December in a nutshell

No, you have not been removed from our Christmas card list. I have not mailed a single one this year... but I will, eventually!

After my last post of our night at Blue Man we've had Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and Maggie's birthday. I feel like I run non-stop and the kids aren't even doing any extra curricular activities yet. If I'm not at work I'm doing errands and household tasks with the kids. There is no downtime except after 9pm... which turns into 10pm and then I'm too tired to think about making complete sentences. And I never remember to finish the last load of laundry!
Really nothing with me is a nutshell! I just haven't had a chance to sit and write in a while. I was reading Leslie's blog and she "broke the silence" after a long quiet month too. I don't feel so bad about not writing the news except that there are a couple of people out there who actually check to see if I put up new pictures of the kids. Our lives are not that exciting... but the kids are cute!

Maggie lost her two front teeth recently and has been singing "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth" for several weeks now. Even though Christmas is officially done, she continues to sing and "wisth you a merry krithmuth" because she thinks it's funny. And she usually is.

Bennett has complained for a while about his heart hurting and feeling funny sometimes when he goes to bed so the doctor said we could get an EKG just to make sure it looks good on paper. With a genetic history like his Dad's and Papa's we thought it would be good to get a baseline. He was extrememly anxious over the whole deal, but the tech was good and once she started with the stickers he was fine. It was over in less than a minute and we were on our way again. Since we were next to the hospital I took all 4 over to the nursery to see all my co-workers. The kids were in a great mood (for not having naps) and decided a little Christmas caroling would be in order. Bennett put on a show for all the women and the girls chimed in every now and again. We stopped by 4 different nurses stations and each time he had to sing his favorite just for laughs and claps... "Oh Christmas tree O Christmas tree... why did you have to fall on me? You broke my leg, you killed my dog... you electricuted Santa Claus". Yes, he was successful in getting laughs from everyone and it only provoked him to sing it more!

Thanksgiving was spent with me at work and Curtis and the kids with his folks up at Vogel State Park. It was a cold and rainy day so they didn't get to play like they wanted, but the visiting time was good.

Maggie's class finally took their field trip to the Christmas tree farm... the October trip was rained out... in the year of the worst drought! We enjoyed our time even though it was frigid that day. The trees in the pictures are inside the barn and are painted white... it's not snow. The kids got to roast marshmallows over a faux fire and made lighting for a cute shot of the girls.

Christmas was a whirlwind. My entire family congregated here the weekend before Christmas. It's always so much fun to have all the cousins together. We played lots of games and thankfully the eldest girls are finally allowed to stay up and play cards (since their mother poops out so much earlier)!!!!!

These are the 3 eldest cousins with lovely shots with Aunt Jenny. We are so photogenic!

We spent part of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day over at Curt's parent's since that was the only way to get to see his sister and his grandparents. We got a couple of meals out of the deal and some good visit times too. I think cousin Eddie finally enjoys a little time with his younger cousins.

Christmas morning for us was very mild compared to my childhood memories. I remember going into my living room and seeing 4 huge piles of wrapped boxes in the 4 corners of the room and 4 stockings stuffed beyond what the crocheted socks should hold. Mom would always go so overboard (and still does!) that it makes these years seem anti-climatic to me. It wasn't big stuff... but just so much of it. And as a kid you really don't care so much about the cost of the goods, as long as there were goods. I enjoyed getting all those cheap little plastic things that lasted a week and then disappeared. I don't remember ever throwing those things away either. Now that the kids are mine I don't want to buy the cheap plastic things because I don't want to have to throw them away and disappoint the kids. Why would they remember if I don't remember? Who knows?!?! So anyway... we stuck to a few board games and the like for the kids this year. It seems to have been the thing to give since they were all on sale after Thanksgiving this year. There were a few clothes items for Maggie and Bennett since they are the biggest. I didn't even put the usual toothbrush/toothpaste combo in the stockings this year. But Curtis did go get Pez despensers for each of them. Great substitutes for teeth care, eh?!

This is at INK later in the week. Lara, Leslie and I took the kids to run off some energy. We painted some pottery too that turned out really cute. I can't show it until after Aunt Lara's birthday this month when she turns 39!!

Bennett finally got a bigger bike so he doesn't have to do the clown ride on Maggie's anymore. He even got to ride it in the snow today. Such a boy!

Maggie turned 6 on Monday and had a day full of celebration with two of her favorite friends, her sister and mother. We started the day at INK, took a break to see Enchanted and eat popcorn, went back to INK, then met Curtis et al for dinner. She wanted a steak! After that we deposited the friends with their families for the new year's celebration and we went to bed.

Now we've started 2008 in style. I've worked both days. Stayed up too late each night watching football. (Go Dawgs!) Finished a couple loads of clothes and now I'm trying to make a dent in the Christmas (new year's) letter. Hey, at least by being late I was able to get a great sale on photo prints and ordered enough for everyone to have 3! Isn't that exciting?!?!

Here's a little video clip that I'm using as a trial. I haven't put an video on here yet so I'm just checking out how it works. It's from this summer down at Grandpa and Grandma's farm. Lydia was still cute at that point and wasn't so TWO!

Blue Man - the Girl's Night Out! WARNING - TONS of pictures!!!!

First, let me say that we ingested not one single drop of alcohol tonight! No matter what these pictures may look like... we were not intoxicated. Some of us are just naturally retarded! :) (Not saying who!)

L-R: Audrey, Cameren, Jeanine, Paige.

A few girls from work and I decided it would be, could be, should be fun to go to the Blue Man Group concert. They were scheduled to come to Gwinnett and we wanted a night on the town... away from work! I think the last time I did something like I was still on night shift and much, much younger! 10 years younger. Anyway, I digress.
Let's see... only a few girls would actually commit to going. If only they had known what they would be missing. The first picture is at dinner. We went to Mo Mo Ya's... or is that Yo Yo Ma's? Either way, we ate there. Japanese Hibachi and Sushi. Paige is the sushi expert so I sat next to her so I could glean from her wisdom! She IS my hero (just in case she reads this)!! We ingested lots of food. But we did NOT enjoy our little sad hibachi chef. I think his puppy must have died that day or something. He poured out the food, slapped his spatula a few times and lit the volcano. That was it. No interaction, no jokes, not even good meat. At least that's what Carmen and Audrey said.
Oh, on a side note. Notice the happy young couple behind me? They were on a date. After they left I told Paige how happy I was to be out of the dating scene.

It was an odd thing to watch and listen to. I can't even explain it, but they just didn't seem happy to be there together. Maybe they were related to the hibachi chef and his dog. Or maybe they just realized they had missed the BMG tickets and couldn't go to the concert with us.
Ok, this is Karen and her husband. She works with us too but ended up taking a small slew of her family instead of hanging with us. They were privileged to sit directly behind us. She only thought she wasn't going to hang with us!!


We arrived way early because dinner was so quick. You know, we even spent a long time just hanging out at the table. We thought about going for dessert but thought that might be fun to do after the show. If only we had known what the night was going to hold for us.
The 5 of us went in. I pretended to be the "DD" because they were giving away free soda (said with a thick mid-western accent). We proceeded to find our seats on the floor.

I thought we had pretty good seats, but the usherette said we had great seats and took us within mere feet of the stage. Woo Wee! We ended up on row 9. It was pretty awesome. As the seats filled the scrolling marquee began to entertain us. If you've ever experienced BMG then you know they communicate very deep thoughts via a scrolling marquee. There were two young boys behind us who read every single word out loud. We didn't have to try to watch the words fly by because they narrated the entire thing. I enjoyed hearing the excitement in their voices. Then we started playing the text messaging game with Paige's phone. We wanted that backstage pass!! :)
We didn't win.
This year the opening act was a wee bit, um... odd and boring, yet intriguing. Phil Yern or Dave Kirn or something I just can't remember. He was certainly a computer geek. He mixed and scratched music and video. Some of it was funny, but mostly we just wanted BMG to come out. He needed to do his 1 or 2 songs and sit down. 30 minutes later......... we finally heard the sweet sounds of rhythm. :)

(This is how they opened!)


Initially they play this tubulum. Until they put both pieces together and play as one... it's a simple single sound. Once they figure out how to combine the two, the whole band comes alive and joins in.











This is the drum set that was right in front of us. I didn't turn my flash on so it wouldn't light up the backs of the heads in front of me... and thus, the shutter stayed open longer. This way, if you can get past the blurriness, you can see the movement of their hands/sticks and their faces. You can also see the liquid that spews from the drums at times. I do believe it's water with colored lights under them but in the NYC show it certainly looked and acted like paint. We were not in the "poncho" section, but we were close. :)
This is my favorite drum. The HUGE bass drum that reverberates through your entire being when it's drummed.
This is one if the whips. It makes a cool sound. One of the people in Karen's family said it was the scratch dude making the sound on his machine. I'm not convinced of that.
Another part of the act was the catching of marshmallows. They switched it up a bit this year and put the "sculpture" on a baseball cap on top of an audience member's head. The paint ball art was done on a T-shirt on another audience member instead of the canvas of the old days. They were certainly lucky people to get such fine artwork! :)
They did a skit with the lead guitarist which doesn't translate into words or pictures. All I have is the end result.

These next pictures of just various ones throughout the show where they were wearing lighted suits. Again, super cool!

Here's the end with the backpacks that shot out all the paper. I think Karen and Michael enjoyed wrapping it around Jeanine. The crazy intoxicated person in front of us looked suspiciously like a mummy when it was over. Then she ran like a chicken to the bathroom when it was over. I think she didn't need anything (like paper) to slow her from the destination.
Can you tell Cameren is thrilled to be riding in my van??!?! What's so funny here is that Karen and her family are also with us. Turns out her battery on her car was dead and wouldn't even run after being jumped off. So, they crammed into the back seat and I took them back to Cleveland. We listed to hip-hop really loudly and showed off some of our newly learned Rock Concert Movements.

I'm pretty sure everyone was impressed with how talented we all are!! Some of the moves I threw down were The Basic Head Nod, The One Armed Fist Pump, The Tribute to Flippie, The Up and Down Jump, Raise the Roof, and a few others I'd be happy to demonstrate! The thing is I think Dave Eyrich and Paul Smith have influenced me more than I remember... from my teen years. Their philosophy was, These people don't know me and they'll never see me again. I can be crazy without fear of feeling foolish.

I had fun!

I hope BMG comes back next fall again. If not, I think I'm going to have to organize a trip to Vegas or NYC to see them. Don't you want to join me?! :)