It's winter break time ya'll

So I went to hang with the homegirls for a few days with the rugrats... and it snowed.. again... just a few days after they had just gotten their power back on after it being out for 4 days. No snow at home. Such is life in New England.

A good time was had while at our stay. Hotel HoJo was very welcoming!. Breakfast and coffee was provided, as was entertainment and booze should be we need it. (Don't get your hopes up, there were no strippers, unless you count the kids running around in their skivvies.) There was even a party full of yummy gluten free food in hopes of my sister being able to get more stuff for FREE!!! Wheee! free stuff, who doesn't like free stuff AND my company?? That's what I thought.

When I came into town a few weeks back it was a *really* quick trip, as the sole purpose was for work and I babysat in exchange for room and board and was out the door shortly after lunch to head to the Pampered Chef party. It was nice spending time with my nephews in a completely different dynamic than when my kids are there and it's pretty chaotic and loud the whole time, just like it was this past weekend. On Saturday we got to visit with mom for a bit before she had to head off to work. Due to her work schedule we don't get to visit as much as we'd like and not nearly as I would like, but we make do with what we can, when we can.

On Sunday the big party day, we had to shovel the street and driveway so people would have a place to park. Stupid snow. Only a brave couple came to the party, but a good time was had by all! On Monday i went to the store grabbed fixins' for breakfast, grabbed a friend and went back so we could feast on breakfast! and after the brother-in-law got home from doing some work, we went sledding on the bluffs for a quick hour before we left for home. While sledding we rain into my friends son sledding with some friends, how's that for coincidence, eh?

We all had a fun time! Here are some pictures of our time back in the 'ham. Also there was this weird nose and glasses that kept finding it's way onto our faces. You've been warned.

   

Boy am I glad that's over with

And by that I mean "The Holidays" which means the holiday Trifecta from Hell: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. ::breathe::

Thanksgiving is normally my most favorite holiday. In my youth we used to travel an hour to my grandmother's where, depending on if it was the year the alternating branches of the clan were there or not, we would all get together (sometimes 25+ people I think) and hang out and the cousins would go run amok and play and have a grand ol' time while the adults did... something.... and we had and prayed for  Eddie Jones to have the bones, because he don't eat no meat, said what we were thankful for and dug in to a glorious meal. My favorite part was the dish of little onions, and EVERYONE was sent home with leftovers.  For the last several years we haven't been able to get together with my half the family for Thanksgiving even though the goal is to do the every other year thing. Our rotation got off and we haven't been able to get it back for one reason or another.

Our tree just after Santa delivered. He says Hi.

This year we thought, for a change, we'd offer to host Thanksgiving at our house. Normally when we spend the holidays with the hubster's side we go to his aunt and uncles with his parents, grandparents and a cousin (the aunt and uncle's son and gf who are in the area). It's usually a pleasant time, but seeing as how I make my own turkey dinner anyway as a result of not being able to take leftovers we thought the change would be welcomed. Well when we invited people, no one wanted to come :( and so I made turkey dinner just for us. For my two kids and husband turkey dinner is not a favorite meal, so they didn't really eat much of it. I got all the leftovers I needed to keep the yummy part of the day lingering for several more, but the day was unsatisfying without the extended family. So my Thanksgiving was pretty "meh" and put me in this weird funk where I didn't really care about upcoming Christmas and decorating, or anything really family oriented. This has never really happened before. 

Christmas break was good. I went into work a couple days, and thanks to university negotiations with the holiday schedule, I now get the 2 work days prior to New Year's off (instead of Evacuation & Bunker Hill Day) . I ended up working on Friday but not Monday or Tuesday and ended up with a 4-day weekend!

auto setting with flash

With my money I earned from Pamered Chef I went out and bought myself the new phone I have been wanting! yay! Aaaaaaaand. I love it. One thing that is awesome is that the touch screen works wearing gloves (yahoo!) and the camera just rocks. The the left you will see 2 photos. They were taken about 9pm at night back to back looking at the same thing. the bottom picture was taken in it's "night" setting and the the top was taken using just the flash on auto. 

This phone really touted the low light picture taking functionalitly and dog-nab it, it works wonderfully. And boy oh boy did I miss that little camera button on the side of the phone. Having to tap the screen to take a picture sucks donkey balls. I don't ever want to have to do that again. 

Night Setting!

I took the kiddos sledding and had a grand ol' time on the hill at the kids' former preschool. We also went one day to the town's favorite sledding area near the hospital and I will never take them there again! It was chaos city.

Growing up we had some pretty basic common sense rules for sledding:

1. Wait until the person at the bottom of the path moves out of the way before heading down,

2. Don't walk up the path to return to the top, walk off to the side

and a couple others which were applied based on the path used for sledding: 

3. If your path exits you into the street do not sled without a minimum 2 spotters at the bottom of the hill to check for traffic,

4. roll off the sled before you crash into the tree

sledding at the preschool!

While rules 3 &4 didn't apply here, rules 1&2 certainly did, and NO ONE was following them. I was freaking. out. The hill was high and steep (it was an old toboggan run that used to have a different path to get to the top, no longer in use), the snow was as hard and slippery as a sheet of ice, and there were a ton of people. There is also a bunny slope off the parking area where Liam was going down on the neighbors slow sled. He was fine. 

People were flying down this hill without a care in the world. Everyone was returning to the top walking in the path of the other sledders. big adult types were way at the tippy top waiting for the path to clear "enough" so they can zip down without "hopefully" wiping anyone out on the way down. I watched one teen head down from one of the mid point launch areas and wipe out an adult man and is 2-3 year old child. They were stupidly just standing there in the middle of the sledding area and then the teen didn't even go and apologize to the guy and instead ran off to mommy who was sitting in her car and wasn't watching watching.. all sorts of effed-upness going on here and I was NOT happy about it. we left shortly after and heading to the preschool for a few until we realized the temps dropped and we were soooo cold... On the way back from that sledding trip I told them that I would never take them there again because it was too dangerous and I was really anxious about it because someone is going to get seriously injured there. They said okay without a fight. I think they thought it was scary too.

Now that it's a new year and the Holidaze are long gone, I can get back to normal. yay! My hope is that in the next month I can get my mother her belated birthday present that is now just about 2 months overdue. *sigh*