A list

Things I did when I was a stay-at-home mom again for a few days:

1. Painted the girls nails.
2. Went to a fun Disney movie.
3. Ate at "Old MacDonald's" (what the girls call it).
4. Puzzles
5. Pretending
6. Made breakfast, lunch, and cooked dinner.
7. Cleaned the kitchen
8. Laundry
9. Cuddled on the couch with M & J
10. Read books
11. Played Hungry Hungry Hippo (but the old one is better - I wish I had saved mine)
12. Threw stuff away
13. Played kitchen with M & J
14. Baked
15. Really enjoyed time with my family

I'm getting ready to go back to work this afternoon, but before I do, I wanted to give a big shout out to my friend Greta who is welcoming Charlie into the Coalier family today. Congratulations Sam, Greta, Sadie, Ruby, and Poppi!

Christmas Eve Eve

Why am I still awake? I had an exhausting month at work and now that I have a 4-day break I should be resting and going to bed early because I don't have any work that I have taken home, I have all my shopping done, and I just get to play with the girls tomorrow so I don't really have anything to plan. Jeff is asleep and I have no idea how he'll have the energy to wake up and go duck hunting in about 4 hours. He must really love to duck hunt.

I am so excited for the girls this year. We bought them bikes and I can't wait to see their faces on Christmas morning. And even more than for the possibility of Santa bringing them presents, they are super excited that it's Jesus' birthday. We are going to make a cake for him (M's idea - so cute). I love her joy right now. I wish I could bottle it and save it forever.

Good night. :)

Crazy cold

I'm sitting at my computer trying to find a paint color for our basement by reading my many favorite blogs. I think I'm going with Tobacco Road by Duron. And I am freezing. We used to live in Northern Illinois and I had built up a pretty good cold weather tolerance. We first visited and looked for a place to live when they had just had an ice storm, which was a pretty normal thing around there. I used to run in negative temperatures - once when the wind chill was -20 and the mph was pretty high. We were about 10 miles from the Wisconsin border - we used to run there and back during our training runs. Now after writing that, I am missing my old running days. I hope that someday I can run hard and fast again. I knew this post was going to be random. It's been a LONNNNNG week at work and I am ready for the weekend.