The Cubs room

So now that Sassy has her room done and ZJ is moved up into the main part of the house, Caleb got to do something that he has been trying to do for about 7 years. He got his Cubs room. Three of the walls are white, one is Cubs blue with a white square that has the blue Cubs "W" on it. Then he put all of his memorobilia up. It's his own little special man cave. He just said though that he has to put the guitar hero up cuz it's 9:40 and he hasn't even been in his room yet. Hopefully I can get a digital camera and get some pictures of that room too.
I really don't think I have much else to say I just wanted to beat last month's posts and have more than 4 this month.

Wii

So a busy week we have had. It started last Friday night when I gave Caleb a deadline to finish Sassy's room by Sunday. We made a trip to Bloomington Friday night and got the desk stuff and the trim. I spent six hours Saturday painting until Caleb got home then we worked on trim and getting the desk in. Sunday Caleb made another trip to Bloomington to get a door. Amazingly all this stuff fit into my little car. Who needs a truck when you have a Saturn Ion! Needless to say we got the room done. I will post pictures when I get them from my stepdad. It is gorgeous and so girly.
Christmas came and went and the girls were pleased. We did the gold, frankincense, and myrrh gifts for each of them. Sassy's room was her gold gift. Jade got a video camera, and ZJ got playdoh. Santa also came and left one gift. ZJ's best gift was her bball hoop from Santa. We went to my grandma's for brunch. Then we drove to Rushville to see Caleb's grandma in the nursing home. She was so tickled to see all of us.
This morning Jade and I did our day-after-Christmas shopping. We didn't really find too many good deals, but Jade sure found a way to spend all her money. She had a blast. My grandparents, my dad, and Caleb's parents gave each of us a considerable amount of money. So she had quite a bit to spend, but she got the last bit of what she wanted. Caleb, Sassy, and I decided to pool some of our money together and buy a Wii. Yes we have come into 2008 now that it is almost over. Walmart in Lincoln did not have one so we had to drive to Bloomington to get it. We also decided to go ahead and buy Guitar Hero Aerosmith. That was for me I think! I can't wait to play that. We are bowling right now. How fun is it to bowl right in your own house.
We have had a good Christmas, and I feel truly blessed right now. We have enjoyed each other and our family time. This weekend we have our fights to watch and it is a big card, so it should be good. I think we are going to have some friends over and play some cards and play some Wii then watch the fights. It will be good. This is the first weekend that Caleb has had both Saturday and Sunday off and we don't have to work on a room in the house. I can't wait. I enjoy this time of year so much. I hope everyone else counts their blessings and remembers what life is really all about.

Zack and Cody

So we were one of the 5000 plus crazy people who stood in line Saturday night for an hour and a half at the U.S. Cellular Colleseum in Bloomington so our children could have 5 seconds to get Dylan and Cole Sprouse's autograph. For those of you who don't have young girls, they play Zack and Cody on the Suite Life of Zack and Cody on the Disney Channel. I think Jade was a little boy crazy and our very unathletic 10 year didn't say a word about the long wait. She just grinned ear to ear. Now Sassy didn't care much for the wait but the autograph picture made up for it at the end I think. We did miss the first period of the hockey game and about half of the second one. But the girls actually enjoyed the game too. Caleb and I were surprised. Of course they liked it for different reasons. Jade was actually paying attention to the game, and Sassy liked that every time the puck stopped they played music and she got to stand up with her foam finger and dance around in hopes of getting on the big TV.
Sunday, my in-laws came down and passed down old family recipes for fudge and party mix. The fudge actually turned out pretty good. We made chocolate fudge and peanut butter fudge. The peanut butter is my favorite. It was a pretty good weekend.
My plans for this week are to start my craziness of baking cookies. I'll pump out about 600 or so. Well off to go bake....

Blogging

So my friend text me the other day and told me I need to blog. I think I spoiled everyone in November posting 4 whole times! Not much has really been going on. I am starting school in January. I have taken my basic skills test and passed with flying colors. I have been substitute teaching for about a month and have been pretty busy with that. My last day at the Elks is Wednesday. I wrecked my car on Monday and now have to fork out loads of money to fix it. But when I went to pick it up they couldn't find a bill for it. Not even an order. So hopefully we can get Christmas done before we have to pay for that. We have scaled down our Christmas considerably. The girls are getting a total of 5 presents from us this year. One gold gift-a gift they really really want. One frankincense gift-a gift that brings them closer to God. One myrrh gift-a gift that covers them from head to toe. Of course Santa will bring one gift. And the Christmas Eve Elf always stops by to leave pjs. My husband and I are not buying for each other. And we have set a small limit for the other children in the family. That's it. I usually go overboard, but I usually start and finish before Thanksgiving. And I usually buy for friends, coworkers, etc. You know at Jade's school, the children are not doing a gift exchange with each other. They are bringing in a donation then going to pick 2 children from the Angel Tree and go out to Walmart to shop for gifts for someone else in need. I think this is something that teaches the students a very valuable lesson about the meaning of Christmas. I would like to incorporate this into my own classroom when I get to teach, but I don't know if I will be able to pull it off in a public classroom. I don't know if that will be bordering on laws that regulate Christ in the classroom. It almost makes me sick to think that at the time when Jesus came to give us life, we can not even respond by giving to others in His name in a public school. The correlation of the time that Jesus was taken out of schools and the rise in teen pregnancies, drop out rates, poor test scores, gangs, etc. is astounding. I have done research on this for papers in school and all I can do is laugh when the government tries to implement new laws to prevent these things, when they just need to reinstitute one important one.
But I digress. My mother-in-law told me what advent is, but I am still on the search for where did this tradition come from. I haven't been able to find that answer yet. If anyone can point me in the right direction it would be appreciated.
That's all for now.