), getting Morella dressed, myself dressed — and showered sometimes (like today), write my Mom, clean up a little. Today I focused on cleaning the kitchen. Swept and mopped the floor, did the dishes, ran the dishwasher, put things away. Its a never ending battle — a lot like making meals. I just despise the drudgery of constantly thinking of meals that the kids won’t eat, all while doing it with one arm because Neeners wants to be carried.

At least they are over their colds. I just have thick boogery caterpillars too wipe off their faces every 15-30 minutes instead of every 3-5. It’s progress.

Well, Neeners is making noise. I should probably get to bed. Tim is working from home tomorrow, I haven’t studied Hochunk in almost two weeks, and there is a lesson tomorrow. Not to mention that great big list I have already put before you.

Oh I did make two little cute owl ornaments for the girls marking this year for the tree. I also worked on real star ornaments with Morella during Neeners nap time, complete with glitter and glue and paint. Morella was in heaven. She loves the big girl activities that she gets to do with me when Neener is asleep. I just wish she would take a nap herself.

Also, I feel like punching all those idiots that assured me that Neeners and Morella would be the best of friends, play together, etc. Morella wants nothing to do with Neeners … it’s constant fighting.

Oh the noise has escalated to crying. She is so needy lately!

Okay. I don’t know where I come up with the energy and constant motivation….maybe that desire to make it a magical time for all…. but I did a ton this past week to get stuff done for Christmas.

Yesterday was the playgroup holiday party, and we had a very special guest appear — my friend Matt dressed as Santa Claus! It was so awesome. First he stopped at my house to visit Morella, who was sick and could not make it. She was very happy to see him, and he gave her a gift (it was one that another Mom had left at my house the night before when she was babysitting because she wasn’t sure if she would make it in time for the Santa visit). She sat on his lap, and Tim told me that she told him what she wanted for Christmas — a pink pony. This was news to us! I never even thought she would actually tell Santa what she wanted, much less sit on his lap. Perhaps it was the candy cane that wooed her.

After that visit, Santa came over to the party. He texted us as left which gave us about 5 minutes to herd everyone down stairs to the finished basement area. Once everyone was down, we put all the gender neutral, wrapped gifts each one of had brought and put them in a black plastic bag for Santa to distribute. He was our randomizer, so that no one got the gift they brought. He also handed out candy canes, and there was a photo op for anyone who wanted their picture taken with Santa to do so. I got a great one of Neeners, who mirrored Morella last year (lots of tears).

Today I baked and decorated a lot of cookies, made some fudge (after a first failed attempt in which lots and lots of disgusting little bugs floated to the surface of the white chocolate batch — note to self, pantry bugs like white chocolate). Other note to self, check the stupid chocolate first! Then the second batch I was working on was almost screwed up when I was put in a can of sweetened condensed milk instead of just evaporated milk. I figured by that point, I might as well just throw in the evaporated milk too and stir stir stir. There was a hairy moment when I almost put in 4 ounces less chocolate…but thankfully just eying the pile of chocolate and looking at the mixture, I was able to figure out it wasn’t going to be enough. I had a small sliver of it before I put in the fridge to cool further and it tasted okay to me.

I can’t tell you how many batches of fudge I have screwed up over the course of my life. Ugh! BUT, I am very proud to say that my Christmas cookie skills have exploded this year. I figured out that the spritzer machine was not at fault — it was a user error. Turns out the dough needs to be room temperature to reallly work and stick like it should. Lowen was over with me while I was figuring that out, so I gave her that spritzer which she promptly took home to bake. The one I found in my cupboard has a turn handled instead of a turn …oh hell do you really care about the details of a sprinter machine?

Today I figured out how to make the perfect royal icing — I had just barely enough powdered sugar to frost most of my cookies — which look absolutely devine. I have one chocolate cutout kind and one sugar … So this years cookie box includes:

–rolo turtles
–chocolate cutouts – iced
–sugar cutouts – iced
–russian tea cakes
–saltine toffee
–fudge
–guanach thumbprints
–sugar spritz
–citrus glazed spritz
–peanut butter blossoms
–linzer with raspberry jam filling

I can’t wait to see how they all look together. I had Tim running about town tonight to find me small gift boxes. Usually Woodman’s has what I need, but neither they nor Cubs was able to deliver. Cubs is right next to Wallyworld, so Tim stopped there (the first time in a decade? to actually buy something) and found some that are perfect. He also found Morella her pink horse…she is going to LOVE it.

I spent a good portion of the evening wasting precious time on the internet…maybe an hour? And then the rest of the time was spent wrapping gifts. When did wrapping gifts get to be so tedious? Or maybe it’s that I collected too many things for too many people over the past year and it’s all catching up with me.

Uh oh, the Christmas clock that everyone hates just played the midnight, get your butt into bed song. Night!

Poor Neeners has not left the house in days due to a various kinds of colds. I think if I had to think about it, the last time she left the house was Monday for a playgroup — boy I hope those other kids didn’t get sick, but then again maybe the girls got sick from there. Winter playgroups…stay in the house and not risk infection? Or leave the house to gain sanity and risk infection? Ha ha.

Morellla came down with Neeners yesterday evening. Last night was one of the roughest nights we have had since Morella was a baby. Ugh. Morella was up so much I almost threw in the towel and decided to stay up all night instead of enduring the torture of going to bed only to not know if you will ever get too sleep. I am of the opinion when it comes to sleep that one should get it if they can, no matter how difficult. Athena woke up with bags under her eyes this morning and lots of hollering. It’s kind of cute. She looks older than she is.

The other day Tim ccouldn’t resist waiting until Christmas to give me my Christmas present. I have trying to guess what it could be the past couple of weeks, but I never would have guessed. He told me that it was stupid that I wan’t using it now because it would make my life so much easier. Guess what it was? It is a tyPad. I had never even heard of such a thing, but it’s basicallly a little keyboard that works via bluetooth so that I can type on the ipad. It’s brillant, and I am using it right now.

I love this ipad. When I first got it, I was a little leary of how great it would be, and in fact kept on using the old laptop becuase I could type better. But that battery is fast dying and the only way that you can use it is if it is plugged in. Plus it takes forever to load up…it’s just fast to use the ipad because the battery life is long, it can follow me around the house, the kids can play games on it, we can watch movies on it, and now I can type on it. Hence my first post using the tyPad.

It’s going to be a long day. Tim had to leave this morning to drive to Milwaukee for a meeting. We both had a crappy nights sleep, and I told him that even so I would much rather take his trip than be stuck in the house with sick kids for yet another day. Morellla hates being sick and is super miserable kid. I wish she was the kind of kid that would just have a runny nose and go about her day.

Right now they are putting chapstick on each other’s face. It’s kind of cute, both of them in their footed jammies, and sick. Moment just killed…Morella walked up and shoved Neeners over. Really. These kids spent so much of their time fighting with each other.

Oh look, Athena found her puppy that we had put in the bathroom to dry off after she dunked it in the dog water yesterday.

Now Morella wants Neeners to follow her…what trouble can this lead too?

Lastly, I went out for my weekly Get Out Of the House on Wednesday. I went over to my friend Amy’s, after putting Neeners down and accidentallly taking a little nap. I saw her awesome basement and was almost inspired to try harder with my basement. I got in a little work on Morella’s stocking, chatted with her kids and after they went to bed we headed off to the Great Dane East to meet my friend Hilary for some end of the semester drinks. Her neighbor was also there, so we had a good foursome. I stayed much later than I intended, but was still in bed by 11:30 — not that it made a difference.

Oh there is screaming coming from the bathroom. At least Tim made some good coffee this morning. I am also going to be baking cookies — spritz and thumbprints today.

Last night I was up until 11:20 or so making Linzer cookies — they turned out beautifully! But the best part was that I could do it while watching Bones on Netflix, streaming onto my Ipad. Never before have I been able to watch TV while baking and decorating cookies. It made the time go by so much faster, and it was so much more enjoyable. Tonight it’s spritz cookies. My friend Laima gave me a cookie press a few years ago and I have tried two years of using it — and hate it. It just doesn’t work that well. Well, I had given up on spritz cookies forever until yesterday afternoon when I found the spritz cookie kit I had gotten myself at a garage sale for $3 bucks before Laima had given me that set. Three bucks is a fortune in garage sale money, so surely this set must be good. Right?

Tim is off having his hair cut. Today is his work from home day. I would have taken Neeners with me to Morella’s yoga class this morning, but Neeners is sick. She had a slight fever before she went to bed 100.8 and then at 4:30 was hotter than a pancake at 102.5. I changed her out of her fleece jammies into cotton separates and let her sleep in my bed, after I gave her medicine, juice with a splash of ginger ale, and watching early morning TV by the light of the Christmas tree for an hour.

Hold on, gotta do Advent calendars with the kids….

So yoga was canceled this morning because I wouldn’t have been able to take Neeners with me to the class since Tim’s appointment was scheduled at the same time. Language was canceled tonight because of a funeral in BRF. I wonder who it was … so now I have the whole day to be stuck inside! Woo.

Tim is home. Nutz.

It was an up and down kind of a day. Actually it was more of a downer kind of a day but ended on a good note. The girls both took naps today, and Athena ended up going to bed early when she thought Morella was going to bed, so I pretty much spent most of the day with just one kid as the naps overlapped, and Morella got up after Neeners went down. We watched The Polar Express which I had taped on the DVR and Morella LOVED it. I even made popcorn which she munched happily and asked me a bazillion questions as the movie progressed. She had a theater like spot sitting in Athena’s big Christmas present — a new britax carseat which had arrived late this afternoon. It’s still clean, plush and soft. That won’t last long!

I was just thinking that it’s going to be a little sad retiring the old bucket seat. In the last 36 months it was only out of commission for six. We got a good 30 months of use from it…not to shabby. I’ll be glad to be rid of it though. It’s so hard to buckle Neeners into it right now and I am frankly surprised that one of Athena’s first 10 words isn’t “damnit.”

The downer part of the day was around noon. Athena had gone down for her nap after an early lunch. I brought Morella into the kitchen to play with playdough – a toy I busted out for special occasions like this – after quickly clearing a spot on the table by putting Neeners cumbersome tray, placemat and a towel onto the stove. I then suggested to Morella that I make her some of her Children’s Tea that she so thoughtfully got from Sarah as a birthday gift to ward off some of the kitchen chill. I filled the kettle and put it on the burner and turned it on. I was immediately distracted by keeping the water running so that it would get hot enough to do a few dishes and clear out some for the dishwasher. I was just about to load the dishes into the dishwasher when I heard Morella say something. I turned around and saw a plume of black smoke and fire. I had turned on the wrong burner! The dishtowel, plastic placemat and tray were all on fire. I quickly got the fire extinguisher but couldn’t figure out how to use it. Years of dust and grime covered the instructions and I was too panicked to figure it out. So I picked up the place mat, tray and towel and put them into the sink full of water. There was still a small flame on the burner and I ran to the cupboard to get the salt … except I couldn’t find the salt! After a minute I gave up and found the salt shaker and dumped it on the flame putting it out. I opened the back door, the kitchen window, turned on the oven hood to full blast, opened up the living room door and turned the living room fan onto full speed.

What a rotten time to find out we are of salt. I could have stopped the fire so much sooner…but then again the fire never should have happened because I had crap on the stove. I never do that. I also never turn on a burner without double checking to make sure it’s the right one either. I guess I should never say never because I did it. Sigh. I am glad I was in the kitchen, but maybe the novelty of being in the kitchen for an activity is what caused my boneheadedness. Ugh…it was scary. Thankfully, no one was harmed. The stove is still fine and the tray was one that Morella had outgrown.

Then as we were calming down to a cup of tea and more playdough fun we heard the mail come. Morella said the same time I did “Mail’s here.” I went and got the mail to cheer myself up a bit. There was one Christmas card (only our second, not including the one before Thanksgiving) and handed it to Morella to open. Meanwhile I opened the other mail. One was a big bill for the extra insurance on the car, and the other was a bill I never imagined I would open, read and contemplate — my father’s final expenses. Thank god for the tribe and their generous funeral donations. The total cost was $6,315. The tribe pays for $6,000 and anything beyond that is the responsibility of the family. I knew it would be that much, that wasn’t the downer. The downer was sitting at the table holding the bill for my Dad’s funeral. It’s was cold, grey and glum outside and snow had started to softly fall. I had my smart, beautiful daughter by my side to lessen the blow, but I was still sad and cried. Morella tried to cheer me up by giving me hugs, and coloring with me.

I called my brother Shane to talk a bit, but I didn’t know what to say. He was busy hauling wood with a neighbor. It was enough to break the mood a bit. I was just about to text Tim and tell him that he should come home to beat the storm when the dog started whining loudly outside. He had only been out for a few minutes, so I went to let him. As I opened the backdoor, Tim opened the front door and came in. Athena (who was up by then, because Morella went to nap) was happy to see him.

After that I watched some TV with Neeners, made one of my favorite dinners – mashed potatoes with hamburger gravy (browned hamburger, onions, can of gravy and can of cream of something soup) with peas on the side. We all ate something. Tim let for his Thursday night game after putting Morella to bed and I put Neeners down, and that brings you to the top of this post.