Stice Family

The kids reaction to Christmas morning and Santa's gifts.






















Christmas was wonderful. Brielle was having trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve and I told her about my childhood family tradition: My dad would tell us to go to sleep as quick as possible on Christmas Eve to make the night go by faster and, thus, Christmas would come faster. We would drink "Sleepy Time" herbal tea with no sugar added to make us "sleepy", which was nasty without sugar, but we were afraid sugar would keep us awake, we chose to gag it down. Ahhh Christmas traditions. We'd wind down to the "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" cartoon and sing carols, read the Christmas story out of Luke, and usually by that time we'd figure the herbal tea should take full affect, and we'd head off to bed.

I told Brielle this sleep-ytime stuff is NASTY. But that if she drank some, she'd be sleeping in no time and Christmas would come super fast. So she said she wanted some. I must have really hyped up the NASTY part about it because she was SO hesitant to sip it. And when she did, she commented that it wasn't THAT gross as if she was relieved. I wonder what she was anticipating! That stuff really is gross without sugar! The next day she said it didn't work and she heard Santa for a long time after drinking it. She heard him come in and out the front door a couple times, put the presents under the tree, put noise candy in the stockings, even wrap a few gifts. And she thought she heard him open a bag of cookies.

Well, we hid the kids' gifts at Todd's office so that explains the coming in and out the door when Todd left and then had to bring the gifts in from the car. Todd wrapped a few of my gifts, I dumped a bag of Jelly Bellies out to sort into individual bags, and little gum balls too, those are kind of noisy. And Todd wanted more than just a snicker doodle cookie so he broke into the Oreos. Brielle has some KILLER ears. That's all I have to say!!!!!! I know she didn't even get a peek out her door, not that she'd see anything from her room, but her door has very squeaky hinges that would alarm us all the way from a far end of the house if she happened to attempt opening it!

The kids had fun on Christmas. Brielle's main gift was a doll house (NOT Barbie, just a doll house that Barbie sized dolls fit in. I'm not too big on Barbie glam stuff). She got a couple Barbies to go with, but I had a heck of a time finding modest ones. She's not allowed to play with them unless they are dressed modestly! Ashton's main gift was a train set.. and a toddler remote control car. One grandma gave them mini Nerf guns and they had wars with those all Christmas morning. Brielle was also given a kids digital camera that she used to take 350 pictures of EVERYTHING in our house just on Christmas day. I wouldn't have thought to give a 4 year old a camera, but that has by far been her favorite gift! Another gave them kids kareoke that was really fun. The kids woke up that morning with colds so we had to skip out on sledding with Todd's dad like we had planned to. We got DUMPED on with snow for a beautiful white Christmas. But with all the new toys, they didn't act too disappointed to be stuck in the house all day. Todd on the other hand was pretty bummed about missing out on an adventure! We did go visit Todd's dad for a bit in the evening. We visited his mom for dinner on Christmas Eve.

I made up a family recipe book for Todd's mom and sister in laws for Christmas. It took me several days straight to get my recipes done and any of the other women's recipes that I had ever gotten from them, like when I was first married. It was really satisfying to see such a thick book for a finished product! But I hadn't even scratched the surface of what some of them have! So I gave the books away asking for them to give me any recipes they'd like to submit so I could type them up.

The day after Christmas, the kids were even more sick. Todd took his 4-wheeler to his dad's so his dad and brothers could have fun towing sleds behind it in their acre behind their house. I think Todd started to really get cabin fever stuck inside on all his days off!

By Saturday the kids were ok enough to get a babysitter and we went to a movie about one of the 15 attempts on Hitler's life by German traitors back in World War II. It was educational, but I'm not big on movies that don't have good endings. And it didn't, of course, since all attempts on Hitler's life by insiders failed until he surrendered when he was surrounded by Americans in the end.

New Years was fun. Todd's mom threw a party that we went to. Lots of card games and goodies. I had spent all day until the party and all day the day before typing up recipes they had given me and sitting so much made my legs and ankles really swollen. At the party, card game playing didn't really help either, especially since it was mostly sitting on dining rm. chairs up to a table. By the time I got to bed, after 1:00 am, I felt like the giant marshmallow man off of Ghost Busters! I have really battled with swelling way earlier on in this pregnancy than I think is at all normal. At least not for me. So I mean to ask my Dr. about it on Monday when I go in for my next apt. It's 2 days later and there is still a significant amount of swelling.

Today we went to Boise and I bought some larger, comfier undergarments and cotton stretchy pants because nothing is fitting my bigger swollen self!!!!! The large jeans I have are too big, but the size that should fit is cutting off circulation. While we were in Boise, we took the kids to Chuck E Cheese's for a little celebration. Tomorrow is Ashton's second birthday. We were going to celebrate it tomorrow, but I just couldn't wait one more day without feeling comfortable in my clothes. I think the elastic on things I was wearing was contributing to the swelling. The kids had a blast there and were really good. We'll still do presents and cake and ice cream tomorrow, but the fun was today.

The seller of the land we've been looking at called back to counter offer again. Still almost 10 grand over appraised value. I guess he did come down from being over THIRTY grand too high. We're in no hurry anymore. No point in being stupid. He can keep countering all he wants until he decides to really be fair. No one else is interested in this market. No one else would pay that much either!

I've done a bit of de-cluttering. Everyone being sick makes me feel like cleaning and de-germing the house. Then the new toys needing homes to be put away adds to that. And LAST... we're getting new carpet!!!!!!!!!!! Finally! I haven't had company over in so long because my nasty carpet is too embarrassing! It's cheap carpet with a cheap absorbent pad under it. So when ever anything has spilled, even being shampooed, it only gets so much. The stains stuck in the pad keep coming back up through the carpet and 5 years is all it's taken to be just disgusting. And it's lighter colored too. So we went for the second darkest carpet at Home Depot and a really high quality pad. We figure we're saving a lot of money to do it, plus it'll help our house sell when that time ever comes. We were having it shampooed every 3 months and really, it needed it every 10 days. That's all the longer it would last before we'd see the old stains again. We tried two carpet cleaning companies who clean with different cleaners/techniques. No difference. So that cost was adding up fast. It should be installed some time in the next two weeks. That was our big gift to ourselves for Christmas. And I'm SOOOO excited.