This certainly has been a crazy week. My schedule was not very consistent at work or at home. First priority was purchasing and installing a dishwasher. Tom and I ended up with a stainless steel Bosch, actually an upgrade from our previous model, but I actually really liked my old dishwasher. No matter now, I needed to get a new one installed since we had a house full of people this weekend coming over for holiday parties. I ended up scheduling an install and delivery on Friday and the guys arrived at noon. By 1pm I was busy loading up the dishes and cleaning the house.
We had all our decorations up, both inside and out. We found a beautiful live Noble fir Christmas tree at Home Depot for a great price a few weeks ago and last weekend Scott got busy and helped me decorate it after Tom put up our lights and the angel. I love the way it makes the house smell. I am also putting the last of my Christmas and Chanukkah cards in the mail this weekend.
So we were trying to get ready for two parties this weekend. I had the girl scouts over on Friday for a holiday party and we earned a candy badge that I found from the New Jersey council. We talked about the history of candy making and chocolate, gum and the candy cane. Did you know the candy cane was a german invention-primarily used to keep the kids quiet during the living nativity. Those germans are so smart! We also talked about candy from around the world and its use for holiday traditions. After nibbling on pizza and taquitos, I had the girls busy making treats, eating chocolate fondue and we topped it all off with a pinata in the garage. I figured they'd enjoy smacking something with a stick! Our only disaster was our attempt at homemade taffy. It seemed to pass the taffy level and reached the rock candy mode. Oh well, we tried. Anyhow, it seems that the girls enjoyed themselves. Tom meanwhile had Scott to his cub scout holiday party at school. They asked the older boys to bring in their pinewood derby cars since the event is going to be early in January again this coming year. Tom got into a heated discussion with a newly appointed scout leader who claimed Scott's cars were illegal due to the width of the tire base. Tom quickly pulled up the BSA guidelines on his Blackberry and pointed out that all Scott's cars were designed and built within the requirements. Then they got into a "discussion" about the amount of work the boys do on the cars vs how much work the parents do for them. As Tom pointed out, some of the work with the radial and circular saws needs to be done by the Dad, but in Scott's case, he came up will all the designs. And he helped sand and paint and put graphite on the wheels to make it go fast. As I said to Tom, I think the idea is that the boys have a project that they can do with their Dads. It is as much the Dads event as it is the boys, and I think that is what makes it special. But of course, some boys get very upset when their cars lose. For several years, Scott was not even trying to win for speed, just looks. But the car designs usually took a winning place for time. This year Scott is going for "cool car" and designed a legomobile. Who knew some people take all this stuff so seriously. Again, what happened to the scout spirit?
On Saturday I was already ahead of myself with a fairly clean and decorated house which made it a bit easier to get ready for our neighbors and our progressive dinner party. The neighbors have been talking about another progressive party(travel from house to house for different phases of the party). As I mentioned, there are alot more kids on our street now and we all decided it was too much strain on the houses and the neighbors to host kids along with adults. So I made an executive decision and decided no kids at the dinner party and there should be a small kids party prior to the adult party. I also decided to nominate one of our neighbors to host the kids party. She was a real trooper and took on the task. As she just took on the role of GS leader for her daughter's Kindergarten Daisy troop, I reminded her that this would be great practice! I also tried to help out by providing some supplies for activities including sugar cookies and frosting and decorations, card making supplies and photo copied coloring pages. She also picked up some small craft items and made even more sugar cookies and one of the other moms provided pizza. I sent Allison down with Scott to help out if she could. I heard it was a bit chaotic, and a lot of kids showed up. I was just glad it wasn't my house! Instead I hosted all the adults for the main meal. Everyone that was able to get a babysitter came, which was surprisingly a decent number. We had about 24 adults that were able to come. I missed the appetizer house since I was busy monitoring the ovens, but most of the appetizers traveled to our house after an hour. We hosted dinner for about 2 hours-I asked everyone to bring a side dish which worked out well since I made a big ham and baked potato casserole along with crab soup in the crock pot. Dinner turned out well, except for my kosher neighbor who could not heat ham or seafood, just salad, and we then walked down the street to our third house for dessert and a white elephant gift exchange. I have been trying to explain this game to everyone for the past several years. It is slowly taking on amongst the neighbors. We swap nice or not so nice gifts, it is all a surprise. You can pick a new gift(wrapped) or steal someone else's gift after they opened it. The gifts can be stolen up to 3 times. Some neighbor's opted out of the game-they just can't handle the stress. Other neighbors only brought one gift per couple(we were happy to share some extra gift items). Anyhow, I ended up with a bottle of Biltmore wine and Tom stole a book that I picked. It was a lot of fun and my donated gift turned out to be the most popular-a box of GS thin mints, liquor chocolates and Godiva chocolate coffee. At the end of the party we all had to go find our kids scattered throughout the neighbor's houses. Allison helped watch 5 other kids. As the party ended we all decided it was a big hit and a great way to visit with each other. We even invited a few new neighbors and people that did not know each other so it was nice to spend the time getting to know someone who lives just around the corner. And the guys added a few new members to their Monday night football group. They especially enjoy sharing new brands of beer.
So today Allison and I went off to sing at my Nursing Home with the girl scout choir. Allison and I had to skip another event last week at a local nursing home next to the girl scout council office. High school has been keeping Allison very busy these last two weeks with midterms. She has school right up to the 23rd, whereas Scott will be done on Tuesday. And that is just a half day with the morning taken up by their Christmas pageant. So he just had a few quizzes to study for, but Allison has had a major test in every subject over the last few weeks. And to top it off, we had our first snowfall on Thursday afternoon. Just enough to shut down school early and close all the evening activities. I was supposed to head to my work Christmas lunch at a local restaurant Thursday afternoon and instead I had to go pick Scott up when school got out since aftercare was canceled. Naturally our boss decided not to cancel the luncheon, so I missed out on another party. How sad. And I even had to work through lunch that day since we were supposed to get off early for our holiday meal. I even had my gift to exchange for my secret santa, so I just sent it on with another therapist. I think I deserve a rain check on the crab cake dinner.
On Friday there was a two hour delay in the morning for school since the roads were very icy. Tom had been putting in late hours at work, so he had to get to work early and I did drop off before the dishwasher came. Naturally Allison forgot supplies for a govt project at home so I had to run back up to her school to drop off the items before running to the grocery store to pick up supplies for the two parties after I dropped Scott off at his school.
I was just elated that I had a car to drive all over town. I noticed a nail sticking in my back tire early in the week and Tom asked me to stop into Mr Tire to have it patched. Everyone was backed up in the evening, so Tom volunteered to take my car in first thing in the morning since his work schedule was a bit more flexible than mine. Not only did we have to have that tire replaced since the nail pierced the sidewall, but they discovered gashes in my other back tire, so I ended up with two new tires-Merry Christmas to me. We have decided that we are single handedly keeping the economy going.
I also left work early on Monday to go to the dentist(yeah no cavities). I was also hoping to take Allison and Scott on a fund raiser walk through our Symphony of Lights display with his school that evening, but the wind chill brought our temperatures down to 10 below! And since traffic was getting heavy, I figured I would not make it to the fund raiser event and then back to Scott's school for his Christmas pageant rehearsal. I decided since we were going to be home for Christmas, that he could help out with the Christmas kids pageant. Practice was at 630 for just 30 mins so they could practice two new songs. Scott is still in the school choir and they have been busy singing at the school masses, and will sing at the upcoming school pageant as well on Tuesday. So we skipped freezing to death Monday night. It was so cold here, a plastic soda bottle exploded all over our back porch. Cookie loved eating frozen ginger ale all week.
We also were planning on attending a few Boy Scout meetings this past week as Scott and his troop will be moving on to the next level in February, but they all rescheduled for open house events in the winter.
So another very busy week and only one more week to Christmas!. Allison has to make up a piano lesson since she missed last Thursday due to the weather. She will be busy right up until Thursday-she is a little frustrated since many of her private school friends are already on Christmas break. Right now she and Tom are off to the indoor field hockey game. Then they will have a break until after the holiday.
5 more shopping days until Christmas! Good luck! Kathleen PS Here are a few more photos from the Festival of Christmas Trees where Allison and I sang with the GS choir.