Traditions With All My Children

Not to be confused with the old soap opera from the 70's - this entry is really about all my children!!
Every Christmas our family has a tradition where we draw names for Christmas to alleviate tbe pressure of spending alot of money yada yada yada. This past Christmas, Lisa suggested we draw names for families instead of individuals so the children wouldn't be left out. Brianna and Erin - well actually all of them - are old enough to care about being left out of the festivities. This was such a terrific idea. The rules were the same. Spending no more than $25 and it had to be homemade. Well. SOME of us succeeded. As usual, I always spend more. I cannot help myself.....
Carrie and Manny drew mine and Dad's name. They put together a really nice photo album of pictures past and had everyone write a page of their favorite memories - a very thoughtful and touching gift. I spent hours looking at it and I will cherish it forever - So I say to you all - Well done! Well done!

Thanks to ALL MY CHILDREN for the memories!

I love you all so much!

Bananagrams anyone?

What word is associated with bunches, splits, peel, and dump(??)? That's right. BANANAGRAMS! Lisa sent this game to us for Christmas and we finally played a couple of rounds tonight. I never heard of 'dump' being associated with bananas - is it what apes do? Lisa, explain that one to me. You never know what games Lisa will pull out of her hat. She finds everything!

Everyone gets 21 letter tiles and and turns them face down on the table. The rest of the tiles are in the center of the table. Someone yells "Split!" and you hurry to make your own mini Scrabble game with your 21 tiles. When a player runs out of tiles he/she yells "Peel!" and everyone takes a tile. If a player is stumped, he/she yells "Dump!" and trades a tile for 3 tiles out of the pile in the middle of the table. The game is over when all the tiles in the middle of the table are gone and the screaming monkey who has no tiles left yells "Bananas!" Fast moving and fun - probably more fun with 4 people. Different versions of the game to play are Banana Smoothie, Banana Cafe and Banana Solitaire. I'm sure Dad, Meegan, Monna, Lisa, Elise, Cari, Marianne and John can think of other ways as well. Creativity eludes me at times! I thought the picture with Kimber's screaming monkey was appropriate for this post. Look at how beat up that poor monkey is! It's been out in the rain, loved on by Kimber, stolen by Carlie for months - yet it lives and screams on. Especially in the middle of the night kicking it on the way to the bathroom in the dark. AAUUGGHH! Kimber sure loves her stuffies.

Am I the only one who has a hard time coming up with something to write in a blog? This is the best I can do for now. Thanks for the inspiration Lisa Beesa!

Random thoughts on the first day of 2010....

After reading both Elise and Meegan's blogs - I am inspired to enter a new post. Inspired, yes. Actually succeeding at a decent post is an entirely different thing as I'm not as clever as these two offspring of mine. I've decided that they inherited their Dad's knack for writing a good yarn. Or should I say 'spinning'? Ha. But to give myself credit, their musical ability is all mine!

As evidenced by the photo below, alas, our dead Christmas tree still graces the living room. Every year I threaten to buy a blasphemous tree (Cathy's kids description of artificial trees) from Robert's - but I wasn't inspired (there's that word again) to spend the money on a tree that doesn't smell good. Someone needs to replicate this smell in a candle. So far no one has succeeded. I bet the replicaters on Voyager could.

I took a night picture to disguise how close my house is to burning down if someone even thinks about lighting a match. I'm calling someone from the Buena Vista neighborhood to see if they'd like a another tree to add to their burning frenzy tomorrow night. Although, burning our tree will be only about five seconds of excitement for a ...what's the word for someone who loves starting fires?...pyromaniac?

In..

other...

news...

~Mary and Mike are moving back to St. George. YAY!! They rented a house in Ivins. It's so peaceful and quiet out there. Heeeyyyy - I want to move to Ivins! Annalisa gets to stay and play house whilst they go back and pack up more things to bring up. They say a garage sale is in the works.

~Carlie is in heat. And I thought someone just spilled on the couch. Uh Duh! Eww! Mary's Golden Retriever named Jack is going nuts clear out in Ivins. Anyone who's ever had a dog in heat knows about the strange things that occur during this period- no pun intended. Kind of like human females - and not. They bleed all over, their appetites are voracious, they wear sanitary pads (they haven't quite invented doggie tampons yet - eww- who wants to go there?), they get depressed and they try everything to escape the confines of the house and yard. The one thing that's different between canines and their human counterparts during this precarious time is that we humans chase our men out of the house and yard, while the canines happily invite them in. Carlie is a very high maintenance dog. You have to pay attention to her, and her only. She paws at you until you pet her. And pet her. They say Cocker Spaniels are 'merry' dogs and this is true - until they go into heat. Yikes! She's 3 years old and we've been lucky that the neighborhood traveling salesmen haven't gotten to her....knock on wood. Remember Lowell? His mother was a Dalmation and he inherited the markings a a German Shorthair - how could that have happened? He was born white like a Dalmation right? Unh hunh.

This will be a long three weeks, like this item of news about Carlie. Okay. I'm done about Carlie. She's on the right in the picture telling me she's hungrier than Kimber.

~ It's finally in my head that I have 2 days off work. Today felt like Saturday and all day I kept thinking "Oh no, tomorrow's 9 o'clock church!" So happily today is Friday and I get to sleep in tomorrow.