It's a Wonderful Life

Merry Christmas (a few days late) everyone!  The decorations are put away and the tree has been burned!  On to New Years Eve!

Christmas really is a series of celebrations for our family.  It started on Saturday with The Christmas Party of The Year!

Here is my leg lamp costume:

 I was able to cajole my husband into participating.  He was the shipping crate to my leg lamp.

Family Photo (please excuse Kevin's hat hair and the angry snow-woman):

I really expected that getting Kevin to dress up would have been my biggest hurdle.  Boy was I wrong.  It was Kaci.  From the minute she saw her snow man costume, she hated it.  In fact her honest to God first reaction was to scream "I DON'T LIKE IT".  We finally got it on her, but she refused to keep the hat on.

Kaci's look of disgust:

Who else was at the party you may ask??  The Target lady from last year's Christmas commercials, Christmas Elvis, a hot elf, Cousin Eddy, Kevin from Home Alone, and the Grinch were among us!  Here is a partial group shot with an especially good angle of the Target lady and her little Grinch.  Sorry Cousin Eddy - looks like you didn't make the cut.

Christmas continues with Christmas Eve festivities being held at Kevin's Dad's house.  Food, wine and presents were had by all!

Christmas was at our house and consisted of prime rib dinner, more wine and more presents!

Nude present opening:

Christmas Tutu:

Kaci must view and approve all photos taken of her:

Upon giving the gift of a stylish white watch to her cousin, Kaci stole it and put it on!  Here she is showing it off to her Uncle Mike:

The day after Christmas consisted of some nasty type of stomach illness for me.  It was not morning sickness, nor a hangover for all that were kind enough to submit a guess.  Oh well, who doesn't like a good purge after the holidays?

So now I am trying to get today and tomorrow's work days to pass quickly as I have a pretty exciting weekend planned (more on that next week).  Quite a challenge when your work load has diminished to zilch.  What in the world will you do to keep yourself busy you may ask?  I have prepared a list:
Friday:

• Write this blog  Done!
• Go to Target for diapers, bottled water, etc.
• Delete the 165 pictures of nothing that Kaci took from my phone. Example:

• Complete 2 reports (work related nonsense)

Saturday:

• Paint my fingers
• Paint my toes
• Answer a few phone calls
• Check to see how many visits my blog got since Friday
• Complete some staff observations and account reviews (work related nonsense)

Bring on 2013!!!

Writers Block

I have no idea what to write about today.  It is just one of the gray days that stomps on my creativity and motivation.  So I am just going to wing it.  Bear with me folks.

CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS:

• I am so close to being done with my shopping.  Only a couple of stocking stuffers for my husband.  
• I am putting together an amazing costume for THE CHRISTMAS PARTY OF THE YEAR that is being held this Saturday.  I am attempting a leg lamp costume.  I will post pictures once complete!
• My husband will be going as himself.  My Dad got to him!  He encouraged Kevin to take a stand and just say no to Christmas costumes.  His reasoning - if they dress up for this Christmas party, then we will start making them dress up on every holiday including Easter, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Day Jr., etc.
• Kaci is going to be a snowman.
• Erickson version of Elf on the Shelf - I was too cheap to spend the $29.99 for the original Elf on the Shelf.  However, while on the hunt for some items needed for my leg lamp costume, I came across a creepy little elf for $1.99.  Bargain!  Here he is in action:

• We had to buy new lights for our tree this year.  Does anyone else agree that the LED lights are a little too disco-ish for the holidays?

KACI:

• Her new favorite thing is to have her nails painted.  We paint, blow dry, paint other hand, blow dry, paint a foot, blow dry, paint the other foot.  Works pretty well!

• New party dress and boots!

• Crazy hair day!

Oh Christmas Tree

After a late start to our Sunday morning (Kaci slept in until 8:30!) we ventured out to pick up a Christmas tree.  We go with a live one because I absolutely LOVE the smell of a fresh tree.  What I don't like is having to water it and vacuum the needles up every 20 minutes.  Oh well, it's only for a few weeks.

Kaci was not excited.  She wanted to be a lazy bean today and lay around with no pants on.  Seriously, the kid has a strange aversion to pants lately.  Hope she overcomes that some day.

And now join me as I recap Christmas Tree Sunday with some photos:

This is the first tree that Kaci had her sights set on...

After a little persuasion she agreed to move on and found this little gem...

For obvious reasons, we vetoed Kaci's choice and went with this option...

Kaci's thoughts on the decision...

I didn't want to miss out on this unique photo opportunity...

And after the tree was in the house and Kaci was down for a nap...

I staged these delicious bloody mary's to show off our tree!

I am going to count this as a pretty productive Sunday.  Laundry done, house cleaned, tree up and blogging complete.  Bring it on Monday...BRING IT ON!