Refried beans on your jacket

When my sister Lindsey got married in the summer of 2006, I went out to Blythe for two weeks with the kids. Chad had to stay behind and work because we had just gone to see his parents in Spokane a - a trip we had our tickets for before Lindsey got engaged (it was one of those quick-as-you-can-say-hello BYU Idaho engagments ;o) Just kidding Lindsey! - and he really couldn't take more time off just then. So, Chad was at home without us, which meant for once he got to work all the long hours he wanted without getting nagged at. He still needed ways to occupy his time, so he ended up going to the gym more than he has in his life. With still too much time on his hands (Chad always has to be doing something, which is one of the huge differences between us), he decided to go watch a movie by himself. Now for the creepy part. He went to the dollar theater to watch Ice Age 2. As a 26 year old. During the summer. Surrounded by kids.

He called me up and told me about it, and I started laughing, but that wasn't even the beginning of it. Chad likes to sneak food into the movie theater. We have never ever purchased food from the theater. Yes, I know we are horrible human beings. I can only blame it on my parents for teaching me at a young age. I distinctly remember eating pixie sticks out of Christie's purse while watching Ernest Goes to Camp in the movie theater. If you have never snuck food in, I will tell you a secret - it is really really easy. So easy that I can barely call it sneaking. If your husband wears cargo pants, you can easily fit a soda in each side pocket. If you have a big purse that doubles as a diaper bag, whaalah! all the food you could ever need during a two hour period (more on that later.) Back to the story- without me there to reign in Cheapo Chad, he went a little overboard. He decided to sneak his lunch in. And what was his lunch? Taco Bell, of course. He wore a jacket, in late June, to the movie, and snuck a bean burrito in his pocket. Can you imagine the gooey beans mixed with hot sauce and onions leaking out of his pockets? Yeah, that is pretty much the way it went down. What a complete dork!

As far as my bag goes, last summer went to see Spiderman 3 at the I-Max in Spokane (which is where the picture was taken) with Chad's dad, uncle, cousin, and his cousin's wife. They all live across the country and knew Chad quite well as a child, but do not know grown-up, cheapo Chad, so imagine their surprise when we pull up to watch the movie and Chad gets my bag out of the trunk, and it is leaking. He wanted cold soda this time, so he had the brilliant idea of sticking ice and sodas in a vinyl lunch bag, which his mom assured him was waterproof. I can assure you that is was not. I made him carry my wet, khaki-with-embroidered-flowers bag in. Yes, he still took it in.

It's not the dishonest part I disagree with. It's the making a mess, indiscreet, not knowing your limits part.

We went to watch I Am Legend last week, and we were at Target right beforehand looking at Christmas clearence, so we decided to pick up some snacks for the movie. We got a bag of Reese's peanut butter cups that was 50% off and two sodas. I really needed something salty, so we bought a bag of popcorn from the food court, and divided that up into two bags so that we could roll the tops over, and had no problem fitting our haul into my bag. So during the movie when I wasn't gripping Chad's out of pure terror, I was shoving popcorn in my mouth.

Don't judge us. We all have our dirty little secrets.

See ya, Sucka'!

After reading some of the comments on my previous post about real vs. fake Christmas trees, I felt my resolve about this being our last real tree wavering a little. I was reminded of the many many things I love about real trees, and especially how much I loved them when I was a child. I started to wonder if maybe we should continue with real trees for the sake of our children and the memories we are creating for them.

But this was the year of the World's Worst Christmas Tree, and it sealed the fate of all future Coleman Family Christmas Trees. The verdict is in and, they will be fake. In fact, we already bought a Christmas tree for next year off of Amazon (if you do follow the link, we actually got the 7 1/2 ft version of the one shown, and for a much better price) and the UPS guy dropped it off on my doorstep about ten minutes ago ( our UPS guy always come after 6:30 pm, which seems strange to me).

What made it the World's Worst Christmas Tree? Besides the crooked trunk, it had mysteriously pokey and painful pine needles. When I first tried to scoop together the needles into a pile underneath to clean up after we put the tree up , I found that I just couldn't do it. Way too painful for my fingers. I actually had to get my gardening gloves out before I could finish the job.

Despite watering the tree almost daily, the needles on the tree got sharper and sharper. It got to the point where I refused to rehang any ornaments that fell off. They stayed huddled in a pitiful heap under the tree because my hands said it just wasn't worth it, and there were only about twenty left on the tree by Christmas. My kids also knew to steer clear of the very unfriendly tree, and they wouldn't go anywhere near it (unless on a bike). When Audra was here on Sunday, she went to touch it without being properly warned and pulled her hand back with a little yelp. It was seriously that bad. Also, by this point we were using an old computer moniter to hold the tree stand down, since I had to use my sewing machine for the nativity costumes.

We started to take the mean little tree down the day after Christmas, and Colin came up with a great idea. He immediately rushed into the kitchen and grabbed some oven mitts to protect hands while he took ornaments off. Smart boy!

So long, farewell real Christmas trees. May you go to a home where you will be loved unconditionally. Try giving my cousin Olivia or brother-in-law Seth a call if you are looking for a good family.

Audra the wonderful

My lovely sister-in-law Audra posted a million great pictures of our nativity on her blog. My camera batteries ran out as I was trying to take pictures, plus her camera seems to take much better pictures in low light. Please visit the pictures and thank her on my behalf for being the event photographer.

Our Christmas Eve part 2

I wanted to add more pictures to the previous post, but they added them out of order, so here is part 2.

After dinner, the boys got to open up their new pajamas, plus one more gift. Gabe opened up some new buses and a train for the Thomas set. He was so thrilled, his hands were shaking.

Colin chose to open up a V-tech from Grandma and Grandpa Coleman. He loved it, and of course insisted on opening it up and playing with it for awhile.

Chad unwrapped a present from me to find a new sweater (surprise!) and three edited movies - Shawshank Redemption, Amelie (which was actually for me, so it was kind of a joke), and Schindler's List.

After that, we did bathtime and into the new pjs. Then we drove around the neighborhood and looked at the lights.

When we got home, we set out cookies and egg nog for Santa, and some carrots for his reindeer. Colin wrote him a note.

Then we read a book about the Christmas Story, sang some Christmas songs, and then off to bed! It was only 7 by then, but Colin had a really hard time falling asleep! He didn't fall asleep until 8.

Our Christmas Eve

We ordered our traditional Christmas Eve pizza, and while we waited we made cookies for Santa. This is Gabe sulking because I told him not to eat any more cookie dough.

The pizza came. They were out of larges (we had ordered two of them) so they gave us four mediums instead! Plus we had two orders of wings. A ridiculous amount of food for two adults and two kids.

Colin declared that wings were "like ribs, only better!" Wow! Ribs used to be his favorite food. One time they did a spotlight on him in Primary, and when they said they part about him, it got a lot of chuckles (all the other kids had things like mac and cheese or chicken nuggets). He's awesome.

Time for a Coleman Family Picture. Merry Christmas Eve.

I could just eat him up

Mine, all mine!

Okay, I do have to share him with the boys, but Chad is officially off for the holidays!!! He doesn't go back until January 2nd! I am so excited. Our home is so much brighter when he is around.

When he came home today, I started thinking about one thing to be thankful for in our lives - paid time off! In the old, college days, when Chad took time off of work, it meant he wasn't being paid. Since Chad is very pratical, that meant he had a really hard time taking any work off, and if he could get extra hours, he would. After Chad got his job at the MTC, we couldn't afford to leave for Christmas because they paid employees time and a half during the break, and we just couldn't pass money like that up.

It's so amazing how quickly you can start taking some things for granted - like being able to chill at home for a week and a half and get paid for it! Hooray for salaried positions!

Sorry about the writing at the beginning, but I could not get it to work out right and I got tired of trying. Sometimes I get really sick of dealing with the formatting on blogger.

Why do I do this to myself? I know why.

I didn't really enjoy Christmas last year. I was stressed out already when Christmas Eve came, and after we put the toys out for the kids, I still had to finish sewing costumes for the nativity we were having on Christmas Day with all the cousins. When I finished, I went to get the camcorder out so it would be ready in the morning and found that I had no idea where it was. I am notorious for losing things, and I honestly try so hard to not to, so when I do, I get really obsessed and crazy. Which is what I did. Late at night on Christmas Eve, I became obsessed and crazy about finding the video camera, and got into a huge fight with Chad because he wasn't as nutso and stressed out as me, and that made me furious. We never did find it, and I went to bed still upset about it (as a side note, we still have no idea what happened to it - I think it might have been stolen out of our van at one point with the video of Gabe on the day he was born inside of it). Christmas morning was pleasant, but right after that I began getting the house ready for the big family dinner. I was still preparing 10 cornish game hens and a ham, plus fully decorating the tables, when everyone started to show up. The food was taking forever to cook, and I opened the oven and realized it was no longer hot inside! Some of the apricot glaze for the hens had spilled directly onto the heating coil and burned it out. My oven was broken, with food for 12 people inside. We had to pack up everything and take it over to Levi and Audra's. Everyone was, of course, incredibly helpful and patient, but by this point I was just so plum tired and frustrated. The next day, I got on an airplane with Gabe and flew to Phoenix, arriving at 12:30 am (when Chad's Aunt and Uncle graciously picked me up), to go to Aaron's wedding that day at 2 pm. Okay, so really, is it any wonder that I didn't enjoy Christmas last year? Sure, there were certain moments I enjoyed, and my trip to Phoenix was actually pretty stress-free and relaxing (compared to the days that proceeded it), but overall, I do not have fond memories of the season.

Realizing that it was my own fault that I was miserable last year, I decided that this year was going to be different. First, I did all my Christmas shopping before the month of December. I have not had to worry about gifts for weeks. Second, I am still hosting the family Christmas dinner, but we are doing it on Sunday, so that Christmas Day can be as stress-free as possible. I have been trying not to put off doing anything that can be done ahead of time.

However, I added some things to my t0-do list that didn't need to be added. I volunteered to decorate a table for the ward party, and I am making a new cheesecake recipe for the party from scratch. I also realized that I wanted to do something special for my Sunbeams, so I have spent way too much time with that. I also babysat A LOT (which is great for the pocketbook, but sure makes it harder to get out and do things) over the past week, and forgot that we volunteered forever ago to take Evan and Santi overnight for Bobby and Sabina's anniversary, which is tomorrow night. I also just finished making some more nativity costumes for this year's family dinner.

Last year, a couple of weeks before Christmas, when I was spending a lot of time working on a tap dance that someone had asked me to do in a skit for the ward party, Chad said, "Why do you do this to yourself? You don't have to do all these extra things!" and for those of you who have known me for a long time, you know that that was a big problem for me in high school and college. I did way too many things and ended up procrastinating or doing a bad job on most of them. Honestly though, I have gotten way better. I usually keep my life very simple and I rarely feel that I don't have enough hours in the day to finish what I committed to doing.

My answer to Chad at the time was, "But this is the stuff that I like doing." I spend a huge amount of my time doing nice, responsible things like washing dishes or picking up after the kids - things that are required of me that I know I will never ever enjoy. When I get to chance to actually be creative, and be "me" for awhile, it is hard to pass it up. My problem is that Christmastime brings too many of those creative opportunities. I like to make cards and write newsletters. I like to pretend like I am on Project Runway and create nativity costumes without using patterns. I like to make up silly tap dances and shock everyone in my ward, because they had no idea that I was once-upon-a-time, a total performer. I like to cook and decorate. Can't I just drop everything else instead of the fun stuff?

The amount I am doing is actually scaling back. If I thought I could handle it, I would also be making gifts for my friends, baking goodie plates for the neighbors, doing the 12 days of Christmas, making gingerbread houses (oh, I love making gingerbread houses) and decorating my house like a picture out of Martha Stewart Living.

I think I have done well. I have a lot to do over the next few days but not so much that I won't be able to just relax every once in awhile. Plus I have everything done that can possibly be done ahead of time. My Sunbeam presents are even wrapped and put in my Sunday bag. Phooey. I just remembered I needed to pick up some pictures are Walmart - the one store I am avoiding right now (what a zoo!) Maybe I will have to go there instead of Target afterall. Yuck.

I am not stressed out yet. I am enjoying the holiday season. Get back to me in a few days and I will let you know if I still feel that way.

Coleman Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celeb - Collage - Morph

Coleman Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Vintage pics

O Christmas Tree

At the botanical garden was the coolest tree I have ever seen. As soon as you walked into the room, you wondered "What is that lovely scent?"and then when you looked closely, you could see that the 20 ft. tree was completely decorated with live orchids!

Christmas at the Garden.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we have a membership to the Daniel Stowe Botantical Garden. We went to see the Christmas lights there tonight and it was magical for the kids (and a little too cold for Chad and I - I dressed the kids much more warmly than myself, and Chad didn't listen to me when I tried to boss him into wearing a jacket over his hoodie:0) . Colin was just running with excitement, and Gabe's eyes were as wide as could be.



One of the coolest things there was a giant tent made of red lights, that you could walk into. There were also a lot of cute flower lights, like the tulips above. Look closely and you can see Gabe's eyes glowing.

Those boys!

On Sunday we took Colin's shirt off while he ate dinner. After dinner, Gabe told Colin he wanted his off too, so Colin put his unbuttoning skills to good work....

And then helped him finished the job.

Colin hopped on his bike and had Gabe push him all around the house. They thought it was hilarious to run into Mom. Notice my foot stopping them. They got a little worked up, and next thing we know.....

We hear a crash, as Gabe drives into the Christmas tree and knocks it down!

We got it back up later, but it leans even more now and looks pretty beat up!

Weird work stories

Okay, none of these top the work story that my brother Aaron told last week, but they are still very interesting. It is funny that five of the stories have to do with fast food - that stuff makes people just plum crazy!

Mistletoe

Looking for another excuse to kiss your loved ones? I have looked for mistletoe in vain for years, and finally found this adorable mistletoe/kissing ball at Target for only $5! I have been cornering Chad under it all week.