Tackle it Tuesday #10 - Clean up, errands and prayers

This week's tackle is sans pictures, I have a birthday party coming up for my son on January 11, so I am deep cleaning, scrubbing floors, dusting, etc and I am really not up for taking before and after pics with everything that I need to do with having to put away Christmas gifts on top of this.

We are also running to the credit union this morning to get a deposit in before the end of the year to save us all a $5 service charge.

The most important tackle today is prayers for Baby Stellan, he is in the hospital fighting for his life with RSV. You can get details and updates on My Charming Kids please keep Stellan and the whole family in your prayers, God is great.

Check out what other people are tackling and tell us what you are tackling over at 5 Minutes for Moms.

It's Christmas!!!

Well, Christmas Eve anyway, I'm home by myself, I have to finish a blanket and straighten up while my darling husband has my son at work with him. They will be home around 1, the office closes at noon, then 1/2 hour train ride and 1/2 hour from the station, keep in mind it would only take him 1/2 hour to drive to work, but parking costs in Center City Philadelphia are exorbitant.

Anyway, Christmas is my favorite holiday, not for the gift giving, though the look on my son's face when he sees the presents under the tree makes my heart swell. I love Christmas because it signifies the birth of Jesus, the most amazing gift any child of God could be given and because it's about family. This year we will be dining at my sister's new place in Ocean City, NJ. It's a little small and we won't all be able to sit at the dining room table together, but that doesn't matter, we will all be there, all 10 of us.

When we were younger, we alternated Christmas dinners, we would host one year and my Mom's brother and his family would host the next. Christmas in my family has always been about family, we would get together, the kids would show each other their gifts and we'd play, we'd eat and then sit around and talk (when we were younger, we'd run off and play).

I think that lately we've gotten away from the holidays being about family and it's become more about the gifts, my older sister (I'm the middle of 3 girls) suggested that we stop giving gifts to each other for everything and just get together instead. We're going to discuss that tomorrow and see where it takes us.

I think we should all stop this holiday season and remember what it is we are celebrating, the birth of the Christ child. And to enjoy the blessing of our families whether they be small or large, related by blood or choice, your family is something that can't be replaced. Enjoy the time.

OK, so this started out as just a note about it becoming Christmas, but since I've had an emotional couple of years losing people in my family to old age and cancer, I've become a little more focused on the importance of family. So sorry for the tangent but these are my stream of conscious thoughts.

Have a very Merry Christmas!!!

Tackle it Tuesday #9 - A day late

Well, I was supposed to obviously do this yesterday, but as it's Christmas time I ran out of time yesterday, so I'm posting this first thing, of course it helps that my husband took our son to work today.


So anyway, my tackle it was some homemade Christmas presents, I knitted scarves for my son's teacher and aide (of course the pictures are still on my camera and my husband took the laptop with him to work so I'll have to add them later) and I made this fleece tie blanket for my son.

Here's a close up of the material.


The material isn't what I would have chosen normally, but he wanted red, it's his favorite color and everything has to be red.

I also am making a red plaid blanket with a red facing for my husband but it isn't quite done.

Check out what other Moms did yesterday at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Tackle It Tuesday #8 - Christmas Candy

Apparently I make good candy, I only really make it at Christmas because it's very time consuming, but I make a lot, and it's all chocolate, well milk chocolate and white chocolate (which really isn't chocolate). I am not bragging about my chocolate, I think it's ok, it's not really difficult to melt chocolate and dip or mix things in it and put it on a piece of wax paper, but my husband's work family started asking in the spring if I was making my candy this Christmas.

Since my schedule has been behind these past few weeks because of pesky little things like asthma attacks and ensuing ER and doctor visits, I just got to making the chocolates this week. I made 3 kinds of chocolate covered oreos (plain, mint & peanut butter), buckeyes, milk chocolate pretzel joys, milk chocolate coconut haystacks, milk chocolate covered marshmallows, white chocolate pretzel joys, white chocolate coconut haystacks, white chocolate covered marshmallows and white chocolate peppermint bark. I forgot to take pictures as I was making them, so I'll have to post that later, so if you want to see pictures, you'll have to come back.

Go check out what other blogger have tackled at 5 Minutes for Mom.

My little Wise Man

So, my son's Christmas program was Friday night, he was one of the three Wise Men, or as he's been telling me for about 2 weeks, he was a rich man who is a king. He was disappointed that the gifts weren't real gifts just wrapped cardboard boxes but, he did well anyway.

And, considering he supposedly has a behavior problem at school, he was the only wise man not fooling around on stage. The play part went well, the angel and Mary almost dropped baby Jesus, but caught him by his foot. They all did well, all the children had to do was go up on stage and stand, they had the Burl Ives recording running in the background.

The second half of his program was a little rough for him, he didn't want to go back on stage, he was tired. The show was from 7-8 and he's usually in bed by 7:30 so, this is what he looked like for most of the program, though not with his arm in the air - that was for the song they were doing.

Then we went down for cookies and juice and he didn't like the juice because they mixed Hawaiian Punch with 7Up, why they put soda in a drink for preschoolers, I really don't know, my son doesn't like soda, he says it burns his mouth. So, we went home for snack and juice and he didn't wind up in bed until 9.

He had his last hockey game on Saturday and got his first trophy, his team won every game they played this season. I didn't make the game since I woke up yesterday sick and of course my husband didn't take any pictures of him with his trophy so I'll take some and post them on another post soon.

Tackle it Tuesday #7 - Teacher gifts

This week, I made some teacher gifts. This is what I am giving all of Len's teachers, we have 2 MOPPETS volunteers, 4 teachers in his classroom. His 2 primary teachers are also getting scarves, but I'm still knitting them.


These are Sand Art Brownies (on the left), the recipe and instructions are on OrganizedHome.com and Hot Chocolate Mix from Controlling My Chaos. I will warn you these are messy to make, but if you want to make a lot of these easy to make, inexpensive gifts, invest in a tart tamper and a wide mouth funnel, you can also buy a regular funnel and cut off the "chute" and that will make you a wide mouth funnel, but it's not as stable as one made to be wide mouth.

This is what I tackled, check out what other blogger tackled this week at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Tackle It Tuesday #6 - Christmas Decorating

This week we tackled getting ready for Christmas. We put up our tree as you can see here.

We also put up a pine garland on our banister. We put up our candy canes outside along our sidewalk, but that's as far as outside went because we then got rain and you can't really decorate outside in the rain.

So, what did you tackle this week? Head on over to 5 Minutes for Mom and check out what other bloggers have tackled this week.