We've been a little busy...

Alright blog friends.  This week took me by storm and what started out as a week with Jahred mostly off, turned into a week with me mostly on.  Here is a list of things accomplished and a few notes on what should have been achieved.

Check these off:

Axel made a silly face at his teacher after she asked him to "not walk silly" to the door at the end of class – I lectured on appropriate school behavior (even when you haven't been outside and have loads of extra energy and are feeding off the attention of 22 other preschoolers...it's still not ok to make a silly face at your teacher) ;).

Upcoming holiday party – Axel and I whipped up 4 dozen truffles and one batch of buffalo chicken dip (I have no idea if it's tasty or not since I don't eat meat...best of luck carnivores).

Thought I accidentally threw away our $100 Menards rebate – dug through the trash in the middle of the night because I was thinking about aforementioned problem while breastfeeding at 3am.  By some wacky coincidence, the rebate arrived the next day in the mail.  Whew.

Buddy the elf is causing chaos in order to encourage Axel to not make silly faces at his teacher – perhaps such a whimsical elf isn't the best example of not acting silly.  Too damn bad, the kid's 4, wicked smart, and if he wants to walk in a silly way to the door at the end of the day I'll be damned if I'll be the one to waste our super-fun time together nagging him about it.

Axel is confusing his discount stores – Buddy the elf appeared in a bowl of marshmallows one morning and Axel said to him, "Buddy!  Do you know where we got those?  SAVERS!  Now you just wasted them."  For the record, I do not purchase food at Savers.

Axel offered to give all my yarn to "someone who doesn't have any yarn" – this "giving tree" thing at school has really grabbed hold.  While I don't mind helping out a needy family I would somehow like to teach Axel that Mommy and Daddy work really hard and it's o.k. for us to have what we have.  It's lovely to think of others, but it's just as wonderful to be proud of where we are and how hard we struggled/worked like hell to get to a comfortable state.

Found the "it" toy of the season – "I would like a car that turns into a dinosaur and it's red and it shoots another car which is blue and has a small dinosaur that attaches to it somehow and it talks and it turns back into a car."  I thought for weeks that Axel was asking something of Santa that was virtually impossible.  After discovering it as a "sold out" item on my favorite website, www.yoyo.com, I quickly sourced it and paid full price on another site.  What a load off.  I will say that in this calendar year, this is the first "new"/ not pre-owned toy I have bought for my child.  For the giving tree at preschool, it is required that all gifts be "new."  Thought provoking.

Transformed our house from Thanksgiving (see table shot below) to Christmas (see Axel topping the tree with our vintage tree-topper, "Um, Mom, this isn't actually a star.  We're supposed to have a REAL STAR.  One with lights."  Crap.).  This reminds me of when we bought our van.  Rubbing insult to dorky-van-injury Axel says to his friend, "Wanna see our new van?  It's silver...which isn't even a color."

Things I have yet to do:

Email Kristina S. to tell her thank you for the Wristie order.  It is probably to you already, as well as a dog collar for your sweet puppy.  I do hope it fits.  I meant to email you saying that I miss you all as well and hope to make a journey south when I'm not babysitting one of Santa's elves.

Take pictures of my kids with Santa.  I will be checking this off my list tomorrow and after our first dry-run with the mall Santa (where they think I'm the cheapest Mom alive since I refused to purchase their $34.99 photo package...and they DO NOT allow you to snap even one of your own) I'm confident that Axel is all business this year and to get the toy mentioned above he will show me those pearly whites.

Clean my house.  I'm in survival mode and if you looked in my bathroom right now you may just see two days worth of MY pajamas on the floor in front of the shower.  They lay right where I stepped out of them and while deciding what to wear to bed tonight I grabbed something new off the shelf because I was too lazy to walk downstairs.  Do I see a problem with two sets(potentially three tomorrow) of pj's on my bathroom floor?  Absolutely not.  It's more of a badge of courage that I dared two showers in two days.  That never happens.

Call some people that I've been meaning to call.  My college roommate is turning 30 this month and that just means that in the coming calendar year I'll be turning 30 as well.  Holy crap.  I need to consult the authorities on whether or not I'm old enough to turn 30.  While more than half of my friends have reached the milestone and beyond, I'm hanging on to my youth – hanging on by my two sons, my colorless minivan, the occasional grey hair I find in my head, the fact that I own enough yarn for my son to think of giving it away, the quilts I have yet to finish, the nearly seven years I've been married, the geriatric dog who's been with me for most of my adult life, the aches, the pains, the crooked-smile of a scar on my abdomen from my most recent cesarean, my fine china that collects dust from the lack of entertaining going on around here, the shot-glasses that will NEVER get used and sit in the "donation" bag, my star-less faux Christmas tree, my favorite books and my own two hands that are most wonderful and tackle everything I throw at them in a day.  I think I'll look towards 30 like an old friend.  Maybe I'll ponder all of this next month...when I have more time.