25 days left!

Nov 30

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, christmas countdown 2007

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Isn’t it a beauty? Toddler charm at its best.

So. If you haven’t noticed, we have entered the nose picking stage. I swear he keeps his finger jammed up there half the damn day!  Scott had the camera LCD screen turned around while he was filming.  So the waving of the arms is him testing the live action feed on the screen.

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I’ve been scouring the internet for gift ideas. As you can imagine, I came up with way more than enough. So I’ve created a list at wishlist.com to keep track of some of them for later purchase/birthday ideas, etc. I don’t think I could ever bring myself to use the wishlist service for something like a birthday or Christmas, but it would certainly be helpful for weddings, baby showers, etc. I’m just using it to keep track of neat products that I find online so that I don’t clog up my bookmarks.

1. Castle Blocks - I think these are amazing. This wasn’t one I found myself, I had a little help from Chris’s Holiday Gift Guide over at In the Trenches of Motherhood (aka Notes from the Trenches). These blocks look amazing. Be sure to read about how the ‘blocksmith’ started his business. Certainly a different take on your average wooden blocks. They look to be excellent quality. I am quite anxious to try them out, and I would love to take advantage of a holiday sale. This would be a good one to go in together with the grandparents!

2. Memory Game: I’m not even sure what I love about this one so much. It looks simple, long lasting and well made, for a nice price. Memory is a classic game that is good for all ages, so this would grow with your child, provided you are diligent about keeping up with the pieces. If not, it certainly isn’t a terrible budget strain to replace it. The shapes do look pretty small though, so watch out for the younger members of the family. You can always start out with 3-4 pairs and leave part of the board empty for the younger players.

3. Car Cake Pans: I must give credit for this find to my mom. She called to ask me if I though Caleb might like something like this for a gift. Would he like it? WOULD HE LIKE IT?? Let’s see, he loves to kitchen. He drags a kitchen chair across the room and positions it on my foot so that he can climb up and help. The mega bonus is that the cakes are little car shapes, they are absolutely precious. I already have birthday ideas whirling through my head. Wouldn’t that make a neat center piece. A long straight road running the length of the table with car cakes for each party goer. It could also be an EXCELLENT birthday party activity for kids a little older than mine. If you’re the organized type, you can set up a decorating station for each child, give them their vehicle, a paint brush for the icing (glue), and several pieces of candy for decorations, have the sprinkles lined up down the table. Kids would eat that up, literally!

4. Haba Boat Swing: I have drooled over seen this before. It is quite expensive, but doesn’t it just make you smile to look at it! Love the colors. I have always loved the concept of an indoor swing. Hey it could even double as a bassinet when the next baby comes along! ;) I’M JOKING! Don’t try that! Especially when the older sibling has been soaring around the room like Peter Pan in the thing for a year.

5. Aqua Play Set: This is just a neat concept to me. I’ve seen a similar thing made by Brio a while back, but I can’t find it now. Again, steep price, but there are different sets you can get, this of course being the most complete/expensive. Looks like it would made a good summer toy for those days when you need to get the kid out of the house, but once you do it is too hot to move outside. Set it in the shade and let them play. It looks like it might be time consuming to set up though(?)

6. Colorforms: Yes the same colorforms that were around when you were a child. They seem to be pretty timeless as well. Encourages pattern play and creativity. Look around, you might find a better price, but I just happened to see them here.

7. Lacing Tree: Need to brush up on your hand eye coordination. This looks like a cute version of a lacing activity. A little more clever than some I’ve seen where you just outline a picture that is already there. Here you can actually make decisions about which animals should go where. Waiting room activity anyone?

8. Mazes(click pictures for links): I think I’ve seen the first one (or a similar one) at Target. “Drive” the different vehicles around to their appropriate buildings/homes. Very cute also. Requires some thinking for how to get each vehicle to the correct spot and move others out of the way. The bead maze has two pens, so siblings/friends can share. Again, hand eye coordination. Both of these are self contained, so they would make excellent toys on the go (for waiting rooms, airport terminals, etc)

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26 days left!

Nov 29

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, christmas countdown 2007

Click here and start at the bottom to see the tree get decorated!

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It is Wordless Wednesday, another mindless excuse to post pictures, which I clearly do not understand the concept of, seeing as how I find it impossible to actually be wordless. Maybe I should change it to Wordy Wednesday on my blog. Anyway, these are pictures of past Christmases.

2005

2006

His reaction last Christmas when he came in and saw all the toys that weren’t there the night before when he went to bed:

The Aftermath:

Caleb and his cousin, Matthew:

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You ever have those days where your husband gets home and says “Hi Honey, how was your day?  What did you do today?”  And you look at him and say, “The house is still standing isn’t it?”  I’m having one of those days.  No particular reason.  I’m just feeling frazzled.  Probably because I’ve let some much crap that I was supposed to be doing through the week pile up.  Hmmm.

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I ordered a workbench for Caleb from Sears.com on Thanksgiving night so that I wouldn’t have to brave Kmart on Black Friday in addition to my other stops. It is a My First Craftsman item, thus the reason it is only sold at Kmart and Sears. It was $10 off, and stupid Sears finally sent me an email Monday and canceled my order! I was pissed! They never even sent an order confirmation. I could look it up on their website using my order number though. Craptastic. Apparently it sold out, and they let people continue to order on their website and just canceled orders after letting people think they were getting their product for a few days. Asshats. Anyway, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find it, so we went to Kmart last night. Scott and Caleb stayed in the car while I looked through the chaos that is Kmart’s toy section. Finally I asked someone, and he found one in the stock room that had just come in yesterday. I got it, and we put a blanket over it in the back.

After Caleb was in the bed, we were going to start a movie. I wanted to be sure that the workbench had all its parts and pieces, for no Christmas Eve assembly surprises. We also wanted to check out the little drill to see whether to get a separate one from Kmart. Can I just tell you how cool this thing is? We put it together, which took all of three seconds (Little Tikes, how do I love thee, I can put our huge playset together in about three minutes. Literally.) It needs a lot of batteries, but I have a plan! I’m going to make a list of all of the batteries that we need before any wrapping happens, and I’ll put batteries in anything I can beforehand.

Wow though. My little mechanic is going to LOVE this thing! Daddy will be able to teach him all about it. Scott says he’ll have Caleb changing the oil by the end of January. When were were working on a project outside last weekend, Caleb said “Mommy can you please go get my tools? I help Daddy. I need my tools.” The same tools I have to make disappear shortly before Christmas! Not sure how I’m going to do that, but we have another Littles Tikes bench that we got secondhand. I want to sell his current tools with the bench on Craigslist. The new toolbench puts this other one to shame and takes up less space to boot (the other one got moved to the storage building).

The POWER drill has several different screwdriver and socket bits. It has a little hanging shoplight, a grinder, a saw, tons of nuts, bolt, screws, sockets, hanging pegs, a project car, and an engine to work on! The wheels can be unscrewed from the car using a screwdriver or the drill, he is gonna LOVE that. We got it out of the box around 11pm. Finally at 11:40, I looked up and said, “I thought we were gonna watch a movie tonight.” Scott said, “I’m having fun playing with my son’s toy right now, thanks!” *strongly resists the urge to abbreviate laugh out loud right here*

So about that procrastinating thing, did I mention that I unpacked my suitcase from Georgia so that I could go to Mom and Dad’s for Thanksgiving? Yes we were in Georgia at the beginning of October. Why? And all the crap that Scott took out of the Honda when he came to pick me up (when the car broke down)… Wrapped up in a king size comforter (used like a Santa satchel) and dumped on the other side of the bed. Go ahead and ask me about the boxes that all of Caleb’s Christmas stuff came in earlier this month. Piled in the corner of the playroom. Half a loaf of bread that we were going to turn into bird food? Sitting on the counter. For three weeks. Everywhere I look, there is more procrastinated crap! It is taking over!

I sure didn’t procrastinate on going to get that service plan this morning though. UPS showed up with our new camcorder (my first one!) this morning about 10:30. By 11, we were dressed (yes I was still in my pajamas when he got here, and if I hadn’t had anywhere to go, I still would be), and out the door to go get the service plan for the camera that Scott wanted. Best Buy offers a -if you drop it in a puddle, then run over it with your car, we’ll replace it free- service plan. They told me I had 30 days to get it, but it was easier if I brought it in new so they wouldn’t have to inspect it. See, looky! And you can even see this half written blog entry in the picture!

Is it just me, or have camcorders gotten unbelievably compact in the last few years! Remember all the parents standing in the back row at school plays with their big clunkers? I bet this thing would be really hard to use for someone who had big hands, it almost feels too small. And they have a 30GB hard drive packed in there! You can absolutely expect a ridiculous amount of Christmas footage. You can’t wait, I can tell! No doubt you’ll hear Ralphie’s mom in the background, “Put your arms down when you get to school!….Fra-gil-le! The warm glow of electric sex gleaming in the window.”

On that note, the house looks like a dump. So if you’ll excuse me…

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27 days left!

Nov 28

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, christmas countdown 2007

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Procrastination. I was all state my senior year. Certainly there must be a hall of fame. President of the Procrastinators Association. We were going to have our bi-monthly meeting last week but we decided to put off. You know with the holiday and all. My vice president, Amber, was out of town for turkey festivites, as was I. ;)

Here’s my high hopes for my website that I’m supposed to be working on…
Get the photo gallery up to date so that I can post pictures monthly. If you only had any clue how much I have complicated that with my gallery layout…do you know how hard it is to go back and try to remember what your now almost three year old was doing at seven months old? Hell I can’t remember what I had for lunch today! So that is on my ‘things to procrastinate’ list.

Next we have the child passenger safety information section. The subject that I’m so quick to pass judgement on out in public tsking at how this seat is installed and gawking at three year olds in boosters, yet this subject has been “coming soon” for about six months. To make sure that process is extra complicated, I am making a brochure that is all inclusive. All the advice I have to give about installing, selecting, and using carseats, and adding the state laws to each brochure. This means I have to look up CPS laws for all 50 states. Then I’ll have this nifty little drop down menu where you can select your state and print out a brochure. This is just if you don’t want to read through the information that is going to be on the website.

So that sounds like plenty to keep me busy right? So I must be making progress, yes? Sure! I went and got another domain name so that I could blog in two places! Yeah notice that hasn’t happened yet? But I did put my Christmas tree up today…on my website. You can even leave me little presents. They are free! Just the thought that counts. Like my dear husband who left me a lump of coal. We don’t have the tree for the house yet…we doing that…uhhh…next week!

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28 days left

Nov 27

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, christmas countdown 2007

Click here and start at the bottom to see the tree get decorated!

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