The Obligitory Christmas Post

When everything is “meh,” it’s hard to get excited or involved in anything. I found Christmas seriously, seriously hard this year. Decorating became a chore, baking became overwhelming, shopping? All I can say is thank whatever supreme being there might be for Amazon. The most enjoyment I got out of Christmas ramp-up, and don’t laugh because I am dead serious, was ordering wood grain wrapping paper paper to go with our Christmas tree theme: wood ornaments only. 

We spent the week leading up to Christmas shouting, "That's mahogany!" every time a cat or a girl got too close to the tree!

The other highlight of Christmas? Funny story actually.

We haven’t updated our gaming console since the PS2. Really. We have a first gen Wii, but I don’t considering that as an “us” update. The Wii was a gift from my mom many, many years ago. So our console gaming has been rather limited in the past few years. Don’t get me wrong, I love my PS2 and it will not become part of the Dejunking 2015 project at all. I have very specific, very joyful memories attached to it. Yeah, I’m looking at you Sara. Baulder’s Gate Marathon? SSX Tricky until our fingers cramped? Still play ‘em. Still love ‘em.

This Christmas Scott and I decided to finally update to a PS4. Cool, right? We completely skipped a generation! The girls were thrilled when they opened it Christmas morning, squeed even, and couldn’t wait to start playing. So as I was making the Christmas Breakfast and getting ready for work (yeah. Work on Christmas. Sucks, but that’s the hospitality industry for you.) Ashleigh started unboxing and setting up the new shiny.

After a few minutes of ripping plastic, tearing tape, and shredding cardboard, Ashleigh appeared in the doorway, a cord in her hand.

“Mom, I can’t set it up.”

“What? Why?”

“There’s no plug for it,” she said.

“Just unplug something else.” We’ve got a dvd player, Wii, and PS2 all hooked up to our TV, surely there is something we can do without.

“No, Mom,” she wiggled the cord at me, “It won’t plug in. There isn’t a port.”

Frustrated because of the 20 million things I’m trying to get done, I walked into the living room and took the cord from her. “What do you mean?”

“This cord doesn’t fit the tv.” She wiggled the cord at me again.

I pulled the cumbersome, heavy tv away from the wall and look at the back. And Friends, wouldn’t you know it, our TV is so old, that it doesn’t have an hdmi port! Seriously? Yup. Our ancient, only got it because it was on sale and they were discontinuing the model, tv can’t handle new technology.

Scott and I couldn’t stop laughing. The girls? Well, they were less than amused.

Guess what else we got for Christmas?

Troublesome Little Elf

By now, everyone is probably sick with all the Elf on the Shelf photos floating around the Internets in December. But I was going through my Christmas photos (finally!) last night and doing my monthly external back-up when I happened to spy this one photo of Rupert's Shenanigans that I absolutely loved.

Rupert is our Elf on the Shelf brought to Cyra when she was in kindergarten, before the huge Elf on the Shelf bandwagon was formed (OMG please tell me that doesn't make me hipster!). After a pretty rough November in which said kindergartener was misbehaving, Santa brought Rupert to keep an eye on things.

For the most part, Rupert just moved around, watching...watching...like the burning eye of Sauron. That is until 2012 when Rupert decided to have some "fun" and got into plenty of trouble: TPing the Christmas tree, dying all the milk green, using all of Cyra's bodywash taking a bubblebath. You get the idea.

This past Christmas was probably the last that Cyra will be a firm believer in the Magic of Christmas. And Rupert, willing shenaniganer that he is, was a willing participant. That is until some of the other toys in the house got tired of his crap...

A Paizo Goblin, a Dalek, and Sebastian from Black Butler all ganged up on Rupert and Irish Princess Barbie (Rupert's love interest) and tried to feed Rupert to a collection of evil monster miniatures.

Cyra, the calm, collected kid that she is, came out in the morning and just shook her head.

"Oh, Rupert," she said softly, "What have you gotten yourself into now?"

Plight of the Computerless (UPDATED)

Remember that time a few weeks ago when I said I'd keep blogging because I wasn't burnt out or anything like that after the A to Z challenge?

Yeah. I didn't lie, but all of a sudden I became slightly more computerless than I was before. You know back when I had a computer to use and all.

Long story short, I finally got around to installing the new cd/dvd drive my sister got me for Christmas (yes, it took me nearly five months to do it. I'm lazy, remember?) and wouldn't you know it, that even though it only took me about ten minutes to install, I apparently screwed up something somewhere, because the second I turned it on, I got the blue screen of death.

Twice.

So off to the Computer ER I rushed with my ancient tower. And, well...I confiscated my daughter's laptop in the meantime, but I'm taking this time to go a little unplugged. It's nice. And some projects around the house are actually getting done. Amazing what one can accomplish without the Internet to entertain me!

Hopefully, the computer techs will be able to fix whatever I screwed up and I'll be up and running again sometime next week. Until then, My Friends, I'll be putzing around the house and garden - have I mentioned my garden yet? No? Well, just wait!

Cheers!

UPDATE:

Seriously, folks, I got my computer back and they techs were all like..."Um it's $40 bucks and we couldn't find anything wrong anywhere. We had it running all day. No blue screen. No weird noises. Nothing."

Okey Dokey.

So , YAY! Computer! Although they did mention that it was a rather old computer. Old? It's barely five...but I guess in computer years that's about 4,724 years old. Guess that will need to get budgeted in sooner or later.

Friday Photos

Alright so these are older photos from December, but I figured that since Blogger and I were taking a break and all, I'd go pull some funny shots I would have shared if I could have.

Every year I buy a gingerbread house kit from Wilton. I know I might lose some of my baking cred here, but I really don't like gingerbread all that much and for me rolling out dough is a pain. The kits are relatively cheap, offer an afternoon of shenanigans (and yes, it always ends with shenanigans!), and the end result is a pretty "creative" center piece during the lead up to Christmas.

This year I got the mini village kit with four tiny houses and another kit to make trees. What started out are a serious endevour quickly degenerated into a nonpareil food fight with Ashleigh and I slinging sprinkles across the table at each other. Cyra was definitely not amused. In fact, she was so serious and determined to make her two houses perfect that she didn't even throw one sprinkle! And she yelled at us to "stop acting like children."

Jeesh. Ten year olds are so bossy.

This was our finished project. I used two lemon Starbursts and molded them into stars for the tops of my trees. Ashleigh and I got crazy with the decorating and ended up making a mess.

Notice how the right side looks as though it has been attacked by the Cake Boss if he had broken all his fingers and his arm in three places and was psychotic. Yeah. That's Ashleigh's side.

Now the problem with leaving out an edible decoration, we've discovered, is that our dog Junie likes to counter surf. Nothing is safe. And though she has gotton much better about behaving now that I watch her like a hawk all day and keep the counters and tables free from temptation, I knew that a tray laden with sweet cookies and icing would be her downfall. In order to keep our village safe, each night I would slip it into the oven.

Surely nothing could go wrong with that plan.

Nothing that is until a few days before Christmas when I forgot to take it out and preheated the oven for dinner...

A delicious sweet smell wafted out from the over as I was chopping up a pepper. And all of a sudden it dawned on me: The Village!

Pulling it out of the oven I couldn't help but laugh. Cyra came running out to see what was so funn an nearly burst into tears.

"It's okay," I told her. "Look, only the icing roads and my stars seem to be melty. It'll be fine."

Unless, of course, you're the dingbat who pops it back into the oven that night and promptly forgets about it until Christmas morning, when once again, the oven required some preheating. This time, however, distracted by the chaos of the morning, I didn't remember until I was about to put in the blueberry stuffed French toast.

"Cyra," I cried out, "I did it again!"

"MOMMY!" she hollered from the living room as she rushed into the kitchen shiny new presents temporarily forgotten. Her shoulders sagged a little in defeat and my mom stifled a giggle. I couldn't help it. I burst into laughter. Cyra glared at me for a second before running back into the living. She returned a few seconds later camera in hand.

"Here," she sighed. "You might as well take pictures of it."

One of Crya's houses completely collapsed, but the others stood up well.

My handmade stars, on the other hand, didn't fair as well.

The lesson? Always check inside your oven before you preheat it. Or maybe just don't store things in your oven in the first place.

Boxing Day Gratitude

Christmas was a success. It typically is so it goes without saying but it is nice to acknowledge when things go right. The presents were all under the tree, wrapped and ready to go by 11pm Christmas Eve so I potentially would have gotten a good night’s sleep if in fact I had been able to sleep at all. The blueberry sauce didn’t bubble over, which meant that I didn’t have additional kitchen clean up. And most importantly, to me anyhow, the Girls loved every second. Granted, I could probably wrap a couple of brightly polished rocks or a couple of packs of funky socks and they’d be thrilled (no joke, those kids love rocks and socks!).

I managed to keep Christmas reasonable and budget friendly by starting my shopping way back in August (in some cases even earlier). I knew what they would like and I started looking for sales and discount and coupons and for the most part found them easily while convincing the Girls that the few things they did asked for were ridiculously expensive.

I’m kind of mean like that.

But on the other hand, I lucked out with my kids because they are so unimpressed with gadgets and technology it is a rare Christmas that finds mp3 players or e-readers under our tree. This year was no exception. Legos, board games and DVDs dominated the top spots. For Cyra the Lord of the Rings Lego set was her big gift and for Ashleigh seasons 1 – 5 of Doctor Who were hers.

I’ve mentioned before that we are a family of gamers. Board games, video games, card game, RPGs, we play them all. Our living room is taken up by DVDs and games. We have two storage ottomans stuffed with all manner of games. My point? We are always looking for new games to play.

And that brings me to some very sincere “thank yous.”

First, to my BFF Sara for marrying such an awesome guy. Geordie introduced Sara to Settlers of Catan and then shortly thereafter, introduced it to me and the girls. Who would have ever thought sheep herding was a fun thing? But we loved it, especially Cyra who quickly developed a knack for the game.

Catan was the first game to find its way under the tree.

Next, for the rest of the board games, I’m going to have to give a huge shout out to a celebrity, something I’m fairly sure I have never done before. But a big thanks to Wil Wheaton.

Yup. Wil Wheaton, awesome actor and avid gamer.

Wil Wheaton who, among other things, hosts a cool web show called Table Top on Geek and Sundry (I’ve mentioned them before too) where each episode he gathers some of his friends around a beautiful gaming table that I so desperately yearn for, and plays a game. Wil Wheaton introduced Ashleigh and I to Gloom, Star Fluxx, and Dixit which all found places under the tree this year too.

There were a bunch of other games that were features on Table Top that I was willing to get but…budget, budget, budget.

I’d also like to thank Ashleigh for insisting that we trade in old Wii games for some new used ones. If she hadn’t I would have never found what is clearly the best Wii game in existence: Dinosaur Strike.

I can barely describe it because words can not adequately explain the awesomeness that is this game. So a very brief description: You get to fight dinosaurs AS A DINOSAUR!!!! OMFG!! This is a game that was designed specifically for me. It is, as Sara said, like a dream come true. Why Dinosaur Strike was not the most heavily promoted game of 2010 I have no idea. Even worse? They’ve stopped making it and while I got it for a song at GameStop, I looked it up on Amazon and the prices for it there range from $50 to $250! Yikes!

Scott and I played it last night while the girls ate dinner (I make a huge Christmas brunch rather than a dinner so later meals are a ‘get it yourself’ deal). He played as a T-Rex (of course) and I was a velociraptor (totally my favorite carnivorous dino. FYI: pachycephalosaurus is my favorite herbivore). And oh how the hilarity ensued! Fun fact: I am horrible at fighting games. In fact I am so horrible at them I tend not to play them at all. But Dinosaur Strike takes the cake! I am pretty sure I will never stop playing this game!

My very last thanks is to my Mom. (Hi mom!) Mom is pretty awesome in and of herself so any gift she gives me is pretty cool. This year she got me a pressure canner and cooker that I’ve been longing for since last spring when I planted my very first garden. While the garden didn’t turn out as fabulous as I was hoping for, that didn’t stop me from reading and researching all the cool things I can make and preserve. Remember that sour orange tree out back? Guess who’s making marmalade this week??

Making marmalade might just be the only thing that tears me away from dino-fighting this week! Or maybe pie-making. Did I mention the awesome lime green Le Creuset pie plate that Scott and the Girls got me to replace the one that broke last March? So. Very. Beautiful.

And there you have it. I hope that your holiday (which every flavor you like) was shiny like mine! And a happy Boxing Day to you all…whatever that is!