Ten on Tuesday

1. Today I am being naughty and wearing a certain Christmas gift that I bought for someone. Can I help it if the gift wasn’t wrapped just yet and it totally matched my outfit today? I’m sure I’ll get it wrapped soon, unless it matches my outfit for my work holiday party this weekend…
***Let’s see how many of my friends and family actually read our blog and question if it is their gift I am wearing***

2. Last night Justin made me my very first Reuben sandwich. Dee-lish! Actually, since Justin read up on the history of this sandwich before making it he informed me that we were, in fact, eating Rachel sandwiches since ours had pastrami (or was it salami?) instead of corned beef (which is fine by me since corned beef has never sounded all that appetizing anyhow). But then I pointed out to Justin that his sandwich didn’t even have sauerkraut on it. What then should that sandwich be called? A virgin Rachel? Which brings me to #3…

3. I LOVE SAUERKRAUT! Seriously, its delicious and I never eat it. It even tasted good to me when I was in my first trimester with Kendry and could not find anything appetizing.

4. This morning it was only 5 degrees here - even colder than yesterday. Do I even need to say it? Where on earth is my snow to go with these freezing temperatures?!

5. Kendry is still a bit off from our late nights this last weekend in Quincy. He woke up around 4:30 on Monday morning, and last night he was up at 2:30 and then 5:30. I don’t dare say that I need a good night’s sleep tonight (even though I obviously do) because then he’ll be up at least three times tonight.

6. I’m meeting some girlfriends for dinner at Thai Taste after work tonight. I can already taste the pahd thai. Yummy!

7. I need to find a fun white elephant gift for Justin’s work Christmas party on the 18th. I think we are supposed to just contribute a gift as a couple, but Justin wants to bring a winning scratch ticket ($10) as his gift, and for some reason this year I want to contribute an item people fight to have. Could this stem from a desire to really be liked by Justin’s colleagues?

8. The UPS package tracker indicates that my Christmas cards were delivered to our house today, which means its time to start addressing, stamping and mailing.

9. Justin, Kathy and kiddos arrive in a week, and my friend Amanda will be in our neck of the woods around the same time. There is nothing like time with family and friends during the holidays.

10. My baby boy is 7 months old today!

New Rudolph Tradition

Most of you know just how much I LOVE the claymation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer movie that plays on TV each December. In fact, I even own it on video, although it is much more fun to watch it live on TV. I'm not really sure why that is. Perhaps because if its on TV that must mean Christmas is coming, as opposed to watching it on video at any other time during the year, which, for the record, I do not do.


I figured it was only appropriate for me to get Kendry off on the right foot when it comes to this Christmas tradition of mine. The program aired on TV last night, but it didn't start until 8pm, and Kendry usually goes to bed between 7:30 and 8. Not to mention that WSU and Gonzaga were playing basketball against each other last night, so someone else in the house was playing couch commando. Even if I had wanted to stretch Kendry's bedtime out so he could watch the show, it wasn't going to happen. We're pretty sure he is now cutting teeth on top and he started getting pretty irritable around 6:30 last night. I had planned to put up and decorate our Christmas tree while Kendry bounced in his jumperoo (happily) nearby and could watch. But no dice on that plan. I finally gave Kendry a little baby tylenol and decided to give him some mommy time. Then I realized the perfect solution. I grabbed my Rudolph video, Kendry's pacifier and bear blankie, and our Christmas quilt, and together the two of us curled up to watch Rudolph on mommy and daddy's bed. For only being 7 months old Kendry actually seemed to enjoy the movie, not to mention the sound of me singing along with the songs. He happily played on my lap until he could no longer keep his eyes open.
Yes, this is going to be a magnificent Christmas tradition.

Ten on Tuesday

1. “I’m…dreamin…of a white…Christmas…” I am listening to my Elvis Christmas CD in the car this week, in the hopes of introducing Kendry to some real Christmas classics. He seemed to be laughing to the tunes this morning. I’m not sure if that means he likes Elvis or if he is already laughing at how old-fashioned his mommy is.

2. We recently bought Kendry some meat baby foods and last night I gave him his first taste of pureed ham. The smell alone was about enough to knock me out - it reeks like Spam! He was a sport and ate a good portion of it before his gag reflex started kicking in. I couldn’t blame the kid. He eats pretty much anything, but the ham was probably pushing his limits. This morning when I got him out of bed I could have sworn I caught another whiff of Spam - blech! I think we’ll ditch the baby food ham and just let him enjoy diced up real ham when he is ready.

3. We’re putting up our Christmas tree tomorrow! Hooray!

4. Kendry had his first meeting with Santa last night and he did great. He gave Santa a few stares, but then smiled happily for the camera.

5. I have accepted the fact that pregnancy totally stole my rear end, but yesterday I sat on a bench at work and felt like I was resting my entire body weight on my butt bones (probably not the actual medical terminology, but you know what I mean). Ouch! Shortly thereafter I looked up the cost for a gym membership at the aquatic center near our house. $20 a month is a small price to pay to get my rear end back (meaning muscle). My goal is to get to the gym for my first workout sometime in the next week. Or, I suppose I could just eat a lot of Christmas baked goods over the next month.

6. Justin, Kathy and their kiddos will be here to visit us in just two weeks! I can't wait for Alexis and Kendry to meet; they are only three weeks apart in age.

7. We are SICK of turkey!!

8. 24 more days until Christmas, which means I only have about 13 more days to get my gifts mailed off to Alaska. And with each passing day the post office gets crazier and crazier...

9. We bought over $50 worth of Christmas lights at Walmart the day after Christmas last year. At that time Justin was feeling quite ambitious about Christmas 2009. He put up the lights this last weekend and they look gorgeous, but he only used about 5 strands of icicle lights on the front of the house, and a few blue strands for the tree in front of our house. You do the math. Yep, we still have about 10-15 boxes of various Christmas lights sitting in the basement. What were we thinking? Anyone need lights?

10. Where is my first snow?! I'm still dreamin of a white Christmas...

Black Friday Mayhem

Friday morning at 5:00 a.m. found me in my car, headed to Walmart to begin my Black Friday shopping. Given that I had not gone to sleep until after 11:00 p.m. the night before, I was quite shocked to discover that I didn’t have much trouble climbing out of bed at 4:15 a.m. Mind you, getting up at that hour to go to work, and getting up at that hour to go SHOPPING are two very different scenarios. And you can bet that I was ready for some serious shopping.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my boys (hubby and kiddo), but on Thanksgiving I spent all day with just boys. This year we were supposed to spend Thanksgiving in Quincy with Justin’s family, but his grandma was admitted to the hospital the day before Thanksgiving so we decided it would be best for us to stay and help out. Justin’s dad drove down on Thanksgiving Day to see his mom, so he joined us for dinner. And we invited Grandpa Wayne to come to dinner as well, after he was done visiting Grandma at the hospital. So, our Thanksgiving dinner consisted of three and a half men, and me. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving, but I’m sure you can understand why I was in desperate need of some serious girly shopping time the following day. I had scoped out all the ads the night before and planned my strategy of attack. If only I knew what awaited me…

For starters, our brand new Walmart parking lot was packed! Seriously, that store didn’t see that many cars when it opened just two months ago, and that is saying something for this neck of the woods (no offense to my fellow LC Valley residents). At that point I knew I was in over my head. I went straight to the toy aisles to achieve my first mission: gifts for nieces and nephews. On my way there I think I was nearly run over three different times by shopping carts. In fact, I think two of those three near death experiences may have been by the same crazy shopper. They were out to get me, I tell ya!

As I hightailed it through the store, picking up my mere four items, I was shocked to hear people detailing how they had been at the 24 hour store since 1:00 a.m., just loading their carts with the sale goods and then waiting for the official 5:00 a.m. store price so they could checkout. Can you say crazy!? Where do these people come from? I was still at home in my turkey coma at 1:00 a.m.

My one blessed experience at Walmart (and perhaps my greatest Walmart experience ever) was when I asked a store manager, who just happened to be strolling by me, where the Tupperware set I was looking for might be located. He helped me search the area where he thought it had been stocked, but then admitted they were probably all gone. I decided I wasn’t going to look all over the entire store for a stupid Tupperware set and wandered off to another department. But about thirty seconds later I heard someone behind me shout “I found one!” Of course, I didn’t turn my head at this exclamation because I just figured it was another crazed shopper. But in fact, it was the manager. He had found the very last Tupperware set, which was on a spectacular sale by the way, and had spotted and followed my green hat as I wandered into the other department. Talk about amazing customer service, especially on Black Friday. So, a shout out to Walmart manager Brad - you rock!

I had also hoped to find some new pajamas for Kendry on this shopping trip. My little sprout of a child is now wearing pajamas in the 12-18mth length since he is so long/tall, and I think he grows out of a new pair or two every week. I could probably make his current pj’s last longer by snipping off the feet, or by simply buying pj’s with no enclosed feet on them, but the footie pajamas are just so darn cute on babies! Walmart had advertised $3 pajamas for kids on Black Friday, so after Rock Star Manager Brad got me my Tupperware set I set out in search of the pj’s aisle. Once I spotted the pj’s, however, I knew it was time to leave. The other mothers like me were scavenging over the bin like vultures. Even if I had wanted to bust out my high school basketball “boxing out” skills to vie for position around the bin, I knew it would be impossible to find what I was looking for anyway. The pj’s were no longer neatly stacked by size and pattern, rather they were all in one big heap, having been rampaged by the mothers before me. Fortunately for me, I had less than 10 items for checkout so I didn’t have to wait in line for an hour to escape the mayhem that was Walmart.

I will admit that after this start to the day the other stores seemed a lot less crazy, or maybe I was just acclimated to the shopping chaos. Either way, aside from my half hour wait at Kmart just to checkout, the rest of my stops were quick and successful. I got my three huge awesome-smelling candles for just $9, an adorable holiday sweater with matching hat and mittens for Kendry, the regular socks and underwear stash for Justin, and pretty much the rest of my Christmas gifts for everyone else on my list.

The one drag was not finding our California King sheet set at Costco, even through they had advertised Queen, King and California King sizes. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all, right?

So, in summation, I’m not sure this whole Black Friday thing its all its cracked up to be. I suppose if I was looking to buy something more pricey like a TV, furniture or computer, the Black Friday sales might help me out. But until I have extra cash to shop for items of that caliber, I think sleeping in and having a lazy morning with my boys wins hands down.

Homesick for Alaska

Something about the holiday season always makes me a little homesick for Fairbanks. The holiday season is generally a time to be with family, and at this point pretty much all of my family still lives (or will soon live) in Alaska. Since we can only do one Alaska visit per year, if we're lucky, it is so much easier for us to travel up there in the summer as opposed to Thanksgiving or Christmas. Not to mention how much cheaper it is since mileage tickets are impossible to use over the holidays. In fact, the last time we spent Christmas in Alaska was the first Christmas we were married (2005). Ahh, the infamous "everyone crammed into one house and everyone got sick" Christmas. Talk about memories. Not only were Justin and I in culture shock from the vast darkness and the sub-zero temperature, but we also had to battle a stomach bug. I'm sure the Christmas dinner was delicious, but I don't remember being able to stomach any of it.

That was also the Christmas where I actually failed my driving test. Yes, me, the perfect driver who practically aced the driving test on my 16th birthday. Who knew you could gain so many years of experience behind the wheel and at the same time proceed to forget all the stupid driving factoids that never mattered to begin with? Hello! I'm not applying for a motorcycle license, so why would I need to know how many motorcycles can travel side by side and one behind the other on an interstate freeway with four lanes, in New Jersey, headed north, when its raining, if no one is around to hear them...

Okay, so maybe it wasn't that bad. My ego is still a little bruised. But really, the only reason I even tried to take my test (without studying) is because I had turned in my Alaska driver's license only weeks before in Washington in order to have a proper Washington license with my new married name on it. I was worried I was going to be restricted from boarding the plane to Fairbanks if I didn't have the proper ID that identified me as Jody Gimlin rather than Jody Binder. But my assumption that I could get up to Alaska and just get a new Alaska license was incorrect because they made me take the stupid test.

Now, you might ask: Why all this trouble for an Alaska license when I am no longer a resident anyway? Well, in case you didn't know, Alaska has no sales tax. So, my handy dandy Alaska license has saved me a pretty penny or two on large purchases in Washington over the years. Thus, you see why I was so adamant about getting the license replaced.

After my complete failure of the test - and I say complete because I didn't even get through 16 of the 20 questions before I had exceeded the maximum amount of incorrect answers - the Alaska DMV told me I could try the test again in two weeks. Yeah, right! Even if I was going to be there two weeks later there was no way I was going to put myself through that embarrassment again. So I settled for just getting an Alaska ID instead of a license. By the way, Justin was not with me when this whole DMV incident occurred and it took me a few days to overcome my pride and admit it to him. He has never let me live this one down, and I'm sure as soon as Kendry is old enough to understand what a license is Justin will be telling him that his mother can't pass driving tests.

But I digress... obviously, being so far from my family this time of year is the first reason I get homesick for my home state. The second reason would be: SNOW! It is completely unreasonable to expect an Alaskan girl to survive through the holiday season without the most magical form of precipitation. When we moved to the LC Valley three and a half years ago everyone failed to tell me that the valley gets very little snow each year, if any. I have been going through withdrawal ever since. And I think its especially hard now that we have Kendry because I am so excited for him to experience snow for the first time. And I mean REAL snow, not this half inch stuff you wake up to at 7am, only to have it melt by noon. No, I mean the foot of snow that keeps you inside (except to go play in it) and that sticks around at least until Christmas. The kind of snow where a kid can make a snowman without having to use all of the snow in their front yard. Really, how sad is it to see a snowman who looks like he is half grass, half snow sitting in a perfectly snow-free yard. Pa-the-tic! (said in sing song voice)

Alright, I'll openly admit that after a month of being back in the Alaska cold and snow I would probably be ready to come back to Washington, but for now I'm going to be a bit nostalgic. Oh, Alaska, how I miss thee...