Pre Christmas

Wow. Almost two months since I’ve written in here?

We painted. A month or so ago. Hubby was in London and I talked my sister into coming down to help me paint, and Mom and Dad took the girls for the night. It was originally just going to be Friday night, and I’d go get the girls Saturday, but when we got the purple on the walls in the girl’s room the ceiling, which we hadn’t planned on painting, looked so dirty it was obvious we had to paint it. Kristin said it looked like there had been a fire and there was smoke damage all over the ceiling. So we had to take all the stuff down off the ceiling, and go get white paint, and paint the ceiling. That took much longer into Saturday than I’d thought.

Saturday afternoon I got a call from the Primary president and in talking to her came up with the plan of keeping Kristin another day if she could, and seeing if Mom and Dad could keep the girls, and trying to just keep going and paint the master bedroom too. That’s what we did. So in a wild weekend Kristin and I painted the girl’s room and our room.
We did a good job, actually, and it looks much better. I put the master bed on an angle and I like it except that the nightstands are kind of deep and it sort of closes off Hubby’s side of the bed, making it hard for him to get in and out. I’d move the whole bed but there is a vent right in the wrong place on the floor.

Thanksgiving was really nice. We went to Logan and the girls had a great time, I made the sweet potato casserole and brought pumpkin pie from Costco. I didn’t do the early morning shopping thing on Friday with Glade like I have done the past couple of years, and it was nice to sleep in.

We spent a week in Orlando, Hubby was there for a conference and really wanted us to come out and meet some of his friends. Ironically, we only met one, his friend Naresh from India. We had a five day pass to Disney World, and really had a great time. We went to the Animal Adventure the first day (Friday), the Epcot, then because the girls were getting so anxious to ride some rides we went to Magic Kingdom. The original plan was to go to Magic Kingdom three days in a row, and blow off MGM, but Thing 1 made a comment that she was getting tired of Magic Kingdom so we went to MGM. Of course there weren’t as many rides, but we found all the rides we could, and there were other interesting things and it was fun for me and Hubby too.
Thing 1 and 2 and I had first class seats on both of the legs of the trip home, Hubby was with us for one, the girls and I did the other. It was a bit of a juggling act keeping them happy from across the aisle, but we managed. We flew back on the 12th of December, and for my birthday Huby bought a glass cube that had images of the girls inside. It wasn’t a surprise because they did it at Epcot and it took 45 minutes, and I got involved trying to help get the girls to hold still for five seconds.

The rest of the week I have been trying to catch up. The house is still kind of a mess upstairs from the painting, I’ve only got one of the toddler beds out of the way, the other one is still leaning against the wall. Oh, did I mention that we bought an IKEA bunkbed that is short enough to put right against the wall. Kristin slept in the bottom bunk one of the nights she was here, and said it was much more comfortable than the futon downstairs. I had to paint it white to make it go in their room, and I took one of the two toddler beds to Kid 2 Kid in the back of Kristin’s car, but I haven’t had the girls out of my hair long enough to get the other bed to Kid 2 Kid, since I have to fold the seats down to get it in the trunk.

Thing 2 had a bad morning this morning.
She was playing with Thing 1 and when I told them it was time to go downstairs and have breakfast because we needed to get going to not be late for church, she wigged out. She attacked the Megablock tower Thing 1 had built, demolishing it. It was kind of like she burst into the Tasmanian Devil or something. Then of course Thing 1 launched herself and Thing 2 in retaliation for destroying the tower, and when I tried to intervene, Thing 2 just started screaming and yelling.

After the yelling stopped and she was asking to be forgiven, we came downstairs and started breakfast. Thing 2 noticed there are a bunch of presents under the tree that I put there last night, and started hauling them in to show us in the kitchen. Then it got quiet for a moment and Hubby heard tearing in the front room, only to poke his head in to see Thing 2 had unwrapped one of her presents. She hadn’t opened the box, but she had gotten all the paper off. Telling her it wasn’t Christmas yet, even telling her gently, only resulted in a new episode of screaming and crying. She was hollering that we hate her and she hates us and on and on… trying to reason with her is just a waste of time, I hate being near the screaming anyway so I don’t know why I bother. I went upstairs to comb my hair and she came up begging forgiveness again…

She wigged out one more time when we were putting her coat on, her sleeves were too tight to get her hands down her coat sleeves, and she started doing her fit thing. There are times I want to just toss her under a cold shower…

Otherwise the girls have been being fabulous. They are very ready for Christmas, excited about Santa. Thing 1 has told us she wants a Nintendo DS for Christmas. When I try to put her off with comments about how expensive it is, she came up with a alternate game plan. “I know,” she told me. “I’ll ask Santa for it. Then you won’t have to pay for it!!” Brilliant! Thing 2 also threw a curve ball by asking Santa for a teddy bear. A Teddy Bear? Yes, a teddy bear. Hmmm… hadn’t planned on that one, either. As often happens to me at Christmas, I start looking forward to it being over. Sometimes the extra work it involves just seems like more than I want to do. Right now, I would really like a nap. In fact… I might just be able to finagle one. There were a bunch of absolutely darling things I was going to write about the girls but have of course forgotten them.