Sometime's You Can Still Get Things For Free

I stopped at Hy-Vee this morning to pick up some fruit. The apples and strawberries were on sale. The checker rang them up and I noticed it didn't show the sale price. The manager came over and he refunded my money and gave me the fruit for free! It feels good to get something for free!

A Belated Wisconsin Christmas

We packed up the car with gifts and headed north on January 5th. The only thing missing were the reindeer! We decided to change it up and take Hwy 151 through Dubuque into Wisconsin. Even though it is 7 miles longer, it seemed shorter. There was a lot less traffic and hardly any semi's to deal with. We arrived at my mom's at 10:45pm.

The boys didn't fall asleep until 2 hours before we got there. I was hoping to bring Anthony in the house and put him back to bed, but that was not to be. He woke up and was ready to go again. Chase was all excited, because he knew he was going to be getting more presents all weekend. He immediately wanted to open presents when we got there. My mom said they could both open one, because we were doing our family Christmas in the morning. Chase got a Floam kit. He is fascinated with Floam, and played with it for the next hour. Anthony got this cute toddler drag strip toy. I made the mistake of using my foot to launch the cars, so he had to keep trying to do that too. It was very cute. We finally all went to bed by 1am. The good part of that was Anthony slept until 8:30am. I was very happy to get 7 hours of sleep.

My brother, Madilyn and Hanna were suppose to be at my mom's by 9:30am. So we all hurried to get showered and dressed. Then we started making breakfast. Chase was so excited to see his cousins. At 10:30am, Justin still wasn't there. So I called his house and there was no answer. So I told him Uncle Justin must be on his way. Well, by 11:30am we finally figured out he must not be coming. So we let the kids open the rest of their presents and we opened ours. Mom gave us a shredder. It has special slots for shredding cd's and credit cards. We've never had one, so it will get put to good use.

We left for Sara's house around noon. We have started a tradition. When we were little we would always eat at each other's houses on Saturday. Most of the time our mom's would make wiener roll ups for us, so we are now carrying that on. When we get together for Christmas we have Chase help us. Hopefully next Anthony will be able to participate too. We eat wiener roll ups, french fries and carrots. Then we open gifts and play games. Sara bought Chase and Anthony this fun game by Cranium called "Hubbabaloo." There are 12 rubber mats that have different shapes and pictures on them. There is a recorded voice that tells you what to do. Like, "Find an animal." Then it tells you to put your knee on a food. So you follow the directions, and then it will stop and ask who is standing on a musical instrument. If you are, then you win that round. We had fun playing it with Chase. Later Anthony was trying to do it too! Eric got to watch the start of the Chiefs game and then we had to head off to Aunt Pat's for the family Christmas dinner.

We arrived just in time for dinner. We ate and then it was time for fun and games. Aunt Pat bought this fun game that had horns with numbers. She then had different songs we could play. The horns were numbered 1-8. Chase even played. We played Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, and Silent Night. At first we weren't very good, but we got better after a couple of times. Afterwards, we did our white elephant gift exchange. Eric ended up with Best Buy gift card and I got a candle and some room fragrance.

We left there around 7pm and headed to Aunt Cheryl's where my brother and his family were. I forgot to mention that my brother boycotted our extended. Family Christmas and blew us off Saturday morning. Chase was so excited to see his cousin Madilyn and then they didn't come to my mom's. At least they got to play for a few hours Saturday night.

Sunday morning we went to visit my grandma and grandpa Gruenwald. They aren't doing well. They should be in assisted living, my grandma can hardly walk and she has a lot of pain. She says to me, "Well this will probably be the last Christmas I am alive." Talk about putting a major downer on the visit!

Afterwards we went to my dad's. We opened presents and then went out to eat. The boys were very well behaved and we had a good visit. We got on road around 2:45pm and pulled into the garage at 7:45pm. We made good time and only had one stop.

Happy New Year!

Once again I apologize for being so tardy with my writing. New Year's weekend was wonderful. It was slow and lazy. Saturday I watched one of my favorite movies, "Love Actually." Then I took a 3 hour nap. Anthony woke up at 5am, so I need some more rest. Then I soaked in the hot tub for 15 minutes. I think it was around 5pm I decided to actually get dressed. It was heavenly to be a bum.

Sunday was another lazy day. I was bad, we skipped church. I just didn't have the energy to get everyone ready, including myself. I was still feeling the after affects from Christmas weekend. Sunday I showered around 3pm, and my motivation for getting showered, was we were going out for New Year's. The Elk's were having a pretty good deal. It was $55 a couple and that included dinner, all the booze you wanted to drink, breakfast and a live band.

Eric went and picked up Cody around 6:30pm. Justin and Angie came by to pick us up at 6:45pm. We arrived at the lodge just after 7. Every seat was sold for the event, so we were packed in like sardines. The tables were covered with horns, hats and noise makers. We had a great time. The band played a diverse range of music. There were people of all ages there. We were probably on the younger end and I would say there were couples there in there 70's, and we were all out on the dance floor cutting a rug. We had a champagne toast at midnight and then went downstairs for pancakes, sausage and eggs.

Our friend Justin arranged to have his sister drop us off and pick us up. So we didn't have to worry about drinking and driving. Cody slept over so we didn't have to worry about bringing him home either. So it was a fun and relaxing night for all.

Christmas 2006

Christmas came so fast this year, and now it is already over! This Christmas was by far the most fun, thanks to Chase and his excitement. He is so much fun to watch, as he opens his gifts. He ohh's and ahh's and says, "What the heck? How did they know I wanted this?" or "Holy cow, look at this." We didn't buy Chase or Anthony a lot of gifts, because we are blest to have a wonderful extended family and friends that buy for them as well. They only need so many toys, and then it gets overwhelming.

Saturday afternoon Miranda, Rob and Donna came up from Missouri. Donna is Miranda's sister and Eric's step-sister. We hadn't seen her since Mom's funeral, so it was great she came along. Saturday night we relaxed and watched "Superman Returns" which we hadn't seen yet. Rob is a Superman fanatic, and brought it along. It was good. Then after the kids went to bed we watched "Beerfest." We decided you can't watch Beerfest without drinking beer! So we had 4 pitchers of beer. There is a warning on the case saying, "Do not attempt to drink beer everytime beer is consumed in this movie. It is not advised." So we did heed that warning, but needless to say we were feeling roasty toasty.

Sunday morning I was up early with Anthony wondering I drank so much beer 6 hours earlier. I started some cooking for lunch and dinner and then went to church. I managed to stay awake during the sermon. For lunch I grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. Jody and his kids, Willy and Justin from Knoxville also came over to eat. Chase really likes playing with Sammy who is 8. We gave her walkie talkies for Christmas, so they played with them the whole time.

Shortly after lunch I had to start prepping food for our Christmas Eve get together. I had the meatballs, wieners and cheese dip ready to get turned on before we left for church at 4:30pm. We had a very nice candlelight service at church. It was first time we attended, since we are normally in WI. We even let Chase light and hold a candle. He did great, me on the other hand spilled wax on my pants. One should keep the candle upright, even after blowing out the flame!

We went home and we ate. I also had shrimp, veggies, cheese and crackers, brownies and truffles. Stephanie came with the kids around 8. She brought a killer Mexican dip and raspberry cheesecake. I also bought Kaloua for White Russians. They were very yummy. The kids opened some gifts. I bought Justin a model rocket kit, which they wanted to try out immediately. So then went out back in the dark and launched the rockets. Of course they had no idea were they flew too, and could not find them. I went out looking Christmas morning, but I didn't see them anywhere. Chase didn't go to bed until 11:30pm and we stayed up until 1am.

Christmas morning Anthony awakened me at 5:30am. The lack of sleep was really starting to wear me down, since I wasn't able to grab any naps. However, I found this wonderful product called 5 hour energy at Walgreens. They say it only has the equivalent of one cup of coffee and a bunch of vitamins. I don't know what they all do, but it works. It kept me going. It is the best $2.50 I ever spent. It also doesn't cause you to crash.

Chase slept until 9am. I've never heard of a kids sleeping in on Christmas morning, but he did. He got up, just as I was putting Anthony down for a nap, which was fine. He isn't into opening gifts. Chase rushed into the living room and saw two presents sitting under the tree for him. Santa brought him a Lightening McQueen from the movie, "Cars" and an airport he wanted. He was very excited about both. Santa didn't realize how much assembly was needed for the airport. Uncle Rob said he was going to have a talk with Santa about it! It took Rob and Eric a little over 2 hours to get it all put together, opps! It said some assembly required.

I decided that this year I wanted to make something new, a dish I had never made before in my life. Looking back it was a huge risk to make something new. What if it hadn't turned out? Thankfully it did, and we all enjoyed Chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes with corn and bread on the side. Lisa and her family arrived at noon for lunch and afterwards we did our white elephant gift exchange. Eric ended up with a neck massage pillow and I got "Along Came Polly."

Everyone left by 2:30 on Christmas day. Eric and I finished cleaning up and I collapsed in the chair. I didn't move for a long time. Eric put in "Talladega Nights" which was funny. We both like Will Farrell. All the excitement hit me really hard on Tuesday at work. I caught myself falling asleep at my computers several times, and I had a lot of work to get done! I've realized that you never do get caught up on sleep, you just keep on going.