Monday, December 3, 2012

Merry, Merry, Happy, Happy!

 (Lexi loves babies.)
 What I have to say about Christmas right now is a big bah humbug.  Mostly, that would be Christmas cards.  Just ordered another inferior card (at least last year I had a good excuse).  And then...(as if it isn't lame enough to have a lame picture), if I somehow kept record of this stuff, I'm sure I could confirm that the printer dies once a year at Christmas time when I'm trying to print out address labels.  I only use the printer approximately twice a year, and for the random times I print out recipes or whatever else I might use it for, I don't care if it works then, I would like it to work today.
 So I'm starting another post in an irate mood.  Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead.
(Pretty thrilled with their new stickers.) 
Or should I tell about how my new sewing machine quit working, so I unthreaded it all (including the bobbin), packed it all up, took it to Jo-Ann's, they plugged it in, rethreaded it all, and it worked perfectly.  That also would have been lame enough except the lady proceeded to go on about "user error" and "usually threading problems".  (Lady, I just did the exact thing you did six times at home.)
 So the babysitter couldn't come one day, and they were kinda slow at Scott's work, so he took the day off and stayed home with the babies went on great adventures with the babies.
 They went out to Brummitt's to watch the pecan harvest.
(If I had used this for a Christmas picture, it would have been a lot more realistic, and probably even cuter, especially with Lexi scowling like that.)
 When I got home from work, Summer met me at the door.  "Dabid...Dabid....Dabid...(she was very excited) Dabid shake the tree!!!"  (Summer doesn't say "v's")
 Watching pecan harvest is pretty cool.  I went out to watch a year or so ago.  They have this tree-shaker machine that you hook up to a tractor, attach to the tree, shake the tree, then drive around under the tree with the pecan-picker-upper, and all the able bodied people around help rake the stray pecans toward the picker-upper, and then do it all over again under the next tree. 



 Sitting in a pile of pecans.
(Packed away some of Summer's clothes to save for Lexi, together the babies got my boxes out, and Lexi piece by piece threw everything downstairs.  Thought it was kinda funny that it all got caught on top of the door there.)


Speaking of the babysitter, somehow she braided Summer's hair.  Usually just to comb Summer's hair is a huge accomplishment. 

 
Lexi has a great fascination with shoes.  On the one hand, she always tried to put shoes on people whenever anyone is walking around barefoot, but she also knows to use shoes to get bugs/spiders/etc., so anyway on this day, she brought me a shoe to get a bug that was in the kitchen.  (Please note - I made that sound really mild ("a bug in the kitchen".)    I've made a new goal to not talk about evil scorpions, spiders, snakes, etc, so I'm saving all the following stories inside my head:  oh, hi there snake on the front sidewalk trying covertly to hide in the hose, I wouldn't have noticed you except that you're 2 feet from me, and your evil head is standing up - unlike a hose, that kind of gave you away.  And then there was the snake that the neighbor just killed that was long enough that I could have made a belt for Scott, Summer, Lexi, and giantly pregnant me with it.  Ahm, I thought snake season was over, and I wasn't supposed to be worrying about them lately.  (I'm sparing the details on these stories.  Gold star for me.)
In other wildlife and such stories...there was a dead coyote on the road the other day.  When I drove by, there was a buck standing victoriously beside it.  (Get over it, Buck, I know you didn't kill the coyote, clearly hit by a car.)  Also saw the biggest buck I've ever seen in my life while driving one day.  This is news because most deer around here are dog-sized.  (They're not white tails.  Have no idea what they are, but it's not an exaggeration to say that they are the size of dogs.)
Ah, there's the 98.  Drove the Honda to work on the day that Scott stayed home.  My main goal was to park next to Tim's Lexus.  (Random fact:  Tim's car still has "that new car smell" even though he occasionally drives his poodle to the park in it.)  Alas, hopes were dashed - he wasn't there, and ironically, there was another rather unfortunate car that I parked next to.  So my hopes also were dashed that someone might look out the window and say "Who's driving that dreadful car?  Someone give that woman a raise!"
Neighbor's longhorns.  Recently found out these guys are famous.  Neighbor raises them to be props in movies.  I'm not making this up.  Heard that they were in the latest remake of "True Grit".  Was feeling famous by association, but then I got suspicious.  Are there any cows in True Grit?  I mean, isn't the plot of the story that the girl is chasing down her dad's killer?  (That sounds harsh....  Confirmed: we read too many Westerns around here.)  Scott assured me that all Westerns have some cows hanging around in the background.  (Come on, I wanted these guys to be in a movie where the main theme is a cattle drive, or maybe, at least, a family moving west on the Oregon trail with plenty of zooming in on the cows as they're travelling slowly along.)  
I keep thinking that every nice day we get is going to be the last nice day of the year.  The babies were playing in the rain the other night.  It was warm enough.  On Thanksgiving Day, we were at Rassi's and there were kids swimming in their pool.  (Not our kids.)  Today and yesterday were really nice too - in the 80's.  Air conditioner still running.

 (Lexi = loves to climb.  This door hasn't flung open on her yet, but one of these days it will.  Does this on the oven too.)

 More of the pecan harvest.  Not sure how these got out of order.