Holidays

I haven't blogged in a wa-ay long time. I kept thinking about things I should write about, but I just wasn't feeling it while out of town. (One is worth mentioning. We were sitting around at my parents house and the phone rang. Ben looked at the phone to see who it was and the caller id said, "Jesus C". When he told us who was calling, everyone froze and looked at each other with the "I'm not answering it" look. I would like to talk to Him, but not via Comcast, you know? My mom finally answered it and it turns out that it was coming from "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints." It was the Bishop. Maybe still a good option to avoid those phone calls.



Here is my Mom's beautiful tree with my beautiful boy on Christmas morning.





I'm not sure if our holidays were more like this:

Or this:

Yes, yes, we had lovely times. But James' holiday went a bit like this: Cold, Croup, Cold, Ear infection, Croup, Broken lamp, Time out Chair X 1,000, naughty, sassy, disobey, disobey, disobey, breathing treatments, ear drops, nose spray, allergy meds, cough meds, rash meds... But we're home now and he's not so demanding--in many ways. I shouldn't complain, he was healthy throughout the whole fall until right before we left for Christmas break.

While in TX, there was a lot of movie theater activity. Ben and I saw "Bedtime Stories" and thought it was great. The guys saw "Valkyrie" and dug it. The girls saw "Yes Man" and one raunchy scene ruined the whole thing. I saw "Marley and Me" with my mom and really liked it and really cried. We still want to see "Seven Pounds"--we heard it was awe-some from a lot of people. We also had lots of good food--both from home cooking and gulf coast goodness. Hello seafood and barbeque!

The best part was all the family we got to see. We saw everyone there was to see in Texas-on my side and Ben's. James was in cousin HEAVEN! He loved every last cousin and Aunt and Uncle! He loved having so many people to play with and so many people catering to his whims. He had tons of fun with the older cousins and all their nice gadgets. And once again, he was totally smitten with Elizabeth. He looked across the dinner table at her and said in his best charming voice, "Elizabeth, you soooo pretty." I just about died it was so adorable.

You know how it's always the random presents that people like? Well, I got Ben a plug and play "Deal or No Deal" game for his stocking and that thing got played a lot. James loves it and when he opens any case he yells, "Whoo hoo! $50!" Ben got me "The Price is Right" DVD game and we wrangled granny and papa into playing that with us while James yelled "Come on down!" continually. Our family present was a Wii system with extra controllers and games that Ben got at Sam's at 4am on Black Friday. I told Ben we couldn't open it until he had finished his Dissertation Proposal. He sighed and agreed. We haven't opened it yet.

Meanwhile, the water main behind our apartment broke last night. The R.A. pounded on our door at 10pm at told us that any minute they would be shutting the water off..."for a long time." We started filling up any and all large containers with water for the toilet, washing hands, cleaning up, etc. We didn't really need much during the night and thank heavens they turned it on briefly this morning and we all raced through showers and filled up the tub for James and then it was off again. We made it through the day and tonight I think the problem is solved. I'm not pouring out any of our water reserves until I'm sure.

I went back to work today. It was good, but I wasn't jumping for joy or anything. It's hard overcoming holiday laziness. My students must feel the same, because only half of them showed up.

Now, if all those people who owe me pictures (ahem, granny, David, Melodie) would send them my way, I could show ya'll some pics.