Chicago finally realized it's winter.

Hey everyone.  I hope you all had a great Christmas and a good New Year's.  I had a great time off, which was littered with unusually warm winter days for Chicago -- 30s and 40s, even a 50 I think.

Not today.  Today it was 12 when I left.  Good times.

Anyway.  I've missed you all.  And here's what you've missed. :)

**Went to dinner with friends the first night of my vacation.  Had three-four martinis.  Talked about myself in third person.

**Went to Winter Wonderfest at Navy Pier with the kids.  So much fun.   Will be more fun when the kids are a bit older but we still managed to have THIS MUCH FUN:

Christmas Eve.  First, here's Maggie in her adorable "russian" coat.

**I got Maggie dressed first and PJ saw her and said "Maggie, you look cute!" then took her hand, lead her to the couch and said "Cheese mama!"  The result:



We went to my parents.  Of course, there's not much we can get my mom, so I emailed a bunch of her friends and former co-workers and asked them to write letters to her talking about the fun times they had.  I put all the letters in a scrapbook.  She of course cried, but I have been told she has now read all the letters and loves it.  John and I also wrote one.

Then we  had Christmas Eve with John's mom in her trailer.  Yes trailer.  As in trailer park.  We'll save that post for another day.   It went surprisngly well, except for the fact my MIL will not stop saying shit about Maggie being too attached to me. 

The girl is in a clingy stage, and she also never sees you.  Maybe if you saw your grandkids more often.  Some gems:

**You're NOT going by your mother (while taking her out of my line of sight, which of course makes Mags scream hysterically).

**You really have to cut off this connection between you and Maggie.  It's ridiculous.

**You mom has to go and ruin everything (by saying good-bye when I was leaving the other day and she was babysitting).

And variations of this.  I'm about to rip her eyes out.

Oh and she bought my almost three year old that Go Fish game.  You know the game with about 50 little fish who's mouths open and close?  WHO DOES THAT???

Christmas morning went awesome.  Kids loved all their toys.  I got a KINECT!! For the Xbox.  John was all worried I wouldn't like it, but I love it.  Except my arms are so fricking sore today I don't even know what to do with myself.

I also got jewely.  Boy knows better, okay??

The rest of our vacation was a lot of just hanging out around the house, seeing some friends, etc.  It sucks to be back at work.  I'd stay home everyday if I could.  :)

Oh and can I just say?  I am ready for all the tv shows to come back.  Good lord.



Jolly old St. Nicholas....

lean your ear this way...

St. Nick came to our house today.  You know, leave a little something in your shoe, St. Nick?  My mom always did this for me -- until I was 25 years old (she actually made me leave my shoe in my car after I moved out so she could put something in there) and I wanted to continue the tradition with PJ and Mags.

Problem:  Other than itty bitty pieces of candy, not much fits in an almost 3 year old and a 1 year old shoe.

And lord knows if they got candy, they'd have to eat it THAT VERY MINUTE so candy was out.

So their gifts did NOT go in their shoe.

They got these cool reward sticker books:

Now, I'm all for letting Maggie have all the princess crap if SHE likes it, and don't want to force it down her throat, but Daddy saw this and HAD to get it for his baby girl.  Yeah, he's screwed.

Mags also got a mini slinky and PJ got one of those grabber toy things.

Of course the concept of St. Nick was lost on them, but I know he came dammit!

We also finished shopping for PJ and Mags on Saturday.  I cannot wait to give them their gifts.  They are just going to be so excited.  This is really what Christmas is all about.

Now to finish everyone else....

How's your shopping going?