Merry Christmas, our tree is dead, and maintence made an emergency call to our house.

Merry Christmas! We had such a fantastic day yesterday, and hope everyone else did as well. I had my work party on the 17th at Boston beanery, which always ends up being a lot of fun... this year was no exception, with a few interesting elements.... being Mormon, me and my co-worker Seantylle get to be the DD's for the night. Good times were had by all..... and that is all i shall say about my night here...

Anyway. Christmas! We went to Richmond with my parents and sisters Heather and Lyndsay the sat before Christmas to see my grandpa and my moms siblings. We always play a wonderful game of dirty Santa. (pick a present, if it is good, someone else steals it, you pick again, if it sucks, you get to keep it!) I drew a candy jar filled w. candy and gold coins, and my sister heather stole it. I finished the day up with a diaper that had a coupon good for a 24 hour shift with my cousins 5 month old girl Jordan.... She wouldn't let me take her at the end of the day though, but I ALMOST got a girl for Christmas (if only it were that easy!!!) John got a coconut fish that was in a popcorn tin. When you lifted the lid of the tin, a singing card opened at the same tin so it looked like this fish was singing at you. pretty funny! the boys got a TON of pokemon stuff from my aunts and grandpa... 180 mini pokemon figures and the battle dome. We drove to Lynchburg sat night and spent a few days with my parents. They got the boys tennis rackets, sleeping bags, flashlights, and mess kits. They are so ready to go camping, now we need warm weather! Christmas Eve we drove home, and went over to dinner with some wonderful families. We played some cards, ate a ton of awesome food, and had the boys asleep by 8 pm! Not bad for Christmas Eve! The boys were up by 6 am yesterday morning. They were so excited bc we got rid of our stockings last year bc of poor condition, and they were so bummed they couldn't hang stockings Christmas Eve, but when they woke up on the morning, Santa had brought them new stockings, and even filled them with pokemon cards and other fun treats! the oldest 3 boys got video games from grandparents Christmas morning (Thanks, they LOVED them!) and board games and some clothes, but the big gift of the day were Heeleys, the shoes that everyone sees kids wearing in walmart with the wheels in the back. the catch with these shoes is you cannot buy the off brand, they have to be heeleys. In the off-brands the wheels don't remove, they just pop into the shoe, and so they aren't allowed in school... (grrr.) so we bought heeleys, where the wheels actually can be removed and the hole covered. The boys LOVED them. as friends came over throughout the day, several of their friends had gotten them for Christmas as well, and the kids all had fun practicing their moves!

I must have been the only kid on earth who had to do chores on Christmas day. Every Christmas, we would open presents, then spend several hours cleaning the house. I hated it. But I have passed the tradition on to my kids. Every year, my parents would have huge parties that lasted all day. I did love those, and have tried to carry that on. Yesterday we had several families come over to play games and eat a ton of food. We had such a great time, but with one major mishap. Our downstairs toilet has been running ever since we moved in. We try to just not use it very often. Whenever the kids do use the bathroom, we just turn the water on, flush, and turn it back off. recently, the water at the shut off valve has been pouring whenever we turn off the water. John remedied that by pulling the arm up in the toilet so that it wont run at all. not a bad fix, until yesterday. So, a kid used the bathroom downstairs, and we HAD to flush it. when john went to flush it, the arm snapped off, right at the base, where there was NO way to get the water to stop filling the bowl. He tried to tighten the screw in the shut off valve to keep it from spraying. no luck. after abt 30 minutes of messing w/ the toilet, and knowing NOTHING is open that would help is fix this on our own, we made the emergency maintenance call. our guy came and rigged it for now, but everyone watching him fix the toilet kept waiting for the piece he shoved into the broken arm socket to fly out and water spew into his face. that fortunately did not happen, but now we have a bathroom out of commission, and he is talking about coming in and ripping our sink out of the wall in the bathroom that does work so he can access a shower problem... overall though, we had a great day! We had tons of fun, and the kids were just so excited with their new toys and all the friends that came to play!