Prepping for Christmas!
Mon., Dec. 22nd – Ah, my first official day of Christmas vacation! It was so nice waking up and actually getting a chance to make breakfast for everyone. I saw Mario off to work and once he was gone I started cleaning. I took a break, then started organizing Alaethia’s room some more. Her closet is almost 100% organized, except for some of the boys’ blankets and board games on the top shelves.
Eenan’s getting over his cough and was resting, Jaylen was playing the Game Cube without throwing a fit, and Alaethia was blissfully playing in her neat, clean room. I’m slowly getting the house in order. That’s what I call heaven.
Tues., Dec. 23rd – I woke up to turn off the alarm and find that Mario had already woken up. I staggered to the living room 20 minutes after the alarm went off and contemplated staying awake to do laundry. I told myself no, I was going to get the boys’ breakfast ready and then allow myself to go back to sleep. It’s one of my resolutions for this holiday break: sleep, and not feel guilty about it!
I woke up around 10 and waited for John to come over since he’d agreed to go to town with me the evening before. He didn’t come over till 11 and then tells me I have an hour and a half to get to town and shop. Um, it takes half an hour to get there and another half hour to get back…there was no way 30 minutes was enough to finish all my shopping. I had things to return which takes long enough!
I told him to forget it and started cleaning and doing some more laundry. He comes over around noon, bummed, and tells me his plans were cancelled. Karma! He asks if I want to go to town after all, but I say no, I’m busy now. He sits at the chair he usually occupies when he’s here and huffily takes out his laptop and starts surfing. I do want to go to town, but I take my time getting ready then making lunch for the kids and I. Mom came over to stay with the kids while we went shopping.
Our first stop was Circuit City to pay off the rest of my credit card balance ($15.56). We only had a $1,000 account and the finance charges per month were ridiculous. I’d give more than the minimum payment due and the finance charge was still greater than the payment. So we transferred the balance to another credit card with no interest for a year. I’m hoping to do that for all my credit card.
We went to the mall, which was John’s idea. I’d been avoiding the mall at all costs, except for the time I’d gone to JC Penny to buy Mom’s gift and Toys R Us for Aly’s. We stopped by several stores and then went to Build-a-Bear, where John wanted to get Alaethia her gift. The line trailed well outside the door of the store, out into the isle. We spent 1 hour standing in line, just to get to the “Stuffing” section. John was getting her a turkey (he’s strange like that) and he wanted to get her a Hello Kitty, but they were out. So we picked a pink bear with white hearts instead. I complained the whole time we were in line, especially because I could feel my sugar dropping and I was getting shaky. Thankfully I had some Jelly Bellies in my bag.
I was also getting in a bad mood since some shoppers from Mexico think the rules don’t apply to them and kept trying to cut in line. They kept coming up with excuses like, “I’m just going to pick the animal.” Um, no. I had to wait in line to pick our animals so they’d have to do the same thing, sorry.
We stuffed the bear and turkey and rubbed our love and care into the little hearts that get sewn in. We asked the girl helping us if she knew when they’d be getting more Hello Kitties and she said she wasn’t sure since they’re the first to go. She said definitely not before Christmas since it was already the 23rd.
We get in the other line to pay, which is another freaking hour. As we’re standing there looking at all the clothes while the line slowly inched closer to the registers we notice people walking around with limp, stuff-less Hello Kitties. Wtf? When we’re parallel to the animal bins we notice they’ve added not one, but three bin-fulls of Hello Kitties! We’d already stuffed bear, but I was hoping that when we got to the register we could talk to someone and have them switch them. I went across and grabbed a Hello Kitty and when we finally get to the register talk to the girl about our dilemma. She called someone to stuff the Hello Kitty and said they’d use the bear we’d already stuffed as a sample so everything was fine! I was so glad!
It was already 5pm and we were starving. John asked if I wanted to eat at Kumori (um, yes!) so that was our next stop. He needed to be home by 8pm, so we needed to eat and finish shopping in a hurry. Too bad they were taking long with everything—doesn’t it always happen that way? We also had this brilliant idea to order a Jalapeno Firecracker, which is a huge jalapeno stuffed with crab and cream cheese and had all these colorful sauces swirled all over. It looked and smelled delicious. I watched in awe as John ate his with no problem, while I kept taking tiny bites from mine and having my eyes and nose immediately water. I told him screw it, it was too hot and I couldn’t do it. So he happily took mine and ate it in two bites—and man did he regret it!! There wasn’t enough lemonade on the table to soothe the sting! He told me that my pepper was much, much hotter than his was. He’s like, “Didn’t you see me eating mine with no problem? Yours was a lot hotter!”
We ate our rolls quickly once they brought them to us, and then went to Barnes and Noble a few shops down to get a gift for a friend of his. Our next stop was Target, where I returned a few things and bought 2 cute dresses to stuff in Alaethia’s stocking (she has way too many toys already!), and some jeans for her and wipes. Next we went to Walmart, where I was going to buy the boys a Halo figure each, like the one Elda’d asked me to get for her for Brandon. We had no luck finding them, but we did find Elda’s Bakugan Starter Set she wanted for Brandon that we couldn’t find anywhere else. I couldn’t believe my bad luck; I hate not finding what I need. Since the kids wanted Happy Meals we stopped at Mcdonald’s and then finally, thankfully, went home.
The baby was squirming around like crazy. I still wish I had some type of ultrasound machine at home so I could see exactly what she’s doing when it seems that she’s kickboxing in there. Damn you Tom Cruise and your money and your in-home ultrasound machine!
I wrapped the rest of the presents I had stashed in the closet while all the kids were playing at Mary’s. I was about to start wrapping the cute play-stroller we’d bought for Alaethia when Mary brought her in. I didn’t think anything of it and left the box on the table while I cut the wrapping paper to size. Alaethia was walking into the living room when she stopped in her tracks and asked, “Hey, wha’ dat?” She came running back and asked to open the box and I thought fast and said, “No, Baby, we can’t. That’s Angela’s toy. Her mama forgot it here.” She actually fell for it!
I was so sleepy but I had to wait for the laundry to come out and I had to wait for Alaethia to stop being moody. She’d developed a canker sore and it was driving her nuts. I couldn’t find the Orajel anywhere. She was awake till 12am.
Wed., Dec. 24th – Mario and I both woke up and I made breakfast. He was tired and reluctant to go in to work in the first place, even though they’d be getting out early. His bosses, along with Jorge, Maggie and Robert, got drunk and stayed up till 4am so no one was answering their phone when he was calling to ask what time they should go in after he noticed he had a missed text from Robert. He said he’d wait till 9:30 for them to let him know and if no one called he wasn’t going in. They did call, but just to let him know it was an optional day, so of course he didn’t go in.
I don’t remember what Mario had to do that day, but I gathered up the kids, Alaethia’s things and Mom, of course, went with us to several stores to find those Halo figures I wanted for the kids. I went to 3 different Walmarts, including the one I’d gotten Brandon’s Halo figure at, but they were all sold out at the first two. I finally found some at the 3rd one, even though they weren’t the ones the kids originally wanted, but they were Master Chief anyway so they’d do. I got Alaethia a little Pucci (I think that’s what they’re called? They’re tiny plush dog houses with a tiny dog and tiny accessories—which I would promptly put away in case she decided to eat them), I found a gingerbread house THANK GOODNESS, and bought a large cookie tray for the Snickerdoodles I’d hopefully be baking.
I finished wrapping everything up and then we all went over to Mary’s to construct the gingerbread house. I *had* to get one this year since Eenan wrote a composition about his Christmas memories and making a gingerbread house with his siblings was one of them. Since the house already came assembled it was much easier to get the icing made and ready for “gluing” all the gumdrops and candies. They had fun making it…and then eating it.
Mary and I helped Santa *cough* wrap up Christmas gifts from him and stuff stockings and all that jazz after the boys went to sleep. Mario was watching Alaethia and he noticed she’d gotten a fever. I was so worried, especially because Mary told me to keep an eye on her since the canker sore and fever and cold-like symptoms (which she didn’t have) were the first signs they’d gotten when Bonnie got Meningitis as a baby, bless her soul. I just prayed and prayed that it wasn’t the reason why Aly was sick. After Mary and I finished up inside, we watched some TV and then to bed we went. I gave Alaethia some Motrin to help the Tylenol we’d given her earlier and put her to sleep in our bed. I get too nervous when they’re small and develop fevers. I’m always afraid they’ll get worse before they get better and I won’t notice. She slept well all night though. Good thing, because we had an early morning the next day!