So much gratitude to those who have sacrificed and served us in the past, today and in the future.
Many prayers to those who are in dangerous places-may you all remain safe and come home soon.
We honor you today and every day. We are so proud of you. We love you all.
Thank you and God bless you!
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i hope everyone had a wonderful christmas! we really did. in the midst of exhaustion my mom and i sat and thought about it and agreed that this seemed like one of the best christmas celebrations we've had. i do love the season and look forward to it all year long. i have to confess though that when it's done, i'm done. i like to get the house back to normal and everything put away quickly. we were light on decorations this year so that's good. but as i look at the loot we've all acquired...that is going to be a challenge. my camera is lost among said loot, hopefully it'll turn up soon and i can share pictures of our day. and i can't wait to see all of your pictures!
ok so for the snark. and if this applies to any of you, well, i'm sorry. *sort of* but really i hope that instead it will change your way of thinking. =)
now i don't mind if anyone decides to have santa as part of their christmas traditions or not, that is totally an individual choice. in fact i do enjoy learning about everyone's different traditions. there is just one little thing that really annoys me and i've got to let it out.
some people worry about santa "getting credit" for giving gifts, especially the big gifts. what?! say again?! this is about the silliest thing i've heard. and as petty as *i* think it is, i've heard/read about a handful of people who actually worry about this. seriously.
now i love to give gifts, love it! probably a little too much. it's never occurred to me that santa is raining on my parade. when i give gifts i'm only thinking about how happy (hopefully) the recipient is going to be. and if santa is giving great gifts too, that is awesome. in the end doesn't it all work itself out? isn't the effort going to be realized? i totally think it will.
i do apologize for this snarky moment. if it had come up once i'd just said to myself "how silly" and moved on. but as i've mentioned, it's come up quite a few times. as if we don't have enough truly troubling things in life to worry about? and where is the christmas spirit?
not only do i believe in santa, but i get caught up in his magic too. santa always brings us the best gifts!
to all of my blog friends-old and new...merry christmas! can't wait to hear all about your christmas celebrations! and i've been taking pictures, so that's a good thing! may you eat, drink and be merry...christmas eve is my favorite day of the year!
i think these guys are great-enjoy!
when i saw this on my friend stephanie's blog, i just knew i had to swipe it and share. be sure to check out stephanie's blog at the huntley home! hope this makes you giggle just like it did me, =)...
"Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take my fake man down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down.
First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.
Second, an elderly lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was only one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard."
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gosh time is moving so fast! is it just me or do you all feel that life is whizzing by way too quickly? it seems worse during the holiday season. every year there are so many things i want to do for christmas and every year the day comes and goes before i'm ready for it. this year is proving to be no exception.
y'all we haven't even decorated! that is terrible. usually we decorate the weekend after thanksgiving. we had decided this year to have a smaller tree and mr. heather was going to have a new "theme". just haven't gotten around to it yet. he also needs to replace our outside decorations as our old ones sort of croaked after last christmas. hopefully we can get it done this weekend. that's the plan anyway.
every year i intend to watch "it's a wonderful life". i've never seen it, i have it, but again time rushes by before i have a chance to sit and watch it. maybe i will actually accomplish that goal this year. we'll see.
obviously i survived the week of chaos. there were so many things scheduled that it made my head spin. i did reschedule a doctor's appointment because school snuck in another early release day. (which i have to complain is getting ridiculous!) despite that we added in another school function with kelley's chorus and chimes concert last night.
i wish we'd recorded the concert as it was really good! it was so nice-they had real christmas carols instead of made up "holiday" songs. is christmas coming back en vogue? i hope so. it was getting out of hand if you ask me, especially when the christmas tree box was labeled "holiday tree". but i digress...
kelley did really great! but seeing her up there with all of the other kids made me realize how tiny she is. it seemed like she's atleast half a foot, if not more, shorter than everyone else. between that and her quiet nature i'm always afraid she's going to get pushed around. she does hold her own pretty well though. thinking that she's going to middle school next year just blows my mind!
seriously, time is going by way too quickly!
here it is the last day of the nablopomo challenge and i made it!
i can't decide if the challenge was hard or not. blogging isn't hard at all and it's something i enjoy. but when there was a bit of responsibility tacked on it did become harder. making sure i remembered to blog every day. and figuring out what to blog about, now that really was the challenge i think. some days i admit the pickins were slim, but other days more than made up for them.
it's been fun y'all! reading the blogs of everyone else who was participating in nablopomo...not only did i find some cool new blogs to read, but i got to know y'all better!
on another note, i'm happy to share that i was awarded more bloggy awards! knowing that people are actually reading what i write is cool! and when i get comments i'm totally excited!! awards? i'm thrilled to get those!!!
these days... and R.A.W. Chronicles both gave me the Heartfelt Blogger Award! thanks so much to both of you!!! be sure to click on their blog names to check out their blogs!
i'm wishing all of you a happy, joyous and blessed holiday season! and to end nablopomo, i'll leave you with this sweet commercial i saw...
*believe*
i'm hoping that everyone had a great thanksgiving! we sure did, the food was so yummy! and it was nice to have a day with nothing to focus on except for my family. i'm a bit spoiled and don't actually cook on thanksgiving, i have, but it's not usual. it's one of the ways that i can try to hold on to thanksgivings as a child with none of those grown up worries. thank you mammie for making us a wonderful dinner!
when i wrote about the holidays i had as a child, i mentioned that it was usually just my parents and me. sometime during my early adulthood, my grandma and grandpa roger moved to our town as did my grandpa ted (poppy, as the girls called him) who i met for the first time when he moved to be near us. of course mr. h, kelley and bethany joined the family. as did bill and vi, my parent's neighbors who quickly became family to us. the years that followed, our holidays were celebrated with a full house and i loved that so much!
this thanksgiving though, i reflected with sadness. we have lost three of our family members over the past years. poppy and bill passed away five years ago within just a couple months of each other. the holidays were sad that year. my grandpa roger died this past spring, he was the grandpa i knew my whole life. we have had a few get-togethers since then like birthdays and the 4th of july. but thanksgiving was the first of the holidays with "tradition". grandpa roger was missed a lot this thanksgiving. and it was sad to notice how our family get-togethers that were once big to me are getting smaller.
so please remember this holiday season and really every season that life is short. our time can pass so quickly. enjoy the time you get to spend with all of your loved family and friends. sadly, it can be gone in an instant. i can only hope that one day we will be reunited, all together again. until then i have lots of memories...
we love and miss you so much grandpa roger! 
am i the only one who has no desire to go out shopping on black friday? i have never gone, ever. sharing this makes me feel like i must be a stuffy old scrooge. i know how popular the day is and i usually get pretty excited about the same things that most people do.
seriously though, i can not imagine what could possibly make me even try to venture out there. it's not the middle of the night thing, i'm a night owl. i do love to shop and never turn down a great deal. i love going to the mall during the holidays when it's decorated and christmas carols are playing, i'm all about the christmas spirit.
the reason i'm such a scrooge? i think it's the people! every year i hear about the crowds, the fights, people being trampled and was it last year that a worker was actually killed? those type of things make images in my mind of obnoxious, awful people acting like fools. i know that sounds mean, but seriously, people have lost their lives during these sales. for what? so someone can save a few bucks or get that hard to find toy they should have bought a month or two ago? and to add insult to injury the shoppers get mad when their shopping gets interrupted because someone had the nerve to be trampled to death?
so i'll be the one person who is staying home on friday morning. just like i always do. what i will be doing though is staying up late after thanksgiving and checking out the black friday deals on the interwebz, in the comforts of home. i'm not that much of a scrooge!
for all of you peeps who are brave enough to venture out on friday...be careful! and i hope y'all score some fabulous deals!
i asked for requests for things to blog about during my nablopomo challenge and a bloggy friend jennifer (you can check out her blog by clicking on her name!) suggested favorite childhood memories. i have a lot of them, and i think i'll share my holiday faves from being a child to now being a mom.
growing up, most of the holidays were spent with just me and my parents. sometimes we'd have relatives over or go to visit, but usually it was just us. i have great memories of our holidays.
thanksgiving always started off with watching the macy's parade. then we'd have our thanksgiving dinner, complete with homemade noodles. yep noodles. outside of family, i've met just a few people who have noodles as well. but for us, it's a must! the day usually ended with our bellies full and watching the original miracle on 34th street. that was it, and it was perfect!
thanksgiving these days is spent with family, and of course the girls. i have never been able to get them interested in watching the parade, but i still give it a little peek every year. our menu has changed a little, but not much. mammie does the cooking, and other than mashed and sweet potatoes, there are no veggies, none. one year i did make the ever famous green bean casserole. but have since gone back to a veggie free thanksgiving.
my very favorite day of the year is christmas eve. i love the anticipation of santa claus and remembering the birth of Jesus. both are just absolutely magical. our routine hasn't changed much over the years. lots of christmas carols. dinner is an awesome mixture of appetizers and treats made by mammie and papa. papa's specialty is loaded nachos. we exchange gifts with extended family. and mammie always makes sure we have a new pair of christmas jammies. the girls hang their stockings and papa reads "twas the night before christmas" to the girls. we do all of this at mammie and papa's house because they have a chimney! they leave santa milk and cookies of course, and usually carrots or oats for the reindeer. 
christmas morning is all about the presents. as a child i remember always waking up to a lit christmas tree stuffed with presents underneath. and santa always, always took great care of me! one year he almost broke my heart. what i really wanted that year was a speak n spell. i was so excited to get it, i just knew it had to be there. all the packages were opened and there wasn't a speak n spell. i was thrilled with all of my gifts but still sad. turns out santa had dropped a present behind some furniture...and it was my beloved speak n spell! i am an absolute spelling bee and i'm sure it's because santa didn't let me down!
our christmas mornings are pretty similar now, waking up to that magical site of a lit tree and presents everywhere! sometimes we sleep at mammie and papa's on christmas eve, sometimes we sleep at home. fortunately we are barely a mile away. papa has an "in" with santa and he never gets confused as to where he's supposed to show up. we unwrap presents from santa and from each other. listening to carols. we usually have a light breakfast of cinnamon rolls. saving our appetite for the big christmas dinner. my grandma has been making that for the past couple years. 
as for new year's eve and day, we really don't have any traditions. it's never late to start them though! last year the girls had their first sleepover and rang in the new year with sparkling grape juice. the adults had champagne. new year's day we do watch college football. but again, no real traditions.
i'd love to hear about your new year's day traditions...we definitely need to start some!
a loving thank you to all who have served our country, are currently serving and their families. this country is so very proud of you!
now that vampires are slowly being accepted into our society, we were lucky enough to sneak a peek of a couple on halloween.
it was definitely a sight to see. i was a bit creeped out.
from the looks of their mouths, it appeared that they had fed recently. 
but not to take any chances, i wore a garlic clove necklace.
just to be safe.
my bloggy friend angel hosts this blog carnival every saturday. be sure to check out her blog for more super snapshots!
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i hope everyone has a perfectly, lovely day!
no big plans here. the girls want to have a movie night "camp out" so we'll likely do that. bethany will want to watch twilight...again. and i can't blame her really. but daddy probably won't want to watch it again, and i can't blame him either. i'm surprised he actually watched it with me once.
both kelley and bethany are starting to get into scary movies. so maybe we have one that will scare them just enough...without going overboard. that will be a challenge.
and i just had to borrow (well steal) this valentine from sellabit mum-it really made me laugh!
kelley and bethany are a year and a half apart. and early on a tradition was started, i believe, by papa. (grandpa=papa, grandma=mammie for future reference). when you have two babies or toddlers, it's hard for them to understand that only one of them gets gifts. and of course they are going to be all up in the other's business trying to unwrap things. this is where the UN-birthday gift comes in.
it's never a big deal. the girls never seem to mind. and in all fairness until cancer intruded into our lives they didn't get a lot of gifts "just because". (i admit that since cancer i do get them gifts "just because", cause you never know when the last "just because" is going to happen.) now daddy has never agreed with this practice. but i've never accused him of being normal, have i?
and really how do you fairly quit the tradition? someone's going to get the last UN-birthday gift, leaving the other with the short end of the deal.
this birthday season poor kelley at the wise old age of 9 1/2, said she understands that we may think she's too old for it. WHAT?! never! (in my mind). as if that's not the worst, the creator of this tradition also hesitated. thank goodness that mammie and i still had our good sense. and thus kelley received her UN-birthday gifts...nothing big a DS game (it was on sale!) and a miniature sock monkey to match her favorite bigger sock monkey. that's it. kelley was happy and bethany was STILL the belle of the ball.
so what do you think? is the UN-birthday tradition NOT a good one? you can comment and i will surely consider your thoughts. (tho i don't think i will quit the tradition any time soon. =))
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