Advent Project

I had the dubious privilege of witnessing the most bizarre tantrum a few weeks ago. When we were at a pet store with my in-laws, my father-in-law gave Doug some change he had gotten back after he made his purchase. Doug took the change and headed back to the cash register area, looked around and then wailed, "There's no box!!!". We were all quite confused. I asked him what he meant. He explained, "There's no box, for the kids!". And then it dawned on me, "Like at McDonald's? When I give you my change for the kids in the hospital?". "YES!". I  told him that the pet store didn't have a box for that, but if he liked, we could drop it off the next time we were at McDonald's. He seemed to like that idea, but whined about it for a bit on the car ride home. I was finally at wits end with this and told him when we got home, I'd stick the change in an envelope and mail it to Ronald McDonald. He seemed to be satisfied with that.

I started thinking about it though and it seemed like this was an opportunity for one of those 'teachable moments'. When we got home I asked him instead if he's like to collect change until Christmas and then drop off a lot of change at once for Ronald McDonald House. He agree and we decorated an old bottle (with glitter glue, naturally). We've collected quite a bit of change and Doug is always very excited when Jeff and I give him some more. At some point tomorrow, we'll all go together and drop it off. I'm amazed at how excited Doug is about it and how well he's stuck with it. I think this is a nice Christmas tradition for us to adopt. I think we'll definitely pick a charity and do the same thing next year.

Winding Down the Year

We're almost at the end of 2011. So I'm now ready to spend another six months trying to remember what year it is when I write checks. It takes about that long for the new year to sink in. Either that or I write '2001' everywhere. 2010 was really hard to remember because there was a '1' and a '0' just like in '2001'. But I digress.

We had a nice Christmas. I got the only thing I really wanted: Doug had a great Christmas. I also got some new Vera Bradley gear. We got to spend Christmas Eve with my Dad's family and Doug was really into my Grandfather's trains. Christmas morning we stayed here and my parents came to us in the afternoon. Doug got a lot of cool stuff. Our house looks like Santa just decided to stop at our house and dump all the toys from the rest of the block here. We had Christmas dinner over at my Grandma's house and Doug enjoyed a nice roaring fire in the fire place. Fires in fire places are evidently the most awesome thing ever. It was busy, but over all nice.


Doug's Grandparents in Kansas City sent him enough track to choke a hippo and we had a lot of fun on the 26th building track for his trains.


I decided that we were going to start the new year out with a clean house, so for the past few days we've been cleaning and taking down the decorations. We cleaned out the closets and pantry and donated things we didn't need or want anymore. I feel like it's a little easier to breath without the clutter, dust and decorations around. We're planning a very laid back New Year's Eve. We plan to go out for a late lunch and then come home and put on our pajama pants and watch movies and eat cocktail meatballs. I've been looking forward to this for weeks, it should be great!

Happy New Year!


Doug doing his part in the clean-up effort. Not pictured is his dancing to 'Some Kind of Monster' (I told him it was about Cookie Monster). If you can picture 'The Elaine' dance from Seinfeld without the kicking, you can picture Doug dance.