December, 2007 | The Angel Forever

Monthly Archives December 2007

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Belated B-day present!!!

Posted on December 18, 2007 4:38 pm by TheAngelForever

Alright, so it was not really a birthday present, but I sure think it was. Two days after my birthday I received an e-mail from Shannon at Bloggy Giveaways that I had won something. Sure enough I had won a beautiful necklace that I had left a comment to win.

Here are the details. The necklace I won was a Natural Mineral Lampwork with Gemstones made by the very talented Jennifer Casady (here it is on Jennifer’s website). This gorgeous birthday present retails for $108!!

Jennifer was a pleasure to communicate with. She promptly e-mailed me to set up delivery. And today it arrived. Now for some photos of how it was packaged on delivery:

And now the beautiful necklace in a macro shot taken minutes ago.

Please be sure to check out Jewelry by Jennifer Casady and see all of her wonderful creations. I know I will be making a wish list of things from her store for the future.

Thank you again to Shannon and Jennifer for this great prize!

Categories:
birthday contests customer service Web business web fun

Fun mail day!

Posted on December 18, 2007 10:41 am by TheAngelForever

Yesterday evening before heading to volunteer at the Scholastic Warehouse sale we received our mail. Thank goodness we FINALLY got the Entertainment Books that I ordered the Monday after Thanksgiving. I really was getting worried.

At around the same time I found a fun new blog called Table for Five. While looking around I noticed they had a giveaway for the new Land Before Time – The Wisdom of Friends DVD. I entered and on December 5 Elizabeth left me a comment telling me I won. The DVD arrived yesterday and NHL can not wait to watch it later today. Thank you so much to Elizabeth for the fun blog and wonderful giveaway :)

Categories:
contests web fun

Snow, sleet, sledding, secret ingredient cookies & sleepy babies

Posted on December 17, 2007 12:15 am by TheAngelForever

Storm #2 of the not even officially winter season is heading out (I think). As of this morning we had 5-6 inches of snow and the ice kept on coming all day. Our plan was to stay home, watch movies, dig out, and bake cookies. Some of those were accomplished. We are partially out from under the snow and ice, we never had a chance to watch a movie (thanks to a certain little monkey), and we ate cookies that were delicious.

By mid-morning JL finally decided that it was time to head out into the snowy cold "fun" and took NHL with him to get out some energy. The poor kid was experiencing some serious cabin fever from being in the house since early Thursday afternoon. Here is Darth Daddy with his camera of course!

Now please note the dorky Abominable Cameraman taking a photo here while measuring the snow fall:

Finally it was time for NHL and JL to dig out at least the front area of the house:

After some time they finally made it further down the sidewalk to clean up more of the snow. Look at the little guy following his daddy – AWWWWW!

Digging, digging. . . . and yes more digging!

I went back inside to check on the little guy who was keeping warm. As you can see he was having a blast playing, but you can also see his poor little nose was very sore looking. He now cries when he sees a tissue coming toward him.

A little while later JL came in to get me for some photos. The boys had decided to take a break from cleaning up snow to play in it. Here is a mosaic of their sledding fun.

The smiles one both of their faces were just SO big!

Soon after this the boys came inside to get warm and eat lunch. We had lunch that NHL picked out – tomato soup with alphabet noodles in it. Mommy thought he might get a kick out of them and bought them. After this we noticed that NHL was getting tired. We knew he would not go to his bed. Instead we got him to snuggle up on the couch under a blanket. After fighting the nap we finally noticed that he was quiet and calm. Here is how I found the little guy. It still amazes me how kids can fall asleep in the most odd ways.

Meanwhile another little boy in the family was miserable. He refused to eat solid food, wanted to be held and could not sleep. He would settle, get into his crib and wake up crying within 20 minutes or so thanks to his poor nose. Here is how he greeted me after one of the mini-naps. The shine on his nose is vasoline to help the sore areas from constantly wiping all of the dripping.

While NHL was napping JL was ambitious and made some chocolate chip cookies using the recipe from Deceptively Delicious. The secret ingredient in these cookies are whole chickpeas. NHL woke up just in time for the first batch to come out of the oven. JL made one recipe which yielded 40 cookies (Seinfeld’s recipe says it will make 2 dozen – what size cookies does she make?). As you can see NHL approved and wanted more than the two that he was allowed. They truly were YUMMY and you never would know there was something like chickpeas inside.

Now both of the boys are in bed and the house is quiet. The 7 month old was a struggle since he was beyond overtired, congested (did the milk thing to help), and two teeth are really coming in. He also learned a lesson – you do NOT bite mommy when nursing and laugh. If you do that mommy will pass you to Daddy and say "No BOOB for you!"

Night-night for now since the morning will be here soon to finish digging out.

Categories:
food glorious food fun jl jsl nhl photos sick kid teething weather weekend winter yummy

Storm 1 over . . . storm 2 in progress

Posted on December 16, 2007 12:39 pm by TheAngelForever

The storm from Thursday has come and gone and dumped about 10 inches of snow here. My poor aching back still has not recovered. Why? Well, Thursday night JL was up sick hugging our toilet (they certainly were not friends – that’s for sure). This meant that I was the lucky winner of taking care of all 3 boys and digging us out. Tons of fun since we were not able to get the snow blower from my aunt and uncle fixed and here in time (note to self – get that DONE quickly).

Here are some pictures from the last storm Thursday night as it was at the worst. These were taken when JL was coming home. His commute home is normally a 30 minute drive in BAD traffic. Well, it took much longer than that. He finally arrived home about an hour and forty minutes after he put his car into drive. Even my poor mother had her fun. She typically goes 5-10 minutes to get home. It took her over 40 minutes to get out of the parking garage at work and an hour and a half total just to go partially across the city. There were NO plows out and it was miserable to say the least.

This is a photo of JL coming down out street at about 6:30 Thursday evening. Not the best photo, but it gives you the idea of how "lovely" the conditions were.

As you can see from this next photo it was coming down quickly and had gotten a lot deeper since I went out to shovel earlier.

And now a car going down the street on that "fun" evening:

Friday everyone stayed home. I did not want to dig out and take NHL to school and he was really tired. So we stayed home and I dug us all the way out.

Yesterday we went to get things for the house (FOOD) before the next storm hit over night and today. JL was feeling better so everyone went out. This is how it looked yesterday at about 10:30 (about the time I was freaking out over the ice damns forming again):

Last but not least my boys ready to brave the cold temperatures. The poor little guy didn’t know what to do. He was just happy that we were going to get him some "cushy" tissues for his poor bleeding nose.

So here I sit moo-ing the little guy who is refusing solids today while the other boys are digging us out of 5-6 inches of snow while the sleet and freezing rain continues to fall. More photos to come later. I am off to see the sledding NHL and price out a move to Florida so I can be warm near Mickey Mouse!!!

Categories:
jl jsl losing my mind my boys nhl photos sarcasm sick kid vent winter

NHL’s Chanukah Party 2007

Posted on December 13, 2007 8:13 pm by TheAngelForever

Yesterday was the rescheduled Chanukah party in NHL’s classroom. It had been on Monday, but thanks to the ice storm it was pushed off. When we arrived all of the kids were waiting for us at the circle area. We went over and they "lit the candles", said the blessing, and sang a few songs. After that the teacher explained that the kids would rotate around the centers will all of us. There were 5 total and we went to all of them.

Here are some photos of NHL from when I first arrived and one of JSL with his Chanukah bib on. The last photo at at the first center that we explored. This center was the pretend (dress-up/kitchen) area that also displayed all of the show-and-tell items for "H" day. NHL brought in his travel "Hungry Hungry Hippos" game.

Our next stop was the math center. Here they had a menorah set up to count candles.

Then we went to the fine motor center. Here they had dreidels to spin and play with. As you can see they had sheets to show the kids how to play. Please note NHL’s teacher took a photo of all of us and I had fun taking a picure of the dreidel whirling around.

Next we went to the hands-on center area where they had latke tasting for everyone. Here is NHL testing them out with some sour cream and apple sauce.

Then we went out to the hall where the motor center was set up. Here the kids had to sit and wait their turn. Then they got onto a scooter and pushed their body on their tummy down the hall. They had to get some Chanukah cards and bring them back to a sheet to make matches on and identify them. These are some photos of NHL doing this activity.

At this point it was already getting late. We barely had time at the block center on the rug. No photos of this, but I did take some of random Chanukah art that was in the hall and within the classroom.

Then it was time to have some brownies and get presents. The kids (and teachers) made the parents photo frames with their photos in them. The teachers also gave a bag of goodies to the kids. It was a very nice hour in the room and we were able to see how centers run, just with a LOT more people in the room. I was floored that almost every child had at least one parent/grandparent there.

With that I will share one more photo of my fun Chanukah socks. (Hey L this is just for you!)

Now it is time to get the big kid into bed. We already have at least 6.4 inches of snow outside and they claim a bigger storm coming Sunday. The bad news – our snow rake temporarily broke while JL was using it on the roof. He did the side that gets ice damns more, but the other side will be finished at a later time.