We have had snow, snow and more snow. I think we've had about a foot, but a lot of it has settled, so it looks more like 8 inches. It was coming down pretty hard tonight, so I sent the boys out for about 2 minutes so I could get a few pictures.

We heard about this site on the radio this morning. The kids are having so much fun playing around on it. There is a naughty/nice list. Austin and Ethan both earned a B+, and Santa told them that their halos were a little crooked, but that they still made the nice list. Kellen is on the nice list too, but he earned a C+.

You can email Santa, and get a response from him. Check it out! So much fun!

Email Santa

My Goofball kiddos!

Bo and Lexie loving the snow

Carting the snow across the yard

I have to share....Its a little silly, but...

Air Wick is doing a promo. If you buy a refill, you get a warmer unit for free (with coupon). They have been on sale for pretty cheap lately, and if you get the Sunday paper, there are manufacturer's coupons for $1.00 off of two refills, and then the coupon for the free unit. Sometimes the coupon is on the warmer unit itself. I now have 4 units, and of course we've been trying out the scents. I'm huge on making the house smell like the holidays at Christmastime. Their apple/cinnamon scent is pretty good, but up until last night, the lavender was my favorite. I tried out the vanilla passion last night, thinking that the holidays were almost over. I couldn't wait once we got home, so I opened one to test it. OHHHHH MAAAAN it smells soooo good!

Its doesn't really smell like vanilla. More like fresh baked and iced cookies....even better, if you ask me.

So laugh if you want, but seriously...humor me, and go spend the $2.50 first.

I think my boys (at least the two older ones) are hitting that age where its hard to learn that material things are fun, but its not about getting the biggest and most expensive gift. I think its a very hard lesson for even adults to learn, so I really don't expect kids to fully understand, but we still try.

Even when its not Christmastime, we try to make a habit out of doing little things for people when we can. Sometimes we like to pay for the car behind us when we go through drive thru...that's the boys' favorite. We've found that when David and I do things like this on a whim, the boys seem to follow suit at other times. For example, this past summer, we were at the park. A little boy (about 4) was riding his bike with his younger brother. They were riding a little ahead of their dad, when the boy lost his steering and fell part way off the sidewalk. Without saying anything, both Austin and Ethan saw that his dad was further away than we were, and immediately ran to help him up and to see if he was alright. It wasn't a big deal to Austin and Ethan, but you could see that it took the boy and the dad by surprise.

Since the holidays have come along, we've done a few very small things to help others.

We went through Taco Bell just after Thanksgiving, and the boys thought the man behind us looked like he was having a bad day, so we paid for his meal. Like I said the boys love doing this, and always get excited and pumped about how people react.

Then, while David and I were out Christmas shopping (the morning after the first snow storm), we stopped to get some tacos. We ended up with extra, and decided to give it to the man on the corner holding a sign, asking for bottles/cans to return. When David approached him, he was being asked by someone just passing by what he does when the weather gets bad. The man said he does the same as any other night, and sleeps outside. I wanted to do more for him, and we talked about how its too bad you can't trust people enough to offer them your garage to sleep in during the winter.

Just the other day, we were all running errands to get gift cards for David's employee Christmas party. With all of the businesses going down here, a lot of them hire people to stand on the street corners to hold signs for advertisement. It was so cold that day. When we would get out of the car, our faces would hurt from the freezing wind blowing the snow. So we decided to buy one of the sign holders a coffee. I can't imagine having to accept a job standing out in winter weather, holding a sign for 8 hours of minimum wage. I feel so blessed that our family is still able to have a warm home and food on the table. Anyway, the boys decided they wanted to hand the man the coffee. It was such a good feeling watching the boys (just Austin and Ethan) walk up and hand it to him. They told him Merry Christmas, and the boys said he thanked them 3 times. We then discussed the feeling they got from just giving a cup of coffee. They mentioned that it felt better than getting a present, and Austin said he wanted to do it all day long. We ended up getting one more coffee, and the boys delivered it to another man. The looks on their faces was enough to make David and I feel like maybe we are doing something right here. ;)

Once we got home, everyone seemed to still be floating on that feeling. Austin and Ethan asked if they could go out and plow our driveway. When then came in about 2 hours later, they told us that they had also plowed many of the neighbor's driveways, and wouldn't take money from them when it was offered. By the next day, they had come up with their master plan. They would offer to replow driveways each time it snow, still for free, but if anyone offered to pay, they would accept a donation to go toward buying coffee for people standing in the cold. So far, they've collected $5.

Austin said, "We're offering to help people, so we can help more people".

I think they're getting it....

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The sad part is, I can see this happening in our family...except our grandma is MUCH more aware of what those dolls are for...LOL I found it on our local Craigslist R&R.Enjoy!

This is an article submitted to a 1999 Louisville Sentinel > contest to find out who had the wildest Christmas dinners. It won first prize.

As a joke, my brother Jay used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them.

What they say about Santa checking the list twice must be true because every Christmas morning, although Jay's kids' stockings overflowed, his poor pantyhose hung sadly empty.

One year I decided to make his dream come true. I put on sunglasses and went in search of an inflatable love doll. They don't sell those things at Wal-Mart. I had to go to an adult bookstore downtown.

If you've never been in an X-rated store, don't go. you'll only confuse yourself. I was there an hour saying things like, 'What does this do?' 'You're kidding me!' 'Who would buy that?' Finally, I made it to the inflatable doll section.

I wanted to buy a standard, uncomplicated doll that could also substitute as a passenger in my truck so I could use the car pool lane during rush hour.

Finding what I wanted was difficult. 'Love Dolls' come in many different models. The top of the line, according to the side of the box, could do things I'd only seen in a book on animal husbandry. I settled for 'Lovable Louise.' She was at the bottom of the price scale.

To call Louise a 'doll' took a huge leap of imagination.

On Christmas Eve and with the help of an old bicycle pump, Louise came to life.

My sister-in-law was in on the plan and let me in during the wee morning hours. Long after Santa had come and gone, I filled the dangling pantyhose with Louise's pliant legs and bottom. I also ate some cookies and drank what remained of a glass of milk on a nearby tray. I went home, and giggled for a couple of hours.

The next morning my brother called to say that Santa had been to his house and left a present that had made him VERY happy, but had left the dog confused. She would bark, start to walk away, then come back and bark some more.

We all agreed that Louise should remain in her pantyhose so the rest of the family could admire her when they came over for the traditional Christmas dinner.

My grandmother noticed Louise the moment she walked in the door. 'What the hell is that?' she asked.

My brother quickly explained, 'It's a doll.'

'Who would play with something like that?' Granny snapped.

I kept my mouth shut.

'Where are her clothes?' Granny continued.

'Boy, that turkey sure smells nice, Gran,' Jay said, to steer her into the dining room.

But Granny was relentless. 'Why doesn't she have any teeth?'

Again, I could have answered, but why would I? It was Christmas and no one wanted to ride in the back of the ambulance saying, 'Hang on Granny, hang on!'

My grandfather, a delightful old man with poor eyesight, sidled up to me and said, ' Hey, who's the naked gal by the fireplace?'

I told him she was Jay's friend.

A few minutes later I noticed Grandpa by the mantel, talking to Louise. Not just talking, but actually flirting. It was then that we realized this might be Grandpa's last Christmas at home.

The dinner went well. We made the usual small talk about who had died, who was dying, and who should be killed, when suddenly Louise made a noise like my father in the bathroom in the morning. Then she lurched from the mantel, flew around the room twice, and fell in a heap in front of the sofa. The cat screamed. I passed cranberry sauce through my nose, and Grandpa ran across the room, fell to his knees, and began administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

My brother fell back over his chair and wet his pants.

Granny threw down her napkin, stomped out of the room, and sat in the car.

It was indeed a Christmas to treasure and remember.

Later in my brother's garage, we conducted a thorough examination to decide the cause of Louise's collapse. We discovered that Louise had suffered from a hot ember to the back of her right thigh.

Fortunately, thanks to a wonder drug called duct tape, we restored her to perfect health.

I can't wait until next Christmas.

Grandma has pulled herself back up again this time. The hospice nurse who had come last Tuesday after her fall and said she was nearing the end, walked in on Friday, shook Grandma's hand, and congratulated her for making it through. I guess she wasn't ready to go yet. That's completely ok with all of us.

The original plan was to drive down just for Thanksgiving day, and come home the same night. With the dogs, its difficult to leave overnight. Now that the van needs new tires, we can't really just take them with us. Once we found out that Grandma wasn't doing well, we knew we had to figure something out....so we somehow managed to fit all 5 of us, and the dogs (Bo is 100lbs and Lexie is about 60) in David's Impala. It wasn't exactly a roomy drive. And yes, we were all safely and legally buckled.

Before we headed over the mountain, I went into the dr feeling like I was getting strep throat. They did the ever so fun throat culture, and we got the positive results before we had even packed our things to leave, so we picked up antibiotics on the way out. I felt pretty good overall, and was excited to see everyone.

Over the next few days, we stayed at Grandma's house. David helped care for Grandma (and me) through the weekend. I helped where I could, but progressively became pretty worthless. Grandma got pretty confused at times, but also had her times of sarcasm, fiesty-ness (is that a word?), and some completely normal moments. At one point, I was so tired of only eating a liquid diet, that I told grandma all I wanted was a "big, fat cheeseburger". Of course, this was one of her more alert times, but she was also a little confused. So she agreed that it sounded good, pulled out $20 and sent David about 10 miles to Dairy Queen to get everyone cheeseburgers. Normally, I would give her a hard time and tell her she's just trying to torchure me by eating one in front of me, but I didn't say anything. That night, she also managed to eat a king size reese's, and a whole Hershey's bar. She's not a huge junk food eater, normally. I stuck to my chicken noodle and cream of mushroom.

Come Saturday afternoon, I still was not improving, so off to Urgent Care, we went. After looking at my throat, they spared me another culture, and offered me different antibiotics and some pain pills. My poor throat was full of nothing but nastiness. There were a few nights that I woke up having a hard time breathing because my throat was swelling from the ibuprofen wearing off.

I started FINALLY feeling better yesterday, and today, I went for that Cheeseburger I been wanting. Oh maaaan, was that good!

I think we are all getting a cold now, but I'm sure its nothing we can't handle...as long as its not strep.

Now that I'm feeling better, and Grandma is getting back to her stubborn self, we are going to attempt to get ready for Christmas by the weekend. I still need to do our Thanksgiving dinner here at home. I missed out on the turkey last week....that was rough, but I'm looking forward to baking our bird.

There's the update on us! We are all happy we were able to spend so much time in the valley, and that strep is gone.