Lovely Christmas

We had a very nice Christmas!  Relaxed and lovely :-)  It began with Christmas Eve at my parents. Cassidy was friendly and played with the Magnadoodle with Aunt Barbara and pretended that she didn't want my Gram to tickle her (she did want to be tickled).

She was semi-interested in opening gifts.  I don't think she understood something was in the box but she enjoyed it a lot once I put it all together!

Santa came that night with nice surprises for us all.

Well, Jake looks bored in all these pictures but he was excited later when we gave him his new stuffed reindeer!  Once we got dressed we headed to Bill's mom's house. Cassidy loved playing with all her cousins toys. There are a LOT of toys at that house.
As Bill posted on Facebook, "28 hours, 300 miles in the car, 3 Christmas get togethers...". I won't lie, it was a long day. It's a lot of sitting in the car so Cassidy was up late that night after too much napping during the day. But it was fun. Bill and I rocked out on the way home to I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash (It's a bright sunshiny day!)!

She was very serious about her vacuuming.

I've already created a box of old toys to donate and need to get going to taking down all the Christmas decorations. One more week off of work and lots to get done!

Picture with Santa

Yesterday Bill and I went Christmas shopping. We did our Toys-R-Us run and we let Santa know what Cassidy wanted. My parents watched Cassidy while we shopped and then we all met at a restaurant for dinner. During which Cassidy was a total spaz and didn't eat a bit!

During our shopping we had purchased a really cute sweater dress for Cassidy to wear on Christmas.  Today, we thought we'd dress her up and go have her picture taken with Santa. We talked about it a bunch of times. She kept saying "yeah", she wanted to see Santa.  She probably did want to see him, but she didn't want to sit with him. She immediately got the big pouty lip and started crying! 

Our house is all decked out for Christmas!

Jake is got a bath yesterday. He's so soft!

The little reindeer has a scarf with pockets.

Not sure what she's looking for but she checks

the pockets regularly.

My Christmas shopping is all done!  I'm hoping to finish wrapping gifts, run some errands, clean the house and take Jake for a nail trim tomorrow. Oh yeah, and I have to work too.  Surgery on Tuesday so I want to get lots done so I can focus on healing the rest of the week. Busy time of year to be having surgery but new boobs will hopefully be a great Christmas gift!

Lovely holiday and pet peeves

We had a lovely Thanksgiving. Good food (uh huh I am a good cook!) and company. Cassidy was (as always) totally adorable!  Even with just a small group, we had 4 generations of family. Of course we took a picture.

Which brings me to my first pet peeve.  The last time I'd used my camera we'd been outside at a playground so it was set for action.  Which you need a lot of light for. It doesn't happen often but it happened on Thanksgiving - I forgot to switch it for indoor pictures, so every picture we took is dark :-(

For my second pet peeve...  mail. I've been noticing for awhile now that I seem to get coupons in the mail close to when they expire.  Yesterday, Black Friday, at 4pm when my mail arrived I got a coupon from the Old Navy that was good for the 3 days leading up to Black Friday?  Coupons from Stop-n-Shop good for the week before?  It's frustrating enough getting your mail and it's 1 or 2 relevant things and the rest all junk mail but if you're going to send coupons at least send them before they expire!

Not that I'm doing any shopping this weekend since Bill went to CT for the weekend and I am home alone.  Shopping alone with Cassidy is not fun at all. The grocery store will be the only store I see this weekend!

Thanksgiving

In past years that I hosted Thanksgiving, I found it stressful. Writing lists of what to buy, when to do what, cleaning, cooking etc. Racing around like a nut. Everything had to be perfect. 

Perfect.

I hate that word. Nothing is ever perfect and aiming for perfection just causes stress. I'm sure I'll forget to put the rolls in the oven to warm them up or forget to cook the vegetables (it's happened!). But this year, I don't care. I'm not stressed.  As someone said to me just yesterday "everything works out whether you stress about it or not". We will have a lovely Thanksgiving tomorrow with great food and good company. I can't wait for a nice relaxing day.

Last weekend we went to the playground since the weather was so nice. I am loving the weather we've been having and I wish it would last all winter. It's nice to be outdoors comfortably in November.