Holidays!

Christmas...everything Christmas! Really there is not much to say, pictures will show everything. I think we celebrated 3 or 4 times. We went to Luke's grandpa's house Christmas Eve, had Christmas at our house Christmas Day, plus went to Dad's on Christmas, and up to Aunt Lisa's, and then the Sunday after we celebrated with Luke's side of the family. Not to mention, grandma had left tons of presents for the girls when she and grandpa came up for Avery's birthday, so they had those to open, and we stopped by my Uncle Rob's house, and they had presents there too!!! I'm pretty sure the kids will never need another thing again!


The girls opening presents from Nana and Papaw on Christmas Eve


Apollo, looking through the baby gate


Lillian with her name puzzle


Mimi, Avery's new baby


Avery getting in on the action


The girls waiting on Christmas morning


Lilly has been obsessed with tornadoes since we had one hit in September


Lexi with her new Indy hat and whip


and some new astronauts and space ships


The baby dolls got new strollers for Christmas


Lilly with her new hat and whip


Avery opening her tea set


Next stop on Christmas was Grandpa Perkins house


Avery and I


The girls got trains and colouring books


The Perkins clan at Aunt Lisa's


Boxing Day at the Cowgar's


Lilly is keeping a watch on the presents


Anne and Daleen waiting


He always gets chocolate covered cherries :)


A doctor set from Aunt Angie and Uncle Chuck


Aviation is in the blood!


Lexi and Lilly opening presents from the stockings


Blu-Ray!!


Build a Bear, Spa style


More gifts...


Papa Cowgar got the big gift this year! A new toolbox.

Christmas...again, and again, and again!

Where to start. This holiday has come over and over again it seems. The weekend before Christmas, Nana and Papaw came up to visit and see Avery for the first time. That brought lots of presents. Then we went to my Aunt and Uncle's, since that is where Nana and Papaw stayed. Bring out even more presents.

Christmas Eve my family does a gift exchange, but they decided to do it at 8PM since people were working. We were not staying out that late, so we dropped our gifts off at my dad's so he could take them. Chelsea stopped out though, on her way to family over here in Wooster. That's a few more presents, since we exchange gifts, seeing as I watch Kendra and all.

Christmas Day...obviously presents. The girls got bikes from us, so Moon Sand, art stuff, car stuff, and a TV microscope that they are probably a bit small for still. We packed up and went to dad's, since mom was showing up. So we get PJ's and ponies and play-doh and then gift exchange gifts. We eat the family lunch and head home for the day.

Boxing Day we spend on Luke's side since it fell on a Saturday, everyone could show up and Christmas was less hectic for everyone. Even more presents. Arts and crafts stuff, baby dolls, clothes, and much more. Luke's mom found left handed scissors and can opener, since Luke told her I complain about the right handed stuff in this house. I tried that can opener the other day, and it feels quite odd to use it after using a right handed one for my whole life.

The Sunday after we stuck at home and tried to clean up the piles of cardboard and gift paper (recycling them of course), but Keith and Angel stopped by with Kaden, so we could gift exchange. Yup...one more round of presents. They announced that they are expecting again...should be early this fall sometime!

I think if we wouldn't have just had a baby, the gifts may have been a little less, because Avery got a compilation of Christmas and just being born gifts.

I have pictures galore to go through before I can tell Luke which ones need resized and put up for the blog, so bear with me. Just wanted to update and hope everyone had a good holiday. We certainly did.

Happy New Year...I still have a job!

I worked 5pm-9pm today, and went in a bit early to talk to HR about my hours. Apparently she lost the note I wrote her about changing my availability to Wed.-Fri. 5pm-10pm and anytime Saturday. I may have an occasional Sunday in there when someone goes on vacation in electronics, therefore, next week I get register trained. WooHoo! (insert sarcasm here) I also had a verbal warning for my attendance for me being sick before Christmas. It's standard protocal for retail. I remember being so mad at Lowe's for going over my attendance because I missed the first week and a half of work because of a surgical complication and was placed on bedrest. Retail has no heart, they don't care what a doctor says. Unless you are dead, your lack of attendance is counted against you. So I guess I don't get to be that full-time stay-at-home-mom again...just yet. I will stick it out since they graciously started me out at more than minimum wage when I started. It will be slow the next couple of months, so I shouldn't get too many hours.

We took all of our Christmas decorations down today and packed them in the basement. The house looks a lot cleaner now. Looks like I'll be working on the living room the next 2 days to keep my deadline. We also plan to do grocery shopping tomorrow sometime...and hopefully soon, we will head up to Akron General for a baby. As it slowly approaches Tuesday, I'm afraid that we will have to sit through an induction, and all the induction stories I have from friends are bad. Hopefully it won't turn out that way.

We are staying on budget so far this month. Hopefully that won't change after the grocery shopping trip tomorrow. I'll check back in when I have more exciting news to share.

Christmas...again and again and again.

Well I missed work this week because of dry heaving and throwing up a lot. I couldn’t eat much, so I got dizzy really easily. Monday I worked 2 ½ hours and management sent me home because I looked like I was dying. I called off Tuesday and Wednesday, because the dry heaving just wasn’t letting up. I even dry heaved a few times Christmas Day, but I’ve been okay now, just feeling a little weak.

The girls had a great time with the holidays. Christmas Eve we went to my Dad’s and they opened gifts. Lilly doesn’t care about opening them, but Lexi loved to open hers and Lilly’s. They got a lot of play food from my Dad and their Nana and Papaw (on Sunday) for their kitchen sets.

Christmas Day we went to Luke’s brother’s house (they were supposed to have that new baby by now, so it was more convenient for them). We got some nice organization bags for toys, an art set, and some other toys from everyone.

On Boxing Day we went to my Mom’s place. She made a turkey and the girls got some socks, gloves, and an outfit. Her and her boyfriend also got them a little wooden table with chairs (very country-ish). Then we came home to start organizing toys in the living room.

Today I worked 11am-3pm. No one said anything to me about missing a few days. I went about my normal business and helped condense batter stack outs, since all the Christmas shelving was being torn down to make way for patio furniture. For now I think I will stick with the job. My schedule next week only consists of one night, for a total of 4 hours, so that’s not too bad…lol. Cutting hours is big after Christmas, so I probably won’t be working too much the next couple months. I changed by availability so I will not be working Sundays, Mondays, or Tuesdays. That gives Luke some consistent days off to schedule picture shoots if need be.

Below are a few shots from our various Christmas celebrations this week.

The weekend before Christmas and I'm sick

Well I’ve decided to hold off on any large projects until after the holidays. There are just so many places we have to go this week. The plan is my dad’s house on Christmas Eve, before I have to go to work (because retail stinks and I work on Christmas Eve), then Christmas Day we will spend at Luke’s brother’s house with the Cowgar side of the family, then the day after Christmas we will go down to Wilmot and do Christmas with my mom.

This past weekend was quite busy. I’ve been feeling sick for the past few days, and spent Saturday morning dry heaving for nearly 2 hours. I was supposed to work 7am-12pm, and that just didn’t happen. Sunday morning I felt sick as well, and the same goes for this morning. On top of that my grandparents came up from West Virginia Saturday and spent the late afternoon and evening here with the girls before heading up to my uncle’s house. Sunday we had our niece Samantha’s birthday party, and left there early to make it to my uncle’s for Christmas on my mom’s side of the family. Lexi has been feeling a bit sick lately, and Lilly missed her nap Sunday since we were out, so they were absolutely terrible half the day. Lexi seems to be having attachment issues since I’ve gone back to work. She constantly needs me, and can’t seem to do anything herself. On top of that, she has been having horrible whining episodes that no kind of consequence seems to fix. I honestly don’t think that this gig with K-Mart is going to last very long. We are having these issues with Lexi, and I’ve been there for a month and a half and missed 3 days. Two days I was really sick, and the other one, the strut spring broke on the car and flattened our driver side tire. On top of that, we are waiting for Luke’s brother’s wife to have their fourth baby. She was due on Saturday, and the baby still hasn’t come yet. I’ve already written a note to HR that I will be calling off that day if I am scheduled to work. That should be the last day I would miss, unless some unforeseen disaster happens (like the car).

The weather has been freezing the past two days. The wind has been blowing, keeping the temperature with wind chill at below zero! Needless to say, the electric heaters in the house aren’t keeping the house warm anymore. Old house equals drafty, and this wind is sucking our heat away. This makes it hard to do anything in the house except sit here cuddled up and shivering. Good new is that it is supposed to warm up. No snow for Christmas, but at that this point I don’t care.

I think after the holidays are over, I will keep myself in line by maybe posting a picture of one of the rooms in the house. That room will be my project room, for me to reorganize and declutter. I’m not sure of a timeline for each room. I guess it depends on my schedule with work and with babysitting. I’ll figure it out. I also will post a picture of a home improvement picture, and keep the blog updated on our progress. We only have $50 each month set aside to go towards home improvement, so projects will take a bit longer to complete, but we will get there.

I am also going to keep myself in check with a monthly debt snowball. I want to find a format that I will post with the stats of what we hope to do that month, and then show how much we were able to put towards the snowball. We will have a set amount from just Luke’s income, but extras from babysitting and K-Mart will hopefully be thrown into that snowball as well. I think I will maybe work on the debt snowball chart, and post that later, maybe with a couple pictures from the weekend.