Happy December....

OK, I’m on the home stretch and then I’m all up to date. I was up and at work on the Wednesday. The boys slept for most of the morning, and Bruce of course was driving the desk as he calls it. Everyone at work was happy to see me, which is always nice to hear, especially my bud, Paula. She left me a nice text message to say she missed me, which again is always nice to hear. I spent the day catching up on work and personal stuff with all the girls, so it was a fun day, we did get a lot of work in, it wasn’t all gossip…. I got home and had the itch, so the tree got put up, just the tree, no decorations yet, but it was a good start. I was a week behind in looking at my tree, we finished the tree the next night, I cooked dinner while the boys put all the decorations on. Then like every anal person, once they went to bed, I fixed it up and decorated the rest of the house. I love Christmas; it gives me a chance to make the house look all girly and pretty. The tree came up beautiful and the rest of the house was great too, I was really happy with how it all turned out and to match the cool lights on the outside of the house. On Friday Bruce got a call, Jarrod Leonard (Supercats) was in San Jose and his friends were going to Sacramento for the weekend and catching a ride down with them to stay with us, yeay visitor, Bruce was really excited. Bruce went and picked him up on Saturday morning and we had a good catch up on home and his trip (he’s doing around the world trip) so far. Sounds like he’s having a fantastic experience and has some great plans to the rest of his trip. Conner and Jamieson were nervous and excited about Jarrod being here, they remember watching him play and he was going to be watching them play now…Conner was definitely excited and nervous. We headed out to the stadium and to their credit they both played really well; Jamieson has definitely grown into his size and is like a gazelle running down the court. Conner started off nervous but made a couple of shots and was off to the races, I think Jarrod was impressed and his team was bummed that he wasn’t going to be around to help out at practice. We went out for Conner’s team Christmas pizza night and watched some (USA) footy and chatted to parents, it was a fun night and I think Jarrod enjoyed himself as much as you can on a basketball family night. I went out on Sunday and started my Christmas shopping, yes, started! I was a little freaked out about it. I did some shopping and came home and cleaned the house a bit while the boys watched the football and caught up…. I made Jarrod a nice homemade lasagna etc before Bruce dropped him back to meet his friends so he could go to New York for Christmas. It was a great weekend and Bruce was bummed he had to go so soon. Another week started and another week closer to Christmas, I spent the Monday night after work, while the boys were at basketball, wrapping presents, the great thing about my tree is that it’s nice and low, so it doesn’t take a whole lot of presents for it to look full, I love that!! Tuesday rolled around and arrhh, a day to not go to work, but lots to do around the house. The boys did their usual off track thing, although mum was home so they did get a couple of jobs to do. Wednesday was a big day for me, off to work in the morning, the boys (all 3) at home, I got home around 2.30pm cause Justin and Jeremy were coming after school, Paula had a late meeting so they stayed for dinner and then I took them home and put them to bed. After a long meeting, her texting me while in the meeting, bored and frustrated, she got home around 11.30pm. We had our Christmas Master Mind group meeting, which was enlightening for everyone, it’s always good to look back and analyze the year, it kind of motivates you to do more for the next year. Bruce dropped my mum and dad’s Christmas present box off to Carlos for delivery for me…. thank goodness for Carlos and United Airlines. I again did some more Christmas shopping and the boys had a basketball skills session, so I had a little time to myself to get things done, still feeling like I was behind with everything, but closer. Conner had his friend David over for the afternoon, which turned into a sleepover; David is a great kid (nice and quiet), which is a change for our place. David spent Saturday with us, he came to watch the boys play basketball and then out to Jamieson’s teams Christmas pizza break up. It was a funny night, Jamieson’s team this season parent wise is not as fun as other ones. On Sunday morning, Bruce and I went out early and did some groceries, and it was Belinda grooming day, nails, hair etc. Mum called and we had a good chat caught up on the Christmas plans. Christmas week was upon us, Monday was a tying up some loose ends before Christmas at work, then went home and tried to do nothing unsuccessfully. Happy Christmas Eve Eve, it was on a Tuesday so I didn’t have to work but I did go in for our Christmas Lunch. I wasn’t feeling the great, tooth is playing up, I feel a root canal coming on…. Lunch was kind of weird, there wasn’t a whole lot of talking, I don’t know if it’s because there is a boy in the mix or that Paula and I weren’t ourselves, but we were out of there in just over an hour….I was home around mid afternoon, and tried to relax, but did a little cleaning instead. Spent a quiet night on looking at my tree!! Christmas Eve, today I spent most of the day cleaning and baking lots of yummies, it was tiring but fun, Christmas is always fun and I was excited about being home for the day. We went over to Paula’s - her little Christmas tradition, soup for Christmas Eve dinner. We had it in bread bowls and it was really yummy, a good tradition which I may pinch, at least while we are here in the winter. The kids all played upstairs and we all had Christmas drinks downstairs, we were home by 10.00pm to make our Christmas Day phone calls to home. I called Rael’s first, Mum and dad were there for breakfast, I spoke to them all and so did the boys. It was nice to talk to them, Oscar is talking so clearly and Felix called me Aunt Binda, it was cool!!! Next we called Trace’s place and Bruce chatted with Rhys, and gave Dylan some crap (nothing’s changed), Elise put on the webcam and we chatted, then I got o chat with Trace and everyone (we as much as you can when they are all yelling stuff and you are on speaker phone), it was fun and they are all really cool. The boys went off to bed around 11.30 and I got off the phone around midnight. I started wrapping in the closet and I took the last one out around 1.30am, but the time everything was set, Bruce and I got into bed about 2.00am. It was the usual Christmas Eve sleep, waiting to hear noise around the house. Jamieson woke up around 7.15am, and I heard him run down the hallway, then he came back up the hallway to see if we were awake. He jumped into bed with us and we talked. Apparently he saw the basketball shooting game, and then there was also something under a blanket, what was it? He didn’t know because he didn’t look. What kind of a kid on Christmas morning is he??? Bruce and I looked at each other and just laughed!!!! After him fidgeting around in bed for half an hour we told him he could wake up Conner, if you sleep after 8.00am you should get woken up, that’s my excuse anyway. I ran down the hall and put the tree lights, music and set the video camera. They came out and there were a lot of COOL’s and YEAY’s, so I would say Santa and Mum and Dad rocked this Christmas. We had to stop half way through the present unwrapping to get the turkey organized. I figured it that I ‘just’ fit into the oven so it didn’t have to go to Paula’s to cook. Bruce, god love him, stood at the kitchen bench and grabbed the bag of innards out while I made the stuffing, we stuffed that bird, put it in the oven bag (wasn’t going to stuff this up, went the guaranteed route) and put that sucker in the oven for the next 4-5 hours. Conner was bummed that we weren’t having roast potatoes cause there was no room in the oven that’s just what had to happen. We sat down to our Korostin traditional Christmas breakfast of boiled eggs, ham, toast, juice and hot chocolate. What was really nice was we were sitting there and Conner said, “ I miss this”. I said what “sitting here together or having ham and eggs?” He said, ‘Both’, it was a really cool breakfast just sitting there eating and talking. We got up and let the boys play with their new stuff while we cleaned up after breakfast. We had showers and the boys played, Bruce had NBA basketball on the TV and everyone was just chillin out, I was playing with the table settings. Paula and Steve arrived around 2.30pm, when we looked at the oven bags directions and realized it didn’t take as long to cook, so we were eating a little earlier than we thought. YEAY, we cooked a 20 lb turkey and it was really yummy!! Lunch turned out fantastic and we had a really great meal all 6 of us. It was cold outside, the house was toasty with lots of yummy smells coming from the kitchen, it was like in the movies. We finished up lunch and cleaned up a little, had a couple of calls from home and the boys watched basketball – the Lakers were playing, that says it all. Justin and Jeremy were dropped off around 6.00pm, the kids played for a little and then they went back to Paula’s while we finished tidying and took a breath. We got to Paula’s around 7.00pm and I sat on the couch and didn’t really move – exhausted!!! Bruce picked me up off the couch around 10.00pm and took me home, not to most exciting Christmas night, but hey, you cant’ have everything. We got home and Bruce put me to bed, what a good husband. (the kids had a sleepover at Paula’s – quiet house – AWESOME!) Boxing Day (Which is not what they call it here – the day after Christmas) came around, we got up and around lunchtime I went out and had a look around at all the Christmas bargains – 75% off - gotta love that. It also turned into a few extra things for me –80-90% off Vera Wang, gotta love that even more. I got all my new (Red, yes I said RED) I decided to do red and white next year to go with my really cool pretty fuzzy tree skirt. We had a quiet rest of the afternoon, I picked up the boys from Paula’s just after 4.00pm and we went home for a couple hours before going back to her place for Christmas drinks with some of Steve’s friends. This was actually the first time meeting most of them, so it was going to be nice and add a little weight to Paula’s side of the party, so to speak. We grabbed the boys around 10.30pm and took them home to bed, they were so tired after the last couple of days and late nights. Saturday morning Bruce and Conner went out to see if there were any garage sales around and spent some time together, they ended up at Toys R Us and Conner bought some stuff with his Christmas money, he got some basketball cards (DER) and a game of some description. Jamieson and I had a quiet morning, playing and generally not doing a lot at all and that’s pretty much how we spent the rest of the day…aarrhhh!!! Sunday came and went pretty much nothing much going on, it was nice to not have any plans, I did however spent a lot of the day cleaning the house, not very Christmasy. Back to work on Monday after a few days off a lot of business here are still on skeleton staff so it was slow and will be until about the 5th when most of them come back. New Years Eve came around we had strategic planning at work. We finished up mid afternoon and everyone went home early, I stayed a little longer to tie up some loose ends and Bruce came and got me. We had a nice dinner and headed over to Paula’s to have a “New York New Years Eve”, which sounds weird but is actually a really great idea. We celebrated the New Year when the ball dropped at (9.00pm California time) this way the kids all get to celebrate without our eyes popping out of our heads and we are still in the party mood…. The Rivera’s were at Paula too and Kristie had some sparklers from July 4th celebrations so the kids had a ball in the court running around even in the FREEZING COLD!!! Then not long after that they were back upstairs playing and watching movies, brilliant idea!!! That was how we finished another year…I hope you are all well and had a great New Years Eve and finished the year with good friends and or family.