It's starting!

Yikes, Christmas is three days away! In Walgreen's today, I was a little surprised to hear a young boy repeating this over and over to himself: "Christmas is in three days, yep, Christmas in three days." My first thought was, "This kid is a little too excited; Christmas isn't until next week." Then I realized it is next week! Yay! I'm so excited to get to see so much of our family this week! I'm getting up at the crack tomorrow to try to beat the Wal-Mart crowds and so that Claire can stay home with Daddy before he leaves for work.

Bad news, folks. You knew it would happen: Claire got my cold. I'm sure many of you moms know this as well, but NONE of those children's cold and cough meds can be taken by kids under six! That's what the pharmacist at Walgreen's told me anyway. He said the FDA allows saline spray and baby Tylenol only. SO I'm hoping I can get our doc to call in some cold medicine she prescribed Claire probably a year ago without me having to take her to the dr. office in this bitter cold!

Speaking of which, I posted on Facebook and Twitter that we had a magical snow last week: it only happened in a very small area which included us! I'm not sure how far west and north it went, but the snow stopped about half a mile from our house and didn't fall in town at all! It was strange! Claire and I were both suffering from some major cabin fever at this point, me having been too sick to go out much the previous two days, so we bundled up and went outside to run around a little. This wasn't technically Claire's first snow; we had some some pretty deep snow this March , but Claire couldn't really enjoy it(Strange to think that then, snow made for nothing but stress for me!). This time, she said snow, which sounded just like "no," clapped her hands in delight, and ran around the yard. Unfortunately, I still don't have any gloves for her, so we didn't stay out very long.


I finished my Christmas shopping Friday with my sister! Yay! I'm so glad I don't have to face the crowds in Sherman this week. The area where we do most of our shopping is poorly designed and even on a typical Saturday, has terrible traffic jams around the exit ramp and in the parking lots. Makes it hard to be merry and bright!

Quick list of things I'm excited about this week:

1. Claire's first Christmas to kind of know what's going on! We have three or four Christmas books, a couple stuffed Santa Clauses, and of course, the ill-fated meeting with jolly old Saint Nick himself in the mall (we got one of those hilarious kid-crying-in-Santa's lap pics!). We opened our gifts from Paul and Diane today, and she was thrilled, dancing and bouncing and laughing like crazy!
   
2. Seeing The Tale of Despereaux with Mom, Tyler, and maybe Claire.
   
3. Making lots of sweet treats, including strawberry pretzel salad, chocolate-and-caramel drizzled potato chips, french toast casserole, and peanut butter cup cheesecake. (I don't get so excited about broccoli cheese casserole.)
4. Christmas Eve at Dad's house with the sibs and Grandma: For the people on my list who have everything: pictures of their darling granddaughter!
   
5. Christmas morning at Mom's house: Last year, it was a marathon of Rock Band in our pj's. We'll see what this year holds.
   
6. Friday night with the Mauck sibs and fams: Cutting down on the usual mountain of gifts with Paul and Diane giving each son's family their gifts separately. With all of us watching each person open each gift, that one can go way past the kids' bedtimes!
   
7. Saturday with Diane's extended fam AND my mom's extended fam (Yep, they're on the same day!). I just hope we're able to get in some quality time with the Dallas and Mississippi-based branch of our family without being despised by all the children at the Pannells by holding up their gift distribution!
   

I doubt I post again before Christmas, so I hope all you lovely readers have a holiday filled with comfort and joy!

Stats of my cold

Symptoms: Persistent dry cough, runny nose, sneezing, sinus headache

Movies watched since Friday: Emma, The Goonies, Footloose, Overboard, Pride & Prejudice (1.5 hours of the BBC version), and Caddyshack.

Workouts since Friday: 0

Diet: steady stream of hot tea, cough drops, and crackers

This sounds like the couch potato's dream, but it ain't all it's cracked up to be. YUCK! Claire has taken up the amusing habit of blowing her nose on tissues and throwing them in the "tash." See what she's been seeing mommy doing the past few days?

Footloose Fun Facts!

(Culled from my sick night home alone watching the special features on my Collector's Edition of Footloose)

1. The movie was inspired by events in Elmore City, Oklahoma (just west of I-35 south of Pauls Valley)! The writer of Fame and writer of Footloose saw a newspaper article about this small town's first prom in 95 years because public dancing had been outlawed. He traveled there, talked to people involved, visited the churches and high school, and wrote the film!
2. Zac Efron is going to make a GREAT Ren McCormick in 2010!!
   

Christmas shopping + 19-month-old - Stroller = NIGHTMARE!

Dividends of the above equation:

1. A broken glass jar at Hobby Lobby: She stayed in the cart the entire time, until I was checking out and let her down for a minute, and this is what happens.
2. Jewelry case as ice skate: While I was perusing jewelry in Dillard's, Claire found a padded leather jewelry drawer organizer conveniently located on a low shelf, pulled it down, and stuck her foot in it for some one-legged carpet-skating.
3. Rearrangement of Dillard's shoe display

And the grand finale, folks.....drum roll, if you please...

4. Claire and me as new parts of the Victoria's Secret display window: You know those pink spotted dogs Victoria's Secret has in its PINK display windows? Yeah, Claire darted through a rack of PINK sweats, climbed up on top of the 2-foot platform in the display window, and was patting the dog when I found her, and laughing maniacally when she realized she'd been found.

Christmas hullabaloo!

Sorry about the lag in posting. Even though I do live the luxurious life of a SAHM, I still get busy! Or I just prefer spending off-time playing with Claire to posting to my blog.

Here's a vid of Claire reading. I had the sheets thrown back to air them out yesterday morning, and Claire gathered up three of her favorite books and went and cozied up on top of the pillows and sheets and started reading!




Anyway, after finishing up a writing assignment this week, I realized I only have a few short weeks to prep my curriculum and syllabus for my SOSU class, so I've been working on that everyday, with frequent breaks for last-minute online shopping of course.

Here's Claire, enjoying an afternoon cookie after coming in from outside, which explains her flyaway hair! She pulled herself and the saucer up on the couch all by herself! Reminds me of myself, enjoying a cookie in comfort!



Claire makes her funny face while riding "Minga," named after a horse on Sesame Street.

Thanksgiving Fun!

Well we're back and rested up from our fun weekend in Kansas. The Maucks have lots of fun traditions that I've enjoyed getting to be a part of in the last four years. There's four-wheeling the kids around, and pulling a big group of them in a trailer, all ages, from 1 to 13.

The men always go bird-hunting (except for Jay, who is all buck), and sometimes gigging (I'm still not entirely sure what this entails). We of course have a HUGE meal on Thursday, with melt-in-your-mouth Kansas corn, homemade rolls, smoked ham, and Diane's great dressing. I made two Paula Deen recipes that were quite delicious, if I do say so myself: pumpkin cheesecake, pecan-toffee tassies, and a quick and easy sugar cookies (from a mix) with raspberry jam thumbprints.

















Abby is always a favorite of the babies and kids. This is Logan, Katelyn, and Claire Mauck! Claire has started saying Katelyn's name, "Tatie." She loves her!



















Claire and Lauren were having a lot of fun climbing from the mini-trampoline to the couch. Claire kept trying to love on her, but Lauren was having none of it! Zack was keeping an eye on them.

Friday is for shopping, although I'm not as hard-core as some. One group always leaves around six, while I go with the later group around eight. I got four or five Christmas gifts, and probably almost matched that number in clothes for me! But I got some good deals. Jay likes to say I usually match Christmas gifts in stuff for me, but I don't think it's quite that bad!

Jay and I went out on a long four-wheeler ride Friday afternoon while Claire was sleeping, along with four other Maucks. Uncle Don cut a whole bunch of trails through his woods, with some thrilling drops, tight turns, and creek crossings. It was super-fun!

We stayed with Jay's cousin Tracy, her hub Kourt, and their two little boys Dylan and Drew. Dylan loves playing with Jay, and Claire loved playing with Dylan, so they had a lot of fun.
Friday night is always steak night, when Don grills steaks over an open fire with bois d'arc wood. It is the best meat I have ever eaten! After din, four of the husbands and one wife put the babies to bed while five of us stayed up and played Nertz. Let me just tell you Pannells, I apologize for the miserable way I represented our family. It was the worst three games of my life! The last game was seriously 20 hands long and I never got out of the negatives! Even though I think I Nertzed twice in that one! Singles nertz is so much harder than doubles! The scores are lower and it goes on forever! It was still fun though.

We left Saturday morning and got home at about four in the afternoon. Claire did not take a single nap on the way home! She was pretty good, though. Between Diane and I, we had a ton of books and movies and other stuff to keep her occupied.