I'm back! Busy holidays

OK, so I haven't done anything this month but read. I've happily flung myself into the world that I lived in 11 years ago--18 years old and madly in love--as I've read through the Twilight series of books three times (and dragged Terry to the movie twice). The first picture below is one Terry took of me in my "natural habitat"--curled up on the couch with a book. It's been so many years since I've allowed myself to just enjoy reading more than picture books (my attention span has deteriorated and it takes a good love story to pull me into much longer anymore). It's been tons of fun, and I'm not sure that I'm ready to give it up yet. Who knows, I might just branch out and read something else sometime, though right at the moment I'm still having fun with Bella, Edward, and the rest of the Cullens.

Despite my inattention to the rest of the world, I actually managed to pull off one of my best Christmas holidays yet. It's just a good thing I had everything ready before Thanksgiving. Everything went very nicely, and now 2 days later we still haven't hit the major post-holiday crash that typically comes within 10 minutes of opening the last present. But maybe that's because we had something even more fun than Christmas presents just the day after--a visit from Uncle Bob--my oldest brother, who's usually in Scotland or traveling around the world. Almost as big a surprise was that Uncle John came to spend the day, too. Though he's only a half hour away, he rarely comes to visit (too many scary little girls). Bob played on the Wii with the girls (in the pic below with Marty). Just after this picture, they all played Wii Bowling, where Linda creamed everyone with an amazing 6 strikes in a row (and one or two more after breaking her perfect streak in frame 7). She was awesome! No form, no setup, but strike after strike.

Today was another special day. Terry and I celebrated our 11 year anniversary. We'd already had a night out, so today was a family fun day--especially since we were also celebrating Linda's five-and-a-half birthday. So strange to think that, though I'm fairly certain I've spent at least 10 of those 11 years mostly pregnant, my littlest baby has been with me for half my married life. So today we watched some of our Christmas movies--Tinkerbell and Wall-E, went out to lunch for some popcorn chicken (next pic of me and my girls), and went to Build-a-Bear to get bride and groom elephants to celebrate eleven years together. The girls were not happy to be in the store to not get anything of their own, so I completed the family with 3 baby pachyderms. The last pic for the day shows the happy family--Elebella and E. Phant and their little ones Emerald, Emmy, and Moonstone.

So that's the end of my current holiday adventure. It was a fun, whirlwind of days. And now I can take a deep breath and rest for all of 3 days before the next holiday is upon me. I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season, too.

Two for the Tooth Fairy

Chrissy lost a tooth at school today. She brought it home in a bag that had a cute card on it that said "Hip Hip Hooray! I lost a tooth today!" Immediately on entering the house she went upstairs and put the tooth in her tooth fairy pillow.

After I tucked the girls in for the night, panic ensued when Chrissy checked for her tooth and couldn't find it in either of the tooth fairy pillows in the room. So I was called in to help with the search (nearly impossible in the girls' room, despite it having been cleaned just 2 days ago). We searched the area around, and then I asked to see the pillow that Chrissy was fairly certain she had put her tooth in. Digging deeper than little hands would go, I found a tiny tooth shoved into the root area of the tooth-shaped pocket on the pillow. Relieved, Chrissy replaced the tooth a little less deeply and set it under her pillow.

As I was getting up to go, I moved to put the other tooth fairy pillow away, and noticed a tiny lump in the root area of that pillow's tooth-shaped pocket. Sure enough, there was a second tooth in there. Marty was briefly excited that she might get some tooth fairy money for it, but I explained that there was statute of limitations on lost teeth. Besides, she was fairly frequently paid for lost or otherwise missing teeth (like her first TWO!, that she swallowed). Also, that particular pillow had been mine when I was little, so for all we knew it was one of my old teeth.

We finally settled on putting both teeth into Chrissy's tooth fairy pillow to make sure that the tooth fairy received the correct tooth. Phew. Now we can all sleep in peace. :o)